century AD, Strabo, drawing on the philosopher Posidonius, compares the esteem
Moses enjoyed as a prophet amongst the Jews with that of Amphiaraus, Trophonius,
Orpheus, and Musaeus amongst the Greeks, of themagoi, the necromancers or
nekuomanteis, the diviners from bowls orlekanomanteis, and the diviners in water
orhudromanteisamongst the Persians, and of the Chaldaeans or astrologers amongst
the Assyrians (16.2.39). That image of the Persians probably owes more to Greek
ideas about the magic practiced in Persia than it does to any Persian reality; what it
really tells us about are forms of magic practiced in the Greek-speaking hellenistic
world. (In his description of a visit to the underworld, the satirical writer of the
second half of the second century AD, Lucian, gives the man who conducts the visit
the Persian name of Mithrobarzanes, although identifying him as a Chaldaean, and
has him don magic garb that resembles the clothing worn by the Medes:Menippus6–8.)
Plato in theLawstakes it for granted that persons who are necromancers will at the
same time profess to be able to bend the gods to their will by sacrifices, prayers, and
the incantations of sorcery (909a8–b5); that is to say, necromancy is practiced by
sorcerers. For such persons he reserves a particularly severe punishment, isolating
them from the rest of the citizens in a prison for the rest of their lives and casting their
bones beyond the boundaries of the state (909c1–6).
There is evidence that in the hellenistic period another of the forms of divination
with which Strabo credits the Persians was practiced in the Greek-speaking world as a
form of magic What happened in this form of magical divination was that a boy-
medium gazed into a mirror, pool of water, or lamp, where he saw a vision that led
him to utter a prophetic utterance. The boy was prepared for his vision by the
magician who intoned an incantation over him. Apuleius of Madaura, who stood
trial for magic-working at Sabrata in North Africa between AD 156 and 158 and was
himself accused of having uttered incantations over a boy who was gazing into a lamp,
cites a story told by Varro, a Roman polymath of the Late Republic, about a magical
consultation; its subject was the outcome of the Mithridatic War and it had taken
place in Tralles, a city in the Maeander valley; a boy had gazed at an image of Hermes
in a pool of water and then uttered a prediction in verse of some one hundred and
sixty lines (Apology43.3–6).
We have already had occasion to look at the passage in Plato’sSymposiumin which
the prophetess Diotima posits a category of being that lies half-way between gods and
men, and the members of which act as intermediaries between the human and the
divine (202e1–203a2). The doctrine Diotima enunciates assumed a huge importance
in later Platonism, which takes it for granted, almost certainly correctly, that Diotima
is Plato’s mouthpiece. In the view of one Platonist, Apuleius of Madaura, what the
doctrine meant for magic was that demons were the agents who created the wonders
performed by magicians (On the God of Socrates6). Apuleius’ application of the
theory to explain the wonder-working side of magic is an indication of how large
that aspect of magic loomed in the minds of men. It is conspicuous that references to
magicians in Plato are predominantly to persons engaged in the wonder-working,
illusion-creating side of magic. Magicians orgoe ̄tesare for Plato above all persons who
create illusions; they are persons who practice wonder-working (thaumatopoiia);
persons who can change their own appearance or the appearance of objects (goe ̄tes
as creators of illusions:Republic584a8–9, 602c10–d4;goe ̄tesable to change their
form:Euthydemus288b8,Republic380d1–383a5;goe ̄tesandthaumatopoiia:Sophist
Magic in Classical and Hellenistic Greece 365