Hosios ― A Semantic Study of Greek Piety

The author examines the meaning and usage of the Ancient Greek adjective hosios, traditionally rendered as “piety,” and its cognates, focusing on the idea of lexical competition and asking what semantic and pragmatic circumstances caused speakers to use hosios and its cognates in contrast to other ways of expressing a similar message. She considers the semantic relationship between hosios and its near-synonyms eusebês and dikaios, their evaluative nature, the apparent polysemy, usages to refer to the behavior of a god, the increasing popularity of the lexeme in the fifth century BCE, the weight of evaluations such as hosios and its cognates, how the semantics of hosios can aid in the interpretation of Athenian conceptualization of citizenship and the role of religion in political life, and the paradox in the hypothesis that hosios can mean both sacred and profane. The book is based on the author's doctoral dissertation. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Saskia Peels, Ph.D. (2014, Utrecht), is a postdoctoral researcher at the Universite de Liege. Her work focuses on different aspects of Greek religion in literature and inscriptions. She is co-author ofA Collection of Greek Ritual Norms (Universite de Liege 2016).