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Towards Historicizing Magic in Antiquity

Bernd-Christian OttoInstitut fr Religionswissenschaft, Universitt Erfurt

Nordhuserstr. 63, 99089 Erfurt, [email protected]

Abstract

Even though the concept of magic has sufered severe criticism in academic discourse,the category continues to be used in many disciplines. During the last two decades, clas-sicists in particular have engaged in a lively discussion over magic and have producedan impressive amount of written output. Given the impossibility of dening magicin a consistent and widely accepted manner, one cannot help but wonder what thesescholars are actually talking about. Hence this paper purports (a) to critically reviewthe recent debate on magic in Classical Studies, (b) to advocate for abandoning an

abstract category of magic in favour of a proper analysis of ancient sources and (c) tohistoricize the term magic in Antiquity, that is, to muse on its ancient semantics, func-tions, and contexts. This methodological approach does not only overcome the majorproblems inherent in modern denitions of magic, but will also yield new insightsinto terminologies, modes of thought and speech strategies that underlie ancient reli-gious discourses.

Keywords

magic, Classical Antiquity, Classical Studies, Religious Studies, conceptual history

Reviewing the Recent Debate in Classical Studies

Over the last two decades, an ongoing discourse on magic has left anenduring imprint on the Study of Classical Antiquity. Classicists havebeen highly condent in organizing international conferences on the

I would like to thank Richard Gordon, Michael Stausberg, and Marios Skempis fortheir helpful comments on diferent drafts of this paper.


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topic and have published an impressive number of collections ofessays, articles, several source books, and numerous monographs

aiming at a systematic overview of the material presented while,partly, proposing new theoretical, terminological, and methodologicalapproaches. To date, however, cardinal questions that have shaped theacademic controversy over magic since the late 19th century remainto be answered: What is ancient magic? In what sense is it distinctfrom ancient religion? How should Classicists proceed with ambigu-ous data whose general classication regarding these categories haveunleashed an ongoing dispute? Is the concept of magic any good for

understanding ancient sources? Or should it, nally, be removed fromacademic discourse altogether, given its judgmental, ethnocentric, andsemantically fuzzy notions?

The most representative among them are: Magic in the Ancient World (August1992, University of Kansas); Magic and Divination in the Ancient World (February1994, Berkeley); Envisioning Magic (March 1995, Princeton); The World of AncientMagic (May 1997, Norwegian Institute Athens); Magic in the Ancient World (August1998, Chapman University California), Prayers, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancientand late Antique World (March 2002, Washington), Magical Practice in the Latin

West (September/October 2005, Zaragoza); Contextualizing Magic (November 2009,Rome). Cf. Faraone & Obbink 1991; Meyer & Mirecki 1995; Kippenberg & Schfer 1997; Jor-dan, Montgomery & Thomassen 1999; Ciraolo & Seidel 2002; Mirecki & Meyer 2002;Noegel & Walker 2003; Bremmer & Veenstra 2003; Brodersen & Kropp 2004; Shaked2005; Gordon & Marco Simn 2010; Bohak, Harari & Shaked 2011. Apart from the essays in the collections mentioned above, the following articles are

important: Segal 1981; Versnel 1991; Phillips III 1994; Becker 2002; Stratton 2013. Luck 1985 & 2006; Ogden 2002. Cf. Fgen 1993; Graf 1996; Dickie 2001; Janowitz 2001; Lotz 2005; Carastro 2006; Busch2006; Stratton 2007; Kropp 2008. See, e.g., the discussions about neoplatonic theurgy, about the so-called prayers for

justiceor texts like theCorpus Hermeticum or the Papyri Graecae Magicae. For neo-platonic theurgy see, among others, Copenhaver 1987; in fact, the controversy startedalready in late Antiquity with Iamblichus, who opted for a clear distinction (e.g. de mys-teriis 3.25.160f.; 3.31.176f.), and Augustine, who deliberately equated magic with theu-rgy (e.g. de ciuitate dei 10.9). For the discussion aboutprayers for justice, see especially

Versnel 2010. For the discussion about the Corpus Hermeticum see, e.g., Copenhaver1988. Also thePapyri Graecae Magicae have been subject to an ongoing dispute on itsmagical and/or religious properties see, e.g., Segal 1981; Smith 1995; Remus 1999.


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Apparently, the vast majority of the works alluded to above do nottake up a radical position regarding these questions (that is, they do not

opt for abandoning the term) but rather continue to perceive magic asan adequate, albeit disputed, category. Thus, to date, the term magicstill serves as a concept widely used to signify and classify specicsource material in the Study of Classical Antiquity. Substantive applica-tions of the concept of magic appear so regularly even in works aimingat a critical discussion or deconstruction of modern denitions thatan implicit conviction of (at least the majority of ) Classicists becomesapparent: it might be problematic or even impossible to dene magic

in a coherent way, but, nevertheless, magical rites were indeed per-formed in Classical Antiquity. Beyond the words and independent ofacademic controversies, ancient magic is (and was, respectively) realand, as such, needs to be properly investigated.

See, all with explicit justication, Versnel 1991; Thomassen 1999; Hofman 2002. Some examples may serve to illustrate this point: Fritz Graf (1996:1423), who con-

vincingly deconstructs the classical set of denitions put forward by Frazer, Durkheim,Malinowski, and others, begins his monograph with the following words of condence:Magie ist ein fester Bestandteil der antiken Religionen Griechenlands, Roms, des altenItalien (Graf 1996: 9); as he rejects all substantive denitions throughout his book, theintroductory sentence (and many others) therefore remains mysterious. In a similar

vein, Matthew Dickie (2001:1f.) criticizes all established denitions in the introductorychapter of hisMagic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World, but frequently surprises

with phrases such as The overarching category so formed is surely to be identied witha concept that denotes much the same set of activities as does our concept of magic(p. 34), the concept of mageawas at rst very far from being coextensive with the

notion of magic with which we operate (p. 21) or The concept of magic, present inthe Greek world of the fth century BC and particularly in Athens, [. . .] tallies in largemeasure but not entirely with the concept of magic with which the Western world isfamiliar (p. 40). Dickie apparently suggests a pragmatic, everyday understanding here;

yet, as he rejects all established denitions it remains unclear what he actually meansby our concept of magic. Likewise, Peter Busch (2006:15) dismisses substantive deni-tions at the beginning of hisMagie in neutestamentlicher Zeit, but nevertheless classiesmagic as being part of religion throughout his book. Similar patterns of argumenta-tion can be found in many of the aforementioned works. Some twenty years ago, Henk

Versnel (1991:181) described this problem with pertinence: Practically no one escapesmoments of reduced concentration when they suddenly fall into unsophisticated com-mon sense concepts, though they sometimes betray their awareness of the lapse byputting the term magic between inverted commas or adding so-called.


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The ongoing belief of Classicists in the term magic as a feasible orunavoidable academic category may partly be explained by the fact that

the very same term appears within the ancient sources. As is known, theformer denomination of a Persian priest caste, magu, entered intothe ancient Greek language in the 5th century BCE, underwent somesignicant semantic transformations during its Greek adaptation, andfrom then on served as an important concept in Greek, Roman, Jew-ish, and Christian literature throughout all Antiquity. Unsurprisingly,a number of ancient authors were already discussing the concept and,in part, proposed theories about the possible mechanisms underlying

the beliefs and rituals subsumed under /magia. Since the earlyRoman Empire, people had even been prosecuted under the formal-ized term crimen magiae the Apologia sive pro se de magia of the2nd century philosopher Apuleius Madaurensis is both a dazzling andhighly entertaining textual proof. Finally, more than two thousand

Cf. de Jong 1997:387: These words derive from the Old Persian appellative for apriest magu- (nom.Magu), etymologically related to Av. mogu- which appears to havemeant (member of a) tribe. For the early etymology see also Nock 1933; Bremmer1999/2002. Cf., among other texts, Aeschylus,Persae318; Sophocles,Oedipus Rex387f.; Euripi-des, Orestes1493f.; Euripides,Iphigeneia in Tauris1327f.; Gorgias,Encomium of Helen910; Hippocrates,De morbo sacro1.1f.; Plato,Alcibiades1122a. In all likelihood, the Persian magicians described by Herodotus in hisHistories (e.g.1.101f.; 3.30f.; 7.19f., 37f., 113f., 191f.) and documented in the Persepolis Fortication Tab-lets (see Hallock 1969) did not apply an etymological derivate of their self-appellationto their practices and beliefs; indeed, they seem to have been responsible for centralaspects of Persian temple and deity cults, that is, for Persian religion. In contrast, the

adaptation of the Greek term implied the conviction that magic is not religion butsacrilege and blasphemy (in Greek terms: ); see, e.g., Hippocrates, de morbosacro1.1f., esp. 28f., and below. Cf., among others, Plato,Laws932e933e (Plato uses the Greek synonym;for synonyms see below, footnote 62); Pliny the Elder,Historia Naturalis, esp. the begin-ning of book 30; Plotinus,Enneads, esp. 4.4.4044; Augustine, e.g. de doctrina christiana2.XX.30.74f. However, a closer look at these sources reveals signicant conceptual dif-ferences between these authors that will be analyzed in more detail in the second partof this paper. Cf. in more detail Fgen 1993; Lotz 2005. See the splendid edition of Hammerstaedt et al. 2002; see also Winter 2006, the clas-sic Abt 1908, and the discussion in Graf 1996:61f. Apuleius explicitly refers to the con-cept of crimen magiae (e.g.Apologia25.5). Lamberti (2002: 344346) argues that there


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ancient curse tablets have been found and described by Classicists todate. Given their often harmful aspirations and the fact that their pro-

duction is described in thePapyri Graecae Magicae, a text corpus writ-ten by ritual specialists explicitly claiming the title ,what term

would be more suitable for their analysis than magic?Unsurprisingly, in recent academic works on ancient magic, espe-

cially in the afore-mentioned monographs, there is a strong tendencyto leave modern denitions behind and apply an emic approachinstead. Fritz Graf in particular has done considerable groundworkon the ancient conceptual history of magic in his Gottesnhe und

Schadenzauber. Kimberly Stratton has recently ofered substantialnew insights into the ancient discourse on magic (or, in her ownwords, on magic as ancient discourse) in her studyNaming the Witch.

must have been a senatusconsultum for establishing the juridical concept of a crimenmagiae in the rst century CE, based on theLex Cornelia de sicariis et venecis. Cf., e.g., PGM IV.296f. See the title in PGM IV.243; IV.2082; IV.2290; LXIII.5. See, for example, Segal 1981:36970: The most interesting question for scholarship,as I see it, is not whether the charge of magic against Jesus is true or not. Since hedoes not claim the title, there can be no possible demonstration or disproof of a charge

which is a matter of interpretation in the Hellenistic world. The most interesting que-stion for scholarship is to dene the social and cultural conditions and presuppositi-ons that allow such charges and counter-charges to be made; Dickie (2001:19) claimsto understand the Greeks and the Romans in their own terms; Graf 1996:23: Stattalso eine strenge, aber knstliche Terminologie zu schafen, verfolgt man die antikenBedeutungen der Terminologie als Teil eines Diskurses ber die Beziehungen zwi-schen Menschen und Gttern.; Busch 2006:17: Die Fragestellung, die wir in dieser

Studie an die antiken Texte richten, wird eine andere sein. Wir fragen nicht, ob dieHandlungen und Worte Jesu und der frhen Christen magisch sind. Wir fragen, inwie-

weit und warum diese als magisch verstanden wurden. Hierbei kommen die antikenTexte selbst zu Wort. See also Stratton 2007, who has ofered the most consistent studyof the ancient discourse on magic so far; see, e.g., p. 13: Consequently, I emphasizeattention to emic terminology in order to illuminate the ideological prejudices behindrepresentations of magic. By focusing on ancient terminology, one can discern whenand how magic was mobilized as a discourse in antiquity. This difers from approachesthat impose a universal second-order denition of magic onto other cultures and con-comitantly impose modern distinctions and categories as well. Cf. Graf 1996:2457. See Stratton 2007:12f. See also Stratton 2013. The approach in this paper difersslightly from Strattons work as I do not speak of magic as ancient discourse (in the


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However, important questions remain unanswered: what did /magia actually mean to Graeco-Roman authors? Can the ancient use

of the term justify the ongoing application of an abstract category ofmagic in Classical Studies? Even in recent works claiming to focuson ancient terminology, no clear or systematic answers to these ques-tions have yet been given. So far, the predominant use of magic as asubstantive category in the very same studies has tended to downplayattempts to reconstruct the historical semantics of the ancient term in asystematic way and to relate them to possible diferences regarding theacademic concept.

However, in a number of recent works the shift towards deeper reec-tion on ancient terminology has led to the thesis of deviance. In Antiq-uity, some authors claim, magic functioned only as a polemical term tostigmatize and exclude others (named the religion of the other, thedangerous other, the theological opposition), or, in other words,to squelch, avenge, or discredit undesirable behavior. Harold Remus,

who investigated the 2nd and 3rd century controversy between Chris-tian and Graeco-Roman authors on the miraculous abilities of Jesus of

Nazareth and, among others, Apollonius of Tyana, describes the con-ict as a competition in naming: arming miracle of the extraordinary

end, it is a term, not a discourse) but rather of /magiaas termswithin ancientdiscourses. Stratton (2007; 2013) may be regarded as an exception here; however, her book lacksa nal discussion of the tension between her methodological approach and the exten-sive use of the concept of magic as a signier of curse tablets or the Papyri Graecae

Magicae in Classical Studies. Maybe this is due to her own relatively minor attention

to these sources; in fact, her book almost completely lacks a discussion of the ancientuse of magic as a self-referential term, an aspect that is given more attention to inthis paper. Cf. Zinser 1997:93f.; my translation. Cf. Kippenberg & Stuckrad 2003:155f.; my translation. Cf. Phillips III 1986:2711: A charge of magic represented a persuasive way to deni-grate ones theological opposition: the opposition would have to prove that its allegedpowers derived from the right cosmic forces. Cf. also Gager 1994, 183: When lookedat from the perspective of the centre and its values, this negative use of magea usuallyamounts to little more than the claim that what we do is religion and what they do ismagic. And so the term has been used pretty much ever since. See also Stratton 2007and 2013. Garrett 1989:5.


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phenomena of ones own group and denying the name to those of rivalgroups. The ancient terminological dualism of /magiaon the

one hand and /signum or /miraculum on the other canfunctionally be reduced, Remus claims, to the conceptual creationof discursive boundaries: between us and them, between insideand outside, and between true and false. Charles R. Phillips IIIadds that these arbitrary and highly judgmental ancient demarcationsof discursive boundaries ushered into academic discourse in the late19th century and, thereby, decisively inuenced the scholarly contro-

versy on magic as a whole.

In the ancient sources, there is no doubt a plethora of evidence forthe thesis of deviance.The vast majority of the texts that came down tous and include the term magea/magia or one of its cognates or syn-onyms refer to persons, texts, ritual practices or beliefs from an outwardperspective and are usually accompanied by semantics of devaluationand stigmatization. However, the polemical instrumentalization ofthe ancient term magic is only part of the truth: in the Papyri Grae-cae Magicaethe term appears ten times while clearly referring to the

authors themselves and their own ritual practice. Here, does

Remus 1983:182. Remus 1983:5254, 182f. Cf. Phillips III, 1994: 10910: These ancient distinctions have entered the schol-arly traditions, the more so since empiricist-dominated classical studies were wont toprivilege ancient views of their own phenomena. A.A. Barb spoke of the syncretis-tic, rotting refuse-heap of the dead and dying religion in late antiquity, noting of theresultant empty shell that the masses lled it with all the refuse of superstitions,

questionable white magic, and an apparently alarming amount of gotea, that is tosay unequivocal black sorcery. Peter Salway observed that ghosts, black magic andcurses were taken seriously in the Classical world, and are part of that darker side ofClassical religion . . ., while H.H. Scullard on Roman religion of the Republic notedthe dark forest surrounded the minds of their ancestors. And why did this occur? Thesocio-economic elite of ancient authors speaking directly to the socio-economic eliteof modern scholars. Cf. PGM I.127; PGM I.331; PGM IV.211; PGM IV.243; PGM IV.2082; PGM IV.2290;PGM IV.2319; PGM IV.2450; PGM IV.2454; PGM LXIII.5. This nding corresponds to thesecond edition of Preisendanz & Henrichs (197374), according to the Thesaurus Lin-

guae Graecae. There might be further instances in the additional material presentedin Betz 1986 and Daniel & Maltomini 199092, which have not been checked by theauthor.


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not imply a stigmatization but rather a positive evaluation, notionsof high religious expertise, of total efectiveness and legitimacy of the

rituals at issue. Thus, a general postulation of the thesis of devianceseems misleading. However, it can add to a more complete picture ofthe ancient use of the term magic: /magiawere employed aspolemical concepts to exclude and stigmatize beliefs and ritual behaviordeviating from religious norms only in the literature of ancient, cultural-religious elites. At the same time, it was used as a self-referential termby (at least Graeco-Egyptian) ritual specialists, which led to an identi-cation with the concept and, what is more, to a positive evaluation of

their (inevitably construed) religious identities. One would thus be rightto speak of a discourse of exclusion and a discourse of inclusionoperat-ing simultaneously in Antiquity, endowing the concept of magic with

variegated semantic and evaluative nuances. In the second part of thispaper, I shall deal with these nuances in greater depth.

To sum up: pervasive modern discussions about the concept ofmagic in the study of classical antiquity as they are, they yet failedto establish a thorough theoretical and methodological perspective as

far as their central concept is concerned. The majority of studies con-tinue to perceive magic as an adequate category capable of classifyingancient sources. Nowadays, denitions are usually rejected; terminolog-ical alternatives to counteract the conceptual vacuum have rarelybeen proposed. Due to the discomfort produced by modern denitionsof magic and the frequent occurrence of the very same term in ancientsources, recent works tend to vouch for an emic approach. However,

Cf. the evaluation of magea as being holy in PGM I.127 ( {} ) and as being divine/godly in PGM IV.2245 ( ). Note that the lexeme appears (according to the Thesaurus LinguaeGraecae) no less than 191 times in the PGM (including all ections). See also formula-tions like PGM I.129 (The gods will agree in every respect [ {} ]), or the self-perception of the ritual practitioner as being inPGM IV.6856. However, one nds substitutive expressions like ritual power in more recent

works; see both Meyer & Smith 1994 and Meyer & Mirecki 1995.These attempts seemto reect the desire to reach a higher level of abstraction but need to be thought outin a more consistent manner. In fact, they often go hand in hand with the substantiveuse of the concept of magic and usually take up its notions. On this point see also

Johnston 2003.


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the simultaneous use of the concept of magic as an abstract categoryseems to have disfavored the systematic reconstruction of its histori-

cal semantics. The increasing focus on ancient terminology led to thethesis of deviancewhich reveals an important aspect of the conceptualhistory of magic but should not be postulated for Antiquity altogether.Indeed, deviance-theoretical positions appear somewhat isolated in thediscourse and are usually entirely neglected in the majority of worksdealing with ancient curse tablets. All in all, substantive applicationsof the concept of magic still dominate the Study of Classical Antiquity;therefore, the cardinal questions posed at the outset of this paper are

still in need of satisfying answers.This nding is quite astonishing, granted that the discourse on magicin Religious Studies has culminated, in the words of Hans G. Kippenberg,in the collapse of the category. Due to its pejorative connotations,fuzzy semantics and, not least, the cumulative falsication of all majordenitions, the urgent need for an unconditional abandonment ofthe term has been registered already in the 1950s and culminated in the1960s and 1970s by dint of the so-called rationality debate. Critics

claimed that the academic concept of magic does not operate as animpartial, semantically sound and, thus, helpful concept, but rather asan ethnocentric, semantically distorting, and highly polemical templatearising from 19th century idealistic yet arbitrary conceptions of (mod-ern) science and (Christian) religion. Thus, when opposed to sci-ence, magic has been accused of being a mere residual category, [. . .]created by the scientic observer in order to explain incomprehensible

One might add here that the reconstruction of historicalsemantics is only possibleby systematically excluding modern semantics of a term under examination. In other

words: conceptual histories, especially those aiming at a reconstruction of onomasio-logical shifts, can only be accomplished by strictly discarding substantive applicationsof the analyzed concept. Apart from the splendid work by Gager 1992; see below. Kippenberg 1998:86; my translation. For this process see in more detail Kippenberg 1995. See also, among manyothers, Lowie 1948:136151; Wax & Wax 1963; Hammond 1970; Hanegraaf 2005; Otto 2011,ch. 25. Otto & Stausberg 2013, esp. 112. Cf., among others, Radclife-Brown 1952:138; Pettersson 1957:119; Peel 1969:834;Pocock 1972:2; Leach 1982:133; etc. The rationality debate can be studied in moredetail in Wilson 1970; Horton & Finnegan 1973; Kippenberg & Luchesi 1995.


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actions; when opposed to religion, magic was merely regarded asa refuse-heap for the elements which are not suciently valuable to

get a place within religion. Unsurprisingly, in some recent works ongeneral concepts in the Study of Religion the term magic has not beentaken into account. For Randall Styers, one of the most radical recentauthors, academic theorists of magic are themselves no more thanmagicians: culling diverse forms of behavior, modes of knowledge,social practices, and habits from an indiscriminate range of culturalsystems and historical epochs and transmogrifying them into a uniedphenomenon.

So far, the discourse on magic in the Study of Classical Antiquityhas tended to reject these rather critical, deconstructionist positionsbrought forth in Religious Studies and adjacent disciplines. Jonathan Z.Smith put them up for discussion among Classicists by publishing hiscritical article Trading Places in Meyer & Mireckis Ancient Magicand Ritual Power. However, his arguments were not well receivedin the Study of Classical Antiquity but, instead, heavily criticized byC. A. Hofman in his article Fiat Magia, who claims to represent a

school of thought that sees in magic a useful category. In fact, one

Kippenberg 1998:95; my translation. Pettersson 1957:119: Summing up, we may say that the scientic debate over therelation between magic and religion is a discussion of an articial problem created bydening religion on the ideal pattern of Christianity. The elements of mans beliefs andceremonies concerning the supernatural powers which did not coincide with this idealtype of religion was and is called magic. There is always a tendency to mock theunfamiliar in other mans faith and worship. Magic became and still becomes a

refuse-heap for the elements which are not suciently valuable to get a place withinreligion. The study of comparative religion would win clearness, honesty and strin-gency, the aspects of valuation would be avoided etc. if the term magic were given adecent burial to quote Doctor E. Smith in the scientic debate of the nature ofreligion.; italics Pettersson. Cf. Taylor 1998; Braun & McCutcheon 2000. Styers 2004:223. See also Styers 2013. Other recent critics of a substantive categoryof magic are Pasi 2008; Otto 2011; Hanegraaf 2012, esp. 16477; Stuckrad forthcoming.See for a potential solution of the problem (patterns of magicity) Otto & Stausberg2013:10f. Cf. Smith 1995. See Hofman 2002:188f., 193f. Hofman 2002:180.


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gets the impression that the ourishing scholarly discourse on ancientmagic has, up to this point, felt rather threatened by critical authors

like Smith and Styers, as if the latter wanted to take away its main cat-egory without ofering any alternative. This tension led to rather crudepatterns of argumentation: Hofman, in the aforementioned article, isso focused on criticizing Smith and other critical authors that he com-pletely omits to explain howthe concept of magic could actually beused coherently in Classical Studies. In this respect, his nal phrase letthere be magic remains mysterious.

Due to these conceptual inconsistencies, this paper argues for a

methodological turn in the way the concept of magic is used in Classi-cal Studies. It adds to other works claiming that the arguments against asubstantive application of the concept of magic in academic discourseare, if well thought out, highly convincing, if not compelling (even so,these do not need to be recapitulated here). Likewise, the paper fol-lows the argument of Jonathan Z. Smith that abandoning magic as anabstract category from scholarly discourse does not lead to a loss of ana-lytic potential, but instead to an enhanced understanding of the source

material at stake. However, critical authors have, so far, neglected toclarify the advantages that arise from abandoning a substantive categoryof magic. In particular, they have failed to ofer insights regarding theimmense impact and persistence of the historical concept of magicthat pervades no less than 2,500 years of textual sources. In fact, criticiz-ing and abandoning modern denitions of magic does not necessarilycontribute to understanding how ancient (or other premodern) authorsemployed the term. The present paper aims at resolving these issues by

developing two strategies: rst, it tries to ofer conceptual alternativesto the habitual classication of ancient sources like curse tablets or the

Hofman 2002:194. See in more detail the works mentioned in footnote 35. For a summary of criticalarguments see Otto & Stausberg 2013:110. See Smith 1995:1617: I see little merit in continuing the use of the substantive termmagic in second-order, theoretical, academic discourse. We have better and more pre-cise scholarly taxa for each of the phenomena commonly denotated by magic which,among other benets, create more useful categories for comparison. For any cultureI am familiar with, we can trade places between the corpus of materials conventionallylabeled magical and corpora designated by other generic terms (e.g., healing, divining,execrative) with no cognitive loss.


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Papyri Graecae Magicae as magic; second, it opts for a systematic his-toricization of the ancient term that is, for a thorough reconstruction

of its meanings, functions, and contexts in ancient textual sources anddiscourses.

A Methodological Turn: Historicizing the Concept of Magic

At rst sight, taking the initial step of abandoning the substantive useof the concept of magic in academic language appears to be a simpletask. Having discarded the term, though, how should Classicists deal

with source material habitually tagged as magic in Classical discourse?In this respect, the extensive use of an abstract category of magic inClassical Studies may have led to the conviction that it is counterpro-ductive (or even impossible) to abandon such an established concept.

In fact, it is quite simple to nd a convenient, if not much moreappropriate alternative concept: one of the rst academic denitions ofreligion, Edward B. Tylors belief in spiritual beings, covers most ofthe material labeled as magic in Classical Studies (not to mention other

established denitions of religion). The whole corpus of dexionescould easily be identied as a specic, ritual form of belief in spiritualbeingsand thus (at least according to Tylor) as a specic form of ancientreligion. The fact that dexiones often imply morally reprehensible rit-ual intentions should not lead to their instinctive classication as beingnon-religious or magical: malicious ritual goals have always played asignicant role in the established religious traditions of Antiquity and

were, in fact, perceived as being legitimate under certain conditions

(that is: the intention to harm someone by ritual means cannot operateas a criterion for diferentiating magic from religion).

Cf. Tylor 1994 (1871), e.g. p. 383. Consider Spiros widely used denition of religion as an institution consistingof culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated super-human beings; cf.Spiro 1966:96. Apart from many Graeco-Roman textual examples (see e.g. Herodotus, Histories7.188f., where he describes how the Athenians destroyed part of the Persian eet bypraying to the northern wind Boreas) and the overwhelming evidence from old Egyp-tian and Mesopotamian sources, even the biblical text gives strong evidence here; cf.,for instance, Ex 7.1f. (the ten plagues of Egypt can, in fact, be interpreted as a ritually


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Tylors denition can also be applied to curse tablets showing patternsof ex opere operato: even when direct references to spiritual beings

are absent it seems fairly reasonable to assume that a belief in spiritualbeings always remains the underlying rationale in the ancient idea ofcursing (binding, in this case). John G. Gager has written a renownedstandard work on ancient curse tablets without using the term magicas an analytical category and thereby shown that it actually is possible.

A critical interpretation of the concept of religion, accompanied bymodern interpretations of the concept of ritual and subordinatefunctional terms (describing ritual goals such as divination, healing,

evoked punishment of the Egyptians to counteract the stubbornness of their pharaoh;however, moral reections on killing all rst-borns in Egypt are omitted in the bibli-cal text); 2. Kings 1.910 (Elia kills 50 soldiers by verbally evoking re to fall from thesky); 2. Kings 2.2325 (Elisha kills 42 children by means of a verbal curse); Jer. 19.115(schismatic cities are punished by the ritual of the broken pots); Acts 13.1011 (Barjesus,a pseudo-prophet and magos is blinded by a verbal curse of the Apostles); Acts 5.111(Hananias and Saphira, two peasants, are killed by a verbal curse after holding backmoney from the Apostles); etc. On this aspect see Kropp 2004:947; Kropp 2010. Cf. also Faraones notion of thedirect binding formula (1991:10f.). That is, instead of assuming ex opera operato mechanisms in curse tablets that omitthe transcendent addressee, other explanations could be brought forward with equal

validity such as writing pragmatics, autonomized reception processes, ritual dynam-ics, etc. See also Gager 1992:13: here it should be recalled, however, that gods may havebeen invoked orally, when the tablet was either commissioned or deposited. Cf. Gager 1992:25: The sentence X is/was a magician! tells us nothing about thebeliefs and practices of X; the only solid information that can be derived from it con-

cerns the speakers attitude toward X and their relative social relationship that X isviewed by the speaker as powerful, peripheral, and dangerous. [. . .] Thus our treatment

of ancient dexiones does not locate them in the category of magic, for in our view nosuch category exists (italics Gager). Irritatingly, Gagers highly progressive approachseems to have been swept under the table by the majority of scholars dealing withcurse tablets in the last two decades. Critical terms imply according to Mark C. Taylor: Rather than positing a uni-

versal grid or seamless organism, critical reection articulates an incomplete web ofopen and exible terms. This seamy network of constraint, which is riddled with gapsthat can be neither bridged nor closed, constitutes a constantly shifting cultural a priorithat renders critical knowledge possible while circumscribing its unavoidable limits.;Taylor 1998:17. See for recent approaches Kreinath, Snoek & Stausberg 200607.


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binding, etc.), would potentially suce to deal with ancient sourcematerial habitually tagged as magic in Classical Studies.

Analyzing ancient curse tablets and similar sources (such as cursestatuettes or amulets) within the frame of religion has two major ben-ets. On the one hand, the habitual distinction between these sources(magic) and established ancient cults (religion) can be questioned.From an emic point of view, dexiones may, at least partly, not havebeen perceived as a sectarian, curious, and potentially blasphemous rit-ual method but rather as a widely known tool to resolve conicts withthe aid of the gods and, therefore, as a (morally reprehensible) aspect

of ancient deity devotion. Curse tablets found at ocial temple sitesor near altars the recent nds in Rome (Fountain of Anna Perenna)and Mainz (sanctum of Isis and Mater Magna) serve as important newevidence here even suggest that they may have been used withinocial cults and operated as only one part of a variety of ritual oferingsto the gods. The fact that a signicant amount of curse tablets were,in all likelihood, produced by unlearned private persons or even by

Of course, one could argue that the concept of religion implies problems similarto those of magic: likewise, religion is characterized by fuzzy semantics, implicit

judgments, and a long and diverse history; it provoked, similarly, an ongoing academicdispute ofering no nal answers. As a matter of fact, no academic term is able to sur-

vive the critical analysis of a postmodern deconstructionist; monolithic, well-denedconcepts have become (quite rightly) extinct alongside the burial of the phenomeno-logical school and its grand narratives. However, one has to make choices: it seemsreasonable to argue that some terms are (in a quite pragmatic sense) better than others.Religion, with a loose working denition of belief in spiritual beings,is no doubt appli-

cable in Classical Antiquity (and is, in fact, usually applied in this sense in ClassicalStudies). Bringing in the concept of magic while analyzing ancient sources evokesthe well-known arsenal of theoretical problems implied in the terminological dualismof magic and religion. Thus, instead of working with two problematic concepts thedistinction of which may forever remain unclear, it seems reasonable to stick to themore established (and less disputed) term and discard the other. In the end, this is apragmatic decision which cannot be ultimately justied; however, as this paper willshow, the methodological approach proposed here can actually helpto make bettersense of the ancient sources and, thus, contribute to academic progress. On this point see also Gager 1992:20f. Cf. Blnsdorf 2010; Piranomonte 2010. Cf. Graf 1996:144f.; Smith 1983:253 n.8. Cf. Gager 1992:4f. and 123 n.11.


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ocial town writers (that is: not by ritual specialists who claimed thetitle/magus)adds to this picture. Thus, from the viewpoint of ancient

producers or clients, the use of binding formulae on lead tablets mightnot have been perceived as being ontologically distinct (magic) fromother aspects of ancient sacricial cult (religion), even if these meth-ods were considered illegitimate or immoral in elite religious discourses.

On the other hand, analyzing curse tablets within the conceptualframework of religion can question idealized views of establishedancient religions. Do dexiones really bear substantial diferencesfrom other forms of requests for divine aid conducted in Graeco-Roman

temples throughout all Antiquity? In hisApologia, Apuleius of Madauracritically notes that the unconsidered application of the crimen magiaemay lead to the accusal of pious deity devotees who merely address apetition (votum) to a statue. The philosopher points to the problemof classifying ritual oferings here: obviously, the instrumental aspectsof ancient polytheisms (that is, foremost, the sacrice) operated onthe same conceptual grounds as curse tablets (belief in spiritual beings,do ut des) and, in part, aimed at similar ritual goals. Who knows how

Cf. Jordan 1989. Cf. Apuleius, Apologia, 54, 5f.: In fact, everything that he has ever done will beused as a handle against any man who is charged with sorcery. Have you written apetition on the thigh of some statue? You are a sorcerer! Else why did you write it?Have you breathed silent prayers to heaven in some temple? You are a sorcerer! Elsetell us what you asked for? Or take the contrary line. You uttered no prayer in sometemple! You are a sorcerer! Else why did you not ask the gods for something? The sameargument will be used if you have made some votive dedication, or ofered sacrice,

or carried sprigs of some sacred plant. The day will fail me if I attempt to go throughall the diferent circumstances of which, on these lines, the false accuser will demandan explanation. Above all, whatever object he has kept concealed or stored under lockand key at home will be asserted by the same argument to be of a magical nature,or will be dragged from its cupboard into the light of the law-court before the seat of

judgment. [quippe omnibus sic, ut forte negotium magiae facessitur, quicquid omninoegerint obicietur. Uotum in alicuius statuae femore signasti: igitur magus es; aut cursignasti? Tacitas preces in templo deis allegasti: igitur magus es; aut quid optasti?` con-tra: nihil in templo precatus es: igitur magus es: aut cur deos non rogasti? Similiter, siprosueris donum aliquod, si sacricaueris, si uerbenam sumpseris. Dies me deciet, si

omnia uelim persequi, quorum rationem similiter calumniator agitabit. Praesertimquod conditum cumque, quod absignatum, quod inclusum domi adseruatur, id omneeodem argumento magicum dicetur aut e cella promptaria in forum atque in iudiciumproferetur.]; translation Butler 1909:95; Latin text: Hammerstaedt 2002:152.


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many ancient citizens actively cursed or were cursed in Graeco-Romantemples using only prayer or materials, such as wax or papyrus, that did

not last over time, unlike lead? Thus, proposing a general diferencebetween pleas proposed on lead tablets (magic) and pleas proposedalongside more ephemeral ritual oferings in ancient sacricial cults(religion) is certainly not justied. Rather, the use of lead laminaemight be perceived as mirroring a more private and morally contestedaspect of ancient deity devotion (or, in more radical terms, deity instru-mentalization) and, thus, of ancient religion.

This short discussion of the classication of ancient curse tablets shall

suce to show that the analysis of these sources without employing anabstract concept of magic might produce clearer analytical resultsand evoke research questions more adequate to the religious world inClassical Antiquity. In particular, the judgmental notions implied in thehabitual opposition between magic and religion can be set aside,thereby heightening the perceived religious value and signicance ofdexiones and other ancient sources alike. Finally, ancient polemics sur-rounding these ritual practices (that is, their classication as being illicit

or irreligious in ancient texts, employing, among other terms, /magia) can be analyzed while, at the same time, excluding themfrom scholarly terminology.

When it comes to taking the second step, the historicizationof theconcept of magic, things are obviously more complicated. As the con-ceptual history of magic spans over more than 2,500 years and runsthrough a large amount of textual sources drawn from various epochs,cultural-religious settings and languages, it would be presumptuous

to assume that a few clear and homogenous semantic patterns couldbe tracked down for its entire history. In fact, the ancient use of theconcept, covering Graeco-Hellenistic, Roman, and Judaeo-Christiansources, already implies highly diverse conceptions of magic in thesecorpora. Besides, one has to read between the lines in order to deducethe ancient semantics of magic as classical authors usually lack de-nitions. Even those ancient authors who tried to systematize things e.g., Plato in the 11th book of hisNomoi (using the synonym ),

The historicization of the ancient concept of magic proposed here implies,of course, the simultaneous historicization of synonyms. But how can synonyms beidentied when the actual meaning of /magia remains, at least in the begin-


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Pliny the elder in the 30th book of his Historia Naturalis, Apuleius inhis Apologia, Plotinus in his 4th Ennead, or, to name the most impor-

tant Christian author, Augustine in his De doctrina christiana revealhighly diverse modes of thought and, thus, general conceptions of theterm magic.

While Plato situates his general concept of (usually translatedas impiety, blasphemy; for Plato, asebea implies, among other things,the belief that gods can be inuenced by ritual oferings to intervenein some earthly matter) within his law against pharmakea ( ), Pliny rather opposes magia to (what he perceives as)

secular medicine, or, more implicitly and somewhat unjustiably, toestablished Roman cult. Apuleius is highly ironic in his entire speechand proposes at least three diferent denitions of the alleged crime of

which he is accused. In his Enneads (4.4.404), Plotinus tries to fuse

ning, unclear? The ancient texts themselves can operate as indicators here, as someterms are regularly used equivalently; for andsee, e.g., Philo of Alex-andria, De specialibus legibus, 3.101f.; Plotinus, Enneads 4.4.40; Pseudo-Phocylides 149.Synonymity can also be detected indirectly, as and are often correlatedin ancient texts (e.g., Gorgias, Encomium of Helen910; Diodorus,Bibliotheca historica5.55f.; Philostratus, Vita Apollonii; Cassius Dio 78.18.4; Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philoso-

phorum1.8; Origen,Contra Celsum, e.g. 2.1; 6.39; Synesius, De insomniis 132), and, inother texts, and (e.g. Plato,Meno80a-b; Plato,Laws909ac; Plato,Symposion203de). Stratton (2007, 2637) provides a nice overview of the ancient ter-minology associated with/magia. For Plato, implies three false attitudes towards the gods: general disbelief(that is, atheism); the belief that the gods do not care for human needs; the belief thatgods can be inuenced by, e.g., ritual oferings; Cf. Plato,Laws 885b933e.

Cf. Pliny, Historia Naturalis30.1f.; See the implicit opposition to Roman religiousinstitutions, such as the Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis, in HN 28.13; here, Pliny claimsthat ritually spoken words canhave an efect (a fact proven by 830 years of Roman his-tory), while, in many other passages, he refutes the ecacy of words when spoken bythe magi. Cf. Apuleius,Apologia, 25.9f; rst, he quotes Platos statement inAlcibiades1 (122a)that refers to the worship of the gods ( ) among the Persians; thus,

Apuleius asks ironically, why is it regarded as a crime to know the laws of ceremony,the order of sacrice, and the norms of religion (leges cerimoniarum, fas sacrorum, iusreligionum). Shortly later (26.6f.), he refers to the ordinary convention (more vulgari)that refers to the magusas someone who has incredible powers through hiscommun-ion with the gods (communione loquendi cum deis) and, especially, through powerfulinvocations (incredibilia quadam ui cantaminum); however, he refutes the latter image


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the ancient understanding of rituals subsumed under /with his idea of a coherent, interrelated, divine cosmos operating more

or less mechanically through patterns of symptheia. Finally, Augus-tine classies magia as apactum daemonum, implementing the idea of asingle, powerful opponent of God reigning over a regiment of daemones(being for Augustine, in contrast to Plato or Apuleius, intrinsically evil)

who try to seduce and enslave humans.Given this variety of conceptual backgrounds and semantic patterns,

one obviously has to leave behind the idea of magic as a monolithic,well-dened term and, instead, focus on the plurality and haziness of

historical semantics. In fact, reconstructing the conceptual history ofmagic in Classical Antiquity means taking a range of approaches andconceptions into account that depend on the author under examina-tion and the respective cultural-religious context. Thus, there is noroom in this paper for a thorough discussion of ancient semantics ofmagic.Apart from Strattons analysis of important functional aspectsof the ancient discourse, a more comprehensive reconstruction of thehistorical reception of the term and its synonyms has been undertaken

in my Ph.D. thesis. However, there are terminological patterns, whichare easier to grasp and which shall be examined in this paper.These terminological patterns correspond to the distinction proposed

above with respect to the functional use of the concept of magic inAntiquity: does the term refer to out-group or to in-group persons, texts,

rituals or beliefs? Considering the ancient textual sources against thebackdrop of this question may lead to the analytical formation of a dis-course of exclusion and a discourse of inclusion. These two discourses

by proving it to be absurd. Finally, Apuleius more than once suggests that the wholecourt case against him is a compensatoryfarce (this implies Apuleius generally criticalevaluation of the crimen magiae), driven by nothing more than the envy and greed ofhis accusers (e.g.Apologia28.6f.; 54.5f.; 67.1f.; 99103). Here, the philosopher even out-lines the main arguments of the thesis ofdeviance. See in more detail Otto 2011, ch. 7. Cf. Plotinus,Enneads4.4.4044. Cf., among many other passages, Augustine, De civitate Dei8.1619; 21.6; Augusti-nus,De doctrina christiana2.XX.30.74f. See Stratton 2007. See Otto 2011. Discourse is understood here as a sum of statements (i.e. texts) including the ety-mon or synonyms.


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can and should be reconstructed diachronically and interculturally. Fur-thermore, they reach beyond Classical Antiquity because they can also

be identied in medieval, early modern, and modern textual sources.Crucial to the methodological approach proposed here is the indepen-dent analysis of the discourse of exclusion and inclusionas the perceptionof magic may difer fundamentally among authors who refer to othersor to themselves while using the term. In particular, to understand whatancient self-referential magicians really thought and did, it is crucialto set aside the polemics of the discourse of exclusion and take extanttexts of the discourse of inclusion exclusively into account.

The discourse of exclusion pervades the huge majority of Graeco-Hellenistic, Roman, and Judaeo-Christian texts. While the cultural-religious and, thereby, the semantic backgrounds of important authorson magic change, their functional use of the term(that is, in most cases:a polemical devaluation and social exclusion of the people, rituals orbeliefs in question) remains the same. Thus, in spite of their major con-ceptual diferences when talking about magic, Plato, Pliny, Apuleius,Plotinus, and Augustine (to name only these few) can all be assigned

to the discourse of exclusion in Antiquity. While the discourse of exclu-sionhence emerges as the dominantterminological pattern throughoutAntiquity, there is only scarce evidence for the discourse of inclusion,

mostly limited to the Papyri Graecae Magicae and related Graeco-Egyptian ndings. This quantitative imbalance of ancient textual sourcesbetween the discourse of exclusion and the discourse of inclusion is itselfan important rst insight arising from the historicizationof the ancientterm magic proposed here. In fact, if the Papyri Graecae Magicaehad

not been recovered in the early 19th century, there would have beengood reason to argue that the polemical instrumentalization of the termmagic had been the only way of actually using it in Antiquity thatis, that it had purely served as a polemical tool for social exclusion andnot as an identicatory concept for the self-appellation of ancient ritualpractitioners. On the basis of the evidence of thePGM, this argument

For a wider time frame see Otto 2011. Cf., in more detail, Brashear 1995:3401f. See also Betz 1986, especially XLIIXLIV. This argument does not imply that privately operating ritual entrepreneurs (forexample, producers ofcurse tablets) did not exist in Classical Antiquity (indeed, therecertainly were many of them); instead, the argument focuses on their names: due to


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(that is, a general postulation of the thesis of deviance for Antiquity alto-gether) can be led away. However, the question of the representative-

ness of thePGM remains: are they only the tip of the iceberg of a muchgreater textual discourse of self-referential magicians throughout the

Ancient Mediterranean? Or did only Graeco-Egyptian temple priests orscribes in Late Antiquity, marginalized through the Roman, and, sincethe 3rd and 4th century CE, the Christian occupation of their homeland,sympathize with this former underdog title? As no other in-groupsources from ancient self-referential magicians have been found yet,this question remains unanswered up to this moment.

However, there are other important research questions arising fromthe analytical separation of an ancient discourse of exclusion and inclu-sion. Taking a closer look at the discourse of exclusion, it is, for example,highly illuminating to reconstruct similarities and diferences regardingthe religious patterns that are devaluated and stigmatized by the termmagic in diferent cultural-religious settings. Taking, for example,Plato for the early Greek, Pliny for the Roman, and Augustine for theChristian discourse into account, it is interesting to note that the demar-

cation line between the included and the excluded (that is, between theaccepted and permitted and the condemned and prohibited) signi-cantly difersamong these three authors. Plato not only aims at deval-uating private ritual practitioners working outside the ocial templecults, but he also tries to delegitimize the all-too-human attempt toexpect favors from the gods by ritual donations. That is: he implicitlyattacks the well-established sacricial cult in classical Greece, therebyproposing the moralistic-philosophical ideal of a helping, yet notbrib-

able, god. Indeed, a reading between the lines of his Laws revealsthathe actually aims to stigmatize the human individual who tends to

the negative connotations of the title /magus (including synonyms like ormalecos) in ancient literature and the increasingly harsh prosecution of the crimenmagiaeespecially since the early Roman Empire, it is to be doubted that private ritualpractitioners used these stigmatized terms in public. Indeed, they may have used (atleast a little) more value-free terms such as, , haruspex, or augur. Stratton (2007; 2012) has ofered valuable insights into this scholarly desideratum;in this paper, I will mainly discuss texts that are not, or are only marginally, dealt within Strattons works. For this theme see Plato,Republic363e364c; Plato,Laws909a910d; 932e933e. Cf. Plato,Laws825bf, esp. 905907d; on this point see also Graf 1996:32.


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instrumentalize religion (in this case, gures of the Greek pantheon)in order to procure personal benets. Platos concept of pharmakea

thus marks the boundary of an egoistic misappropriation of the gods,in contrast to his ideal of a more philosophical, respectful, and unselshbelief.

By contrast, Pliny the Elder employs magia to summarize anddevalue an enormous amount of (primarily) healing practices circu-lating throughout the Roman Empire of the 1st century CE. WhilePlato argues on religious grounds, Pliny focuses on the ostensible inef-cacy of the described practices; thus, the term magia in the Historia

Naturalis primarily implies notions of inefectiveness, charlatanry, andsuperstitio. Unsurprisingly, a large amount of diverse cultural-religiouspractices, beliefs, and persons nd their place in Plinys concept ofmagia, including Homeric gures such as Circe, the Sirens, and Proteus,Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus,and ritual specialists from all ancient civilizations such as the GallicDruids. Magia thereby marks the boundary between Plinys upper-class secular Roman worldview and a plethora of ritual practices and

beliefs perceived as being fundamentally antithetical and external toRoman Culture. Indeed, a closer look at his excursus on the power ofwordsin the 28th book reveals that Pliny cannot separate the ecacy of

words ritually used in established Roman cult from the ostensibly fraud-ulentformulae of the condemned magi. His famous history of magic

See in more detail Otto 2011:169f. and Otto & Stausberg 2013:19f. Cf. especially books 2832 of theHistoria Naturalis. Cf.Historia Naturalis30.1f.; see also, e.g., 22.20; 28.12,47,198; 29.67,81; 32.34; 37.155.

Cf.Historia Naturalis30.513. Ogden 2002:44: One of the most important aspects of this discussion is its explicitunication within the same category whatever that category is of gures of verydiferent varieties [. . .]. Compared, explicitly or implicitly, to the mages (of Persia,Medea, Babylon, Assyria, and even Armenia, all closely identied [. . .] are: Circe, theSirens, Proteus, Thessalian witches, Carian Telmessus (known for various forms of divi-nation), Orpheus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus, as well as Jewish, Cypriot(Cyprus is identied as a particular home for magic in later sources), Latin, and Gallicsorcerers. For all that magic spread over the entire world, it is presented as fundamen-tally external and antithetical to Roman Culture. Cf.Historia Naturalis28.929; the typological similarity of thepowerful words usedin Roman cults and the rituals of the magi reveals that Plinys implicit opposition isactually that of traditional, established Roman cult vs. all kinds of unauthorized and


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at the beginning of book 30 is, therefore, a rather perplexing attempt tohistorically fortify a concept that actually lacks clear semantic grounds.

Thus, the passage should (if this is not too trivial a point to add) not beperceived as a textual window on ancient magic by Classicists.

Augustine again relocates the demarcation line between the legiti-mate and the illegitimate in his De civitate Dei and, especially, his Dedoctrina christiana. Augustine picks up the notions of andsuperstitio from the Greek and Roman use of /magia. However,he adds a complex demonology and theory of signs in order to explainthe communication between the magos and the daemon. In this way,

the whole Graeco-Roman sacricial cult becomes magic as pagangods are (for Augustine) nothing more than demons. Accordingly, inAugustines writing, core aspects of Graeco-Roman religion, includ-

ing deity devotion, divination practice, and theatre play, are conceptu-ally equated to magic, now representing nothing more than a cultum

mostly individualistic ritual activity labelled as magia. One might therefore also thinkof individual religiosity as an alternative label here; on this perspective see Rpke2011. Mathew Dickie (1999) rightly claims that Pliny referred to earlier texts (which hadbeen for the most part lost) while compiling his work such as a book attributed to Bolosof Mendes on sympathy and antipathy, a book of Zachalias on stones, a book of Pseudo-Pythagoras on plants, and the cheiromecta of (Pseudo-) Democritus. My argument doestherefore not imply that the material presented by Pliny is based on pure fantasy orcreativity the fact is that he participated in an ongoing textual discourse in Antiq-uity. However, Dickies construction of a consistent magical lore fails at one centralpoint: did the authors of these earlier works really subsume under the ancient con-cept of magic the idea that stones, plants or animals have an efect on human afairs?

Although this question cannot be answered with certainty, it seems rather doubtfulthat/magia operated as the general framework for this idea before Pliny. Fromthe viewpoint of ancient terminology, it is more likely that these books were tagged(by their authors) as being scientic (that is, philosophical/peripatetic) or medical. InhisHistoria Naturalis, Pliny might have changed this pattern of classication and sub-sumed a vast variety of strange or uncertain beliefs under the umbrella term magia,thereby signicantly broadening its semantic range. See in more detail Otto 2011:225f. and Otto & Stausberg 2013:23f. Cf. Augustine,De civitate Dei, especially books 8 and 9; 21.6; Cf. also De divinationedaemonum;De trinitate, e.g. 4.11;De doctrina christiana2.XX.30.74f. Cf., explicitly,De civitate dei9.23 referring toPsalms 9596. See alsoDe civitate Dei1.29; 8.24; 19.23; etc. In a similar vein, De doctrina christiana2.XX.30.74 reveals Augus-tines equation of idolatria (that is, Graeco-Roman deity cults) and magia.


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daemonum. Again, the semantic range of the term is considerably broad-ened: it is Augustine who systematically employs magia to signify and

classify everything that is not (Christian) religion, thereby not onlyafecting the Christian discourse on magic as a whole, but also (yetmore implicitly) the academic discourse on magic since the late 19thcentury.

An important implication set forth while reconstructing the ancientdiscourse of exclusion is the lack of trustworthiness of its magical claims.

Authors belonging to the discourse of exclusion tend to classify persons,texts or ritual actions (even whole religions) as magic although this

classication does in most cases not correspond to the respective in-group perspective. To be more precise, many of those who are referredto as magicians in ancient texts have, in all likelihood, not called them-selves magicians. The 2nd and 3rd century controversy between Chris-tian and Graeco-Roman authors on the miraculous abilities of Jesus ofNazareth and Apollonius of Tyana has already been mentioned as animportant example for this discrepancy between the out-group and in-group use of the title magician in ancient sources. There are many

other examples of this phenomenon within the ancient conceptual his-tory of magic. Hence, Classical scholars should deal very carefully

See in more detail Otto 2011:309f. and Otto & Stausberg 2013:33f. For Graeco-Roman texts claiming that Jesus was a magician see Celsus

(cf. Origines,Contra Celsum1.6, 1.38, 1.68, 2.49, etc.), Porphyrius, (cf. frr. 4 and 63) or Hierokles, (cf. Eusebius,Contra Hieroclem,esp. chapter 2); for Christian counter-texts accusing Apollonius of Tyana and furtherpersons with Graeco-Roman background of being magicians see Origen, Contra

Celsumor Eusebius,Contra Hieroclem. In this respect, it is important to note that Apol-lonius biographer Philostratus emphasizes more than once that Apollonius was not amagician but, instead, a wise and upright philosopher in direct contact with the gods(see, e.g., Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 1.2; 5.12; 7.3839). On the controversy see, apartfrom Remus 1983, also Smith 1978; Gallagher 1982. Cf. the magicians mentioned in Hippocrates,De morbo sacro1.10f. (does Hippoc-rates really refer to self-referential magicians wandering around in Greek poleis maybe even Persians? or is his use of the title purely polemical? This cannot beanswered with certainty); Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 20.142 (did theCyprian Jew Atomus mentioned by Flavius Josephus really call himself a magician?

Again, there is no clear answer); Tacitus,Annales, e.g., 2.32 (Tacitus reects the fuzzyapplication of the title by the Roman legislative, which can also be grasped in Apuleius

Apologia); Cassius Dio 72.8.4 (that Arnuphis, a ritual practitioner accompanying the


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with the attributive use of the concept of magic in ancient sources; inmost cases, it will not give any substantial information on the subject,

but merely aim at its religious or moral devaluation.Given this tendency and, especially, the immense impact of the dis-

course of exclusionon the ancient conceptual history of magic, it seemsobvious that /magia didnot operate as sound, impartial signi-ers, but rather as semantically fuzzy, highly polemical ciphers operat-ing within or among ancient religious discourses. Thus, the fact that theconcept already pervades ancient literature cannot serve as a justica-tion of the concepts extensive application by Classical scholars. In fact,

the problems Classicists are facing when applying magic as an abstractcategory might be comparable to those already inherent in the ancientterm except that Classical authors usually did not ponder its seman-tic value from a critical point of view and, thereby, realize its actualhaziness. There is even reason to argue that the polemical notions ofancient/magia had an impact on James G. Frazer when he formu-lated his highly inuential theory of magic in the Golden Bough. The

legions of Marcus Aurelius, called himself a magician is very unlikely); Pliny,NaturalisHistoria30.1f. (Pliny uses the title to refer to all kinds of non-Roman gures); Apuleius,Apologia90.5f. (Apuleius gives an enhanced version of Plinys list); Apuleius himselfis classied as a magician by Christian authors such as Augustine (e.g., De ciuitate

Dei 8.19); other Christian authorities created texts solely devoted to listing magicians,such as Tertullian (De anima 57) and Arnobius (Adversus nationes 1.52.1); the NovumTestamentum Graece refers to the Samaritan Simon (Acts8.925) and the Jew Barjesus(Acts 13.6f.) as mgoi(again, both cases are unlikely from an in-group perspective); thepositive use of the in Mt 2.1 does, however, deviate from the usuallypolemical employment of the title magician in Antiquity.

However, apart from Apuleius critical reections in his Apologia, Graeco-Romanphilosophers polemicizing against Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries alsoshowed an intensied interest in the arbitrary character of the concept; Cf., for instance,Celsus apud Origines, Contra Celsum2.49: with his own voice he explicitly confesses,as even you have recorded, that there will come among you others also who employsimilar miracles, wicked men and sorcerers [ ], and he names one Satanas devising this; so that not even he denies that these wonders have nothing divineabout them, but are works of wicked men. Nevertheless, being compelled by the truth,he both reveals the deeds of others and proves his own to be wrong. Is it not a miserableargument to infer from the same works that he is a god [] while they are sorcerers[]?; translation Chadwick 1965:104; Greek text Marcovich 2001:120. When Frazer, in the second three-volumed edition of the Golden Bough (1900),refers to the sorcerers of [. . .] Greece and Rome to justify his theory of magic, he


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ancient tendency to connect/magiawith devaluation and socialexclusion thereby contributed to the academic instrumentalization of

the concept of magic for the very same purposes in the late 19th cen-tury, now aiming at an across-the-board classication and devaluationof so-called primitives in colonies of the British Empire.

However, the question remains: what is to be done with the self-referential magicians of the Papyri Graecae Magicae? Can at leastthe ancient in-groupuse of the concept of magic justify its academicapplication? Obviously, a thorough examination of the PGM can-not be undertaken here. Already a quick survey shows, however, that

the PGM subsume an irritatingly wide range of ritual practices under: among the most common ritual goals are divination, evok-ing love between two persons, defence and protection, controllingor damaging other people, healing or the achievement of wealth,luck, and fame; if wealth has been stolen, a ritual may be conductedto identify the thief; if a healing rite has been unsuccessful, a ritual forreawakening the corpse may be useful; other miraculous abilities like

writes in the accompanying footnote: For the Greek and Roman practice, see The-ocritus,Id. 2; Virgil, Ecl. 8.7582; Ovid, Heroides, 6.91 sq.;Amores, 3.7.29 sq. (cf. Frazer1900:10 n. 2). The poets quoted by Frazer are an ambivalent selection but can neverthe-less be assigned to the ancient discourse of exclusion (that is, they did not call them-selves magicians; they probably did not know self-referential magicians personallybut rather assimilated ancient stereotypes; they usually aimed at a devaluation of thedescribed rituals and persons).

For this point see in more detail Styers 2004:63f. E.g. PGM II.1f.; III.196f.; III.257f.; III.283f.; III.424f.; III.479f.; IV.53f.; IV.88f.; IV.154f.;

IV.223f.; IV.850f.; IV.1275f.; IV.3088f.; IV.3173f.; IV.3210f.; V.1f.; V.55f.; V.370f.; VI.1f.; VII.1f.;VII.222f.; VII.250f.; VIII.930f.; XIII.265f.; etc.

E.g. PGM IV.296f.; IV.1265f.; IV.1391f.; IV.1495f.; IV.1872f.; IV.2006f.; IV.2708f.;IV.2891f.; IV.2943f.; VII.191f.; VII.215f.; XIII.237f.; XIII.320f.; etc. E.g. PGM I.195f.; IV.78f.; IV.86f.; IV.468f.; IV.831f.; IV.1168f.; IV.1497f.; IV.3125f.;IV.2241f.; VII.150f.; XIII.249f.; XIII.262f.; XIII.278f.; etc. E.g. PGM IV.2126f.; IV.2623f.; V.305f. E.g. PGM VII.193214; VII.218f.; XIII.344f.; XIII.253f.; etc.

E.g. PGM IV.2145f.; IV.2373f.; VII.187f.; VII.390f.; VII.423f.; etc. Cf. PGM V.70. Cf. PGM IV.1168f.; XIII.278f.


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interrogating a dead body, becoming invisible, controlling onesown shadow, breaking up bonds, opening closed doors or extin-

guishing a re (unsurprisingly, without water) are also described.In order to nd a coherent semantic pattern that could cover these

diverse ritual goals and, thereby, clarify the in-group understanding ofGraeco-Egyptianas a whole, it is essential to recall the religiousbackground of the PGM. This background is well known: virtually allrituals described are addressed to gods or, depending on the respec-tive ritual goal, other transcendent or intermediary beings belongingto Graeco-Roman, Egyptian or Judaeo-Christian theologies, thereby

reecting the truly ecumenical religious syncretism of the Hellenisticworld culture. To quote once again Edward B. Tylor, a belief in spiri-tual beings is the core concept that unites all ritual and liturgical aspectsof the PGM. This is not trivial: all ritual goals, including the aforemen-tioned miraculous abilities, imply the belief that it is the gods who areexclusively responsible for evoking them. There are no ex opere operatomechanisms underlying Graeco-Egyptian (that is, the authors

were apparently no followers of Plotinus); also, the Graeco-Egyptian

magicians did certainly not believe in possessing supernatural abili-ties as part of their personality, lineage or psycho-spiritual training( laHarry Potter). They merely operated as mediators between theirclients and the gods while expecting the latter to fulll the requestedneed. Thus, for the authors of the PGM, it is the gods who induce love

Cf. PGM IV.2140f. Cf. PGM I.222f.; I.246f.; XIII.234f.; XIII.267.

Cf. PGM III.613f. Cf. PGM XII.160f.; XIII.289f. Cf. PGM XIII.127f. Cf. PGM XIII.298f. Betz 1986:XLVI: For these magicians, there was no longer any cultural diferencebetween the Egyptian and the Greek gods, or between them and the Jewish God and the

Jewish angels, and even Jesus was occasionally assimilated into this truly ecumenicalreligious syncretism of the Hellenistic world culture. Plotinus more or less rejects the idea that transcendent beings could be responsi-ble for the efects of rituals subsumed under/, thereby favoring the ratherimpersonal force of ; see explicitly Plotinus,Enneades4.4.43, where he claimsthat demons are themselves subject to . Further on this see Otto & Stausberg2013:28f.


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among humans, it is the gods who heal, protect, hurt, and send luck, it isthe gods who are responsible for all aspects of human destiny. Accord-

ingly, in order to deal with critical life situations, it is the gods who needto be ritually addressed in order to request their aid.

Perceived from this point of view, Graeco-Egyptian is nota unique, curious case in the history of ancient religions. Instead, itis characterized by a set of common if not classical ideas wide-spread in the religious world of Classical Antiquity: that the gods areresponsible for human fate and can be ritually addressed, in one wayor the other, to inuence the latter. In fact, the Graeco-Egyptian mgoi

could nd role models for almost everything they did in the majority ofreligious texts circulating in the Ancient Mediterranean, including theJudaeo-Christian tradition. Hence, it is only the highly syncretistic

approach of thePGM and, especially, certain ritual means used to gainthe favor of the gods that seem to difer from the major religious tradi-tions of Antiquity. In this regard, the use of so-called voces magicae, ofpowerful signs () and of material artifacts seem to be quiteunique aspects of the PGM. However, as the voces magicae have been

identied as being nothing more than alternative, ecacious names for

This argument is supported by the fact, that not only a vast variety of gods, but alsoimportant Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian gures found their way into thePGM.For Jesus see PGM IV.3016; XII.192; for Moses see PGM V.108f.; VII.619f. and, esp. PGM

XIII.3f., theMonad, or the Eighth Book of Moses ( ); for Abraham PGM I.219; V.480; VII.315; XIII.816; for Salomon PGM IV.851f.;for Pythagoras see PGM VII.795; for Democritus see PGM VII.168f.; VII.795; for Apol-

lonius of Tyana see PGM XIa.1; etc. In addition, the miraculous abilities attested in thePGM may have been inuenced by the many wondrous stories of both the Old and theNew Testament. In fact, miraculous abilities served as one of the most common reli-gious ideas in the ancient Mediterranean and were usually attested independently (!)of the ancient concept of magic. Apart from the Judaeo-Christian miracle discourse,see the respective passages in Philostratus, Vita Apollonii; Iamblichus, Vita Pythago-rae; Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae; Porphyrios, Vita Plotini; Eunapius, Vitae Sophistarum;Damascius, Vita Isidorii; Marinus, Vita Procli; See also a number of passages in DiogenesLaertius, Vitae Philosophorumand the healings of Vespasian in Tacitus,Historiae4.81and Suetonius,De Vita Caesarum: Titus Flavius Vespasianus, 7. Against this backdrop, itis incomprehensible that scholars tend to instinctively classify miraculous abilities asmagic; they lie at the very heart of Judaeo-Christian narratives and, thus, represent aclassic pattern in the Western history of religions.


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the invoked gods, one could again argue that the term in thePGM refers to religion in its purest sense. This argument can also be

applied to charactres which, in many cases, accompanyvoces magi-cae within larger invocation patterns (either spoken or written) and,likewise, seem to represent alternative god names or formalized prayerpatterns (of course, they also enabled the magician to impress his cli-ents with mysterious and ostensibly ecacious symbols). Finally, theuse of material oferings described extensively in thePGM may be inter-preted as mirroring one of the most common aspects of ancient deitydevotion, the sacrice.

In the end, only conceptual nuances separate Graeco-Egyptianfrom the instrumental aspects of institutionalized ancient cults (i.e.,religions). To give a further example: the relationship between menand gods demonstrated in the PGM seems to imply the possibility ofextraordinary proximity: the gods are perceived as being more or lessat the disposal of the magician (dependent on the proper conductof his rituals) and could even be forced to appear in physical shape.

As a consequence, the Graeco-Egyptian magician may have believed

that he exerted a strong inuence over the gods, and thereby, over his

On this point see already Festugire 1932, esp. pp. 281f. (whose perspective is, how-ever, rather polemical); see also Betz 1986:XLVII, who calls the voces magicae simplycode words. For clear references to voces magicae as representing names see, e.g.,PGM IV.278; IV.1000f.; IV.1183f.; XIII.149f. Further on this see Otto 2011:403f. See on this point also Johnston 2002. See the respective formulations in, e.g., PGM I.129f.; I.274f.; III.494f.; IV.276f.; IV.776;

etc. Note that the Frazerian notion of coercioncannot be consistently applied to the

PGM; indeed, respectful, submissive pleas and more aggressive threats seem to haveserved as two equally valued forms of communication with gods within Graeco-Egyptian magea. The latter form (i.e. the threat) may, furthermore, be traced back toold Egyptian temple rituals and imply ideas of divine hierarchies and ritual identica-tion; see in more detail Otto 2011:399f. See e.g. PGM I with the strikingly visual, even kissable (PGM I.77f.) appearance oftheparhedros. See also PGM XIII and this almost trivial description after a 41 day tourde force of ritual conduct: When the god comes in, look down and write the thingshe says and the name which he gives you for himself. And do not go out from under

your canopy until he tells you accurately, too, the things that concern you.; transl. Betz1986:178.


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and his clients very destiny. It is precisely this notion that is contradic-tory to Platos aforementioned theology and other ancient normative

assertions of how gods and men ought to interrelate. Compared to theestablished Graeco-Roman deity cults that may have demanded a cer-tain amount of respect and submissiveness, the rituals described in the

PGM seem to imply a much more pragmatic interpretation of the wayshumans can interrelate with gods. From the perspective of the modernStudy of Religion, however, both these ancient theologies do not diferin their conceptual foundation; accordingly, they can and should bothbe classied as religion in academic discourse.

To sum up, instead of labeling the contents of the Papyri GraecaeMagicae(and thereby, the ancient in-group understanding of Graeco-Egyptian ) as magic in a modern, abstract sense, the method-ological approach proposed here also involves a general reorientationregarding the discourse of inclusion. On the one hand, the PGM are notperceived as a weird or even rubbishy exceptional case in the history of

Antiquity, but rather as a variation, a shift of emphasis or, even, a mereproduct of reception processes, thereby reecting an actually common

set of religious ideas circulating in the Ancient Mediterranean. On theother hand, the appearance of in thePGM is itself historicizedand, as such, prompts the question: what does this term actually meanfrom an ancient practitioners perspective? Reection on the aforemen-tioned arguments may lead to the following response: the terminthePGMrefers to formalized ritual actions aiming atinstrumentalizingtranscendent beings for individual human needs.

At this point, the reader may be bewildered: does this formulation

not correspond to certain modern denitions of magic? From theviewpoint of historical semantics, however, things are not that sim-ple. In short, drawing attention to this semantic pattern in the PGMhas two important benets. First, it can be compared to subsequentself-referential uses of the concept of magic, for example regardingthe Early Modern magia naturalis discourse, or the late 19th century

Here, magia came to signify an impersonal, all-embracing, pantheistic naturalforce; Cf. Marsilio Ficino,De vita libri tres, esp. book 3 andApologia; Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola, Oratio de hominis dignitate. On the Early Modern magia naturalisdiscoursesee also Goldammer 1991; Heinekamp & Mettler 1978; Otto 2011, ch. 10.


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British occultist discourse of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.Through this diachronic, intercultural comparison of texts written by

self-referential magicians, an important insight is revealed: there arehuge conceptual diferences even within the in-group understanding ofmagic throughout the last 2,000 years, again suggesting the abandon-ment of the idea of a sound, unambiguous academic category of magic.Second, the formulation is not restricted to the ancient discourse of inclu-sion:that is, ritual instrumentalization of transcendent beings for individ-ual human needs also played a central role in other religious contexts of

Antiquity. Indeed, there is reason to argue that it underlies the very core

the Graeco-Roman sacricial cult (do ut des). Thus, the most impor-tant semantic aspect of Graeco-Egyptian is contemporaneouslyvivid in established religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, here being

detached from the concept of magic and, thereby, of devaluation andstigmatization. That said, the Graeco-Egyptian magician loses his auraof uniqueness in Antiquity even more. Rather, he appears as being partof a wide spectrum of ancient ritual practitioners sharing at least tosome extent similar ideas, partly working inside, partly outside tem-

ples, partly having ocial positions in established cults, partly regard-ing ritual relations with gods as a mere means of earning a living as aprivate service provider.

The most important question remains to be discussed: Why did theauthors of the PGM employ the concept of magic as a self-referentialterm? Obviously, this question cannot be answered with certainty.Problems start with identifying these authors: were they, as speculatedabove, marginalized Egyptian priests or scribes? In this respect, Rob-

ert K. Ritner, David Frankfurter, and Johannes Quack have stressed theEgyptian background of thePGM and argued for interpreting these textsin the context of old Egyptian temple rituals. Given this Egyptian

Here, magic came to signify nothing less than apotheosis make the divine manout of the human man (Westcott 1892) achieved through a transformative union ofthe human and the divine will. Further on this see Otto 2011, ch. 11.4. See, e.g., Rpke 2007:149f. Jacco Dieleman (2011) convincingly shows that at least the scribes of some of the(Demotic) papyri must have been educated in a traditional Egyptian scriptorium,thereby following classical rules of Egyptian scribal practices. See Ritner 1995; Frankfurter 1998, esp. ch. 5; Quack 2011 with further references.


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context, one could even think of as a translation of old EgyptianHeka;in fact, Ritner justies the use of an abstract category of magic

in Egyptian studies with this argument. An exclusive translation pro-cess would, however, not explain the semantic similarities betweenthe concept of in the PGM and the stereotypes associated withthe term throughout Graeco-Roman Antiquity: in the end, the Graeco-Egyptian mgoi did conduct rituals to, among other things, inducelove; they believed in being able to have (or ritually evoke) miraculousabilities; and they, at least sometimes, threatened gods. Taking thesesimilarities into account, the Papyri Graecae Magicae do not seem to

represent a unique Egyptian case. Hence, it appears more reasonableto assume a larger textual discourse among self-referential magiciansin the ancient Mediterranean in which the authors of the Graeco-EgyptianPGM merely participated of course, in a somewhat specicEgyptian niche.

However, as the (Western) conceptual history of magic began in thelate 6th century BCE with Greeks assimilating a Persian term for theConstruction of the Other, it seems fairly reasonable to argue that

the discourse of inclusion emerged after thediscourse of exclusion. Thatis, ancient ritual practitioners must have picked up the concept ofmagic as a term of self-reference only after it had already circulatedas a polemical term in popular discourses. These ritual practitionersmay have been encouraged by the fact that there were, in fact, positiveremarks on magic in a few texts associating the concept with wisdom,ritual power, and religious authenticity. It can also be concluded fromother historical settings that polemical terms are sometimes picked up

deliberately by people who aim at separating themselves from popular

See Ritner 1993:14f.; for a critical discussion see Otto 2012. In more detail see Stratton 2007, ch. 2. See also Otto 2011, ch. 6. This positive tradition may have started with Plato,Alciabiades1 122a, who claimsthat refers to theworships of the gods( ) among the Persians; Philoof Alexandria in De specialibus legibus3.100, Dion Chrysostomos inBorysthenes40f.,

Apuleius inApologia 25.9, or (Ps.-) Apollonios in his epistula 17picked up this positivenotion. A positive use can also be found in Synesios,De Insomniis132133,Thessalos13,and, to a certain degree, in the ancient Historia Alexandri Magni, 1f. Further see Otto2011, ch. 9.1.


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culture. There is no better example for this than the modern Neopa-gan movement which, in all its diversity, tends to demarcate itself from

the Christian tradition and, at the same time, elevates the concept ofpaganism. The fact that Neopagans (and, foremost, Wiccans) usuallyhave a particularly high opinion of the concept of magic indicates thatthe process suggested here may not be limited to antiquity.

Conclusion

This paper proposes a methodological turn in the discourse on magicin Classical Studies. It calls, on the one hand, for the abandonment ofan abstract category of magic and, on the other hand, for a system-atic historicization of the ancient term, that is, for the reconstructionof its ancientsemantics, functions, and contexts. The insights yieldedby this methodological turn outweigh the ostensible loss of analyticpotential that might be perceived by classical scholars who habituallyemploy the term as a substantive working tool. In fact, analyzing theancient use of /magiaevokes new research questions that yield

important insights into socio-religious conicts, into the constructionand legitimization of religious identities, or into the tension betweengroup and individual religiosity in Antiquity. Thus, investigating theconceptual history of magic has more to ofer than pursuing fruitlessdiscussions about modern denitions of the term. Instead of implicitlyor explicitly sustaining the idea of an ideal-type, transcultural, and ahis-torical category, classical scholars should begin to perceive magic as ahistorical term that pervades their sources and bears in fact, contrary to

academic denitions, a plethoraof meanings, functions, and valuationsworth investigating.

The suggested methodological turn can, therefore, solve a termino-logical issue that has inuenced the discussion since the early works ofDieterich, Preisendanz, and others: what is ancient magic? The clas-sical discourse lacks a satisfying answer to this question, despite theimpressive literary output covering the topic in the last decades. In fact,the sheer number of scholarly works on ancient magic cannot justify

See the splendid discussion of this social phenomenon in Hanegraaf 2012, e.g.pp. 374f.


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the extensive use of the concept or add to its trustworthiness as an ana-lytical category. The present popularity of magic as a research topic

in Classical Studies rather reveals a scholarly trend, possibly inspiredby the immense success of the mythologized gure of the magicianin modern popular culture or by other dynamics within the academy,such as the intention to produce books wit

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