Some of the materials, such as the curse tablets, give voice to people who would never make it into the official histories, the ordinary craftsmen or performers who turned to magic to give them an edge in their daily rivalries with their competitors. The hatred and malevolence revealed is often ugly and disturbing (especially in the erotic material), but it provides an important corrective to the burnished image of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome that often still appears in contemporary discourse about the ancient world. Other materials, by contrast, such as astrology, alchemy, and theurgy, provide insights into the theological concerns of sophisticated thinkers trying to make sense of the world from a polytheistic perspective. The evidence for magic provides a marvelous window into aspects of life in the ancient Greco-Roman world that are often overlooked – or deliberately hidden away – in more canonical sources. RE: The impetus for this book grew out of the course I have been teaching at Bryn Mawr College since 2000 on Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World. Rob Tempio, an editor from PUP, saw my syllabus online and suggested that it might make a good book. I was struggling to find a book to use in my class that could provide a good background for my students, and none of the options already published really fit my needs, so I decided to make one for myself – and for other teachers and students who might want a comprehensive introduction to the subject. Like my class, the book moves systematically through a whole range of evidence that could be considered as magic in the ancient world, ranging from curses and erotic spells to the esoteric arts of alchemy and theurgy. As I go through each set of evidence, I am always considering the question of what counts as magic, what should be labeled ‘magic’. Exploring why certain practices, images, and ideas were labeled as “magic” and set apart from “normal” kinds of practices, Edmonds gives insight into the shifting ideas of religion and the divine in the ancient past and in the later Western tradition.

What did magic mean to the people of ancient Greece and Rome? How did Greeks and Romans not only imagine what magic could do, but also use it to try to influence the world around them? In Drawing Down the Moon, Radcliffe Edmonds, one of the foremost experts on magic, religion, and the occult in the ancient world, provides the most comprehensive account of the varieties of phenomena labeled as magic in classical antiquity.

Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler