The edited volume presents the rst comprehensive corpus of performative adjuration formulae collated from Greek and Latin epigraphical sources. The original texts-for the most part artefacts connected with magico-religious beliefs and practices of their users-are all translated into English and accompanied by a philological and socio-religious commentary. The international team of three specialists adopts a synoptic approach that tracks various classes of epigraphic documents to analyse permutations and developments in the syntactic structure of the adjuration formula, and its pragmatic function. This major study of the adjuration formula in Antiquity and its continued tradition in the Middle Ages will be of interest not only to the scholars of these linguistic traditions, but also to researchers working in the elds of Religious Studies, Ancient History, Theology, and Archaeology.

Juraj Franek, Associate Professor at the Department of Classical Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, specializes in Greek epigraphy, early Christian literature and methodological approaches to religious. Daniela Urbanová, Professor at the Department of Classical Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, specializes in Ancient magic and Roman epigraphy (especially archaic inscriptions and curse tablets). Ulrike Ehmig is the director of the Corpus Insciptionum Latinarum at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.