Indian Spices and Roman "Magic"
Indian Spices and Roman "Magic"
* Many thanks are due Jerry Bentley and the anonymous reviewer who offered useful
suggestions, especially with respect to historiography. I would also like to thank the participants of the various seminars with whom I shared these ideas in their developmental stages:
the Pacific Rim Roman Seminar (August 2006), Ancient Mediterranean and World History: An Ideological and Pedagogical Confluence? sponsored by the APA Committee on
Ancient History (January 2007), the UC World History Workshop and the UC Late Antiquity Multi-Campus Research Group (June 2007), and the Greco-Roman Religions Program
Unit at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (November 2008). The
feedback offered by these varied audiences of classicists, Greco-Roman historians, world historians, and religious studies scholarsand especially the comments from David Christian
and Amy Richlinhas provided me with the interdisciplinary conversation necessary when
undertaking this sort of world historical enterprise.
1
Center/core and periphery models can be problematic when dealing with premodern
world economies, but from the perspective of imperial Roman ideology that this article is
addressing, the Roman Mediterranean was a center/core coming to grips with the influence
Journal of World History, Vol. 24, No. 1
2013 by University of Hawaii Press
2
As trade between Rome and India shifted in Late Antiquity from its
zenith in the first and second centuries c.e., India became even more
exoticized by the Romans. Spices originally put to culinary, religious,
or medicinal use became associated with magic as real connections
between Rome and their Indian point of origin faded. This abstraction of Indian spices was nothing new for the Roman mindset. Grant
Parker and Gary Young have demonstrated how the luxuria that exotic
goods inspired was a common trope, indeed a recurring invective, in
Roman literature.2 Similarly, David Potter has discussed the relationship between odor and power, arguing that the foreign source of all
scent ingredients meant that they were always good for rhetoric connecting the decline of Roman morality with foreign ways. 3 Connecting these same spices not merely with excess but even with the offense
of magic would take this abstraction to its natural extreme.
To explore this rhetorical and actual exoticizing of spices and
magic in imperial and Late Antique Rome, this article includes, first,
a review of trade relations between Rome and India, as well as the
closely related trade with African Kush; second, a discussion of literary
evidence of magical practitioners who have trade connections, including Apuleiuss Meroe and Philostratuss Apollonius of Tyana; third, an
analysis of fourth-century c.e. Greek magical amulets and spells in the
Greek magical papyri that imbue with magical powers substances that
were only available through long-distance trade with India according
to Pliny and the Periplus Maris Erythrae; and, finally, a look at the special case of the slave trade between Rome and India. While previous
scholarship has emphasized the Persian and Egyptian influences on
Greco-Roman magic, this article demonstrates the Indian influence on
of what its contemporary commentators saw as a threat from the periphery. M. Fitzpatrick,
Provincializing Rome: The Indian Ocean Trade Network and Roman Imperialism, Journal
of World History 22 (2011): 48 usefully reminds us, however, that from a broader, worldsystems lens Rome was hardly a core . . . extract[ing] surplus from a peripheral zone but
rather one node on a broader system unable to dictate terms with its trading partners to the
south and east. It is just the sort of resultant discursive animosity toward the Orient (p.54)
that contributed to the magicalizing of India and its trade goods discussed in this article.
2
G. Parker, Ex Oriente Luxuria: Indian Commodities and Roman Experience, Journal
of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 45, no. 1 (2002): 45; G. Young, Romes Eastern
Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BCAD 305 (New York: Routledge,
2001), pp. 205207. See also Fitzpatrick, Provincializing Rome, pp. 3234, for enduring
Roman concerns about luxuria and Eastern trade.
3
D. S. Potter, Odor and Power in the Roman Empire, in Constructions of the Classical Body, ed. J. I. Porter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 177. See
also M.Detienne, Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Humanities Press, 1977).
4
C. Chase-Dunn and T. D. Hall, Rise and Demise (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
1997), pp. 5255.
5
H. J. Loane, Industry and Commerce of the City of Rome (50 BC200 AD) (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1938), pp. 1428, discusses the movement within the Mediterranean
region of the products derived from the so-called Mediterranean triad of grain, grapes, and
olives. K. Hopkins, Models, Ships, and Staples, in Trade and Famine in Classical Antiquity,
ed. P. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), offers
an intriguing quantitative attempt to differentiate among what he categorizes as long-distance, that is inter-regional trade; medium-range, intra-regional, inter-town trade; and short
haul, local trade (p. 85), concluding that the bulk of transport in the Roman empire was
short-haul (p. 105). Alternately, G. Woolf, Imperialism, Empire and the Integration of the
Roman Economy, World Archaeology 23 (1992): 283293, demonstrates by means of amphora
types the Mediterranean-wide distribution of nonluxury products such as wine and olive oil.
Although G. Woolf, World-Systems Analysis and the Roman Empire, Journal of Roman
Archaeology 3 (1990): 52, does argue for a wide-reaching Mediterranean-based exchange, this
exchange was on a smaller geographic scale than that between Rome and India.
6
Res Gestae 31 records Augustuss welcoming at Rome of ambassadors from India. For
extended discussion of these embassies see S. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy in the Erythra Thalassa 30 B.C.A.D. 217 (Leiden: Brill, 1986), pp. 129130, and M. Wheeler, Rome
beyond the Imperial Frontiers (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), pp. 134135. See
F.Teggart, Rome and China: A Study of Correlations in Historical Events (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1969), passim, and M. P. Charlesworth, Trade-Routes and Commerce of
the Roman Empire (1926; repr., New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1970), pp. 108109,
262, for overland trade between Rome and China, the embassy sent by Marcus Aurelius
to China, and Parthian challenges to this route. See Fitzpatrick, Provincializing Rome,
pp. 4349, for Roman-Chinese interactions. P. Middleton, The Roman Army and Long
Distance Trade, in Garnsey and Whittaker, Trade and Famine in Classical Antiquity, argues
effectively for the role of the army in the creation of networks of contact (p. 75).
4
ivory.7 There was also clearly an information network, transporting language, religion, and other symbolic technologies. While a first impression may be that ideas are lighter than spices and so more portable, actually the opposite is true, in a phenomenon that Chase-Dunn and Hall
call fall-offthe diminishing of the understanding of an idea and that
ideas impact across spacewith a result akin to what happens in the
childrens game of telephone, when a phrase whispered from one ear
to the next becomes wildly distorted, or even lost, in transmission.8 For
our purposes, the Chase-Dunn/Hall model for exchange networks and
fall-off raises questions about whether Indian and Kushite ideas traveled as far as their trade goods did and what kind of fall-off occurred as
those goods traveled the long distances, both physical and conceptual,
to Rome, especially in Late Antiquity. Models for globalization, both
in antiquity and in modern times, are also applicable.9 With respect
to imperial Rome and her trading partners India and Meroitic Kush,
globalization raises the possibility of social dislocation,10 discursive
7
Scholars argue whether or not certain spices procured through long-distance trade are
rightly termed luxury/prestige goods or if their central role in cooking and religious practice
made them necessities and therefore not luxuries (Woolf, World-Systems Analysis and the
Roman Empire, pp. 5155; Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 15, 45). S.Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2011), pp. 249251, weighs in on the potential insolubility of the luxury vs. exotic question regarding the items exchanged in Roman-Indian trade. For the purpose of this article
and ranking these spices as prestige goods, Youngs clarification is useful. Young, Romes
Eastern Trade, p. 18, notes that while these goods may not properly be called luxury goods,
they were a commodity in such high demand that trade in them was profitable.
8
For the concept of fall-off, see Chase-Dunn and Hall, Rise and Demise, pp. 1718,
5355.
9
K. R. Dark, Globalizing Late Antiquity: Models, Metaphors and the Realities of
Long-Distance Trade and Diplomacy, in Incipient Globalization? Long Distance Contacts in
the Sixth Century, ed. A. Harris (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007)a volume of collected case
studies based in a range of archaeological evidencelays out several globalization models
and their applicability for Late Antique long-distance trade. Also on globalization, R.M.
Geraghty, The Impact of Globalization in the Roman Empire, 200 BCAD 100, Journal
of Economic History 67 (2007), constructs a general equilibrium model to determine the
impact of globalization, defined as the integration of world commodity and factor markets
on an economys output mix, resource allocation, and income distribution (p. 1036). Geraghty explores three main factors of productionland, labor, and slavesand four final
goods sectorsgrain, wine, livestock, and urban goods (p. 1038). Geraghtys model makes
a strong case for the usefulness of thinking of the earlier Roman economy in terms of globalization, but focuses more on bulk/staples and hard economic indicators rather than on the
social implications of an integrated world commodities market in Roman times. Fitzpatrick,
Provincializing Rome, p. 30, argues for a model of Afro-Eurasian trade in which Rome is
just a western node of a first-century global economy and that it is time to recast the picture
of Roman economics in terms of both market exchange and a form of archaic globalization
that did not center on Rome.
10
The chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, speaking to an economic
symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2006, discussed various ways to measure distance.
animosity, 11 and resistance that may have been spurred by Indian and
sub-Saharan goods in Roman markets.12
Background on Roman Trade with India
and Meroitic Kush
So, what do we know about Roman trade with India and Meroitic
Kush? 13 After resisting Roman control in the late first century b.c.e.,
Meroitic Kush maintained a tenuous peace with Rome through the
mid third century c.e. and gained economic prosperity by controlling
Apart from physical distance, he enumerated the costs of shipping between two places, how
long it takes for a message to travel from one place to another, the costs of sending such a
message, and the differences in language, culture, legal traditions and political systems.
Bernanke observed that, when such distances are bridged and economies become more
interlinked, the result is often social dislocation and resistance to the other. See B. S. Bernanke, Global Economic Integration: Whats New and Whats Not?, Remarks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas Citys Thirtieth Annual Economic Symposium, Jackson Hole,
Wyoming, 25 August 2006, available online at http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/
speeches/2006/200608252006. C. Whittaker, Trade and Frontiers of the Roman Empire,
in Garnsey and Whittaker, Trade and Famine in Classical Antiquity, similarly asserted that
the symbiotic economies of such border regions . . . generates a frontier pull which is
stronger than any ideology (p. 121) and that frontiers are always zones, constantly shifting
and in ferment, ambivalent in their loyalties and often having more in common with the
other side, as it were, than with their own political centre (p. 122). Whittaker even points
to the trade along the frontier in staples as being critical to that ferment.
11
As noted above, see Fitzpatrick, Provincializing Rome, p. 54, for the discursive
animosity toward the Orient and the values ostensibly represented by Eastern commodities.
12
P. F. Bangwhose The Roman Bazaar (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
argues that Roman trade was not capitalist but was rather the form of market exchange
characteristic of the civilized societies of the agrarian world: the bazaar (p. 296)notes,
in his conclusion without further elaboration, that luxury goods were imbued with certain
charismatic, mystical or even magical properties (p. 302) and were surrounded by a dangerous aura (p. 303).
13
L. Casson, Romes Trade with the East: The Sea Voyage to Africa and India, Transactions of the American Philological Association 110 (1980): 36, offers a useful reminder of the
differences in the demands they made on both shipowners and merchants of African (low
cost, low risk, longer wait for return on investment) versus Indian (higher cost, higher risk,
quicker rate of return) trade. For African Kush, see especially P. L. Shinnie, Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudan (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967); W. Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to
Africa (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977); L. Trk, Meroe City: An Ancient
African Capital (London: Egyptian Exploration Society, 1997); S. Burstein, Ancient African
Civilizations: Kush and Axum (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 1998); D. A. Welsby, The
Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 1998);
G. Connah, African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and D. N. Edwards, Meroitic Kush (c. 300 BCAD 350),
in The Nubian Past: An Archaeology of the Sudan (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 141
181. For trade between Rome and India, see E. H. Warmington, The Commerce between the
Roman Empire and India (1928; repr., New York: Octagon Books, 1974); M. P. Charlesworth,
6
Roman Trade with India: A Resurvey, in Studies in Roman Economic and Social History
in Honor of Allan Chester Johnson, ed. P. R. Coleman-Norton (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1951); Charlesworth, Trade-Routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire;
Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers; J. I. Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire,
29 B.C. to A.D. 641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); J. Thorley, The Development of
Trade between the Roman Empire and the East under Augustus, Greece and Rome 16, no.
2 (1969): 209223; M. G. Raschke, New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East,
Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rmischen Welt II.9.2 (1978): 6041361; J. Thorley, The Roman
Empire and the Kushans, Greece and Rome 26, no. 2 (1979): 181190 (n.b. by Kushans, in
his articles title, Thorley means the Hindu Kush, not Africa); W. Schmitthenner, Rome
and India: Aspects of Universal History during the Principate, JRS 69 (1979): 90106; and
the various studies of pottery, coins, glass, and bronzes in Rome and India: The Ancient Sea
Trade, ed. V. Begley and R. D. de Puma (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991);
the range of essays in R. M. Cimino, ed., Ancient Rome and India: Commercial and Cultural
Contacts between the Roman World and India (New Delhi: Manoharlal, 1994) and in F. de
Romanis and A. Tchernia, Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India (New Delhi:
Manohar, 1997); F. Millar, Caravan Cities: The Roman Near East and Long Distance Trade
by Land, in Modus Operandi: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Rickman, ed. M. Austin, J. Harries, and C. Smith (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1998), pp. 119137; R. Tomber,
Trade Relations in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond: The Egyptian-Indian Connection, in Trade Relations in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Hellenistic Period to
Late Antiquity: The Ceramic Evidence, ed. M. B. Briese and L. E. Vaag (Odense: University
Press of Southern Denmark, 2005), pp. 221233, and R. Tomber, Indo-Roman Trade: From
Pots to Pepper (London: Duckworth, 2008); G. Parker, The Making of Roman India (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and E. A. Pollard, Plinys Natural History and the
Flavian Templum Pacis: Botanical Imperialism in First-Century c.e. Rome, Journal of World
History 20 (2009): 309338. For Red Sea trade in particular, see Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy and Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route; Young, Romes Eastern Trade;
and L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989). For Hellenistic interaction between the Mediterranean World and India, see W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India, 3rd ed. (1938;
repr., Chicago: Ares Press, 1985), with an updated bibliography; and for sites of interaction
in northwestern India and what they suggest for blended identity, see J. D. Lerner, The
Greek-Indians of Western India: A Study of the Yavana and Yonaka Buddhist Cave Temple
Inscriptions, Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies 1 (2000): 83109, and C. Rapin,
Indian Art from Afghanistan: The Legend of Sakuntala and the Indian Treasure of Eucratides at Ai
Khanum (New Delhi: Manohar, 1996), which draws conclusions about the nature of transregional interactions in second-century b.c.e. Bactria based on a treasure of Graeco-Roman,
Indian, and Chinese works of art, piled up at the same site (p. 1). Indeed, important for
the larger picture of Afro-Eurasian trade in this period, and consequently for the syncretic
blending of Hellenistic, Persian, and Indian religious ideas, is trade between Rome and the
Kushan Empire, for which see C. G. R. Benjamin, The Yuezhi: Origins, Migration and the
Conquest of Northern Bactria, Silk Road Studies 14 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), and
C. G. R. Benjamin, Introduction to Kushan Research, in Worlds of the Silk Roads: Ancient
and Modern, Silk Road Studies 2, ed. D. Christian and C. Benjamin (Turnhout, Belgium:
Brepols, 1998), pp. 3149. Unfortunately, the state of the research and the types of evidence
for the Kushan empireincluding scattered historical references, coins, limited or fragmentary inscriptions, and art objects ranging from Gandharan sculpture to items excavated
from Kushan royal palaceslimits their incorporation into this present consideration of
exoticized luxury goods and their associations with magic at Rome, although as middlemen
the Kushans no doubt played some role.
the supply of gold, ivory, ebony, exotic animals and slaves to Egypt
and hence Mediterranean markets.14 Art from Meroe, the capital of
Kush, suggests Indian/Buddhist influence, which would be indicative of this kingdoms intermediary role in long-distance trade from
the reign of Augustus on.15 Archaeological evidence suggests that the
height of trade between Rome and India appears to have been the first
and second centuries c.e.16 This trade took place along several routes,
both overland, as documented by Isidore of Charaxs Parthian Stations,
and by sea, as the merchant guide known as the Periplus Maris Erythraei
reveals.17 Plinys Natural History and the Periplus reveal the various
14
S. Burstein, Mero, in Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, ed. W. H. McNeill
etal. (Great Barrington, Mass.: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2005), p. 1229. Kush falls to
Axum ca. 350 c.e. Axum, located on the Red Sea coast of what is now Sudan was ranked
by Manu with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great empires of his day (Burstein,
Aksum in BEWH). See Parker, Ex Oriente Luxuria, p. 72, for the height of Axumite
trade with Rome in the third to seventh centuries c.e.
15
A. J. Arkell, Meroe and India, in Aspects of Archeology in Britain and Beyond: Essays
Presented to OGS Crawford, ed. W. F. Grimes (London: H. J. Edwards, 1951) describes a
ca.15 c.e. image of Apedemek, the Meroitic lion god with its three heads and two pairs
of arms, and also second-century Indian-looking depictions of Siva, also many-headed and
many-armed, as being indicative of an Indian influence on the art of this area. Shinnie,
Meroe, p. 113, similarly finds Indian influence in a relief of the Lion-god shown with the
body of a snake emerging from a lotus. L. V. abkar, Apedemek: Lion God of Meroe (War
minster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1975), pp. 4243, 4751, has argued these need not
have been the result of Indian influence, wanting instead to see these as an indigenous
Meroitic motif, if not a convenient artistic device. Other, more well known, instances of
artistic influence along the trade routes between the Greco-Roman world and India include
the Achaemenid and Hellenistic motifs on Asokas rock and pillar edicts and the Gan
dharan Buddha with its Greco-Roman Apollonian look. There has even been suggestion of
a Buddhist temple at Petra (Schmitthenner, Rome and India, pp. 9798).
16
See Parker, Ex Oriente Luxuria, p. 70, for the first and second centuries c.e. as the
height of Roman-Indian trade. This apex is suggested by Roman pottery, bronzes, and coinage found in India, for which see K. W. Slane, Observations on Mediterranean Amphoras
and Tablewares found in India, in Rome and India, ed. V. Begley and R. D. de Puma (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 212. Fewer Indian goods appear in Roman territory, but that could just be because they have not been recognized by excavators (Parker,
Ex Oriente Luxuria). One much-discussed exception is the Lakshmi statuette found in the
ruins of Pompeii (see R. M. Cimino, The Indian Ivory Statuette from Pompeii, in Cimino,
Ancient Rome and India, pp. 119122).
17
A good text, translation, and commentary of Isidores work is W. Schoff, ed., Parthian
Stations by Isidore of Charax (Philadelphia: Commercial Museum, 1914). Cassons Periplus
offers a critical Greek text, translation, and thorough commentary. Sidebotham, Roman
Economic Policy, uses the Periplus among other sources to determine what economic policy,
if any, Rome developed for Red Sea trade. The documentation of trade is reciprocal, as
contemporary Tamil poems from India describe Roman ships that arrived with gold and left
with pepper (e.g., Charlesworth, Roman Trade with India, p. 133; Wheeler, Rome beyond
the Imperial Frontiers, pp. 132133; and Casson, Periplus, p. 296). Two additional pieces of
evidence add to the picture of Roman-Indian trade: a second-century c.e. shipping contract
8
spices brought to the Mediterranean from this part of the world: from
southeast Asia, casia, myrrh, and frankincense; from northwest India,
costus, bdellium, lykion, nard, and long pepper; and from southwest
India, nard, malabathron, and black pepper.18 Whether one buys completely into Plinys figures or not, Roman trade with India seems to
have drained away very large amounts of gold from the Roman economy.19 This monetary drain would constitute not only an economic crisis but also an ideological crisis: Rome suffered from hard-currency loss
in exchange for spices that were immediately consumed as perfume,
incense, or food. Returning to the globalization models discussed earlier, one might expect such a trade imbalance to create a certain degree
of social dislocation, animosity, and resistance to the source of these
goods, no matter how sweet-smelling or tasty. This hostility toward
long-distance trade sources could only be exacerbated by Chase-Dunn
and Halls fall-off.
It is beyond the scope of this article to explore in any great detail the
extent to which trade between Rome, India, and Meroitic Kush declined
or changed in Late Antiquity. Issues that would have impeded Roman
trade with the East in Late Antiquity include an arguable collapse
of the Roman Empire and the Han dynasty, the widespread epidemics
that swept across Eurasia, potential adverse climatological impacts on
trade, high tax rates, the general debasement of Roman coinage, and
Roman-Persian relations (namely a strong Sassanid dynasty).20 Major
challenges to the idea that trade with India declined in Late Antiquity
between a Roman businessman in Muziris and an Egyptian shipper (L. Casson, P. Vindob G
40822 and the Shipping of Goods from India, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
23, nos. 34 [1986]: 7679) and the representation of a Templum Augusti on the third- to
fourth-century Peutinger Map. Recent archaeological finds suggest that ancient Muziris has
been found near a small town named Pattanam on the southwest coast of India (BBC News,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/south_asia/497042.stm, 11 June 2006).
18
See Periplus 39 and 49 for the trade goods available in northwest India; Periplus 56 for
southwest India; Periplus 56 and 63 for northeast India. These are discussed thoroughly in
Casson, Periplus; Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, pp. 34109; and Warmington,
Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, pp. 226228 for a list and pp. 180234 for
full discussion.
19
Pliny, Natural History 12.41.84, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, 10 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960) records that India, China, and Arabia
took away a minimum of 100 million sesterces a year. Pliny HN 6.26.101 also writes that
every year India alone exhausted 50 million sesterces of the empires wealth. Sidebotham,
Roman Economic Policy, pp. 3845, discusses the problems with the unfavorable trade balance model that is based largely on Plinys complaints and the evidence of Roman coins in
India. Along similar lines, see Young, Romes Eastern Trade, pp. 203204.
20
For the first three reasons, see the summary treatment in W. H. McNeill, An
Emerging Consensus about World History?, World History Connected 1, no. 1 (2003). W.H.
McNeill offers a more detailed discussion of disease and trade during this period in his
Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976), pp. 77147. For
the remaining reasons, see A. H. M. Jones, Asian Trade in Antiquity in Roman Economy
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), pp. 141, 144, 149. There is much more work to be done by
Roman historians on the potential environmental factors that may have contributed to the
fall of Rome. In addition to the scattered comments from ancient writers about their own
environment, tree rings, ice cores, pollen, and riverbeds can give a great deal of information
about the late Roman Mediterranean to those who know how to read them. J. D. Hughes,
The Mediterranean: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005),
p. 198, argues that deforestation, overgrazing, erosion, salinization, exhaustion of the soil
. . . depletion of animals and plants, [and] pollution destabilized Romes relationship with
her environment in a way that may have played a role in Roman collapse in Late Antiquity. J. D. Hughes, Ecology in Ancient Civilizations (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1975), pp. 128140, presented a similar argument three decades earlier. J. R. McNeill,
Mountains of the Mediterranean World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 85,
paints a similarly gloomy picture of the period 5001000 c.e.: Classical civilization had
intensified deforestation and erosion wherever it took root, with the result of destabilizing
the natural landscape. Conversely, A. T. Grove and O. Rackham, The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), are
more optimistic about Romans stewardship of their environment. Noting that modern
commentators loose the reins of conjecture, unhindered by lack of evidence, Grove and
Rackham write: It is not to be assumed that the Romans, masters of technology, somehow
neglected to secure a permanent fuel supply; nor that monetary inflation necessarily happened because the trees on which the money grew had stopped growing (p. 175).
21
Zosimus, Historia Nova 5:3542, trans. J. J. Buchanan and H. T. Davis (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1967). See also the tariffs on such spices in Justinians Digest
39.4.16.7 (excerpted from the third-century lawyer Marcianus). These are listed as goods
subject to duty at Alexandria (a major entrept for Eastern goods entering the Mediterranean): cinnamon, long pepper, white pepper, pentasphaerum, Barbary leaf, costum,
costamomum, spikenard, Tyrian cassia, cassia bark, myrrh, amomum, ginger, malabathrum,
Indian spice, galbanum, asafoetida, aloe-wood . . . arabian onyx, cardamom, cinnamon
bark . . . ivory, Indian iron, linen, lapis universus, pearls, sardonyx, bloodstones, hyacinthus
[precious stone, perhaps aquamarine], emeralds, diamonds, lapis lazuli, turquoise, beryls, tortoise stones, Indian or Assyrian drugs . . . Indian eunuchs. . . and Indian hair in the Digest as
cited in Parker, Ex Oriente Luxuria, pp. 4142, and in S. P. Scott, Corpus Iuris Civilis: The
Civil Law, vols. 911 (1932; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1973), p. 23.
22
Archaeological evidenceranging from bracteates (gold pendants) in northwest
Europe to Roman glass in Chinasuggests continued long-distance trade in Late Antiquity,
although slightly different in character than that which thrived earlier. For this evidence
and argumentation, see the series of articles in Harris, Incipient Globalization. B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of the Roman Empire and the End of Civilization (New York: Oxford, 2005), has
argued instead that the mass of archaeological evidence suggests a startling decline in
western standards of living during the fifth to seventh centuries (p. 87) in part due to an
overreliance on specialization, made possible by earlier long-distance trade, that was fatal to
the broader Roman economy when any one of the economic indicators (skilled manufacturing, wide-ranging system of trade, large consumer market, and labor infrastructure) was
disrupted (p. 136), as so many were at the end of empire.
10
23
This tendency to fantasize about India does not end with Greco-Roman antiquity;
Edward Saids arguments in Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) immediately
come to mind. More specific to India in particular, J. Drew, India and the Romantic Imagination (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), traces Westerners enduring fascination with
India beginning with Philostratus in the early third century c.e.
24
In Catullus (e.g. 11.18, 45.67, and 64.48), writing in the mid first century b.c.e.
before trade with India boomed under Augustus, India appears to stand for no more than a
distant place far to the East. In Horaces later first-century b.c.e. writings, however, attitudes
toward India become more aggressive. Horace eggs on Augustus to conquer India (Odes
1.12.5465, 1.29, 1.35.40). Among the potential targets for Roman aggression that might
lead to the opening of the gates of the temple of Janus, signifying Rome at war, Vergil in
Aeneid 7.601605 joins Horace in offering the prospect of following the Dawn to India. In
Georgics 2.136139, 170172, Vergil argues that India cannot compare to Italy and, additionally, that Caesar will stave off any Indian threat. Horace and Vergil may merely be
flattering Augustus or they might reflect real military interest in the East, especially when
coupled with Augustuss remarks in the Res Gestae that he sent Roman armies to Ethiopia
(5.26) (Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, p. 139, for Horace and Vergil references and
for potential interpretations)regardless, they reflect an intense interest to make sense of
and perhaps even to conquer this land with which Rome was beginning to have increasing trade contacts. India continues to find a place in late first-century c.e. writing. It is
the source for exotic goods in Cleopatras court in the description in Lucans Bellum Civile
10.117121, 137140, listing ivory, emerald, and polished tortoise shell.
25
Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, p. 142 nn. 131, 132 for references.
26
See Arrians Indica, Parthica and Anabasis of Alexander.
11
12
13
36
Additionally, Philostratuss account suggests a high degree of religious syncretism,
ranging from Indian versus Greek ideas about Dionysus (2.82.9.2) to a discussion of the
belief in reincarnation as shared by Indians and Pythagoreans (3.23). When he visits Troy
after his trip to India, Apollonius summons the ghost of Achilles, not following the Greek
model set by Odysseus, but rather by using the prayers Indians use for their heroes (4.16).
14
37
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 6.12.2, in Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana, trans. C.P.
Jones, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), p.141.
38
Origen, Against Celsus 1.24.
39
E.g., Herodotus 7.43, 113114 on Xerxess use of mages; Pliny HN 30.120 on the
emptiness of the claims of the magi and their roots in Persia; Heliodorus Aithiopika 3.16 for
difference between Egyptian religion and magic. For Persian roots of Greco-Roman magic,
see, e.g., Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, pp. 2021, 4956; Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft and
Ghosts, pp. 3349; for Egyptian roots, see, e.g., D. Frankfurter, Ritual Expertise in Roman
Egypt and the Problem with the Category Magician, in Envisioning Magic, ed. P. Shfer
and Hans G. Kippenberg (Leiden: Brill, 1997); D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt:
15
ritual experts, David Frankfurter writes that [a]s one moves from Oxyrhynchus to Alexandria and then to Rome the Egyptian priestor the
image of an Egyptian priestbecomes ever more weird, an eastern wise
man constructed almost entirely according to the Orientalist perspective or Roman culture. He goes on to say that traditions that originally function in a total social and economic complex now become
merely the hoary accoutrements of a foreign magos; and a[n Egyptian]
priestly literary culture . . . becomes the fascinatingly incomprehensible
wisdom of the eastern guru. 40 How much more so, I would argue, is
the case for the mystification of the image of the Indian sage and the
goods that have traveled so far along the silk roads.
What I am suggesting does not obviate those important Egyptian
and Persian roots for the Greco-Roman construction of the concept
of magic, but what it does do is extend the potential for foreign influence even farther south and to the east. At the very least, the connections that reached through Egypt to Kush and through Persia to India
transformed what was formerly the boundary of Roman interaction,
Egypt and Persia, into nearer territory through which one now passes
in order to get to the even more exotic locales. As interactions with
India and Kush turn Persia and Egypt into transit territory for reaching
the even more exotic, Romans may have been forced to confront more
directly Persian and Egyptian religion and their relationship to Roman
religion. As an example of how expanding trade connections can push
the origins of magic farther away, take Vergils late first-century b.c.e.
Amaryllis, who casts a love spell that echoes Simaethas spell to lure
Daphnis in Theocrituss third-century b.c.e. Idyll 2. The difference
is that while Simaetha uses an Arcadian herb in Theocrituss earlier
poem, Vergils Amaryllis uses Pontic herbs and poisons.41 Vergil puts
the magical herb farther along on one of the routes to the East, almost
as if the materia magica must come from a more marginal territory of
Greco-Roman trade in order to be considered magical. This is not dissimilar to a second-century c.e. version of Iphigenia among the Taurians
that instead puts the heroine on the shores of India.42
Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998); Graf, Magic
in the Ancient World, pp. 89117; and Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts, pp. 5260. This
discussion of Egyptian and Persian roots is not meant to overlook or discount the traditional
Greco-Roman association of Thessaly with magic.
40
Frankfurter, Ritual Expertise in Roman Egypt, p. 134.
41
Vergil, Eclogue 8.64109.
42
Warmington, Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, p. 132, and K. Free,
Greek Drama and the Kutiyattam, Theater Journal 33, no. 1 (1981): 82.
16
17
that first-century guide for merchants making the Egypt to India run.
The spices are vital components in elaborate ritual procedures.46 For
instance, PGM 4.12751322, a fourth-century c.e. bear charm which
accomplishes everything, requires frankincense (), myrrh
(), cassia leaf ( ), white pepper (
), bdellion (), asphoedel seed ( ),
amomon (), saffron (), and terebinth storax (
).47 The Eighth Book of Moses, in PGM 13.1720 (a
fourth-century text now at Leiden) writes: The proper incense of Kronos is styrax (), for it is heavy and fragrant; of Zeus, malabathron (); of Ares, kostos (); of Helios, frankincense
(); of Aphrodite, Indian nard ( ); of Hermes,
casia (); of Selene, myrrh ().48 Clearly these spices that
46
L. LiDonnici, Beans, Fleawort, and the Blood of a Hamadryas Baboon: Recipe
Ingredients in Greco-Roman Magical Materials, in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World,
ed. P. Mirecki and M. Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2002), discusses the range of ingredients used in
magical spells, dividing them into four categories: medicinal plants with pharmacological
efficacy, consecrated plants whose ritual harvest transforms them, substances regularly used
in worship (incense), and exotic substance with no ordinary role in religion. LiDonnici,
Beans, Fleawort, and the Blood of a Hamadryas Baboon, p. 362, includes spices from Asia,
Ethiopia, India, and Arabia in her third category, but does not explore in detail the conceptual issues at play when Indian spices are named. For detailed argument on the precise
Eastern origin of such spices (cinnamon and kasia, in particular), see the articles by J.-Cl.
Goyon, S. Amigues, and F. de Romanis in M.-F. Boussac and J.-F. Salles, ed., A Gateway from
the Eastern Mediterranean to India: The Red Sea in Antiquity (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005),
pp. 730.
47
K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae (19731974; repr., Munich: Saur, 2001),
4.12751322: Offering for the procedure: 4 drams of frankincense (), 4 drams
of myrrh (), 2 ounces each of cassia leaf ( ) and of white pepper
( ), 1 dram of bdellion (), 1 dram of asphoedel seed (
), 2 drams each of amomon (), saffron (), and terebinth storax
( ) (translated in H. D. Betz, Greek Magical Papyri in Translation
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986], p. 63), which one is supposed to combine
with other ingredients to make bread pellets. Also the burnt offering in Preisendanz, PGM
4.17161870, the sword of Dardanos love spell, ll. 18301840 The burnt offering which
endows Eros and the whole procedure with soul is this: manna (), 4 drams; storax
(), 4 drams; opium (), 4 drams; myrrh (), [4 drams]; frankincense
(), saffron (), bdella (), one-half dram each. Mix in rich dried fig and
blend everything in equal parts with fragrant wine, and use it for the performance (translated in Betz, Greek Magical Papyri, p. 71).
48
Preisendanz, PGM 13.354359: This is all in prelude to a direction later in the ritual
that directs, When the moon enters Aries, sleep on the floor during the previous night, and
when you have sacrificed burn also the seven approved kinds of incense in which the god
delights, for the seven censings of the seven stars. The incenses are these: malabathron, styrax, nard, costus, cassia, frankincense, myrrh. [Take these] and the seven flowers of the seven
stars, which are rose, lotus, narcissus, white lily, erephyllion, gillyflower, marjoram. Having
18
ground them all to a powder, with wine not mixed with sea water, burn all as incense. And
also wear cinnamon, for the god has given it magical power (translated in Betz, Greek
Magical Papyri, p. 182).
49
See also Preisendanz, PGM 1.142 (fourth to fifth century c.e. at Berlin, for daimon
assistant), which includes using myrrh ink (and also frankincense) ll. 710. Preisendanz,
PGM 1.232247, is a memory spell also using myrrh ink ( , Myrrh troglitis
in l. 244). Another memory spell is at Preisendanz, PGM 2.3640 (fourth century c.e.,
myrrh, cinquefoil, wormwood also with Ethiopian cumin [ ] [more
Ethiopian cumin in Preisendanz, PGM 4.270884, another love spell of attraction] and
nightshade).
50
For this list and Apiciuss use of foreign spices, see Miller, The Spice Trade of the
Roman Empire, pp. 1011. While Apicius compiled his recipes during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, the manuscript tradition of the recipe book begins in the fourth century
c.e. See E. Salza Prina Ricottis brief articles Indian Plants in Graeco-Roman Medical
Art, Indian Products in Roman Cuisine, and Indian Products in Roman Cosmetics, in
Cimino, Ancient Rome and India, pp. 88118.
51
Apicius, De re coquinaria: The Roman Cookery Book, A Critical Translation, ed.
B.Flower and E. Rosenbaum (London: George G. Harrap and Co., 1958), 6.5.4.
52
Apicius, De re coquinaria, 1.16.
53
When I began this study, I had hoped to find evidence of soma, that hallucinogenic
substance of Vedic Indian religion, traveling along the Silk Roads and being incorporated
into Greco-Roman magical practice. R. G. Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), attempted to identify soma as a particular
species of mushroom (amanita muscaria), while D. S. Flattery and M. Schwartz, Haoma and
19
Apart from these magical papyri, consider also the case of the
inscribed Greco-Roman magical gemstones from Late Antiquity. Here
we have a beguiling confluence of literary and material evidence. Philostratus describes Apollonius and his companions examination of
some stones in India: [Apollonius] took one of the stones and said
You excellent stone. I have found you at the right time and not without divine assistance. I suppose he had discerned some mysterious
divine power in it . . . [Apolloniuss companions] helped themselves
to plenty of the precious stones, planning to dedicate them to the gods
after returning to their own countries.54 This Apollonius reference
points to a first-century magicians interest in Indian stones and their
power. We know from the Periplus, Plinys Book 37, and Justinians
Digest, among other sources, the types of stones imported from India
along with spices. The Periplus lists lapis lazuli, onyx, and agate, while
the Digest includes sardonyx, hematite, and lapis lazuli among other
precious and semiprecious stones traveling west.55 Many of these were
certainly used for jewelry; many of them, however, were carved into
Greco-Roman magical amulets, sometimes with recognizable images
and Greek words, but often with undecipherable magical symbols.56
So what exactly might Apollonius have been looking at? Local manufacture of engraved gemstones with Greco-Roman subject matter has
been convincingly argued for southern India, particularly at Roman-
Harmaline: The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen Soma and Its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1989), have identified it as a wild rue (Peganum harmala) that grows in the Central
Asian steppes. Flattery and Schwartz, Haoma and Harmaline, pp. 1011, link soma in the
Rig Veda tradition with sauma in the Avesta, which would put it toward the west along the
Silk Roads and into the Zoroastrian tradition, a tradition that clearly was influential on the
development of ideas about magic at Rome. Unfortunately, neither Wassons mushroom nor
Flattery and Schwartzs rue show up in the Periplus, other customs records, or Preisendanz,
PGM (at least not that I was able to find). Common rue (Ruta graveolens), however, is indigenous to the Mediterranean and is a common ingredient in Apiciuss recipes and in medical
texts. For more on this, see A. Andrews, The Use of Rue as a Spice by the Greeks and the
Romans, Classical Journal 43, no. 6 (1948): 371373.
54
Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana 2.40.3, in Jones, Apollonius of Tyana, p. 225.
55
Evidence for gemstones in the Periplus is as follows: lapis lazuli (PME 39), onyx
(PME 48, 49, 51), and agate (PME 48, 49); Justinians Digest 39.4.16.7.
56
The classic study of these magical stones is C. Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets,
Chiefly Graeco-Egyptian (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1950). See also A.
Delatte and Ph. Derchain, Les Intailles Magiques Grco-gyptiennes (Paris: Bibliothque
Nationale, 1964). Cyranides, a text originating in fourth-century c.e. Egypt and claiming
to be based on an older stele found in the ruins of Babylon, discusses the magical powers of
stones, plants, birds, and fish.
20
57
V. Begley, Changing Perceptions of Arikamedu, chap. 1 in The Ancient Port of
Arikamedu: New Excavations and Researches 19891992, vol. 1, ed. V. Begley et al. (Pondicherry: Centre dHistoire et dArcheologie, 1996), pp. 2930. Begley points to gemstones at
various stages of finishing, as well as pottery shards with what look like practice carving of
intaglio-style engraving (figure inside an oval shape). As for Greco-Roman motifs on Indian
stones, the reverse (Indian elements on Greco-Roman stones) may also have occurred. A.
Mastrocinque has noted the possible attributes of an Indian god on a red jasper intaglio,
now at the Archaeology Museum at Naples (no. 19 in Bolletino di Numismatica Monografia
8.2.2, Sylloge Gemmarum Gnosticum, ed. A. Mastrocinque [Rome, 2007]). Elsewhere, Mastrocinque has argued effectively for the wide-ranging syncretic iconography on gemstones,
in particular the god/monster Sandas, portrayed in a way that drew on Anatolian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and even Indian components (The Cilician God Sandas and the Greek
Chimaera: Features of Near Eastern and Greek Mythology Concerning the Plague, Journal
of Near Eastern Religions 7 [2007]: 197217).
58
See S. Asthana, Harappan Trade in Metal and Minerals: A Regional Approach,
in Harappan Civilization: A Recent Perspective, ed. G. L. Possehl (New Delhi: American
Institute of Indian Studies, 1993), pp. 271286, for a discussion of the mineral resources
of the Indus River Valley. For discussion of how these seals traveled in Bronze Age trade
contexts, see C. T. Edens, Indus-Arabian Interaction during the Bronze Age: A Review
of the Evidence, in Harappan Civilization, pp. 344, 346, 353, and M. Tosi, The Harappan
Civilization beyond the Indian Subcontinent, in Harappan Civilization, pp. 369, 372.
59
Parker, Ex Oriente Luxuria, pp. 8084. See also Potter, Odor and Power, p.180,
for what he calls the vertical links between members of the highest Roman aristocracy and
members of the luxury trades who served their needs.
21
the Roman elite were the primary consumers of the luxury goods that
trade with India and Kush brought to Rome, those elite had less actual
knowledge about the source of those goods than the merchants who
transported them and, I would add, the slaves from those same areas
would have had. While the movement in slaves was primarily from
west to eastIndian markets had a large appetite for the slaves that
Roman merchants brought in their directionthere is nonetheless evidence of slaves from India being transported to Rome.60 Four times, the
Periplus mentions slaves headed from the East to Rome.61 These exotic
slaves, directly and indirectly, could add to the mystery of the goods
that traveled with them. Slaves, already a marginalized and threatening group, carried cultural knowledge about the spices and their use. To
imagine how slaves and the spices from their land of origin could be
associated with magic, one need think only of Tituba in colonial New
England. Her exotic origins, be they African, Caribbean, or Native
American, contributed to Puritan fears that she was the ritual expert
whose knowledge brought the devil to New England and bewitched
the young girls of Salem.62 Just as Titubas syncretic worldview contributed to accusations about her role in witchcraft, the syncretism at
Rome to which Indian slaves would have contributed may well have
been a part of the exoticizing, if not magicalizing, of the goods that
came from their lands.63
Conclusions
So where does this evidence get us? I do not mean to suggest that all
the descriptions of Greco-Roman witches can or should be directly
linked to Meroitic Kush, or India, or transregional tradethe evidence
60
Warmington, Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, pp. 145146, 358 n. 1,
and Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, p. 22, for a review of evidence of Roman-Indian
slave trade.
61
PME 8, 13, 31, 36.
62
For debate about Titubas country of origin and her role in the Salem crisis, see
E.Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies (New York:
New York University Press, 1996).
63
In the midst of his catalogue of the silliness and extremes of womens religion, the
late first-century satirist Juvenal (6.585586) describes how wealthy women will pay for
answers from a Phrygian or Indian augur well-skilled in the stars and the heavens. Already
then, at the height of Roman-Indian trade, we see hints about Indian religious practice seeping into Rome in a way that Juvenal, at least, finds unacceptable. Textual variants for this
passage include inde, indi, and Indae.
22
64
LiDonnici, Beans, Fleawort, and the Blood of a Hamadryas Baboon, p. 376, and
Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, pp. 224237.
65
This article has not dealt with China, but there is a great deal of scholarship that
addresses Roman-Chinese interaction, especially with respect to the silk trade; see, e.g.,
F.Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (1885; New York: Paragon Books, 1966); C. G. Seligman, The Roman Orient and the Far East, Antiquity 11 (1937): 530; Teggart, Rome and
China; S. Lieberman, Who Were Plinys Blue-Eyed Chinese, Classical Philology 52, no. 3
(1957): 174177; J. Thorley, The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at Its
Height, circa A.D. 90130, Greece and Rome 18, no. 1 (1971): 7180; J. Ferguson, China
and Rome, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rmischen Welt II.9.2 (1978): 581603; F. Wood,
The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002); and I. Gardner, S. N. C. Lieu, and K. Parry, From Palmyra to Zayton: Epigraphy
and Iconography, Silk Road Studies 10 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005).
23
The spell blends recognizable Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist elements in a form those who study Greco-Roman curse tablets would
recognize. It is a powerful reminder that religious ideas, detached from
their original social contexts, flowed east and west on the silk roads and
gained ritual power.
66
H.-J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia (New York:
HarperCollins, 1993), p. 164. For a synthetic treatment of the movement of religious ideas
east and west in the pre-Islamic period, see R. C. Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road: Overland
Trade and Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century (New York: St. Martins Press,
1999), pp. 2387.
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