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Roman Agricultural Magic ROMAN AGRICULTURAL MAGIC by Britta K. Ager A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classical Studies) in The University of Michigan 2010 Doctoral Committee: Professor Derek B. Collins, Co-Chair Professor David S. Potter, Co-Chair Professor Richard Janko Associate Professor Stuart A. Kirsch © Britta K. Ager 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe my gratitude to many people: I would particularly like to thank the members of my committee: Derek Collins, who sparked my interest in magic and encouraged the project at its beginnings; David Potter, for his extremely patient help and guidance throughout graduate school and the dissertation in particular; Richard Janko, for his meticulous corrections and great knowledge; and to Stuart Kirsch, who offered much interesting advice and scholarship to this classicist. My very great thanks go to my fellow graduate students at Michigan, and especially to Amanda Regan, Kathryn Seidl Steed, Richard Persky, Julia Shapiro, Cassandra Borges, and Evelyn Adkins. Without their advice, support, friendship, and encouragements to eat I would never have finished this project. I owe special thank-yous to Ruth Scodel, for the many enjoyable evenings of Scottish dancing; and to the staff of the Michigan Classics department, without whom all would have regularly been lost. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents and brother for their patience and support, and for the many book-filled holidays they endured without complaint. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ii Abstract v Chapter I. Magic in the Roman Agronomists 1 Introduction Defining Magic Labeling Ancient Magic Overt Magic Cultic Magic Natural Magic The Interaction of Types of Magic Social and Political Dimensions to Magic Genre and Magic The Agronomists, Context, and Magic Conclusion Chapter II. Weather Magic 58 Introduction Weather Prediction and Divination Astrometeorological Predictions and Astrology Weather Signs Weather Prediction, the Diagnosis of Nature, and Superhuman Powers Stories About Philosophers and Weather Prediction The Social and Literary Position of Weather Signs The Agronomists and Weather Signs Witches, Kings, and the Weather Weather Magic Causing Rain Averting Storms Chapter III. Crop and Animal Magic 152 Introduction General Precautions Festivals and Other Restrictions on Working Days Precautions Regarding the Phase of the Moon iii Magic for New Crops: Preparing Land and Planting Preparing the Ground Planting Protecting the Seed Grafting Protecting Growing Crops and Animals Cultic Rituals for Crops and Farm Animals Polluting Influences on the Farm Treating Growing Things Dealing With Disease Affecting and Predicting the Final Produce Predicting Crops and the Sex of Animals Affecting the Sex of Animals Testing Produce Ways of Affecting the Final Produce Averting Hostile Magic The Evil Eye Fruges Excantare: Enchanting Crops Away A Brief Hostile Interlude: Malicious Magic in the Geoponics Conclusion Chapter IV. Magic for Weeds and Pests 213 Introduction Cultic Approaches to Vermin Understanding Pests in Natural History Bad Weather, Vermin, and Crop Disease as Identical Problems Natural Magic against Vermin Magic Dealing with Weeds Mice, Snakes and Flies as Bad Neighbors Weeds as Agents Other Overtly Magical Remedies Conclusion Chapter V. Ritual, Authority, and Nature on the Farm 261 The Agronomists and the Control of Ritual The Evil Eye and the Fertilizing Gaze of the Paterfamilias Conclusion Conclusion 294 Bibliography 297 iv ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I examine the magical practices of Roman farmers, primarily through the Latin farming manuals; topics include the magical practices which the Roman agronomists recommend to farmers, the relationship of this material to other genres of magic such as curses and amulets, and how its inclusion in technical handbooks is part of the authors’ personas as upper-class landowners. The first chapter introduces the problem of identifying magic in the Latin agronomists; the authors are uneasy with obviously supernatural action and prefer to describe it as cultic ritual or ordinary technical activity. This chapter also considers the effects of genre and the double audience of landowners and slaves on how they present agricultural magic. Subsequent chapters examine particular types of magic on the farm with an eye towards how the agronomists’ personas determine the way they approach popular folklore; and how magic, technology, and cult interact despite being loosely constructed as opposing spheres in ancient thought. Chapter two deals with weather magic, particularly the intellectual background which makes weather prediction a type of divination and thus a fraught subject; it is a topic with literary cachet but is also dangerously associated with occult knowledge. Chapter three covers magic for crops and animals, in which cultic approaches are prevalent. In the fourth chapter, I discuss magic dealing with noxious animals and weeds; here cultic approaches are few, scientific magic fills the resulting gap, and a special group of charms treat pests as social entities. Chapter five examines the agronomists’ anxieties over v controlling ritual on their farms, and their social and natural-historical justifications for their possession of ritual authority over the familia . Considered in the context of ancient magical traditions and anthropological theory, agricultural ritual emerges not as irrational superstition but as an integral part of rural life; and the Latin agronomists offer a new perspective on the effects of genre and social context on, in particular, traditions of learned magic. vi CHAPTER I Magic in the Roman Agronomists Introduction Discussing how to rid the garden of pests , Columella offers several methods of insect control. You can sprinkle plants with oil lees or ashes, arrange them so as to prevent damp and infestations, or put in companion plantings of species which pests naturally avoid. But you can also dry your seeds in a hyena skin, sow them at the right phase of the moon, or have a menstruating woman walk thrice around the garden to kill caterpillars. Magical and ritual approaches to agricultural operations existed alongside what modern readers would consider empirically useful operations throughout antiquity. Every surviving agricultural writer, even the skeptical Varro, includes comments on farm magic. The Roman agronomists have been much maligned for their inclusion of magical material, the general sentiment being that technical treatises should confine themselves to the empirical world. 1 Amid interest over farming and rural life, agricultural magic has seemed irrelevant, at best, to scholars trying to reconstruct rural settlement patterns and techniques of cultivation. K.D. White, in his extensive account of Roman farming, comments only that “Small wonder that the subject should be embedded in a rich tilth of proverbial maxims and magical formulae, from which even so conscientious a writer as Columella is not wholly free”. 2 Magic is a thing which a good agricultural writer should 1 For a discussion of the sources used, see below, pp. 45-8. 2 White (1970) 86. 1 ideally, it seems, be above. Other scholars have been similarly dismissive. 3 Even in antiquity, Varro (or at least his interlocutors) already made light of the spells and other material which he felt to be extraneous in Cato’s and the Sasernas’ farming treatises (1.2.27-8). Sharp distinctions between the practical and superstitious material in the agronomists may be convenient, but are largely absent in the agronomists themselves. Whatever we think of the usefulness of walking sick sheep over a member of the flock who has been buried upside down at the entrance to the fold, Columella offers it as a practical remedy.4 Likewise, the rest of the “superstitious” material offered by the agronomists is included not out of gullibility, as White implies, but because it is, to the authors, part of a body of knowledge, techniques and practices which they expect to be useful to their readers. 5 Even Varro does not complain that the Sasernas have included magic because it is foolish, but because it is irrelevant to the topic of agriculture proper, in the same way that recipes for ham or cakes or cures for drunkenness are irrelevant. Rather than trying to separate the “practical” from the “superstitious” sections in their writing—categories which have little to do with how the authors themselves treat the material—we should rather ask how ritual was a part of a Roman farmer’s agricultural routine. That it was an integral part of agricultural life is undeniable. The agronomists treat ritual and magic as a natural, ordinary part of the Roman farmer’s regime, and instruction in ritual and magic as useful to readers who would endeavor to become, as Cato puts it, good famers and good cultivators. 3 The standard studies of Roman agriculture and rural life have generally passed over magic with little comment. See, e.g., Spurr (1986) , Flach (1990) . 4 Columella 7.5.17. 5 Or they take a public stance that it is useful knowledge; see below on the immediate practicality of the agronomists’ information and the text as a performance of elite knowledge. 2 If the magical material in the farming manuals has gone largely ignored by scholars working on Roman rural life, it has also been ignored by those interested in Roman religion. Scholars of religion have noted the existence of magical material in the agronomists, especially Cato, but have tended to pass over it.6 Much of the attention to agricultural ritual has traditionally consisted of trying to trace the roots of such-and-such a state festival to its origin in the early agricultural community, with priority given to an “original”, archaic form of Roman religion. 7 Modern studies have questioned the antiquity of rural practices, the view of urban cult as less authentically Roman, and the utility of searching for a pristine state of Roman cult; 8 however, a traditional distinction between religion proper and magic has sill left a great deal of material dismissed as superstitious nonsense, as compared to genuine piety (rural or otherwise).
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