Magic and maleficia in the Ancient World: The case of Roman Sardinia

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 293-302
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Cultures

Abstract This paper will focus on magic rituals aimed at causing maleficia in a specific area: Sardinia. Although difficult to retrace, there is some evidence, on the island, of the existence of forms of both necromancy and oracular divination that refer, with their own forms, to the culture spread in the Roman empire. Among the most significant documents, there are the tabellae defixionum, some epigraphic texts widely documented in the Roman world, and even earlier in the Punic world. The evidence, in this case, is quite interesting, also, because it reflects the combination of different cultures in Sardinia, whose results are “original”, also in the world of magic.

scholarly journals Ernest Renan and Marcus Aurelius: On the End of the Ancient World

2017 ◽  
pp. 409-422
Author(s):  
Maria Protopapas-Marneli
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ancient Civilization ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Good State ◽  
The World

According to Renan, the day of Marcus Aurelius’ death could be considered as the decisive moment in the downfall of the ancient civilization. He, thus, wonders: “If Marcus Aurelius, the unique emperor-philosopher, did not succeed in saving the world, who else, then, could have saved it?” He notes that the emperor’s death was followed by the succession to the throne of his corrupted son, Commodus, and his friends, who all were all ignorant. Renan observes that the emperor’s kindness could not have prevented the unfortunate fate that befell the Roman Empire after his death. What we have here is the perennial problem, already established in Plato, regarding the role of the philosopher-king in establishing a good state and educating good citizens. However, the case of Marcus Aurelius, as demonstrated by Renan in his book, shows the inability of philosophy to serve the real needs, which ultimately leads to disastrous and irreparable consequences. The present paper attempts to reconstruct the reasons for the unsuccessful application of philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Hellenistic era, to the administrative system of the Roman Empire. It is argued that the failure is mainly due to political, religious and cultural problems.

scholarly journals Ernest Renan and Marcus Aurelius: On the End of the Ancient World

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 409-422
Author(s):  
Maria Protopapas-Marneli
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ancient Civilization ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Good State ◽  
The World

According to Renan, the day of Marcus Aurelius’ death could be considered as the decisive moment in the downfall of the ancient civilization. He, thus, wonders: “If Marcus Aurelius, the unique emperor-philosopher, did not succeed in saving the world, who else, then, could have saved it?” He notes that the emperor’s death was followed by the succession to the throne of his corrupted son, Commodus, and his friends, who all were all ignorant. Renan observes that the emperor’s kindness could not have prevented the unfortunate fate that befell the Roman Empire after his death. What we have here is the perennial problem, already established in Plato, regarding the role of the philosopher-king in establishing a good state and educating good citizens. However, the case of Marcus Aurelius, as demonstrated by Renan in his book, shows the inability of philosophy to serve the real needs, which ultimately leads to disastrous and irreparable consequences. The present paper attempts to reconstruct the reasons for the unsuccessful application of philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Hellenistic era, to the administrative system of the Roman Empire. It is argued that the failure is mainly due to political, religious and cultural problems.

Justinian, Malalas, and the End of Athenian Philosophical Teaching in A.D. 529

2004 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 168-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Watts
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political System ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Classical Philosophy

To historians of the ancient world, the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonic school by the emperor Justinian stands as one of the best known, and most debated, events of the later Roman Empire. To some, it is an event of little consequence with only an ephemeral impact upon subsequent developments. To others, it represents nothing less than the death of classical philosophy. Nevertheless, this modern scholarly interest belies ancient attitudes. The only direct statement about the end of Athenian philosophical teaching comes from the Chronicle of John Malalas, and all other ancient sources, including those that rely upon Malalas, are silent about the incident. This silence hints at a fact that this study will make clear. To contemporaries, the closing of the Athenian school was an unremarkable occurrence that represented neither a tyrannical use of imperial power nor an attack upon the valued cultural tradition of philosophical teaching. Like all else in the later Roman world, it occurred within the confines of a political system that, when working properly, matched imperial initiative to the specific needs of a province or city. As a result, the causes and significance of the closing of the Athenian school are best appreciated by understanding how the event developed out of its local political setting.

scholarly journals The castrated gods and their castration cults: Revenge, punishment, and spiritual supremacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Cultures

Voluntary castration has existed as a religious practice up to the present day, openly in India and secretively in other parts of the world. Gods in a number of different cultures were castrated, a mutilation that paradoxically tended to increase rather than diminish their powers. This cross-cultural examination of the eunuch gods examines the meaning associated with divine emasculation in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, the Roman Empire, India, and northern Europe to the degree that these meanings can be read from the wording of myths, early accounts, and the castration cults for some of these gods. Three distinct patterns of godly castration emerge: divine dynastic conflicts involving castration; a powerful goddess paired with a weaker male devotee castrated because of his relationship with her; and magus gods whose castration demonstrates their superiority. Castration cults associated with some of these gods—and other gods whose sexuality was ambiguous, such as Jesus—some of them existing up to the present day, illuminate the spiritual powers associated with castration for gods and mortals.

Preserving the Monuments of the Past

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Object ◽  
Social Importance ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Prehistoric Aegean ◽  
Made In

As old as the human instinct to build is the desire to preserve a building as one’s own memorial. The intention of passing on something of oneself to posterity as a memory makes a building a ‘monument’, an artefact which can endure into the potentially infinite future. But, as Alois Riegl observed, much greater social importance is attached to buildings that are ‘monuments’ in a second sense, those valued by subsequent generations as traces of the past. Although Riegl believed that the ancient world recognized only ‘intentional monuments’, interest in ‘unintentional monuments’ is also widely attested in antiquity. But the two conceptions are clearly interdependent. Different cultures have varied considerably in their commemorative ambitions and their acceptance of the potential of buildings to commemorate. This chapter will examine some of these differences and the contribution made in the age of the Antonines towards attitudes to monuments. Monuments commemorate many things. Most obviously, they perpetuate the memory of individuals. Mortal human beings can be given a form of immortality by establishing a link between them and posterity, either on a private level, as family ancestors, or on a public level, as models for a nation or community. Such monuments serve as moral examples for the future: what is commemorated is both the personal memory of the deceased and the abstract ideal or virtue that they symbolize. Linked to this kind of commemoration of persons is a second object of commemoration, the record of an event, especially a military encounter or a decisive political occurrence; here too, the monuments present a connection between the present and the past. However, these human meanings with which one associates monuments today have not always been the only or most important object of monumentality. In classical antiquity the most impressive and ‘monumental’ structures were those situated in the dimension furthest removed from the world of human experience, the realm of the divine. The great temples of the prehistoric Aegean, regarded as the gods’ permanent, terrestrial homes, reflected not simply the religious loyalty of their builders and worshippers, but a profound sense of the monumental.

scholarly journals The Disciplines of Geography: Constructing Space in the Ancient World

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Gina Konstantopoulos
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Military Enterprise ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis article serves as introduction to a special double issue of the journal, comprised of seven articles that center on the theme of space and place in the ancient world. The essays examine the ways in which borders, frontiers, and the lands beyond them were created, defined, and maintained in the ancient world. They consider such themes within the context of the Old Assyrian period, the Hittite empire, and the Neo-Assyrian empire, as well as within the broader scope of Biblical texts and the Graeco-Roman world. As we only see evidence of a documented, physical, and thus fixed map in the later stages of Mesopotamian history, the ancient world primarily conceived of space through mental maps rather than physical ones. Thus, while the societies of the ancient Near East integrated knowledge gained by actual contact with distant lands into their world view, it was also informed by the literary conceptions of those same spaces. These mental maps were unsurprisingly prone to shifting over time, changing as the social conceptions of the world itself, its border and frontiers, the lands that lay beyond them and how those places might be defined, also changed. These papers question the intersection of concrete and fantastical, or real and imagined, that existed in both the ancient and pre-modern world, where distant locations become elaborately embroidered by fantastical constructions, despite the concrete connections of travel, trade, and even military enterprise.

Neutrality and the World War

1923 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 704-723
Author(s):  
Malbone W. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
World War ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
Pax Romana ◽  
The Church

To understand aright the modern concept of neutrality as it existed on the eve of the World War, it is necessary to inquire into its relationship to the society and law of nations. Neutrality, as is well known, was a status almost unknown to the ancient world in the period previous to the establishment of the pax Romana. Once almost universal dominion had passed into the hands of Rome, the possibility of maintaining an impartial attitude as between the Roman Empire and its enemies virtually ceased to exist, and the tribes and peoples bordering the lands where Roman authority was exercised became either hostes or socii et amici. When the Roman imperator was succeeded as a temporal authority by the pontifex maximus of the Christian church, the Mediaeval Empire, embodying in theory the whole of Latin Christendom, went forth against Moor or Saracen alike, conquering and to conquer in the name of the church militant. The foes of the church were the foes of every Christian potentate, and there could be no lukewarmness, no neutrality, in the perennial conflict against the Infidel.

Mysteries of the Heavenly Spheres: Astrology and Magic

2019 ◽  
pp. 236-268
Author(s):  
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Almost Everywhere ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Fixed Matrix

This chapter studies astrology. The astronomical model of the cosmos described in astrology, with the divinities of the heavens proceeding in systematic and observable paths as they preside over the world of mortals, becomes one of the most important and widespread models for understanding the cosmos in the Greco-Roman world, starting with the Hellenistic period and increasingly so during the Roman Empire. Indeed, some form of this cosmological model appears almost everywhere in the Greco-Roman world in this time period, ranging from the most basic identification of traditional Greek and Roman gods with the visible planets to the most sophisticated and complicated systems detailed in the astrological manuals or Gnostic theologies. The most outstanding features of astrology that distinguish it from other forms of divination are its extreme complexity and systematicity. All forms of divination operate with a fixed matrix of signs and a random element of chance, but astrology works with a vast array of celestial signs, and the element of chance is limited to the moment of birth. While some of the multitude of uses of astrological ideas and images do not appear to be marked as abnormal or extraordinary, others bear the familiar stamp of strangeness that marks the practice as extraordinary, beyond the bounds of normal—magical.

The World of Ancient Greco­Roman Magic

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-52
Author(s):  
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The World ◽  
Ritual Activity

This chapter discusses the world of ancient Greco-Roman magic. When approaching the evidence from the ancient Greco-Roman world for ritualized action, one must analyze not only what kind of evidence one is examining but also what sort of action is depicted in the evidence. One must also analyze who is performing it and for whom, where and when it is performed, why it is being performed, and how the performance works. In this study, the chapters are organized primarily by what sort of practice is involved, but the analysis probes each of the other factors as well to determine when a ritualized action may be labeled “magic.” The survey of different varieties within the discourse of magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world provides one with a better sense of the categories and criteria by which the Greeks and Romans evaluated normative and non-normative ritual activity in the ancient world.

Christianity and the History of Violence in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Rohmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence

This volume brings together a large number of sources with which to illustrate the problem of religious violence in relation to the history of Christianity in the Roman Empire and post-Roman world. The sources are presented in both the original languages and in new English translation and are accompanied by introductions, comments, and short bibliographies. Thematically, Dirk Rohmann focuses on the ways in which Christians were subjected to violence by their pagan surroundings, on the development and scope of the very Christian ideas of martyrdom and of persecution, on how Christians thought about the nature of God and of holy wars, as well as on the problem of violence within the world of early monasticism and asceticism. Drawing on the amount of texts extant from the first to seventh centuries, this book will be of interest to both students and academics in the areas of ancient and early medieval history, classics, and religious studies.

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