Emperors Accused

UEMPERORS ACCUSED

A STUDY OF ACCUSATIONS OF NECROMANCY IN THE LATE REPUBLIC AND THE EARLY EMPIRE

JORIS JEHLE

3463362

SUPERVISED BY SASKIA STEVENS

Emperors Accused

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CONTENTS

Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 5 1. Necromancy in Context...................................................................................................... 7 2. The Functions for the Individual .................................................................................... 15 3. Accusations of Necromancy ............................................................................................ 21 Conclusion.............................................................................................................................. 35 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 37

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Emperors Accused



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 INTRODUCTION
The sun went down, and all the paths across the sea were in darkness. (...) After praying to the nation of the dead and making my vows tothem, I took the sheep and cut off their heads over the ditch in such a way that the dark blood dripped into it. From the depths of Erebus flocked the souls of the dead, the deceased (...). They all crowded around the trench, coming from different directions, and their wailing was weird. The fear that makes one pale overwhelmed me. (...) And the soul of Tiresias came, holding a sceptre of gold.(...) I drew back and pushed my sword with the silver hilt into its scabbard. The great seer drank the dark blood and then said to me: “You have come, Odysseus, in order to be told about a pleasant way home?”1

Thus opens the necromantic scene in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus, with the help of the witch Circe, calls upon the dead seer Tiresias to learn from him the way home. Many important elements ofthis scene can also be traced in later accounts of necromantic rites: the dark and misty scenery, the full moon, the pit, the sacrifice of black animals, praying to the gods of the underworld, the horror of their wailing and appearance, the request of an unduly buried to be put to earth properly, the telling of the future by the dead. But, obviously, also the notion that the soul is separated fromthe body after death, and the converging or overlapping spheres of the dead and the living: the pit brings Odysseus closer to the underworld, the still warm blood brings some life back into the souls of the dead. And essentially, even the ghosts of our contemporary stories have the same characteristics. It is safe to say, then, that this scene in Homer’s Odyssey has had significant influence onlater writing on necromancy and the image and idea of ghosts, whatever his own sources were. Especially the necromantic scenes in Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia show remarkable similarities with Homer’s. In fact, there are few other sources than literary texts which describe necromancy. Exceptions are some magical papyri on which spells and rituals were described and accusations of necromancyin political writings such as Cicero’s speeches or Roman histories. What 5

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Homer, Odyssey 11.12-224 in: G. Luck, Arcana Mundi (Baltimore 1992) 177-8.

Emperors Accused is described in the dramatic scenes or on magical papyri is the praxis of necromancy, that is how, where, why and by whom the rituals were performed, what they were like and how they worked. Daniel Ogden elaborates onthese questions in his Greek and Roman Necromancy2. The study does not cover the function necromancy could have had in a political context. There is an easy explanation for Ogden’s avoiding of these topics: there are only few sources which might answer these questions. Still, I would like to approach this aspect via the few sources there are. Why were politicians, especially emperors, accused of...