Morality, Emotions and Reason: New Perspectives in the Study of Roman Magic

Abstract

Academic interest in magic has grown considerably during the last twenty years. Leaving aside the old stereotyped dichotomy between magic and religion, I consider magic a pragmatic subsystem of religion whose function is to alleviate or deal with daily life’s misfortunes. I suggest in this paper some possible approaches that might be interesting to deepen in the social study of Roman magic. This paper is divided in three sections. The first one deals with morality and magic: even if legal sanctions on magic can be influential in the individual’s decision to resort to magical practices, H. Versnel’s category of Prayers for Justice proved that some curses can be perceived as legitimate from the subjective point of view of the user; I suggest that subjective legitimation can in fact be applied to all Roman curses. The second section tackles the topic of emotions and magic: based on western conceptualisations of emotions, scholarly approaches on ancient magic have generally failed to see the evidence that make the choice of resorting to magic a rational option more than an emotional act. Finally, the third part of this paper analyses magic as rational choice in the individual’s strategies for decision taking.