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Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2011.06.16
Magali Bailliot, Magie et sortilges dans l'Antiquit romaine: archologie
des rituels et des images. Paris: Hermann diteurs, 2010. Pp. 212; xix p.
of plates. ISBN 9782705670498. 44.00 (pb).
Reviewed by David Frankfurter, Boston University (dtmf@bu.edu )
Anglo-American scholarship on ancient magic in recent decades has been preoccupied, first, with
the relationship of literary representations of witches and wizards to the documents of real magic
amulets, binding spells, and the suchand second, to the evolving construction of mageia as a
category of subversion. Magali Bailliots insightful and well-documented little book, however, is
interested in the practice and efficacy of the rituals, symbols, and ingredients used in actual magical
practice. Informed by anthropological theory (Austin, Tambiah, Aug) and the most recent
archaeology (including recent discoveries at Reims and Rome), and supplemented with an
extensive series of rare and instructive color plates of magical objects and sites, the book offers a
refreshing and genuinely interesting attempt to reframe the discussion of ancient magic. Classical
sources (literary, legal), while not the main focus of discussion, are competently deployed to give
magical practices cultural context. By restricting herself to Roman antiquity Bailliot manages to
avoid strict historical considerationse.g., the evolution of Greek or Christian ideas or the impact of
multiculturalismto develop out of archaeological sources a synchronic cultural dimension in which
magical practices made sense.
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An Introduction briefly critiques earlier notions of magic worldview before defending an approach
based primarily on magical papyri, gems, and binding tablets. Bailliot situates herself in a scholarly
trajectory (Graf, Scheid, Faraone, Versnel) that tries to avoid past prejudices about a magic
underworld of secrecy and subversion and to discern the rationality and, indeed, the social
implications of private ritual actions. More than literature, she argues, archaeological discoveries
have shown much local variation in magical practices, implying their reflection of immediate cultural
contexts rather than some universal underworld of magic.
In an effort to shift the discussion of magic away from its torrid depictions in classical literature
Bailliot gives considerable weight to the efficacy of images and symbols. Chapter Two, Beliefs and
Iconography: Prophylactic Symbols and Amulets, reviews a great diversity of apotropaic images
and gestures that dominated the imagination, households, and cityscapes of people across the
Roman empire, addressing a general fear of evil eye and sorcery. Drawing on grafitti, floor
mosaics, and literary evidence she discusses the apotropaic eye, phallus, horn, Medusa-head,
various animals and birds, as well as potent apotropaic gestures like spitting, urinating, and even
defecating. Some images, like the mosaic representation of an unswept floor, Bailliot decodes in
connection to beliefs about ghosts. The chapter is abundantly illustrated from archaeological sites
around the Roman empire.
The third chapter addresses the ritual process of binding rivals and opponents through the
preparation and depositing of lead tablets, figurines, or other media. It is performative in the sense
of assembling materials and declaring ideal scenarios that would affect a social situationresolve
a crisisthrough proper ritual performance. The very vocabulary of binding, Bailliot argues, implies
a series of ritual stages, some oral, some involving materials and gestures. Archaeology shows
considerable diversity in binding practices, from the media for inscribing spells (lead, wax) to the
sites chosen for depositing them (wells, cemeteries, even the sea), and of course the great variety
of deities and spirits invoked in the spells. Archaeology also reveals how little evidence we have of
the total ritual process. Various binding assemblages include everything from tablets and figurines
to bowls and lamps and even some bone fragments, indicating that animal slaughter occasionally
accompanied the rite. A particularly rich discussion of ritual figurines and their treatment, informed
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by the most recent finds from the Anna Perenna fountain in Rome and elsewhere, is supplemented
by ten excellent photographs, and one may be grateful that Bailliot here eschews the needlessly
confusing and exoticizing term voodoo doll. The subsequent discussion of iconography on curse
tablets demonstrates the integral function of magical drawing in the course of binding ritual, but a
protracted description of sketches of the Egyptian gods Osiris and Seth begs the larger question of
mythological eclecticism or syncretism in binding rituals. Why use this crude Seth iconography in
binding rituals in the Latin West? Finally, Bailliot describes a sequence of ritual stages in the
binding rite, from initial invocations and offerings, to the dedication of the targeted individual, and
finally the manipulation and depositing of the tablets and figurines.
The final chapter revolves around the ambiguity of magic. Despite its popularity and regular
deployment in every situation of competition or rivalry, civic institutions disapproved of magical
intervention and often levied strict legal penalties. Bailliot reviews primary witnesses to anti-sorcery
persecutions (Tacitus, Ammianus) and then the evidence for the popularity of binding rites across
class, profession, region, and scale of crisis. As one might expect, local professionalsritual
experts, scribesfacilitated the production of efficacious rituals in most areas. Thus magic had a
social ambiguity: in no way restricted to a demi-monde, yet suspicious nonetheless.
It also, Bailliot argues, had a discursive ambiguity. An indigenous term implying magical efficacy
like amuletum might also have a medical sense. A bulla worn around the neck and a beautiful floor
mosaic both displayed social status and carried apotropaic efficacy. Certain terms for official
religious speechcarmen , evocatio also carried magical capacity, and religious speech
operated on the same illocutionary principles as magical speech. Apotropaic symbolseyes,
phallusespervaded the cityscape, in no way private or secret.
It is on the basis of this ambiguity that Bailliot explains the efficacy of magic. Magic works not
because of some kind of private cathartic drama, as Malinowski and Winkler proposed, but
because the ritual expert, the client/performer, and the targeted individual all operate within a
common system of symbolic limits, in particular the boundaries of the private and the separation of
the dead and the living. The expert and client ritually transgress those limits, while the target who
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might, like Libanius, find a weird ritual object hidden in his chambers, or, like Gemellus Horion of
Karanis, encounter a fetus thrown at him1 will impute ritual potency to the anomalies he
encounters. This idologie communeacross society will inevitably be shaped by local traditions as
well: say, about the apotropaic or impure potency of various local animal or gestural symbols. Thus
Bailliot proposes a kind of discourse of efficacy continuous with (public) religion and based in a kind
of structuralism instead of notions of magic worldview or degenerate religion.
Magie et sortilges has its limitations, of course. Bailliot asserts rather than explores the overlaps of
magical efficacy with the efficacy of public ceremonies and animal slaughter, and she leaves aside
the larger belief-systems about witches and ghosts against which apotropaiawere meant to work
and out of which binding spells sought to employ spirits. While using the Greek Magical Papyri to
explicate binding spells Bailliot ignores entirely the revelation spells, an enormous component of the
larger PGM manuals. There may be good reason to give these rituals less historical significance,
but this should be explained. Furthermore, while making use of Christian authors and late antique
sources, Bailliot ignores the impact of Christianity or Judaism on the construction of magical
efficacy and demonic dangers. (Certainly a study like hers invites a new consideration of what
Christian and Jewish might mean for the topic of magic). Finally, her conclusion about a common
discourse of efficacy and symbolic limits struck this reader as curiously under-developed, given the
voluminous theoretical literature on liminality, impurity, and ambiguity in social experience.
Overall, it is a book that might, in size and coverage, helpfully complement any course on ancient
magic or religion in the Roman world, especially if translated into English, but at forty-four Euros for
a short paperback it may remain only suggested reading. Libraries would do well to buy it for the
invaluable illustrations and unusual approach to magic. Meanwhile, anglophone readers will look
forward to Andrew Wilburns forthcoming Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Egypt,
Spain and Cyprus (University of Michigan Press, 2011?), which likewise puts the evidence of
material culture at the center.
Notes:
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1. P. Michigan VI.423-24, on which see David Frankfurter, Fetus Magic and Sorcery Fears in
Roman Egypt, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 46 (2006): 37-62, and Ari Z. Bryen and
Andrzej Wypustek,"Gemellus' Evil Eyes (P.Mich. VI 423-424)," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine
Studies 49 (2009): 535-555.
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