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Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.10.24
Bengt Ankarloo, Stuart Clark, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Ancient
Greece and Rome. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Pp. xvi + 378. ISBN 0-8122-3517-7. $55.00 (hb). ISBN 0-8122-1705-5.
$24.95 (pb).
Reviewed by Donald Lateiner, Ohio Wesleyan University (dglatein@cc.owu.edu)
Word count: 2811 words
Contributors:
Daniel Ogden, Georg Luck, Richard Gordon, Valerie Flint
"People everywhere are concerned about the same things: health, wealth, good looks, favorable
marriage, children, protection from dangers or disasters." Georg Luck's statement (105) explains
the demand, and witches and magicians supply the product. This collection of four essays is part of
a series whose scope is indicated in the title. The period surveyed in this volume extends from
Homer to Augustine, well over a thousand years. The scattered nature of the evidence
(geographically and chronologically), the hostility of many of the sources (esp. Christian), the
uncertain nature of much of the archaeological data, and the difficult philological and interpretive
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problems posed by producers and operators, either sub-literate or secretive or both, make a
comprehensive presentation into a daunting task.
The contributors, in order (although the reason for this order is not apparent), are Daniel Ogden
(University of Wales, Swansea), Georg Luck (Johns Hopkins), Richard Gordon (no affiliation listed),
and Valerie Flint (University of Hull). The first and third contributions have helpful bibliographical
essays, and the entire volume has a comprehensive bibliography, although no index was provided
in the page proofs that I reviewed (nor were the referenced illustrations included). I trust that the
authors (hardly the press) caught the review copy's many crude misprints present in the bound
proofs. Therefore, I won't trouble the reader with my list.
Ogden examines "Curse tablets and voodoo dolls," an archaeological topic founded by the
pathbreaking works of R. Wuensch (1897) on Attic materials, A. Audollent (1904) on other Greek
and Latin materials, and K. Preisendanz (1928-31) on magical papyri (mostly from Egypt), and
continued by recent publications of D. Jordan, C. Faraone, and R. Tomlin for the peculiar Bath
material. Over 1,600 tablets are already known and more appear as excavators learn what to look
for.
Ogden surveys "binding spells" (probably called katadesmoi and defixiones) on lead tablets,
lamellae (often rolled and "bound," sometimes nailed), and on amulets, etc., and examines spells
associated with anthropomorphic objects (made of clay, mud, metal). He is scrupulously informative
about the studies that he has consulted. He discusses twistedness (the curses, the spell, and the
request). He examines development through time (when a date can be established) of spells for five
categories: love (separation and attraction; one quarter of the total, chiefly men chasing women), for
athletic competitions, for litigation or trade (esp. innkeepers), and "prayers for justice" (more humble
requests for restitution of stolen goods, often quite ordinary like a cloak or bowl). He discusses
deposition sites such as graves and wells (underground water seems to have been an especially
communicative medium) . Literary texts are provided when suitably parallel (e.g., Plato, Vergil,
Apuleius).
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Ogden discusses the powers addressed, commonly Demeter, Mercury, or the mysterious Iao. He is
noncommittal on how professionalized the business of "binding spells" became (cf. the
comparatively early source, Plato Rep. 364b, Laws 933a), rightly so since anyone with some
literacy could bury his/her own. He thinks the magicians saw themselves as "countercultural." He
presents evidence for "pre-inscribed tablets to sell off the peg." Tablets without any writing at all are
known from the Bath Sacred Spring. Gender and Class (slaves) receive attention, and the
noteworthy observation is made that the archaeological evidence seems to be at serious variance
with the literary portraits of binders and witches (summarized 62-63; see below on Luck).
The dolls, voodoo-ish or not, are made of clay, mud, wool, dough, or wax. They too are found in
various venues, often encased or inscribed and sometimes mutilated or penetrated, although
Ogden finds this last fact less probative of male misogyny than Faraone or his teacher Winkler did
in the case of the Louvre female with 13 needles driven into her orifices and limbs (66). He draws a
parallel with Vergil's Dido's burning of a bust of Aeneas with his belongings, a ritual that combines
erotic attraction and destructive cursing (Aen. 4.508-640; p.75). Similarly, Horace combines erotic
and necromantic rites with dolls in one of his Canidia stories (Sat. 1.8; Ep. 5, 17). One might add
that Apuleius' Charite practices rituals before Dionysiac images of her untimely deceased husband.
These idols may be relevant to his sudden return as a dream-spectre (Metam. 8.7). Animals are
sometimes killed so that the operator can activate the curse-tablet or images. The force of this
magical practice is somehow connected to the worldwide religious practice of animal sacrifice.
Sometimes the dolls themselves are deliberately broken.
Ogden hesitates to assign Near Eastern origins to Greek practices but mentions Egyptian,
Babylonian, and Jewish parallels. He is noncommittal about whether the magic "worked," and
unsure, without adequate discussion, of just what such a question could mean. (Gordon has a more
sophisticated conceptual framework.) He clearly establishes the importance of magical texts for
scholars working in the fields of religion and gender and pleads for the scholarly demarginalization
of these often illegal practices occurring on the social margins.
Luck surveys "witches and sorcerers in classical literature," a topic on which he has written well
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before (Arcana Mundi 1985). He acknowledges recycling. This volume, however, seems pitched at
the same audience of advanced undergraduate students. A glossary of relevant Greek and Latin
terms is provided. It is odd to call Apuleius' autobiographical court-pleading, on which his life
depended, "a fairly well balanced account" (98). Gordon's take (200) is properly more cautious.
The magician as "crisis manager, an all-purpose therapist" (H. Betz's phrases), seems an odd
introduction to the imaginary literary vignettes of Circe (a divine singleton here), Medea, Deianeira,
Moses, Orpheus, Simaetha, Dido, Canidia, Erictho, Pamphile, Heliodorus' Bessan necromancer,
and even the historical, if grossly caricatured, Alexander from Pontine Abonuteichus. The
description better fits Apollonius of Tyana or Jesus and Simon Magus, and it certainly suits the
"backwoods" sorcerers of PGM (Betz's own topic). Luck is more persuasive in his section on
Apollonius (130-37) claiming that Philostratus (our main source) shows Apollonius to have been a
magos not a philosopher, despite his clear intentions. But, as Gordon iterates (178-82), the
category of magic has no fixed denotation beyond "the dream of power" in a world where some
men and women are endowed with unusual "crafts."
Nigidius Figulus, a scholarly friend of Cicero's and an occultist, shadowy savant though he be,
belongs to a different category and problem for the history of magic. Luck says too little about this
multi-talented(?) "Pythagorean" astrologer known to Varro and mentioned by Gellius as second only
to Varro and by Apuleius (Apol. 42.7; cf. E. Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic
[1985]). I might note here that the cumulative bibliography includes R. MacMullen's Enemies of the
Roman Order (1966) but ignores Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981) and his other
publications relevant to the location of ancient witch practices.
One may question Luck's undifferentiated prosopography of channelers and the undifferentiated
genres of the sources. Horace's satirical portrait of Canidia and the "Apocryphal" Acts of Peter (or
the fourth-century Syriac so-called Clementine Recognitions) have different audiences and
purposes--although all can be entertaining: Priapus farts, Peter resurrects a smoked(!) tuna fish,
and Simon Magus levitates, flies a spell, but soon crashes, after which he dies and fails to resurrect
as promised. Luck recognizes this problem (133) but fails to act on the awareness. Luck includes
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some good, not well known, later passages from the neo-Platonist Plotinus, the theurgists Proclus
and Maximus of Ephesus, and the Christian bishop Sophronius. He appropriately notes in closing
that the Roman Catholic church still requires two attested miracles for canonization as Saint.
Flint ponders "Christian redefinitions of pagan religions" in "The Demonisation of Magic and
Sorcery." This wisely more limited essay studies the alteration (for the worse, arguably) both of the
concept of daimon and of the emergent monotheism's institutional, ideological, and imperialistic
need to dishonor, disprove, and disestablish "older, looser" supernatural exercises and the pagan
powers that they served in worship. Sources of "salutary fear" were refashioned for specifically
Christian purposes. She shows that it was more profitable for Christianity to capture, tolerate, and
incorporate the demons, practices, operators, and their followers than to extirpate them (if that were
possible). Collision was followed by compromise that "allowed much pagan 'magic' to survive and
...be condoned" (280). Little evidence survives from the losing, elided side.
Good and bad daimones filled the Greek world from Homer to Plato and beyond (Symp. 202e,
Apul. Apol. 43), sometimes helpful, sometimes the source of fear or evil (Plut. Brut. 36.3-4). They
were spirit-bridges and Neo-Platonists and Theurgists both contributed Greek ideas and
psychology to the new Christian system (288, e.g., Euseb. Dem. Evang. 3.6, 5) that inherited only
ubiquitous bad "devils" from its Palestinian monotheistic theological matrix (293-95) and rarely finds
a neutral term for such spirits (perhaps, Acts 17:22-23, 25:19). Eventually, Augustine refashioned
the Hebrew angels to serve as the useful good demons that paganism had once enjoyed. They were
too useful to suppress utterly. Signs and wonders were expected, as testify both canonical and non-
canonical gospels of Jesus and the popular Peter-Simon Magus contest literature (300). The
heresiologists credited Samaritan Simon with real marvels as well as fraudulent (if effective)
illusions. For triumphant and exultant Christianity, Simon emblematizes false claims of messiahship
and failed pagan magic and witchcraft (303).
Flint emphasizes the role of Gnostic dualism, secrecy, and beliefs in evil demons (even Yahweh!
299). The Christian assault on Gnosticism required condemnation of many mysteries, magics, and
defenses along with their "scruffy racketeers" (307). All the creeds and rites sought (and seek) "right
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access to the supernatural," and all located human fear somewhere in the process (Origen c. Cels.
1.68, 2.51, 8.36, quoted 308). Origen, Athanasius, and Cassian contrast Christian protection from
harm to demonic cruelty and Christ's success to the devils' many recent losses (c. Cels. 1.60, 8.44;
v. Ant.). Patristic sources describe monkish battles against demonic monkey-business. It was
nevertheless still hard labor to distinguish non-Christian from Christian exorcisms, even Jesus' own
(e.g., Luke 8:26-39, 11:14-22) as Morton Smith argued in Jesus the Magician (1981). Augustine,
countryman and frequent quoter of Apuleius, wrote many pages on wicked demons and how to
escape their very real powers (e.g., Div. Daem. 3.7-8, 5.9; Civ. Dei 8.18-22, 9.1). He generously
defends, ca. 406, both Jesus and Apuleius against charges of magic (320).
Flint, following Peter Brown's hint ("Sorcery, Demons, and the Rise of Christianity" [1970]), believes
that increasing imperial prosecutions for sorcery and increased penalties ca. 350 CE reflect
imperial desire to control the pagan aristocracy (320-24). At this time, the church showed more
forebearance than the state and even granted asylum for some persecuted practitioners. The
victims of demonization, the possessed, were shown compassion in part because they offered
saints and bishops opportunities to show their (exorcizing) stuff (333-34), foremost, the sign of the
cross. Ordinary Christian baptismal rites echo(ed) older, pagan expurgations of demons (335-37).
Recognizing the interference of wicked spirits diminishes human guilt and alleviates brutal secular
penalties. Would you prefer exorcism or execution? Here we see a secular motive for popular
acceptance of the demonization of late antiquity (291) -- a rational "escapism" into invoking,
propitiating, manipulating, and expelling malefic powers, and scapegoating invisible beings for bad
news, such as plague, that afflicted the individual and the community. Interpretatio Christiana
infected the Church Triumphant to the point where St. Hilarion sprinkles horses and starting gates in
order that Christian chariots should win. They did, and Jerome (v. Hil. 20) attests that this event and
others similar led to many conversions (341). Augustine too concedes the acceptability of
Christianized pagan practice including food offerings, lotteries, and coincident festivals, whenever
such events support the worship of the one true god, encourage the religiously displaced to enter
the fold, and undercut the pagan competition (342-47). Flint has rather little to say of historical
persons and instances, for she focuses on the Christian theology of demons--how they were divided
and conquered and made to serve Christian purposes. She well explores how Christianity
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convinced itself to recycle the wonderful demons of its pagan and late Israelite heritage.
Gordon first discusses the marvellous, the extra-ordinary: what are the rules of Nature as we
experience it and how are "normal" states infringed by gods or humans. How do Hermes' untoward
but tolerable archaic powers become "bracketed off" by the polis' religion as negative magic:
anomalous acts of daemons and their human contacts' techniques of unnatural, unsanctioned
power? "Non-citizens and non-men, that is, women" (194) are the repositories of "illegitimate
religious knowledge" because of their exclusion from full membership in the community. Magics,
sorceries, and witchcrafts exemplify slippery terms -- good to persecute with -- in nearly any time or
culture, a fortiori in past centuries and distant cultures. These terms serve the defining intellectual
elite, in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the "modern" period, in order to derogate enemies and to
distinguish legimating and dominant monopolizing ideologies with their civic institutions from
excluded, degraded, and "dominated" forms (163). Magic, "the last recourse of the weak" (196)
often supplied only a weak solution, but beggars could not be choosers.
Gordon then limits his large topic to amatory magic and the female night-witch (an inversion of the
desirable "babe"). Another's magic spell or love-potion offers a way to explain one's own or a
beloved's defects or failures, such as male impotence or female inconstancy. Such exculpation
allows losers to become victims of others' malign skills, for example, IG XII 7.2, p.1: an Amorgan
concubine ran off to her master's humiliation and anger. Accusations of magic explain any woman's
failure to meet your or vicinal gossipy standards of proper widowly or virginal paradigms (199-204).
Accusations of magic, as Other, in short, can save your reputation or damage an opponent (as
Apuleius discovered at Oea's assizes).
The night-witch, not your neighborhood philtre-fabricator but a useful collective nightmare, reflects a
deeper unease, a sense of pollution and corpse-chopping and parsing, in a world of evil whose
conception Gordon dates to the civil wars of the late Roman republic. The dystopian vision featured
necromantic disturbance, witch-hunts, and a growing belief in uncontrollable evil. Gordon's essay,
brilliant at moments, ranges perhaps too far for a collection of essays; he announces as forthcoming
Spells of Wisdom where he may argue his ideas more fully. The organization here becomes
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obscure as he moves from erotic sociology to philosophers' responses to magic and illicit cult. He
finds "a vacancy that is the structural consequence of negating the norm" (210). This striking if
paradoxical idea is not developed in the consequent catalogue of those who denigrate magic as
illusory flotsam of a bogus wisdom: Hippocrates, Plato, Anaxilas, Cicero, Lucian, Arnobius, etc.
Gordon's learning is truly overwhelming, but one reader at least got lost as he segued without
explanation to six very various domestications of the marvellous (220-43). "Lunar slime" in "Pulling
down the Moon" is one fascinating topic but not parallel to "Magic in History." The hodgepodge, like
a magic recipe, incapacitated the victim, your reviewer, interested though he be in the relevance of
the tick and the cicada (237-38).
Gordon's final section examines "the repression of magic," noting first the paucity of our Greek
para-legal and legal sources. He discusses a Tean curse, a Smyrnean confession inscription, and
the Athenian graphe asebeias (convenient instrument of policing ideas because of its vagueness).
Gordon sees magic developing a clearer and more damaging identity in the Hellenistic period. The
Romans, with their magistrates' massive inquisitorial and capital powers, employed laws against
spells and poisons from an early time (cf. XII Tables 8.8, Livy 8.18.11) and intermittently used them
ferociously. Livy reports thousands executed at a time in limited areas in the second century
(39.41.5, 40.43.2-3). For the Greeks and Romans, the social status of the accused always meant
much. Magic furnished "an index of infamy" (262), an additional weapon or a ground for shared
communal outrage in "a theatre of purgation" (266).
Gordon closes by observing that ancient historians have worked little on magic, and we have long
awaited a general synthesis (see now F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (1994, 1997 English
translation), although various aspects of the subject have received fruitful elucidation. The general
editors' introduction here is unnecessarily perfunctory, not the desirable locating of ancient
European (Mediterranean branch) magic in the larger continuum. Despite its useful questions, one
hopes for wider contextualization: how are Greek and Roman witches and magic different from and
similar to those of other ancient parts of Europe, and how are later traditions dependent on the
Greeks and Romans and independent of them? The redoubtable Richard Gordon, to judge from the
other contributors' various notes of gratitude, seems to have been the guiding spirit behind the
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volume. His own prior work, e.g., "Aelian's Peony" (1987) is among the best. He surely could have
supplied this as a better mise-en-scne. In sum, this volume is unevenly useful, sometimes
surveying the basic but elsewhere bringing forth new evidence and new hypotheses.
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