Venom from the Moon
The tumultuous politics of the late Roman Republic gave rise to a truly terrifying figure in Latin literature: the hideous and necromantic Roman witch. In this spooky season three finale, we meet Horace's Canidia and Lucan's Erictho. Poison, blood, and prophecies from the undead: what else could you ask for in ancient Rome?
Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben with original music by Purple Planet.
Music
Purple Planet - Ambuscade
Purple Planet - Constricted
Purple Planet - Harbinger of Doom
Purple Planet - Immuration
Purple Planet - Lost Souls
Purple Planet - Sense of Loss
Purple Planet - Shadowlands
Sources
Primary
Horace. Epodes. In Horace for English Readers, Being a Translation of the Poems of Quintus Horatius Flaccus into English Prose, translated and edited by E. C. Wickham. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903.
Horace. Satire. 1.8. In The Works of Horace, translated by C. Smart, edited by Theodore Alois Buckley. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1863.
Keats, John. Lamia. Project Gutenberg.
Lucan. The Pharsalia of Lucan: Literally Translated into English Prose with Copious Notes, translated by Henry Thomas Riley. London: George Bell & Sons, 1903.
Secondary
Andrikopoulos, Giorgos. “Witches in Greece and Rome.” The Routledge History of Witchcraft, edited by Johannes Dillinger. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
Ankarloo, Bengt and Stuart Clark. Ancient Greece and Rome: Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Burriss, Eli Edward. “The Terminology of Witchcraft.” Classical Philology 31, no. 2 (1936): 137-145.
Clauser, Mark Douglas. “Lucan’s Erictho and the Roman Witch Tradition.” Dissertation. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 1993.
Edmonds III, Radcliffe G. Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Leinweber, David Walter. “Witchcraft and Lamiae in ‘The Golden Ass’.” Folklore 105, no. 1-2 (1994): 77-82.
McGuire, L. H. “Witches in the Roman World: A Literary and Sociological Study.” Dissertation. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1994.
Meggitt, Justin J. “Did Magic Matter? The Saliency of Magic in the Early Roman Empire.” Journal of Ancient History 1, no. 2 (2013).
Montesano, Marina. Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2018.
Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2002.
Paule, Maxwell Teitel. “Qvae Saga, Qvis Magvs: On the Vocabulary of the Roman Witch.” Classical Quarterly 64, no. 2 (2014): 745-757.
Paule, Maxwell Teitel. Canidia, Rome’s First Witch. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Ripat, Pauline. “Roman Women, Wise Women, and Witches.” Phoenix 70, no. 1/2 (Spring-Summer 2016): 104-128.
Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. “From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and the Roman Witch in Classical Literature.” In Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World, edited by Kimberly B. Stratton and Dayna S. Kalleres, 41–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
