Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome

Parting company with the trend in recent scholarship to treat the subject in abstract highly theoretical terms <i>Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome</i> proposes that the magic-working of antiquity was in reality a highly pragmatic business with very clearly formulated aims - often of an exceedingly maligant kind. <br/><br/>In seven chapters each addressed to an important arm of Greco-Roman magic the volume discusses the history of the rediscovery and publication of the so-called <i>Greek Magical Papyri </i>a key source for our understanding of ancient magic; the startling violence of ancient erotic spells and the use of these by women as well as men; the alteration in the landscape of <i>defixio</i> (curse tablet) studies by major new finds and the confirmation these provide that the frequently lethal intent of such tablets must not be downplayed; the use of herbs in magic considered from numerous perspectives but with an especial focus on the bizarre-seeming rituals and protocols attendant upon their collection; the employment of animals in magic the factors determining the choice of animal the uses to which they were put and the procuring and storage of animal parts conceivably in a sorcerer's workshop; the witch as a literary construct the clear homologies between the magical procedures of fictional witches and those documented for real spells the gendering of the witch-figure and the reductive presentation of sorceresses as old risible and ineffectual; the issue of whether ancient magicians practised human sacrifice and the illuminating parallels between such accusations and late 20th century accounts of child-murder in the context of perverted Satanic rituals.<br/><br/>By challenging a number of orthodoxies and opening up some underexamined aspects of the subject this wide-ranging study stakes out important new territory in the field of magical studies.