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• From domestic apotropaic magic to state religion in the Roman world: ways there and back

  113–128

  Antón Alvar Nuño

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  281

  There are two main methodological approaches in relation to the study of apotropaic magic in the Graeco-Roman world. An historicist one, focused on the formal description of the data and on tracing their possible origins; and a psychologist-functionalist one, which interprets the data as a psychological relief to the anxieties produced by the misfortunes of dailylife. I propose to explore here an aspect of apotropaic magic frequently overlooked: its mutual relation with the religion of the State, which creates a common syntactic framework but also tensions and conflicts.

• La religión greco-romana como modelo comparativo en la década primera de Pedro Mártir de Anglería

  109–123.

  Antón Alvar Nuño

  Views:

  1

  Even though Lafitau is generally considered the forefather of comparative ethnography, the first Chroniclers of Indies (Cronistas de Indias) frequently resorted to Graeco-Roman religion in order to describe the polytheisms of the New World. The first Chronicler who interpreted the New World as the empirical proof of the revival of the Classical World was Pedro Mártir de Anglería. This paper analyses Pedro Mártir’s frequent comparisons with Roman religion in his description of taíno religion and the intellectual background that allowed for the first step towards the formalisation of a theory of polytheism.