Invisible Romans (3 page)

Spells came in handy too if you had a wager on a chariot race and wanted to insure your victory, as this lead tablet from Africa shows:

I conjure you, daemon, whoever you may be, to torture and kill, from this hour, this day, this moment, the horses of the Green and the White teams; kill and smash the charioteers Clarus, Felix, Primulus, Romanus; do not leave a breath in them. I conjure you by him who has delivered you, at the time, the god of the sea and the air:
Io, Iasdao
… aeia./Luck

Or if you sought revenge:

Lady Demeter, I appeal to you as one who has suffered wrongs. Hear me, goddess, and render justice, so that you bring the most terrible and painful things on those who think such things about us and who rejoice together against us and bring suffering on me and my wife, Epiktesis, and despise us. Oh Queen, lend an ear to those of us who suffer and punish those who look happily on such as us. (Amorgos, Greece/Gager, no. 75)

Or punishment for a personal wrong:

Whoever stole the property of Varenus, whether woman or man, let him pay with his own blood. From the money which he will pay back, one half is donated to Mercury and Virtus. (Kevendon, Essex/Gager, no. 97)

Or even to steal another man’s wife:

Let burning heat consume the sexual parts of Allous, her vulvas, her members, until she leaves the household of Apollonios. Lay Allous low with fever, with sickness unceasing, starvation – Allous – and madness! Remove Allous from Apollonios her husband; give Allous insolence, hatred, obnoxiousness, until she departs the household of Apollonios. Now. Quickly. (Oxyrhynchus, Egypt/Gager, no. 35)

And, of course, love was a constant motivation for magical incantations:

Let Matrona, to whom Tagene gave birth, whose ‘stuff’ you have, including hairs of her head, love Theodoros, to whom Techosis gave birth … Do not ignore me, whoever you are, but awaken yourself for me and go off to Matrona, so that she may freely give me everything that is hers … so that Matrona love Theodoros for all the time of her life. I invoke you in the name of Abrasax. (Oxyrhynchus, Egypt/Gager, no. 29)

Amateur incantations were common for everyday occurrences. Some amulets were inscribed with the magical word
Abraxus,
which has been passed down to the present day as ‘abracadabra’; in Christian times, ritual formulae could also be turned to magical purposes, for example the intonation of
hoc est corpus
(‘this is the body’); this gives the modern term ‘hocus pocus.’ But for serious matters, professionals male and female were at hand to offer aid. Of course witches such as Circe in the
Odyssey
and Medea in Euripides had a long literary pedigree, but their real-life counterparts were thick on the ground. Egypt was the land and source of magicians par excellence. Magical papyri represent the textbooks for training, with the critical piece of information left out so that the professionals couldn’t be entirely supplanted by a self-taught person. Kits for magical performance survive from antiquity, including one that seems to be a sort of roulette wheel used for divining the future. A professional could also come equipped with drugs such as incense to create an atmosphere, as well as with tools such as wands to ‘direct’ the magical power wielded.

Jesus of Nazareth had many of the attributes of a magician – the ability to cure illness and to control nature, for example. When the devil tries to tempt him to use this power for personal gain and influence, Jesus refuses, but other magicians had no such scruples. In Apuleius’ novel
The Golden Ass,
Pamphile uses her magic for her own purposes; other magicians were more commercial, however. Paul was seized and hauled before the local authorities because his ‘cure’ of a slave soothsayer deprived her owners of income (Acts 16:16–19). Another magician competed with Paul for the attention of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul in Cyprus, and lost (Acts 13:6–12). Simon Magus (‘the magician’) was one such person who made a living purveying magic:

But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the nation of Samaria saying that he himself was somebody great. They all gave heed to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, ‘This man is that power of God which is called Great.’ And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. [Simon, impressed with the magical power of the apostle Philip, is baptized.] … Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, ‘Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! … I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.’ (Acts 8:9–24)

Simon, a good magician who could see when he was out-magicianed, was terrified and asked Peter, his recognized superior magician, ‘that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.’

Another episode in Acts involving Paul further illustrates the situation. Paul went to Ephesus and immediately became an attraction as his powers to perform miracles, i.e. to have magical powers, became apparent to the populace. Articles such as a handkerchief and clothing that had merely touched him cured disease and drove out evil spirits. Other Jewish would-be miracle workers attempted to duplicate his success by invoking the name of Jesus, as Paul did. Seven sons of a Jewish head priest tried this. But an evil spirit they were exorcizing said to them, ‘I acknowledge Jesus, and Paul who preaches him, but who are YOU?’ And the possessed man bloodily thrashed the sons on the spot. This clear proof of the power of Jesus’ name brought many converts (Acts 19:11–20), because the efficacy of a sorcerer was judged by his success rate. Paul was successful, and many ordinary men were convinced of his supernatural power; the ‘Seven sons of Sceva’ were not successful, and so were discredited. Many other magicians recognized Paul’s power and even burned their valuable magical guidebooks since he had proved his power greater. All these episodes in Acts serve to show how pervasive the belief in the power of the supernatural was, and in the numerous people around who claimed to be purveyors of that power.

Religion provided another avenue for addressing concerns. A broad range of religious activity was on offer. There were the reflexive actions, the traditional, hardly conscious daily rites like pouring some drops of
offering to the household gods before a meal. There was festival religiosity when, in the midst of this or that god’s holy day, banqueting or entertainments or just raucous behavior were in order, part and parcel of the worship of the deity or deities in question. This type of religiosity was centered on the major local or civic divinities. On festival days the local gods were feted, as were the people; more elaborate sacrifices were offered, and entertainments were often sponsored in honor of the god or goddess. It was a time to affirm the community.

Then there was utilitarian religiosity, the use of a priest or prophet or diviner to help solve an immediate problem. In fact, people who claimed to be able to foretell the future were always available in a town. The elite Cicero notes that ‘wherever you go, it follows you, whether you listen to a prophet or an omen, whether you sacrifice a victim or catch sight of a bird of warning, whether you interview an oriental soothsayer or an Italian diviner, whether you see lightning or hear thunder’
(On Divination
1.48). These diviners were available because there was a deep need to make sense of the world and to somehow reconcile the incongruence of the personal world and the external world’s assaults upon it. And everyone agreed that the future was established and therefore knowable, that prophecy and augury and other means of reaching out to that future were real and efficacious. Dream interpretation was a favorite recourse, with professionals such as Artemidorus ready both to offer their services and to write a book about interpretations. Men like Dorotheus wrote books about astrology. And self-help tools like Ouija boards were readily available, an inexpensive way to discern the future.

In his world, the ordinary man rarely dwelled on the intricacies of religious thought. Everyone agreed that there were supernatural powers in the world. Since the divine agencies were in control, all agreed that these powers could be accessed by prayer and sacrifice and incantation and magic. If an agreement could be made and carried out, a reciprocal action in favor of the worshipper could be expected. What one did and what brought results were what mattered. Carrying out the correct action in the correct way was the key to securing divine aid; there was no creed or moral code to adhere to in order to gain the god’s favor. For this reason there were no arguments about dogma in the bars and streets; the proof of a divinity’s power lay in his or her ability to produce results in real time. It is illustrative of this that the many confrontations with magic
in the New Testament literature all revolve around whose magic is most efficacious, never about the philosophy or theology of the practitioner.

Major disruptions occurred not over theology, but when the power of a favored divinity was questioned or insulted. This is well illustrated by another of Paul’s experiences in Ephesus. The temple of Artemis was known widely and was a popular votive destination. A silversmith named Demetrius and his fellow workers made a good deal of money creating and selling silver images of the goddess. This craftsman took action to protect his trade: he incited his fellows by pointing out that Paul was convincing many to turn from polytheism; the danger, he said, was not only that Artemis herself was being discredited, but also that their trade in votives would dry up. With a shout of ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians,’ the gang radicalized the city against Paul. A mob laid hold of him, dragged him to the theater, and tried to have him punished (Acts 19:23–34). The accusation was that Paul had blasphemed against the goddess. ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ was not a theological issue for them; it was a simple affirmation by the people that their goddess not only existed, but was powerful. Anyone threatening that reality was an enemy. Although among the elite the idea of a relationship between moral behavior and the favor of the gods gained some ground through, for example, Stoic thought, there is little indication that such thinking penetrated to those who remained tied to their basically satisfying and satisfactory religious beliefs. These were based upon efficacious supernatural powers who could, with the proper approach, be enlisted in solving the practical problems of the day such as illness, frustration in love, and vengeance against one’s enemies and rivals. To attack the existence of, as here, a goddess, undercut a central tool ordinary people used to address their everyday problems.

In all these attempts to access the power of the supernatural in order to deal with the uncertainties in their lives, men were not terribly concerned when their efforts did not work. The prevailing attitude was that if an incantation or a religious offering did not do the trick, then something had gone wrong with the process, not with the basic functioning of the magico-religious world – the wrong spell-prayer had been cast, or it has been cast carelessly, or had used the wrong accoutrements. There is no indication of a lessening of reliance on religion and magic throughout our period or, indeed, in all of antiquity.

Worries

As ordinary men ordered their lives through popular morality and bringing the supernatural to bear, their personal concerns could throw life into turmoil at any moment. Ordinary men lived in a world full of actual and potential changes in fortune. These might be for good or for evil; the natural reaction to living in a world full of uncontrollable physical and social threats to survival, not to say to happiness, was worry and (if possible) action. Given the differentials in power, the heavily hierarchized social structure, and the vagaries of weather, disease, and natural disaster, people turned to supra-rational means to predict and so deal with the future. Although mentions of elites are fairly common since they, too, utilized dream interpreters and astrologers to help deal with their life issues, both the
Carmen Astrologicum
and Artemidorus’
Interpretation of Dreams
clearly reflect the mind of ordinary men and women.

Because of their usefulness as resources for dealing with life’s issues, these handbooks offer a valuable insight into what was worrying men in their daily lives. The overarching theme (not surprisingly) of both the
Carmen
and Artemidorus’ treatment of dreams is changes in fortune. The advice, interpretations, and prognostications reveal core issues for success or failure in life, encompassing such concerns as death, disease, financial challenges, marriage and family, and risks of journeys. They also focus on the violence of everyday life, stressful interpersonal interactions, and dealings with the law. The emphasis is on down-to-earth problems; there is a significant lack of concern for what might be called ‘large’ calamities. There is only one reference in Artemidorus to ‘approach of enemies, barren land, and famine’
(Dreams
2.9). While history focuses on wars and rumors of wars, disasters, and political maneuverings of the elite, ordinary men had little or no thought for such things. They were preoccupied rather with their immediate situations.

Magical papyri also offer a window. Death, while the commonest topic in Artemidorus’ dream interpretations book, does not receive much mention in these; magic apparently cannot ward off the Grim Reaper except indirectly, by curing disease. Likewise family relations, a topic that figures largely in Artemidorus, is largely missing from the incantations of the papyri, although it does occasionally appear. Otherwise, the topics of the
Carmen
and Artemidorus’ interpretations frequently track
the same concerns shown in the magical papyri: disease and financial success, success in disputes at law, and standing in the eyes of others. Together, the three sources leave a very clear impression of the day-today concerns of ordinary people.