Peter Struck, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, was the Academy’s Lucy Shoe Meritt Scholar in Residence in Rome in January and February. A leading scholar of ancient sign systems, he has written extensively on the theories of the sign in literary criticism and in divination through oracles, omens, and dreams. His first book, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of their Texts (2004), explored the ancient Greek literary critics and theorists who invented the idea of the poetic symbol.

Outside academia, Struck has served as a consultant to NBC, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and A&E, and worked on Clash of the Gods, a TV series on mythology for the History Channel. At TEDxPenn last year, he delivered a talk that linked the practices of ancient divination to contemporary cognitive research. After spending a year at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Studies, Struck saw a connection between the discoveries of cognitive scientists, evolutionary biologists, and behavioral psychologists—for example, with regards to nonverbal communication, intuition, and nondiscursive thinking—and the techniques used by ancients to make decisions or solve problems. More than occult rituals, acts like reading the entrails of sacrificed animals were techniques, Struck explains, that opened possibilities to break from discursive deliberations and tap into “things we know without quite knowing how we know.” Divine Signs and Human Nature: A Cognitive History of Divination in Antiquity, his forthcoming book, expands on this discussion.