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Dioscorides of Samos' mosaic depiction of a play involving two women paying a visit to a witch or diviner. Second century. The mosaic was found in the Villa del Cicerone in Pompeii, and is now at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. via  Wikimedia.

Dioscorides of Samos' mosaic depiction of a play involving two women paying a visit to a witch or diviner. Second century. The mosaic was found in the Villa del Cicerone in Pompeii, and is now at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. via Wikimedia.

Know your sorcerer: the Suda on different kinds of magic

April 07, 2018 by Ancient Medicine in Philosophy

More on ancient opinions about 'good' and 'bad' forms of magic. I'm not sure where the Suda is getting this way of making the distinction, but something like it is attributed to Aristotle in the proemium to Diogenes of Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers. At some point, I'll look at Apuleius' defence against the accusation that he was a magician, especially Apologia 25-7, and the discussion in cc. 29-31 about why he bought a rare fish for a crazy amount of money - not, as his accusers say, for bewitching his wife to marry him (Lindsay Watson wrote a nice article in CQ on the use of the remora in erotic binding spells), but because he was reading and translating Aristotle's works on animals and wanted to do some more hands-on inquiry. Still, witchcraft was a crime punishable by death in Roman law, and Apuleius' defence turns in part on the claim that true magic is an art of how to attend to the gods, not a kind of sorcery or art of poisoning (which is closer to a literal translation of pharmakeia, a word often translated as 'witchcraft').


goêteia (sorcery): magic. Sorcery, magic and poisoning (pharmakeia) are different, which the Medes and Persians discovered. Magic is an invocation of beneficent demons obviously for some good outcome, like the oracles of Apollonius of Tyana. Sorcery (goêteia) is for raising the dead through an invocation - its name derives from the wailing (gooi) and lamentations that happen at funerals. Poisoning is when some death-bringing preparation is given to someone orally as a philtre.

Γοητεία: μαγεία. γοητεία καὶ μαγεία καὶ φαρμακεία διαφέρουσιν· ἅπερ ἐφεῦρον Μῆδοι καὶ Πέρσαι. μαγεία μὲν οὖν ἐστιν ἐπίκλησις δαιμόνων ἀγαθοποιῶν δῆθεν πρὸς ἀγαθοῦ τινος σύστασιν, ὥσπερ τὰ τοῦ Ἀπολλωνίου τοῦ Τυανέως θεσπίσματα. γοητεία δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ ἀνάγειν νεκρὸν δι' ἐπικλήσεως, ὅθεν εἴρηται ἀπὸ τῶν γόων καὶ τῶν θρήνων τῶν περὶ τοὺς τάφους γινομένων. φαρμακεία δὲ, ὅταν διά τινος σκευασίας θανατηφόρου πρὸς φίλτρον δοθῇ τινι διὰ στόματος.

Suda, s.v. γοητεία gamma entry 365
 

April 07, 2018 /Ancient Medicine
Persians, sorcery, Apollonius of Tyana, Demons, witchcraft, magic
Philosophy
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