I hear a lot about the everyday use of "curses", charms and other magic in ancient Rome and Greece, some is superficially similar to Voodoo, but I still wonder how the occult was seen in these societies. In the spirit of Halloween can someone tell me?

Ooh someone finally asked a question directly related to my research! This makes me very happy. Your questions are complex, with several layers that need unpicking before we can get to the good stuff. I will mostly be focusing on the Roman imperial period because that’s my specialism, but there’s plenty to be said for other times and places within Classical antiquity.

The first big issue to tackle here is the question “what was ancient magic like?” To answer this question we have to confront the definition of the word ‘magic’ – not an easy task because it can mean a whole lot of very different things depending on the context in which it is used. For people in the modern world, ‘magic’ mostly means stage magic – things like card tricks, escapology, or flying a white tiger around a room in Las Vegas. This is not generally what historians and anthropologists mean when we use the term, although this sort of thing probably did exist in the ancient world (see Juvenal Satire 6.508-591, where he attacks all the fortune-tellers and magicians working on the streets of Rome). Exactly what we do mean when we use the term ‘magic’ is the subject of considerable, ongoing debate that is unlikely to be resolved. The question of whether ‘magic’ should be seen as separate from, or part of, ‘religion’ has vexed scholars for decades, with plenty of big names lining up on both sides (I’ll suggest some further reading below if you’re interested). I think most would now agree that, at the very least, there is an intimate relationship between religion and magic, but that it is useful for us to make a distinction between them when we can see it in the evidence. More often than not, distinctions between the two categories centre on magic’s pursuit of concrete, earthly goals (rather than aiming at spiritual salvation or eternal life), and involve rituals that manipulate or coerce supernatural entities (rather than supplicating them through prayer). There are clearly issues even with this basic definition, but it should be enough for now. I’d be happy to discuss this further if you are interested.

The picture is complicated for the ancient world because the word magus/magos existed in both Latin and Ancient Greek, which means we need to take ancient definitions of the term into account alongside modern theoretical debates. The word came into Ancient Greek from Persian in the 6th or 5th century BC, when it referred to a particular group of Persian priests. The word shifted and changed as Greek society developed, but was always related to religious specialists, especially those who engaged in foreign or morally dubious practices. This is how it came into Latin, probably in the 1st century BC, and by the Imperial period it came to symbolise the paradigms of non-Roman behaviour – relationships with the supernatural that were totally contrary to acceptable Roman virtues, in particular divination, necromancy and human sacrifice. Certain forms of magical practice were illegal in the Roman empire, and if caught and prosecuted a practitioner could be sentenced to work in the mines or be thrown to the beasts in the arena. This is a quote from Paulus (Opinions 5.23.14-19), a Roman jurist writing in the second century AD, talking about the lex Cornelia sicariis et veneficis, first passed around 82 BC, but probably added to later:

Those who administer a potion to cause an abortion or as an aphrodisiac, even if they do not act maliciously, nevertheless because their action is a bad example, those of inferior rank are sentenced to the mines, and those of superior rank are banished to an island, after part of their property has been confiscated. But if a woman or a man dies from the potion, they receive the supreme penalty. Those who perform or have performed for them impious or nocturnal rites for the purpose of enchanting, bewitching or binding someone, are either crucified or thrown to the beasts. Those who sacrifice human beings or take auspices with human blood or pollute a shrine or temple, are thrown to the beasts or, if they are of superior rank, executed. Those who are knowledgeable in the art of magic are to receive the supreme penalty, that is, to be thrown to the beasts or crucified. The magicians themselves are burnt alive. No one may possess books on the art of magic; and those found in possession have their property confiscated and their books burnt in public; they are deported to an island or, if of inferior rank, executed. Not only the practices of this art, but also the knowledge of it, is prohibited. If someone dies from a drug which was administered for their health or as a cure, the person who administered it is, if of superior rank, banished to an island or, if of inferior rank, executed.

You can see from this some of the fear and suspicion around magic in the Roman world. No distinction is made between magic potions and more mundane poisons – the Romans did not make the same distinction we do in the modern world, with our scientific approach to things like this. It would seem that the Roman authorities were incredibly wary of people using supernatural power to influence, harm or kill people, and attempted to restrict it by making it so heavily punished.