Abstract

It has become a commonplace to say that, in classical Greek and Roman religion, to know the name of a god was to have power over him. The idea was rejected by Martin Nilsson, but he did not argue the point at any great length and a more detailed discussion may be of use. In this paper, I shall examine those contexts where it might be maintained that gods' names possessed some kind of intrinsic power but I shall conclude that the phenomenon is marginal and not universally true of Greek religion as a whole. To do this, we shall have to consider the whole question of how far the Greeks were worried about divine names and what the motives for this may have been. Evidence derived from prayers is of particular importance in this.