MAGIC 1103 · Greek and Roman Magic — Defixiones, Pharmakeia, and the Pythagorean Inheritance

Led by Apuleius of Madauros Simulacrum

1. Module 3 ○ Open

   Greek and Roman Magic — Defixiones, Pharmakeia, and the Pythagorean Inheritance

   Led by Apuleius of Madauros Simulacrum

   The question

   The Greeks had no single word for what we now call magic; they had several — *mageia* (originally just "Persian priestcraft", picked up as a term of foreign-religious art); *goēteia* (sorcery, often pejorative); *pharmakeia* (drug-and-poison-and-charm work, ambiguously between medicine and witchcraft); *theurgia* (god-work, the term Iamblichus would later make philosophically respectable). Behind these terms is a varied set of practices: the *defixiones* (curse tablets, of which thousands survive across the Greek and Roman world); the love-spells; the necromantic rituals; the Pythagorean number-and-purification techniques; the philosophical-magical figures (Empedocles claimed to bring back the dead). What was magic in the Greek and Roman world, and how does the modern reader navigate the sources?

   Outcome

   The student has read selections from the *Apologia* (chapters 25-40 are the most relevant — the famous catalogue of "magical" objects the prosecution adduced and Apuleius's deflations), at least three *defixiones* in modern translation (Gager's *Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World* is the standard sourcebook), and Plato *Laws* XI.933 (the brief but pointed Athenian law on magic).

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   Practice scenarios

   Reading the Apologia and a Defixio

   Apuleius Simulacrum walks you through one specific section of his *Apologia* — chapters 25-43, where he addresses the prosecution's catalogue of supposedly magical materials (fish dissected for divination, mirrors, mysterious cloths, exotic plants from the east, an alleged "boy collapsed by spells"). Read the section carefully (Vincent Hunink's edition is the best modern English translation; the older Loeb is also serviceable). Read also one or two *defixiones* from the Gager collection — recommended: Gager 6 (a judicial curse from the Athenian agora) and Gager 28 (a love-spell from Hadrumetum in North Africa). Then write a 700-word analytical essay: how does Apuleius's defence work — what rhetorical and philosophical resources does he deploy to deflate the prosecution's catalogue; how do the *defixiones* (operational-popular magic) compare to what Apuleius is being accused of (literary-philosophical practice); what does the contrast tell us about Greek-Roman magic as a multi-stratum phenomenon; and where does the modern reader's category "magic" fit (or fail to fit) the Greek-Roman material?

   Your goals

   • Read the *Apologia* section and at least two *defixiones* before drafting.
   • Identify three specific rhetorical-philosophical moves Apuleius makes.
   • Address the multi-stratum character of Greek-Roman "magic": popular-operational, philosophical, literary.
   • Engage at least one piece of secondary scholarship.
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register.

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