Magic in the Ancient World

Revealing Antiquity

by Fritz Graf, Franklin Philip (Translator)

Ancient Greeks and Romans often turned to magic to achieve personal goals. Magical rites were seen as a route for direct access to the gods, for material gains as well as spiritual satisfaction. In this fascinating survey of magical beliefs and practices from the sixth century B.C.E. through late antiquity, Fritz Graf sheds new light on ancient religion.

Evidence of widespread belief in the efficacy of magic is pervasive: the contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle placed voodoo dolls on graves in order to harm business rivals or attract lovers. The Twelve Tables of Roman Law forbids the magical transference of crops from one field to another. Graves, wells, and springs throughout the Mediterranean have yielded vast numbers of Greek and Latin curse tablets. And ancient literature abounds with scenes of magic, from necromancy to love spells. Graf explores the important types of magic in Greco-Roman antiquity, describing rites and explaining the theory behind them. And he characterizes the ancient magician: his training and initiation, social status, and presumed connections with the divine world. With trenchant analysis of underlying conceptions and vivid account of illustrative cases, Graf gives a full picture of the practice of magic and its implications. He concludes with an evaluation of the relation of magic to religion. Magic in the Ancient World offers an unusual look at ancient Greek and Roman thought and a new understanding of popular recourse to the supernatural.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Magic, Religion, Ancient History, Classics, Magick

313 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 1998

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a bit dated now, this book remains an important introductory text on ancient magic. I recently read Collins' Magic in the Ancient Greek World which responds to Graf in many ways and now I see why Collins made some of the choices he did. If you come to this book looking for something exciting or witchy, you may be disappointed because at its heart it is a piece of German classical scholarship, or what they call AltertumswissenschaftM. But if you know a little bit about the ancient world, this book gives you a peek at a fascinating but overlooked part of antiquity. Graf explores the names of sorcerers, especially magus from which we get the word "magic," their role in society, and how they gain their power. He also looks at a couple of the most famous kinds of magic: lead curse tablets and what he calls "voodoo dolls," although he makes clear that these magical talismans don't actually work in the same way as modern voodoo dolls. This chapter in particular has been superseded by the discussion in Collins' book. The last two chapters look at the way literature represents magicians--spoilers: it's often a distorted picture--and the way magic fits in with ancient religious practice more generally. Graf covers a lot of material and this book is a very useful introduction. My biggest quibble is that he doesn't interrogate the notion that magic is performed by invoking demons. This is a Christian slander that was used to debase both the ancient gods and other ancient religious ideas. For the Greeks a daemôn, was simply a lesser deity. Graf is usually careful to explain unfamiliar ancient concepts, but in this regard a reader might get the wrong impression.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

confusionari capp. 1-3

[Giuseppe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quello di Graf è un caposaldo per gli interessati al tema della magia in Grecia e nel mondo antico; tanto più che si tratta di un'edizione piuttosto recente.
Lo studioso tratteggia con dovizia di particolare, senza mai risultare noioso, il ruolo e lo statuto della magia e del mago, a partire da un'indagine filologica condotta sui termini stessi della magia, per poi spaziare a esempi letterari, a rituali e così via.
L'unica cosa che non mi è piaciuta molto è la fretta con cui smonta teorie sullo scopo della magia; anzi, direi che proprio la sezione sugli scopi della magia sia la meno curata: Graf dà velocemente la sua tesi, con pochi esempi a suo sostegno, e altrettanto velocemente smonta tesi contrarie; dato l'argomento "delicato" e complesso, avrei preferito un'analisi più approfondita.

[Ian Racey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too short to examine more than one or two topics in detail, but I particularly liked the examination of literary texts, and Graf’s caution that literature follows its own rules and is not always reflective of the reality that writers are seeking to depict (like how films always present binoculars as providing a figure-eight shaped field of vision, or paintings only ever show the moon out at night). As an example: Greco-Roman literature always depicts sorcerers as women, often consumed by passion for men (think of Medea and Jason), and yet the archaeological evidence shows that curses were almost universally cast by men, particularly love spells, which are always men seeking to capture the hearts of women.

The prose was very thick. Often I would get to the end of a paragraph and realise I hadn’t really been reading for the past several sentences.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very helpful book for anyone who would like to know how the ancients thought about magic and the supernatural. Graf traces themes and approaches that surface in Ancient Greece, and reappear in writings a thousand years later.

[Stendhal]

Leggere La magia nel mondo antico non significa entrare in un mondo di superstizioni, ma comprendere come ogni civiltà costruisca, attraverso la condanna del “magico”, la propria idea di razionalità, di religione, di ordine.

[Christopher Plaisance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Graf's book provided somewhat of a general overview of magic in antiquity, but it seemed maddeningly brief when dealing with those practices more closely associated with theurgy. The complete omission of telestic magic of Asclepius and the disembodied states of theurgic ascent that so strongly characterized the Corpus Hermeticum, Chaldean Oracles, and De Mysteriis seems rather odd. But, for the kinds of magic that Graf does deem fit to detail, the examinations are more than adequate.