Chapter 3 - Early Greco-Roman Antiquity

Summary

A curse tablet from fourth-century Attica exemplifies many aspects of what has come to be considered magic in Western thought/ Inscribed on a thick tablet. This chapter surveys the history of magic in Greece and Rome, up to and including the Republic, with the goal of illuminating both the emergence of magic as a discourse of alterity, or othering strategy, in Western thought. The corresponding influence this discourse had on the practice of rituals that came to be considered magic. Magic operated as a discourse of alterity that was part and parcel of the discourse of barbarism to marginalize certain people and practices, including peripatetic venders of cathartic healing, curse tablets, and unregulated domestic religion and women's control over it. The chapter also briefly surveys the debate among scholars of antiquity over defining magic and its use as a heuristic category for ancient societies in order to clarify how the operation of magic is understood as a social discourse.