Magic in the Greco-Roman world – that is, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the other cultures with which they interacted, especially ancient Egypt – comprises supernatural practices undertaken by individuals, often privately, that were not under the oversight of official priesthoods attached to the various state, community, and household cults and temples as a matter of public religion. Private magic was practiced throughout Greek and Roman cultures as well as among Jews and early Christians of the Roman Empire. Primary sources for the study of Greco-Roman magic include the Greek Magical Papyri, curse tablets, amulets, and literary texts such as Ovid's Fasti and Pliny the Elder's Natural History.Lindsay G. Watson, Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), pp. 1–17.
Terminology
Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos, "Magian" or "magician", was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, to include astrology, alchemy and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for (Pseudo-)Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the "Chaldean", founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that still survives in the modern-day words "magic" and "magician".
Authors William Swatos and Peter Kivisto define magic as "any attempt to control the environment or the self by means that are either untested or untestable, such as charms or spells."
General
While Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plutarch used magos in connection with their descriptions of Zoroastrian religious beliefs or practices, the majority seem to have understood it in the sense of "magician". Accordingly, the more skeptical writers then also identified the "magicians" – i.e. individual mages – as charlatans or frauds. In Plato's Symposium (202e), the Athenian identified them as maleficent, allowing however a measure of efficacy as a function of the god Eros. Pliny paints them in a particularly bad light.
According to one source magic in general was held in low esteem and condemned by speakers and writers. Betz notes book burnings in regards to texts such as the Greek Magical Papyri, when he cites Ephesus in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 19: 19). And on the account of Suetonius, Augustus ordered the burning of 2,000 magical scrolls in 13 BCE. Betz states:
Albrecht Dieterich noted the importance of the Greek Magical Papyri for the study of ancient religions because most of the texts combine several religions, Egyptian, Greek, or Jewish, among others.
According to Robert Parker, "magic differs from religion as weeds differ from flowers, merely by negative social evaluation"; magic was often seen as consisting of practices that range from silly superstition to the wicked and dangerous. However, magic seems to have borrowed from religion, adopting religious ceremonies and divine names, and the two are sometimes difficult to clearly distinguish. Magic is often differentiated from religion in that it is manipulative rather than supplicatory of the deities. Some mainstream religious rites openly set out to constrain the gods. Other rough criteria sometimes used to distinguish magic from religion include: aimed at selfish or immoral ends; and conducted in secrecy, often for a paying client. Religious rites, on the other hand, are more often aimed at lofty goals such as salvation or rebirth, and are conducted in the open for the benefit of the community or a group of followers.
Religious ritual had the intended purpose of giving a god their just due honor, or asking for divine intervention and favor, while magic is seen as practiced by those who seek only power, and often undertaken based on a false scientific basis. Ultimately, the practice of magic includes rites that do not play a part in worship, and are ultimately irreligious. Associations with this term tend to be an evolving process in ancient literature, but generally speaking ancient magic reflects aspects of broader religious traditions in the Mediterranean world, that is, a belief in magic reflects a belief in deities, divination, and words of power. The concept of magic however came to represent a more coherent and self-reflective tradition exemplified by magicians seeking to fuse varying non-traditional elements of Greco-Roman religious practice into something specifically called magic. This fusing of practices reached its peak in the world of the Roman Empire in the 3rd to 5th centuries CE. Thorndike comments: "Greek science at its best was not untainted by magic".
The magic papyri we have left to study, present more Graeco-Egyptian, rather than Graeco-Roman beliefs. Betz further notes:
History Magic in Homeric times
In Greek literature, the earliest magical operation that supports a definition of magic as a practice aimed at trying to locate and control the secret forces (the sympathies and antipathies that make up these forces) of the world (physis ) is found in Book X of the Odyssey (a text stretching back to the early 8th century BCE). Book X describes the encounter of the central hero Odysseus with Circe, "She who is sister to the wizard Aeetes, both being children of the Sun...by the same mother, Perse the daughter of the Ocean," on the island of Aeaea. In the story Circe's magic consists in the use of a wand against Odysseus and his men while Odysseus's magic consists of the use of a secret herb called moly (revealed to him by the god Hermes, "god of the golden wand") to defend himself from her attack. In the story three requisites crucial to the idiom of "magic" in later literature are found:
The use of a mysterious tool endowed with special powers (the wand). The use of a rare magical herb.Pliny in Natural History XXV, 10–12 states his belief that the "origin of botany" was closely aligned with what he saw as the practise of magic, he in fact notes that Medea & Circe were early investigators of plants – and that Orpheus was the first writer on the subject of botany. A divine figure that reveals the secret of the magical act (Hermes).
These are the three most common elements that characterize magic as a system in the later Hellenistic and greco-Roman periods of history.
Another important definitional element to magic is also found in the story. Circe is presented as being in the form of a beautiful woman (a temptress) when Odysseus encounters her on an island. In this encounter Circe uses her wand to change Odysseus' companions into swine. This may suggest that magic was associated (in this time) with practices that went against the natural order, or against wise and good forces (Circe is called a witch by a companion of Odysseus). In this mode, Circe is representative of a power (the Titans) that had been conquered by the younger Olympian gods such as Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.
Magic in Classical Greece The 6th century BCE gives rise to scattered references of magoi at work in Greece. Many of these references representing a more positive conceptualisation of magic. Among the most famous of these Greek magoi, between Homer and the Hellenistic period, are the figures of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Empedocles.
Orpheus Orpheus is a mythical figure, said to have lived in Thrace "a generation before Homer" (though he is in fact depicted on 5th-century ceramics in Greek costume). Orphism, or the Orphic Mysteries, seems also to have been central to the personages of Pythagoras and Empedocles, who lived in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. Pythagoras for example is said to have described Orpheus as "the...father of melodious songs". Since Aeschylus (the Greek playwright) later describes him as he who "haled all things by the rapture of his voice," this suggests belief in the efficacy of song and voice in magic. Orpheus is certainly associated with a great many deeds, the most famous perhaps being his descent to the underworld to bring back his wife, Eurydice. Orpheus' deeds are not usually condemned or spoken of negatively. This suggests that some forms of magic were more acceptable. Indeed, the term applied to Orpheus to separate him, presumably, from magicians of ill repute is theios aner or 'divine man'.
Pythagoras
Magical powers were also attributed to the famous mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras (c. 570 – 495 BCE), as recorded in the days of Aristotle. The traditions concerning Pythagoras are somewhat complicated because the number of Vitae that do survive are often contradictory in their interpretation of the figure of Pythagoras.
Some of the magical acts attributed to him include:
Being seen at the same hour in two cities. A white eagle permitting him to stroke it. A river greeting him with the words "Hail, Pythagoras!" Predicting that a dead man would be found on a ship entering a harbor. Predicting the appearance of a white bear and declaring it was dead before the messenger reached him bearing the news. Biting a venomous snake to death (or in some versions driving a snake out from a village).These miracles of Pythagoras are found in Hellenistic collections such as Apollonius' Historia Thaumasiai VI or Aelian's Varia Historia II.26 and IV.17. Empedocles, the extant fragments / edited with an introduction, commentary, and concordance by M. R. Wright. These stories also hint at Pythagoras being one of these "divine man" figures, theios aner, his ability to control animals and to transcend space and time showing he has been touched by the gods.
Empedocles Empedocles (c. 490 – c. 430 BCE) too has ascribed to him marvelous powers associated with later magicians: that is, he is able to heal the sick, rejuvenate the old, influence the weather and summon the dead. E.R. Dodds in his 1951 book, The Greeks and the Irrational, argued that Empedocles was a combination of poet, magus, teacher, and scientist.
After Empedocles, the scale of magical gifts in exceptional individuals shrinks in the literature, becoming specialized. Individuals might have the gift of healing, or the gift of prophecy, but are not usually credited with a wide range of supernatural powers as are magoi like Orpheus, Pythagoras and Empedocles. Plato reflects such an attitude in his Laws (933a-e) where he takes healers, prophets and sorcerers for granted. He acknowledges that these practitioners existed in Athens (and thus presumably in other Greek cities), and they had to be reckoned with and controlled by laws; but one should not be afraid of them, their powers are real, but they themselves represent a rather low order of humanity. An early Christian analogy is found in the 1st century CE writings of the Apostle Paul. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians conceptualizes the idea of a limitation of spiritual gifts.
Magic in the Hellenistic period