When we think of the relationship between Rome and magic, what comes to mind are the imperial laws against magicians and astrologers or the great trials of late antiquity. Yet the first legal trace of this relationship is much older, and it is found in the text the Romans regarded as the source of all their law: the Law of the Twelve Tables, drawn up according to tradition by the decemvirs in the middle of the fifth century BC.
A text we know only in fragments
The Twelve Tables have not come down to us complete. The original tablets were already lost in antiquity, and their content has been reconstructed by modern scholars by gathering the quotations made by later authors: jurists, orators, antiquarians, grammarians. This means that every fragment reaches us filtered through someone who was reading it centuries later, in a language that had become archaic and was sometimes hard to understand even for him.
For magic, the two main witnesses are:
- Pliny the Elder, who in book XXVIII of the Natural History reports the expressions qui fruges excantassit, "whoever has charmed away the crops", and qui malum carmen incantassit, "whoever has chanted an evil chant";
- Seneca, who in the Natural Questions recalls that the law forbade anyone to "charm" another person's fruits.
The carmen: more than a song
To understand these rules we must start from the word carmen. In archaic Latin it does not simply mean a poem or a song, but any formula pronounced in a solemn and rhythmic form: a prayer, an oath, a legal formula, a sentence. Early Roman law was itself made of carmina, fixed words that had to be spoken exactly, or the act would be void.
In this world the effective word was not a metaphor. Whoever spoke the right formula produced a real effect: concluded a contract, consecrated a place, bound a witness. It was therefore perfectly consistent that the same power could be used to harm, and that the law should deal with it.
Magical chant or defamatory song?
Here begins the debate that has long accompanied these fragments. Cicero, in the De re publica (the passage is known to us through Augustine), recalls that the Twelve Tables punished with death anyone who had sung or composed a song bringing infamy or disgrace upon another. For Cicero, in short, it was a rule against defamation in verse.
Pliny, by contrast, quotes the malum carmen in a context devoted to the power of words and spells, and reads it as a ban on magic. Modern scholars are divided:
| Interpretation | Main argument |
|---|---|
| Rule against spells | The verb incantare and Pliny's context |
| Rule against insult | Cicero's testimony on the defamatory song |
| Two separate rules | The sources may refer to different provisions |
Many now think that for the archaic mind the distinction was less sharp than it seems to us: a public, solemn word that strikes at someone's honour really damages them, almost like a curse.
Stealing the harvest with words
The rule on crops is clearer. The verb excantare means drawing something out by a spell, and the fragment refers to the belief that a farmer could transfer his neighbour's harvest into his own field. It was a very widespread idea in the ancient world. Virgil, in the eighth Eclogue, has a character say that he has seen the sorcerer Moeris move sown crops into another field.
In an agricultural society, where the harvest was life itself, a neighbour who obtained more fruit than the others could easily become a suspect. By providing for this offence, the law gave legal form to a real fear of the community.
The case of Furius Chresimus
Pliny tells, citing the annalist Calpurnius Piso, an episode that perfectly illuminates this mentality. A freedman named Gaius Furius Chresimus obtained from a small field harvests far richer than those of his neighbours, who owned much larger estates. The neighbours accused him of drawing other people's crops to himself by spells.
Summoned to trial before the people, Chresimus brought his equipment into the forum: well-made tools, heavy hoes, a sturdy plough, well-fed oxen and his daughter, a strong and hard-working girl. Then, pointing to them, he told the citizens that these were his "spells", adding that he could not show them his sleepless nights, his toil and his sweat. He was acquitted unanimously.
The anecdote, which Pliny uses in praise of farming labour, shows two things:
- the accusation of magic was a concrete possibility in disputes between neighbours;
- the most effective defence was to make the natural cause of success visible.
The value of these fragments
The few words of the Twelve Tables describe a world in which law, religion and magic spoke the same language. A formula pronounced with solemnity could found a pact or ruin a neighbour, and the lawgiver did not deny this power: he simply regulated its use. It is a lesson that the Studio Esoterico Cornelio considers precious for understanding the Western tradition: the ritual word is born as an act, not as mere expression.
In short
- The Twelve Tables, in the mid-fifth century BC, contained rules on the malum carmen and on charming away another's crops.
- We know them only from quotations by later authors such as Pliny, Seneca and Cicero.
- The carmen was a solemn, rhythmic formula, legal or religious, considered effective in itself.
- Whether the malum carmen was a spell or a defamatory song is still debated.
- The case of Furius Chresimus shows how accusations of magic arose from farming disputes between neighbours.
