Magic in Rome

"Superstitio and magic

Bound tablets with magic inscriptions from late antiquity
Excessive devotion and enthusiasm in religious observance were superstitio, in the sense of "doing or believing more than was necessary";[112] to which women and foreigners were considered particularly prone.[113] The boundaries between religio and superstitio were negotiable.
"In vulgar tradition (more vulgari)...a magician is someone who, because of his community of speech with the immortal gods, has an incredible power of spells (vi cantaminum) for everything he wishes to." Apuleius, Apologia, 26.6.[114]
Superstitio was often "seen to be motivated by an inappropriate desire for knowledge"; in effect, this was an abuse of religio.[112] Secretive consultations between private diviners and their clients were suspect. So were divinatory techniques such as astrology when used for illicit, subversive or magical purposes. Astrologers and magicians were officially expelled from Rome at various times, notably in 139 BC and 33 BC. In 16 BC Tiberius expelled them under extreme penalty because an astrologer had predicted his death. "Egyptian rites" were particularly suspect: Augustus banned them within the pomerium to doubtful effect; Tiberius repeated and extended the ban with extreme force in AD 19.[115] The Twelve Tables forbade any harmful incantation (Malum Carmen, or 'noisome metrical charm'); this included the "charming of crops from one field to another" (excantatio frugum) and any rite that sought harm or death to others. Despite several Imperial bans, magic and astrology persisted among all social classes. In the late 1st century AD, Tacitus could claim that astrologers "would always be banned and always retained at Rome".[116][117][118]


Mosaic from Pompeii depicting masked characters in a scene from a play: two women consult a witch
In the Graeco-Roman world, practitioners of magic were known as magi (s. magus) – a "foreign" title of Persian priests. Pliny the Elder offers a thoroughly skeptical "History of magical arts" from their supposed Persian origins to the ill-fated emperor Nero's vast and futile expenditure on research into magical practices, in an attempt to control the gods.[119] Lucan's Pharsalia has Pompey's doomed and wretched son await the battle of Pharsalus. Convinced that "the gods of heaven knew too little" of the outcome; he resorts to the "disgusting" necromancy of Erichtho, the Thessalian witch who inhabits deserted graves and feeds on rotting corpses. She can arrest "the rotation of the heavens and the flow of rivers" and make "austere old men blaze with illicit passions"; an ideal, stereotypical witch – a female foreigner from Thessaly, notorious for its witchcraft and wizardry. She and her clients clearly undermine the natural order of gods, mankind and destiny.[120] Philostratus takes pains to point out that the celebrated Apollonius of Tyana was definitely not a magician (magus) – "despite his special knowledge of the future, his miraculous cures, and his ability to vanish into thin air".[121]
In the everyday world, many individuals sought to divine the future, influence it through magic, seek vengeance with help from "private" diviners; chthonic deities functioned at the margins of Rome's divine and human communities, and the living might gain their favour and help – somewhat less dramatically than Lucan's Erictho, but usually away from the public gaze, during the hours of darkness. Burial grounds and isolated crossroads were among the likely portals,[122] but Ovid gives a vivid account of what might be magical rites at the fringes of the public Feralia festival: an old woman squats among a circle of younger women, sews up a fish-head, smears it with pitch, then pierces and roasts it to "bind hostile tongues to silence": she thus invokes Tacita, the underworld's "silent one". Archaeological evidence confirms the widespread use of so-called curse tablets (defixiones or "binding spells"), magical papyri and so-called "voodoo dolls" from a very early era. Around 250 defixiones have been recovered from urban and rural Britain; some seek straightforward, usually gruesome revenge, often for a lover's offense or rejection. Others appeal for divine redress of wrongs, in terms familiar to any Roman magistrate and promise a portion of the value of lost or stolen property in return for its restoration. In general, the values involved are quite low. None of these defixiones seem produced by, or on behalf of elite Romano-Britons; presumably, those without ready resort to human law and justice must hope to persuade the gods to act directly on their behalf. The archaeology suggests similar traditions throughout the empire, persisting until around the 7th century AD, well into the Christian era.[123]" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Rome#Roman_deities