Nemo Non Metuit

Elizabeth Ann Pollard is Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence at San Diego State University, where she has been teaching courses in Roman History, World History, and witchcraft studies since 2002. Her research has investigated women accused of witchcraft in the Roman world as well as the exchange of goods and ideas between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the early centuries of the Common Era. Pollard is currently working on two comics-related projects: an analysis of comics about ancient Rome over the last century and a graphic history exploring the influence of classical understandings of witchcraft on their representations in modern comics. Apart from her work on magic, Pollard is co-author of Worlds Together Worlds Apart Concise, the WTWA Full 6th edition, and the Worlds Together Worlds Apart, Companion Reader (W.W. Norton). She has also published on various pedagogical and digital history topics, including writing about witchcraft on wikipedia, tweeting on the backchannel of the large lecture, and digital humanities approaches to visualizing Roman History.Fabrizio Conti (PhD, Central European University, 2011) is a lecturer in History at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy, as well as an Arts and Humanities Advisor at the American Academy in Rome. His teaching and research interests span the late antique, medieval, and renaissance periods, with an interdisciplinary approach to cultural and religious developments and special focus on the history of magic and witchcraft. His publications include the monograph Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (Brepols, 2015) and the edited volume Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions (Trivent, 2020).

"Magic in Western antiquity existed within a social and cultural context quite different from the subsequent Christian-dominated cultures of medieval and early modern Europe. Yet ancient ideas of magic and stereotypes about various kinds of magical practitioners profoundly influenced later conceptions. The essays collected in this volume all properly set Roman magical beliefs and practices in their own specific contexts. The volume as a whole, however, also looks forward, positioning Roman magic as an essential basis from which later beliefs and practices either developed or in many cases were consciously reshaped in light of the received authority of Roman models.These essays span the full range of magic's history in the Roman world, from real practices performed via physical objects that we can in some cases still hold in our hands today (gems, curse tablets) to literary constructions that exerted tremendous force on both contemporary and subsequent imaginings about how magic operated and who magicians were supposed to be. Focus falls on the imperial center and on the provinces, and extends chronologically from Rome's own appropriation of the magical practices of earlier cultures to the critical metamorphosis that ideas about magic underwent in late antiquity, as Christian beliefs became dominant across the classical world. With this breadth, the volume provides an excellent introduction to Roman magic and an essential basis for those interested in magic in later periods as well." —Michael D. Bailey, Iowa State University

• CHAPTER 1 Magical Gems. A Roman development of Etruscan, Greek and Phoenician scarab amulets (8th – 5th c. BCE) — Ronaldo G. Gurgel PereiraCHAPTER 2 Change and Continuity in Curse Tablets from the Roman World — Charlotte SpenceCHAPTER 3 Pursuing Health by Pursuing Disease. The Use of Spells and Amulets to Address Malaria in Roman Antiquity — Yvette HuntCHAPTER 4 "Erotic" Spells, Stalking, and the Exclusus Amator in Ancient Rome — Elizabeth Ann PollardCHAPTER 5 Magic to steal, magic to love, magic to heal: veneficia, defixiones, devotiones in the Naturalis historia by Plinius the Elder — Alfredo ViscomiCHAPTER 6 Cursing Patterns and Religious Belief. Studying the Prevalence of "Judicial Prayers" in Roman Britain — Madeline LineCHAPTER 7 How Lucan Kills Magic. Magic and the vates in Book Six of Lucan's Bellum Civile — Caolán Mac An AircinnCHAPTER 8 Abjection and Anxiety: The Metamorphosis of the Roman Literary Witch — Nicole KimballCHAPTER 9 Foreseeing the Future: The Role of Women between Magic and Divination — Angelica FlandoliCHAPTER 10 Orpheus and the Evolution of the Roman Witch — Britta AgerCHAPTER 11 Memories of Apollonius of Tyana: Sorcerer, Holy Man and Rival of Jesus Christ — Semíramis Corsi SilvaCHAPTER 12 Si Crimina Demas: Necromancy in Roman Literature and Statius' Transgressive Manto — Anna Everett BeekCHAPTER 13 The Magic of Isis-Fortuna in Apuleius' Metamorphoses — Ashli BakerCHAPTER 14 Pagan and Christian Identities in the Later Roman Empire: Maximus of Turin and His Sermons on Magic and Superstition — Fabrizio ContiCHAPTER 15 A World Imbued with Sorcery? The Fight between Christian and non-Christian Powers in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Christendom — Andrea Maraschi