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95 Chapter 3 Identifying the Remains of Magic in the Village of Karanis An Official Accusation of Magic Magic was alive and well in the villages of the Roman empire. Our sources point to the rural town as a place where spells and curses lurked around every corner. We can well imagine village grandmothers curling fingers around thumbs to avoid the evil eye or swarthy foreigners enchanting young women by more than their good looks. For Egypt and rest of the Mediterranean, there are a few tantalizing anecdotes about magic at the village level, such as the fantastic (yet fictional) tales preserved in Apuleius’s Metamorphosis or the inscription that thanks Jupiter Optimus Maximus for his assistance in locating the curses that had been cast against local officials. Surprisingly, we possess one documented case of magical attack against a local man from the village of Karanis. Sometime in the spring of 197 CE, Gemellus, who is also known as Horion and Gaius Julius Horigenes, ran into trouble with one Sotas and his brother Julius, two sons of Eudas.1 Gemellus possessed only one eye and saw poorly 1. P.Mich. VI 422 and P.Mich. VI 423–24 (duplicates). Original publication: P.Mich. VI pp.117–25. Discussion: H. I. Bell, review of Papyri and Ostraca from Karanis by Herbert C. Youtie and Orsamus M. Pearl, JRS 35 (1945): 40; N. Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman rule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 78–79; J.-J. Aubert, “Threatened wombs: Aspects of ancient uterine magic,” GRBS 30, no. 3 (1989): 437–38; Women and society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A sourcebook, ed. J. Rowlandson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 141–43; T. Derda, Arsinoites nomos: Administration of the Fayum under Roman rule (Warsaw: Faculty of Law and Administration of Warsaw University, 2006), 208; Frankfurter, “Fetus magic and sorcery fears in Roman Egypt”; A. Z. Bryen and A. Wypustek, “Gemellus’ evil eyes (P.Mich. VI 423–24),” GRBS 49, no. 4 (2009). The archive of Gaius Apolinarius 96 Materia Magica out of the other; he often made reference to his disability in his correspondence with the authorities.2 It was during the sowing season that the initial conflict transpired. The brothers entered Gemellus’s property and, according to the text, hindered him through the power that they exercised in the vicinity. The conflict was presumably over landownership, as Gemellus is careful to inform the prefect to whom the petition is addressed that he had inherited the property of his father and uncle without “opposition from anyone” (ll. 12–13; 19–20). We do not know the outcome of this initial petition, but Sotas soon died (presumably an unrelated event), and Julius, his brother, continued the family feud. During the harvest season, Julius forcibly entered Gemellus’s fields and took the agricultural produce that was awaiting collection. In a petition to the local authorities, Gemellus records what followed: To Hierax also called Nemesion, strategos of the division of Herakleides of the Arsinoite nome, from Gemellus also called Horion, son of Gaius Apolinarius , Antinoite. I appealed, my lord, by petition to the most illustrious prefect, Aemilius Saturninus, informing him of the attack made upon me by a certain Sotas, who held me in contempt because of my weak vision and wished himself to get possession of my property with violence and arrogance, and I received his sacred subscription authorizing me to appeal to his excellency the epistrategos. Then Sotas died and his brother Julius, also acting with the violence characteristic of them, entered the fields that I had sown and carried away a substantial quantity of hay; not only that, but he also cut dried olive shoots and heath plants from my olive grove near the village of Kerkesoucha. When I came there at the time of the harvest, I learned that he had committed these transgressions. In addition, not content, he again trespassed with his wife and a certain Zenas, having with them a brephos (βρέφοs), intending to hem in my cultivator with malice (βουλόμενοι τὸν γεωργόν μου φθώνῳ περικλῖσαι) so that he should abandon his labor after having harvested in part from another Niger is discussed in I. Biezunska-Malowist, “La famille du vétéran romain C. Iulius Niger de Karanis,” Eos 49 (1957); R. Alston, Soldier and society in Roman Egypt: A social history (New York: Routledge, 1995), 129–32. 2. In P.Mich. VI 425, Gemellus claims that he was the victim of violence by a tax collector because of his impaired vision...

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