© MUSÉE DU LOUVRE, DIST. RMN-GRAND PALAIS / ART RESOURCE, NY
In the third century CE, the renowned Roman lawyer known as Paul the Jurist elaborated upon a first-century BCE law regarding murderers and poisoners:
Those who perform, or have performed for them, impious or nocturnal rites for the purpose of enchanting, bewitching, or binding someone are either crucified or thrown to the beasts … The magicians themselves are burned alive. No one may possess books on the art of magic; and those who are found in possession have their property confiscated and their books burned in public.1
Paul the Jurist’s commentary reveals that Roman legal experts in the imperial period came to see earlier laws from the Roman Republic concerning murder and poisoning as applicable to other forms of harm, especially spells that compel or prevent another’s action. These spells were often termed in Latin defixiones and in Greek katadesmoi, both typically translated today as “binding spells.” Such rites could be threatening in part because they were unorthodox means of controlling others that fell outside of the traditional Roman ritual power structure. Paul’s text indicates that Romans took them very seriously.
In addition to the punishments prescribed for magicians, Paul the Jurist’s commentary states what should happen to magic books: they should be burned in public, an action that evokes the burning of magic books in Acts 19:19. The reference indicates that magic books existed in the Roman period and that they were of concern to authorities. The Roman biographer Suetonius in fact records that Augustus had 2,000 magical scrolls burned in 13 BCE (Augustus 31.1)!
Despite the efforts of authorities, however, portions of magic books survive from antiquity. Most of the surviving texts were produced on papyrus in Roman Egypt between the third and fifth centuries CE, although the texts likely reflect earlier traditions, as fragments of papyri with magical texts have been found elsewhere. Among the binding spells these texts contain, some belong to a subcategory referred to as “love magic.” One such spell for binding a lover calls for the crafting of wax or clay figures of a man and a woman. The man is to be made in the form of Ares holding a sword at the woman’s neck. The woman is to be made on her knees with her hands bound behind her back. The recipe then says to write its specified magical names and words on the female figure, along with the name of the intended target. Concerning the female figure, the recipe then states:
Take thirteen copper needles and stick one on the brain while saying, “I am piercing your brain, NN.” And stick two in the ears and two in the eyes and one in the mouth and two in the midriff and one in the hands and two in the pudenda and two in the soles, saying each time, “I am piercing such and such a member of her, NN, so that she may remember no one but me, NN, alone.”2
The “NN” indicates where the practitioner can insert the name of the intended target and, at the end, his own name; such formulas reveal that these texts were intended as recipes that could be repeated. The instructions also call for a spell to be inscribed on a lead tablet that will be tied to the figures. Once the figures, tablet, and fasteners are completed, the recipe states: “You place it, as the sun is setting, beside the grave of one who has died untimely or violently, placing beside it also the seasonal flowers.” What a location!
Were such spells ever actually put into practice? In the 1970s, a clay female figure was discovered that closely resembles the one described in the binding spell above, complete with copper needles (see image). Now housed in the Louvre, the figure was reportedly placed in a vase along with a curse tablet that resembles the one described in the recipe. The spell on the tablet is 28 lines long in Greek; I edit it here to present some essential details. It begins by calling on a variety of deities and beings:
I entrust this binding spell to you the chthonic gods, Pluto and Kore Persephone Ereschigal and Adonis also called Barbaritha and Hermes chthonian Thoth … and Anoubis the powerful Pseriphtha, who holds the keys of Hades, and to you chthonic devil demons, the boys and girls prematurely dead … I summon all the demons in this place to assist the demon Antinous …3
Addressing the deities and departed, the text continues:
Rouse yourself for me and go to each place, to each neighborhood, to each house, and bind Ptolemais whom Aias bore, the daughter of Horigenes, so that she should not … give any pleasure to another man, except to me alone, Sarapammon, whom Area bore.
The spell then invokes further deities and specifies all the things that the woman Ptolemais should be unable to do, including eating and drinking, until she finally accepts the advances of Sarapammon. It concludes:
Drag her … until she does not reject me, Sarapammon, whom Area bore, and I have her, Ptolemais, who Aias bore, the daughter of Horigenes, subject to me for the entire extent of my life, loving me, desiring me, telling me what she thinks. If you do this, I will release you.
We have no idea if Ptolemais told Sarapammon “what she thinks”—but I wager her thoughts would not have been kind if she found the figure with the pins in it! Spells like these attempted to gain control over others by means outside of normative Roman custom and paths to power. Some clearly believed the rituals worked. In a world where supernatural powers might be summoned to circumvent traditional forms of authority, Roman law could be summoned to destroy the practitioners of magic and their books. Fortunately for modern-day archaeologists and historians, Roman attempts to eradicate the knowledge and means to such ritual power were incomplete, giving us insight into what concerned Roman authorities.
In the third century CE, the renowned Roman lawyer known as Paul the Jurist elaborated upon a first-century BCE law regarding murderers and poisoners: Those who perform, or have performed for them, impious or nocturnal rites for the purpose of enchanting, bewitching, or binding someone are either crucified or thrown to the beasts … The magicians themselves are burned alive. No one may possess books on the art of magic; and those who are found in possession have their property confiscated and their books burned in public.1 Paul the Jurist’s commentary reveals that Roman legal experts in the imperial period […]
