1 Earliest Rome

11.4 Love magic
Horace, EposfeS, 1-40
11.4 Loue magic
Greek and Roman literary texts present steteotypical images of love magic. In
this poem, Horace deploys several of the stereotypes in an attack on one
Canidia: the performance of love magic by a woman, in this case Canidia her­
self; the killing of a boy (whose words open the poem); the use of infernal
ingredients. In fact the practices of love magic, as recorded in surviving curses
and spells (11.5a—b), were rather different.
See further: Vol. 1, 235-6; Tupet (1976) 284-329; R.L. Gordon (1987);
Winkler (1990) 71-98*.
'Oh, whatever god in heaven rules the earth and the human race, what means this din?
Why is everyone's gaze fixed savagely on little me? By your own children, if at your
summons Lucina 1
has aided your real birthpangs, by this pointless purple decoration, 2
1
beg you, by Jupiter who will condemn these things, why do you gaze on me like a
stepmother or like a wounded animal?'
(11) When despite these piteous cries from his trembling lips, the boy stands there
stripped of his emblems of youth, a childish form, such as might soften the impious
hearts of the Tbracians, Canidia, with short snakes entwined in her dishevelled hair,
orders figtrees wrenched from tombs, orders funereal cypresses and eggs and feathers of
the nocturnal screech owl smeared with the blood of a hideous toad, and herbs grown in
Iolcus and Hiberia, the home of drugs, and bones snatched from the mouth of a ravening
dog, she orders all these to be burned in the Colchian flames. 3
Meanwhile, Sagana, duly
dressed, sprinkles waters of Avernus all over the house, her hair on end like a sea-urchin
or a charging boar. Veia, undeterred by any sense of conscience, was digging out earth
with firm spadeblows, groaning as she worked, so that the boy could be buried and die
within full sight of food changed two or three times in the course of the long day, with
his head projecting our as much as swimmers' bodies are above the water when they float
by the chin; so that they could remove the marrow and dried up liver to be a love potion
as soon as his eyes, fixed on the forbidden food, had withered away. 4
1. The epithet Lucina was associated with Juno in her role as protectress of women in child-
binh.
2. Boys wore a toga with a purple band (togapraetexta).
3. Iolcus in Thessaly and Hiberia east ot Colchis on the Black Sea were in regions strongly
associated with magic.
4. In the second half of the poem Canidia complains that the spells are not working and
threatens yet stronger magic. It ends with the hoy's curse on the witches.
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