La magia nel mondo antico

Revealing Antiquity

by Fritz Graf

Il volume ricostruisce tutti gli aspetti della magia nel mondo greco e nel mondo romano. Sono infatti proprio i testi di queste antiche età i primi a dare una definizione della figura del mago e della sua arte e a chiarire il ruolo delle pratiche magiche in rapporto alla religione. Un intero capitolo è dedicato alle "defixiones", che noi oggi chiameremmo fatture o incantesimi, volte a legare la volontà altrui o a causare danni all'avversario.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Magic, Religion, Ancient History, Mythology, Anthropology

272 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 This chapter in particular has been superseded by the discussion in Collins' book.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.

[Cosette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured this book and learned a lot. For an academic work, it's surprisingly readable, far less dry than many books in the field.

Graf surveys magic in the Greek and Roman worlds from roughly the sixth century BCE to late antiquity, drawing on magical papyri, curse tablets and literature. He covers binding spells, erotic magic, divination, ritual specialists, initiation and encounters with the gods. Most valuable for me was his handling of the notoriously difficult question of what "magic" meant in antiquity. Rather than applying Frazer's old magic-versus-religion distinction, he examines how Greeks and Romans themselves used the category, including how accusations of magic marked certain practices as suspect or marginal.

Graf overturns more than a few familiar ideas. Curse tablets were usually less about cursing than binding: immobilising a rival in court, love, business or sport. And while ancient literature is full of women working love magic, from Medea to Simaetha, the spells mostly show men trying to bind women. The literary witch, it turns out, says more about ancient anxieties than about who practised magic.

The book first appeared in the mid-1990s, and scholarship has since moved on. The category of magic has been questioned further, and recent work pays more attention to social context, material evidence, regional variation and the blurred boundaries between magic, religion, medicine and divination. Christopher Faraone and Sarah Iles Johnston are good places to go next.

Even so, this remains an important book and an excellent starting point for anyone seriously interested in ancient Mediterranean magic. I came away with pages of notes and sticky notes bristling from every edge.

[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.

[Kyra Boisseree · Rating 4 out of 5]

So proud of myself for finishing this one. It was not easy, but it was worth it. It was very intense and detailed, but I learned a lot about a very complicated and niche bit of ancient Mediterranean culture. I love how complex some of the cultural sharing was, how ideas developed through borrowing (with or without understanding) between peoples that were neighbors for hundreds of years.

[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.

[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.