Magic in the Roman World

Pagans, Jews and Christians

Naomi Janowitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134633678
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire antique

Using in-depth examples of 'magical' practice such as exorcisms, love rites, alchemy and the transformation of humans into divine beings, this lively volume demonstrates that the word 'magic' was used widely in late antique texts as part of polemics against enemies and sometimes merely as a term for other people's rituals. Naomi Janowitz shows that 'magical' activities were integral to late antique religious practice, and that they must be understood from the perspective of those who employed them.

1
GRECO-ROMAN, CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH CONCEPTS OF “MAGIC”

The origin of our term “magic” is filled with irony and imagination. The Greek term mageia [Latin: magia] derives from the Persian term magos: “priest.”¹ This hereditary priesthood from what is now Western Iran officiated at the ancient fire sacrifices. Herodotus, whose vision was adopted by so many later Greeks, painted a vivid picture for the Greeks of the foreign priests chanting stories of the birth of the gods at the sacrifices (Hist. 1.132, cf. 7.43).

By the first centuries of the Common Era the term mageia already had a long history of use in Greek literature. The earliest Greek writer to describe the priests appears to be Xanthus in the early fifth century (Diogenes Laertes, Lives 1.2). He wrote an entire treatise about the foreign priests, thereby making some doctrines of ancient Persian religion available to the Greek audience.²

Greek uses of the term after Xanthus had negative, or at best mixed, connotations.³ Religious terms often accrue negative connotations in another culture, as in the cases of voodoo or fakir.⁴ Persians were not only foreigners but also military enemies. Magi accompanied Xerxes in his famed crossing of the Hellespont (Kingsley 1995: 189). In Greco-Roman usage the picture of the magos and his mageia deviated from the original meaning, until, as we will see, it became an umbrella term for any and all suspect uses of supernatural powers.

A variety of Greek literary texts associated the magos and his work of mageia with all sorts of questionable figures including beggars and wizards.⁵ Inexplicable behavior, such as Helen leaving her husband for the Trojan Paris, was attributed to the mysterious power of these individuals (Euripides, Orestes 1497). The rhetorician Gorgias equated the practices of the magoi with goetia, an older Greek term for illicit and malevolent practices with even worse connotations (DK 82 B 11 p. 291).⁶

Even as mageia came generally to denote suspicious and barbaric practices, it continued to be used in more charitable ways in some circles.⁷ The term still had positive connotations, harkening back to the magi and mageia as special and powerful esoteric practitioners and practices which were foreign but not illicit or wrong. According to the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Alcibiades the magi were in charge of the “worship of the gods” (1.122A). Cicero introduced the term to his first century BCE Latin readers as “augurs and diviners among the Persians,” roles familiar to Roman readers (deDiv 1.41.90–1). In the first century CE Dio Chrysostom referred to the magi as those who specialize in the worship of the divine (Oration 36.4).

In the mid-second century CE, the writer Apuleius, charged by hostile relatives with luring his rich wife via magic, was able as part of a biting and often sarcastic defense to point to the positive meanings of magos. In his Apology, delivered in North Africa in 158/9 he stated,

For if, as I read in many authors, a magician means in the language of the Persians, the same thing that the word “priest” does, I put, what is the crime, pray, in being a magician? What is the crime in properly knowing, and understanding, and being versed in the laws of ceremonials, the solemn order of sacred rites, and religious ordinances?

(Apology 25.26)

Much later the neo-platonic philosopher Proclus (b. 410) called upon the practices of the magi as support for his positive attitude toward prayer (inTim 1. p. 208). Clearly he thought that his readers would recognize his reference to the ancient priests. In Jewish circles, positive descriptions of the magi include Philo’s description of their attempts to learn the truth (Quod omnis probus 74).⁸

These were minority positions, however, and the negative usages were much more common. Thus Augustine had to explain the suspicious appearance of “magi” in the New Testament; he commented that they were common magicians who had been converted by grace (Sermons 20.3–4).⁹

Use of the term in Roman legal rulings was decidedly negative.¹⁰ These usages are first documented, as best as we can tell, with the Sententiae of the jurist Iulius Paulus.¹¹ The history of this commentary to earlier law codes is obscure, but it was probably edited in the early third century CE using older materials.

In the hands of the Roman lawmakers the previous negative associations of the term were solidified. The practice of mageia became a capital offense.¹² Thus the code states “that it be decided that persons who are addicted to the art of magic shall suffer extreme punishment. Magicians themselves shall be burned alive” (Sent V. 23.17).¹³

Exactly which acts were proscribed varied from code to code and from emperor to emperor, depending most probably on which acts were thought to be most threatening at a particular point in time.¹⁴ Caracalla, and later Constantius II, had very broad conceptions which included, for example, the use of amulets to ward off disease. Under Constantine the Great, the venerable institution of reading auguries for the purpose of divination came under attack. Any diviner who was charged with operating in a private house, instead of as part of the standard public rites, was liable to be burned alive.¹⁵

Given the social role of law codes, the use of the term in these codes seems to construct an objective definition of what magic really is. It is a mistake, however, to take these Roman uses and go back (or forward) in history looking for “magic.” Prior to this time, suspect practices were proscribed on a case-by-case basis that did not necessarily reflect the later Roman notions of magic. For example, the Twelve Tables, originally composed in the mid-fifth century BCE, ordered punishment for the person “who sang evil songs” malum carmen incantare, and who tried to steal harvests via incantations.¹⁶ The Latin phrasing for both injunctions is ambiguous. Ancient interpreters understood the “evil songs” to be a form of slander; modern interpreters are more likely to label it ancient “magic.”¹⁷ These injunctions were not made in reference to any abstract notion of magic, at least as far as the citations we have from the Twelve Tables. Their inclusion was based on the fact that the practices led to personal injury.

Plato also argued for punishing instances of harm done against individuals without any reference to an overarching category of “magic.”¹⁸ Plato’s discussion is particularly subtle and it distorts his complex classification to simply say that Plato was legislating against “magic.” When someone was harmed, the first question that had to be asked, according to Plato, was the social role of the person who harmed him (Laws 933C–E). A doctor could be punished for harming an individual while the actions of a private person carried fewer social consequences. Again this usage is distinct from later Roman ones.

In the first century BCE Sulla’s Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis constructed a special class of outlawed political plotters and poisoners. Veneficium were potions that were thought, among other things, to heal or to cause people to fall in love. Sometimes they were lethal.¹⁹ Again the ruling is specific and no general category is referred to. In fact, references to veneficium throughout Roman literature, and to Φάρμακον in Greek literature, are always ambiguous.²⁰ The potions were powerful; whether that power was for good or for evil depended on the outcome of each specific case.²¹

The appearance of the term “magic” in law codes gives us a series of snapshots of abstract social usage, but does not begin to demarcate the social employment of the term in attacks and counter-attacks. Who was charged with these offences, and who was, beyond that, convicted and punished, depends on issues at which the code does not even hint. In addition, the fact that any event (or non-event) could be explained as due to magic meant that tremendous weight was always thrown on rhetorical arguments even when used in legal settings.

We see this in Apuleius’ lively defense against the legal charge that he was a magos and that he had seduced his wife via magic.²² Despite attempts in the law codes to delineate a clear set of forbidden activities, the specific components in the charge of magic made against him included actions as diverse as collecting fish, owning a mirror, writing poetry, and having a suspiciously small number of servants. “Magic” refused to stay within a neat set of legal definitions.

Apuleius readily pointed out that no one action with which he was charged inherently constitutes magic: is everyone who collects fish a magician? Many of the activities which look like magic, he argued, are in fact the daily pursuits of philosophers and those who investigate the natural world. Seen from this angle, the practices appear innocent, or even praiseworthy. Equally important to Apuleius was a general strategy of ridiculing his opponents. He attempted to put them on the defensive by casting doubt on their characters and motives and thereby to impugn the entire case.

Not everyone was equally likely to be charged as a magician. In addition to the magi, several other groups were particularly closely associated with magic. Hebrews and Jews were thought to have access to ancient secrets, sometimes understood to be helpful wisdom and sometimes viewed more negatively as forbidden and perverse magical practices.²³ Egypt was often cited as the source of magic by other cultures. A writing system which pre-dated the Greeks and the enormous ancient monuments impressed Herodotus and thereby all Greeks. Hieroglyphs, mummification, elaborate priesthoods – all these made Egypt a convenient source for strange and perverse knowledge. Already in the text of Isaiah, Egypt was posited as the source of necromancy rituals by the deuteronomic redactor (Schmidt 1994: 188). This trope reappears in rabbinic literature in the saying that nine tenths of magic was given to Egypt (Avot R Nat 48). For Origen the main contemporary practitioners of magic were located in Egypt (CC 1.22, 28, 38, 68).

Thrace was considered to be the home of many magicians, as was Thessaly, which was notorious for its witches.²⁴ The Marsi were known as “snake-charmers” with special cures for snakebites, a cliché from Ovid (MedFac 39) to Augustine (Epist 55.12; Gen ad litt 21.28, 29). All of these stereotypes flourished in the first three centuries CE and some continue to thrive today.

Pliny’s critique of the magi

In the second half of the first century CE, Pliny composed his magisterial Natural History, a compendium of information about the natural world. This extended survey compiles a hodgepodge of information about plant and animal products including their uses in curing diseases. Pliny tantalizes us by offering to “expose” the “fraudulent lies of the magi” whose “art has held complete sway throughout the world for many ages” (NH 30.1). Modern readers, eager to prove that educated Romans rejected “magic,” have often pointed to Pliny’s rejection of the magi. His compendium, they argue, approaches the world through careful empirical observation rather than through magic. Pliny’s dismissal of magical cures looks deceptively modern at first glance and appears to set him up as a reasoned critic of magical practices.

Pliny, however, includes cures modern readers would never dream of employing. His conception of magic is inconsistent and highly rhetorical, permitting him to both include and exclude practices at will. On closer analysis we see that he does not use a coherent set of criteria for evaluating the ideas of the magi, or anyone else’s cures for that matter. His definition of magic cannot be ours.

The magi’s success is due, Pliny warned, to their ability to make a combination of medicine, religion and astrology that is irresistible to most people (NH 30.2). Many famous thinkers were drawn to this philosophy and treasured the magi’s secrets, including Pythagoras, Empedoc...