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The Annals of Tacitus and the Depiction of the Roman Witch

To begin, my area of research focuses on the image of the Roman witch, and women and magic in the early imperial period. By drawing on early European witch-trials, I hope to be able to establish what cultural and social phenomena were taking place in Rome during the 1st centuries BCE and CE that gave rise to the affiliation of women and dark magic.

In my research, my most difficult – yet also my most intriguing – source has been the Annals of Tacitus. Written as a historical narrative, the Annals’ time-period ranges from 14 – 68 CE, the reign of Tiberius to the reign of Nero. While it has provided modern historians with a crucial understanding of Roman history during the early imperial period, it has also offered a unique lens into a growing theme of affiliating women with dark magic. In the Annals, Tacitus’ main focus is on the political narrative that is taking place. Yet, in as much as this provides, Tacitus also indirectly gives a historical account of the charges of artes magicae laid out against women.

Among such women are Munatia Plancina and Aemilia Lepida. In the former, Plancina is supposedly charged alongside her husband, Piso for the poisoning of Germanicus. While the majority of the focus is on Piso, Tacitus does claim certain charges on Plancina involving dark magic. She is accused of assisting in “black arts” and performing “blasphemous rites and sacrifices” in the death of Germanicus (3.13). She is also affiliated with Martina, a well-known eastern ‘poisoner’. And later on, Tacitus explains that the only witness to prove Plancina’s involvement in Germanicus’ poison – Martina – is herself killed by poison, with the implicit suggestion that it was Plancina who committed this (3.7).

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What was a Demon?

Consider, if you will, a word. It could be any word, big or small, well used or rarely heard. However, it must be a word to which you apply significant meaning. In my case, the word I chose was “demon”. When I began to research the subject of demons with reference to the Ancient Greek world I discovered a rather irksome situation. Many of the texts which I looked into to see what they had to say on the subjects of demons were problematic, in that too often the translated version shied away from the term “demon”, likely to avoid the association that word has due to the Judeo-Christian context with which a large majority of people read.  However, despite this irritating hindrance, eventually, I came to a source which was clear, one which, by dint of being functionally a discussion “περὶ ὀνομάτων ὀρθότητος” (About the Accuracy of Names), was forced to state things without such obfuscatory language as Hesiod’s “they are called pure spirits dwelling on the earth”. This source that actually sets things out plainly, in a slight departure from his usual style, is Plato’s “Cratylus”.

In “Cratylus” the subject of demons comes up only for one exchange, when Socrates and the men questioning him are discussing the order in which they should deal with topics going forwards in the text, and Hermogenes asks that it must make logical sense that, following Gods, they should discuss Demons. In his typical style, Socrates immediately launches into a discussion of demons, prompted, as he was, by a question. Socrates first makes reference to Hesiod’s mention of demons as the sprits of the golden race of men, and here the translator, Benjamin Jowett, does not shy away from translating the Greek “δαίμονες” as “demon”. As the translations of Hesiod which I have read previously have all translated that δαίμονες with any applicable word except “demon”, the reference to Hesiod made by Plato in “Cratylus” directed me to a Greek version of “Works and Days”, where, sure enough, the word which had been translated as “pure spirits” was revealed to be “δαίμονες”.

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Arrian and Alexander Worship

The most problematic, but also useful, ancient source I have come across so far in my studies is The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander. This work was written by Arrian of Nicomedia, a Greek who lived in the first and second centuries CE. He was a historian, public servant, philosopher and military commander. His family were wealthy Greeks, but his full name “Lucius Flavius Arrianus” implies he was a Roman citizen, and he was at one-point consul. The work is one of the few accounts we have of the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon, and clearly relies heavily on works that are no longer extant today such as Xenophon’s account of the March of Cyrus. Everything we know of the author is from Bibliotheca, and references within his own works. The reliability of these sources and fragments in piecing together information about the author is problematic.

The Anabasis details the expeditions of Alexander the Great through Persia and the expansion of his empire. It is majorly a systematic military account, and does not speculate on the personal life of Alexander much. There is also little comment on the politics of the time or the socio-cultural context for the beginning of the Persian wars. The seven books are written in Attic Greek, in the second century CE. It accounts the life of Alexander III who died in 323 BCE, which means that this work was written hundreds of years after the Persian Wars. This gap in time is often cause for skepticism in ancient sources, because he is writing about a time he was not present for, and is basing his works on the biases of previous authors.

Some of the sources Arrian cites are: Ptolemy son of Lagos, Aristobulos (both men who presumably were with Alexander on the campaigns), Diodotus of Erythrae, Eumenes of Cardia, Nearchus of Crete, Megasthenes, Eratosthenes, Aristus and the letters of Alexander. These sources are no longer extant and we must rely on Arrian’s interpretation of them, leaving us in the dark. Arrian is our only extant full account of the expeditions of Alexander, thus we are reliant on his opinion, and the fragments of primary sources we get through him. This is problematic, as it would be comparable to using a modern author as our only reliable evidence of ancient times – we have no guarantee of the accuracy of the representation.

Arrian disapproved of the work of his predecessor, Callisthenes, as he believed that the author was biased in his representation of Alexander, and was more interested in propaganda for Alexander than accuracy. I find this an almost hypocritical assumption of Arrian, as he is also known for his beneficial portrayal of Alexander and he tends to gloss over any negative qualities of Alexander. After Alexander flies into a rage and kills his best friend, Arrian basically says that it is okay because Alexander felt bad about it, and was drunk. This is a weak excuse. He also spends the beginning of his work arguing that his portrayal will be the most unbiased and truthful (blatant self-promotion), and then glosses over many of the negative aspects of Alexander’s character, and is obvious in his worship-like admiration of Alexander.

The account is also quite analytical, and rarely discusses the personal motivations of Alexander, or the social and cultural contexts for what is happening. We are reliant on Arrian as a source, but we must read his work with a critical mind of his bias towards Alexander, the overconfidence in his own work, and the reliability of his information. This source is useful as he likely had access to resources that are no longer extant, and it is by far the most complete work on the campaigns of Alexander, but the fact that it is our only comprehensive source on Alexander’s campaigns leaves us limited in our understanding, and at the mercy of the information we are given.

In conclusion, we are forced to use Arrian as a source for one of the most important figures of the Hellenistic period as he is the most fleshed out and comprehensive source. His work is problematic due to the date he has written it, our inability to verify his sources, his obvious biases that may have caused selection of the truths he discusses, and the lack of discussion of the social contexts and motivations behind the Persian Wars.

Manilius’ Astronomica: a challenging primary source

There are few texts about astrology that survive intact from ancient Greece and Rome. Although there are fragments from early Greek writers, the oldest complete text is Astronomica, written in the early 1st century CE by a Roman, Marcus Manilius. Astronomica is a poem in five books totalling 4,258 lines. It purports to be an instructional text on the theory and practice of astrology, and it would be a very valuable record of astrological practice in the early Empire – if it were not for its fundamental defects.

What’s wrong with Astronomica, you wonder? Well, for one thing, Manilius wrote a lot about the constellations of the zodiac, but very little about the planets. In astrology, the positions of the planets in the sky at the time of the birth of the native (as astrologers call the person whose horoscope is being cast) are supremely important. Without making reference to the positions of the planets within the zodiac the only data you have are which sign was rising at the moment of the native’s birth (which is called the ascendant) and, perhaps, which sign the sun was in. Clearly this doesn’t allow for many variations on the native’s horoscope.

(Of course, the “horoscopes” printed in newspapers today are based solely on the sign the sun was in at the time of birth. Any astrologer, ancient or modern, who was worth his/her salt would scoff at such unsophisticated nonsense!)

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