Magic in the Ancient Greek World » (New Edition)

Derek Collins is an Associate Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively on Greek poetry and its performance, including Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry (2005). Collins has also published on Greek divination and magic, including articles on bird divination, the criminalization of magic in Athens, and the intellectual background to classical Greek magic.

Original and comprehensive, Magic in the Ancient Greek World takes the reader inside both the social imagination and the ritual reality that made magic possible in ancient Greece.

• Explores the widespread use of spells, drugs, curse tablets, and figurines, and the practitioners of magic in the ancient world
  
• Uncovers how magic worked. Was it down to mere superstition? Did the subject need to believe in order for it to have an effect?
  
• Focuses on detailed case studies of individual types of magic
  
• Examines the central role of magic in Greek life

Acknowledgments     vii
Abbreviations     ix
Introduction     xi
Magic: What Is It and How Does It Work?     1
Frazer and Tylor     3
Malinowski     5
Magic as Communication     5
Levy-Bruhl     7
Evans-Pritchard     11
Sympathetic Magic     14
Magic and the Extended Person     16
Magic and Analogy     17
Beyond Frazer     20
Tambiah and Persuasive Magic     21
Conclusion     24
A Framework for Greek Magic     27
Magic and the Gods     27
Divinity and Nature     31
The Hippocratics: Magic, Divination, and Epilepsy     33
Plato and Greek Psychology     42
Magic and Causality     44
Greek Magicians     49
Magoi     54
Gorgias, Mageia and Goeteia     58
Other Magical Terms     60
Conclusion     62
Binding Magic and Erotic Figurines     64
Binding the Gods     67
Divine Agents     69
'Characters'     73
Body Parts and Health     78
EroticMagic     88
Figurines     92
Erotes     97
Homeric Incantations     104
Pythagoras and Empedocles     105
The Mechanics of Homeric Incantations     108
Obstetrics and Gynecology     109
Verse Combinations and the Power of Metaphor     114
Intoxication, Choking, and Gout     118
Incantations and Divination     122
Neoplatonic Theurgy and Homer     125
Conclusion     131
Magic in Greek and Roman Law     132
Magic in Greek Law and Legal Imagination     133
Trials for Erotic Magic     135
Theoris, the Lemnian Witch     136
Plato's Laws Against Magic     139
Magic in Roman Law and Legal History     141
The Twelve Tables     142
The Lex Cornelia     145
Magia and Maleficium: Magic and Witchcraft     148
Apuleius the Magus     150
The Opinions of Paulus and Later Law Codes     159
Interpretationes Christianae     162
The Medieval Inheritance     164
Conclusion     166
Notes     170
Select Bibliography     191
Index      198