Abigail Preston, Roman Law and Magic (Thesis, Portland State University, 2021).
Here is part of the introduction.
The Harry Potter series’ 20 year long relationship with being banned due to “its focus on wizardry and magic” is perhaps the most well-known example of modern day Western culture’s discomfort and disapproval of magic. Surprisingly, such discomfort and disapproval has been traced back to Roman law. Jonathan Z. Smith made the important distinction between societies casually utilizing monikers for illegal religious or ritual behaviors in daily life, and the Romans who made terms identifying this kind of behavior part of their legal tradition.Hans Kippenburg has claimed that the Roman understanding of magic as an illegal act “has launched a tradition that is part of the Western cultural storage and had an impact on scholarly definitions too;” essentially launching over 2,000 years of magical stigma. This broader cultural discomfort with magic has impacted the study of Roman history and culture. Stuart Mckie states that this “lingering discomfort among scholars over studying beliefs and practices that have been thought of as illicit, superstitious or weird” has contributed to a lack of study in Roman curse tablets and magical practices in general.The use of magic in ancient Rome was not in line with older models of Romanization “which conceptualised cultural changes in the provinces as positive movements towards more ‘civilised’ forms.” This thesis seeks to demonstrate the relationship between “magic,” as it was understood throughout Roman history, and Roman law; essentially disproving earlier scholarly opinions that the practice of magic was an unimportant aspect of Roman culture and history. The first section of this thesis addresses the relationship to magic of the elite and lower classes from the Republic (509 BCE to 27 BCE) and into the later stage of the Empire also known as the Dominate (roughly 284 BC to 641 BC). This section illuminates the role that magic and religion played in gender and power dynamics in Roman society. The second section explores the role of accusations of magic in Roman courts and the broader social and political implications of charges of magic.
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