In Roman law there was, at least at first, no offence simply called "magic". There was, however, a word with an ambiguous meaning, veneficium, which could refer both to poisoning and to the use of potions and occult practices. Around this word, over the course of four centuries, a genuine body of legislation against the magical arts was built. Its starting point is a law from the age of Sulla.
Sulla's law
In 81 BC, during the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis was passed, the Cornelian law on assassins and poisoners. It was a law reorganising criminal justice: it set up a permanent court and punished those who killed, those who went about armed with the intent to kill, and those who prepared, sold or administered poisons.
The law did not explicitly mention magicians. But the term venenum was slippery. The Roman jurists themselves noted it: there was a venenum bonum, the drug that heals, and a venenum malum, the substance that kills. And between the two categories lay love potions, ointments, preparations whose nature no one really knew.
From poison to spell
For a Roman, the difference between poisoning and bewitching was not as obvious as it is to us. Both acted in secret, at a distance, through something the victim did not see. The veneficus was the one who harmed by hidden means, whether a herb or a formula.
So it was that, little by little, the lex Cornelia became the legal basis for prosecuting magical practices as well. No new law was needed: it was enough for jurists and magistrates to widen the interpretation of the old one.
The early empire: astrologers and magicians expelled
During the first century AD the issue also took on a strong political colouring. Tacitus, in the Annals, relates that in AD 16 the young senator Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus was accused of consulting astrologers and magicians on matters touching imperial power. After his death the senate decreed the expulsion of astrologers and magicians from Italy; two of them were put to death.
Here the fear was not so much harm to a private individual as the possibility that someone might question the stars or the spirits about the death of the emperor. Private divination about the ruler's fate became a suspicion of conspiracy.
The Sentences of Paul
The most explicit document comes later, with the Pauli Sententiae, a collection of legal maxims attributed to the great jurist Julius Paulus but probably compiled around AD 300. In its commentary on the lex Cornelia, the text lists a series of cases that show how far the concept had by then expanded.
The main rules can be summarised as follows:
- whoever performs impious or nocturnal rites to enchant, bind or constrain someone is punished with death;
- whoever is an accomplice in the magical art suffers the ultimate punishment;
- magicians themselves are condemned to be burned alive;
- no one may own books of the magical art: if found, they are burned publicly and the owner is punished;
- whoever administers love potions, even without intending harm, is punished because the act sets a bad example.
Different penalties by rank
A typical feature of Roman criminal law in this period is the distinction between honestiores and humiliores, citizens of high rank and those of modest condition. For the same offence, penalties varied greatly.
| Rank | Typical penalty for magical books |
|---|---|
| Honestiores | Deportation to an island and confiscation of property |
| Humiliores | Capital punishment |
The same logic applied to love potions: condemnation to the mines for the humblest, relegation with loss of part of one's estate for the notables. If the person who had received the potion died, the penalty became capital for everyone.
The fear of books
The ban on owning magical texts deserves attention. It was not only the act that was punished, but knowledge preserved in writing. The book was considered dangerous in itself, because it allowed anyone to repeat formulas and procedures. It is no coincidence that many ancient magical texts have reached us only in fragmentary form, or thanks to chance finds in the sands of Egypt.
It is the same fear that, centuries later, would accompany the history of grimoires in Europe: secret knowledge becomes suspect precisely because it can be passed on.
An overall view
The trajectory of the lex Cornelia shows how a rule born against murderers became, through progressive extension, the main instrument against magic in the Roman world. The shift was made possible by a worldview in which poison, potion and spell belonged to the same family of invisible dangers. Understanding this worldview helps us read ancient sources without projecting modern categories onto them.
In short
- The lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis was passed in 81 BC under Sulla against assassins and poisoners.
- The term veneficium covered poisons, potions and occult practices, allowing the law to be extended to magic.
- In AD 16, after the Libo Drusus affair, astrologers and magicians were expelled from Italy.
- The Sentences of Paul punish nocturnal rites, magicians, possession of magical books and love potions.
- Penalties varied sharply between honestiores and humiliores.
