234e7–235b6). Since Plato is interested in the relationship between appearance and
reality, it is natural that he should appeal to the illusion-creating side of magic to
illustrate the difference between appearance and reality. It would be wrong to
conclude that the illusion-creating side of magic was more important than the
spell-casting. What Plato’s references to magic-working do show is that a good deal
of magic consisted in public performance. Magicians were not necessarily obscure
figures, consulted only in back alleys; they might well be flamboyant theatrical
personalities, eager to perform in front of an audience. Not all wonder-workers or
thaumatopoioiwould have been classified as magicians orgoe ̄tes.Thaumatopoiiaor
thaumatourgiaencompasses a wide range of activities, from the acts of the acrobat
and juggler to the performance of conjuring tricks. It is the persons who create
illusions, whether by mechanical means or by sleight of hand, who are the more likely
to be calledgoe ̄tes. The settings in which wonder-workers and magicians performed
will have ranged from drinking parties or symposia, to public crossroads, market-
places, and even the theater. Eunus, the instigator of the First Sicilian Slave War, who
is described as a magician (magos) and wonder-worker (teratourgos), is said to have
been brought by his master, who was quite taken in by his performances, to symposia,
where he prophesied in response to questions put to him by those present (Diodorus
Siculus 34/35.2.8). We hear of crowds of foolish persons forming a circle around
wonder-workers (Isocrates,Antidosis2).
The evidence for the classical and hellenistic periods throws very little light on what
kind of tricks magicians-cum-wonder-workers performed and what apparatuses they
employed. There is one tantalizing reference in Plato’sRepublicin which Socrates, to
illustrate the limited contact men have with reality, suggests their situation is like that
of persons confined in a cave who can only see the shadows cast by light from a fire on
figures borne along above a wall that lies behind the prisoners; that wall, Socrates
suggests, is similar to the barrier or parapet that lies in front of the spectators above
which wonder-workers show their wonders (514a1–b6). Magicians of a rather later
date are known to have used just such tricks to throw the shadowy figures of gods and
demons on ceilings (Hippolytus,Refutations of All Heresies4.35.1–2).
An encyclopedic writer of the early Roman empire tells of performers who put their
fingers into the mouths of poisonous snakes that had been drugged (Celsus,
On Medicine5.27.3c). There is some evidence that the practice of handling snakes
goes back to the hellenistic period and was one of the tricks magicians performed.
The hellenized Jew who goes under the name of Artapanus and who cannot
have been active much later than 100 BC, in his retelling of the story in Exodus
that portrays the wonders Moses performed in front of the Egyptian Pharaoh, has the
Pharaoh call on the priests who lived beyond Memphis to create a wonder (teratour-
gein), on peril of being killed and having their temples razed. The priests were
bidden do this, because the staff that Moses had thrown to the ground had been
transformed into a snake and because Moses had caused the Nile to inundate the land
by striking it with his staff. Their response was to use magical devices (manganai) and
incantations (epaoidai) to create a snake and to change the color of the Nile (FGrH
726 fr. 3.27–31). For Artapanus the Egyptian priests are magicians who perform
the tricks that were in all likelihood the stock-in-trade of the magicians of his
day, snake-handling and effecting changes in the colors of liquids; an explanation of
how wine could be made to change color from white to red was contained in a
366 Matthew W. Dickie