hesitate to name their profession on their funerary inscription or in dedications and
gifts they offered (e.g. AE1925, 120 Rome; CIL9.2087 Beneventum; AE1966,
220 Bath). These private haruspicesreceived their income from fees for every service
they rendered. In the eyes of public authorities and of well-educated senators and
knights like Cicero, Maecenas, or Augustus, these private diviners belonged to the
world of superstition, and had nothing to do with the official ones, who were needed
for state reason (Cic. Div.1.92; Dio 52.36.3).Superstition, a Luxury? – or – He shall Love Her
Forever: The Cost of Magic
At the end of the third or beginning of the second centurybca literary character,
a certain Periplectomenus, explains in a comedy of Plautus (Miles692– 4) why he is
inclined not to marry. Women are too expensive; they will ask “for money on the
19th of the month to pay the woman who utters incantations (praecantrix), the woman
who interprets dreams (coniectrix), the inspired prophetess (hariola), and the
woman who divines from entrails (haruspica).” And, he adds, women would not
send away the one who observes the sky (qua supercilio spicit) without giving her
anything. But it was not only female superstition that was a subject of laughter or
of concern. Male superstition was also widespread: in his treatise on how to admin-
ister and direct a farm (De agri cultura), written in the first half of the second cen-
turybc, Cato the Elder admonishes his vilicus(steward or overseer) that he should
not consult a private haruspex, a private augur, a prophet (hariolus), or a magician
(chaldaeus) (Cato Agr. 5.4). We may assume that in Cato’s eyes the money one had
to spend on these “experts” was not worth it.
In the mid-second centuryad, Apuleius (Apol.26.6) gives a “vulgar” (more
vulgari) definition of the people who earn their living with magic: “a magician is
someone who, because of his community of speech with the immortal gods, has an
incredible power of spells (vi cantaminum) for everything he wishes to.” What did
people desire a magician to do? Love spells and the notorious love-philters most often
were the province of old women (e.g. Propertius 4.5). But these spells or magic
tricks did not always work the way they should: there are anecdotes like the one
about the senator L. Licinius Lucullus. He was given a love-philter by one of his
freedman – to the effect that he was reduced to the state of helplessness (Nepos, De
viris illustribus 74.8; Plut. Lucullus43.1–2; Plin. Nat. 25.25.1). Not only harm or
love but also illness and death were thought of as appropriate subjects for magic and
for magicians, who would be paid for their efforts and spells. People believed in
healing charms and the power of magical formulae and incantations (Versnel 2002).
Although Pliny the Elder derides many such formulae as ridiculous (Nat.27.267),
he confesses that some of these incantations were tested by experience and were in
fact powerful (Nat.28.29). In contrast to most of Pliny’s stories, one told by Apuleius
in one of his novels (Met.2.28 –30.9) might record a magical trickery. He sketches
a man from Larissa who asked an Egyptian prophet and priest to revive his dead
son. After being paid, the prophet raised the boy from the dead. Celsus, the famous
338 Marietta Horster