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.qxd 30/10/2007 12:12 Page 101Binding Magic and Erotic Figurines 101boy or a child.Indirect evidence for this view comes from the second-century ce physician Galen, who refutes the claim that those whoexperience erotic frenzy do so as a result of some small and newborn godholding burning torches.176 Although this remark does not mentionfigurines, it confirms that in Galen s time the conception of Eros as an agentof erotic suffering was as a newborn, or in any case a very young child.From our perspective, such a view helps to explain why the rites for anim-ation in PGM IV and XII relative to the others emphasize appeasementand persuasion, and perhaps why in the case of PGM XII.1842 71 somuch food is offered to the figurine including nestlings and chickens.It also may explain why the user of this Eros figurine has to take it tothe door of the erotic victim the figurine literally has to be shown theway, which suggests that it is not socialized here as an adult that wouldbe expected to know such things.At the same time, the rite of offeringflowers and food to the Eros figurine is exactly what one might expect areal person to offer his beloved.Moreover, by taking the figurine to thedoor of the beloved and knocking on it as part of the spell, not only doesthe practitioner enable the figurine to find its way, the spell also enablesthe practitioner to go some way toward accomplishing what he has set outto do in the first place.The rite ensures that he may at least have an oppor-tunity to establish contact with his beloved.Unlike previous approaches to Eros figurines that are preoccupied withwhether they actually move,177 the model of social agency used here isultimately concerned with how the users of magical objects deploy theminto available social categories.Late antiquity is rife with stories aboutanimated statues and figurines of many kinds, as authors such asPausanias, Plutarch, Iamblichus, Apuleius, Lucian, and others attest.Butthey are not all treated equally.Showering an Eros figurine with gifts offlowers and sweets is to treat it like a beloved, but it is also to entice a youngand perhaps characteristically independent child into cooperating.Abusing a figurine in the context of a binding curse that identifies itsvictim angers the figurine and leads it, as we might expect from aninjured person, to ventilate its outrage on the intended victim.The termsof each case have to be examined separately, because not all effigiesbehave equally.In turn the rationale for the ritual treatment they receivecan only be understood once the nature of a figurine s personality andbehavior has been determined.There are no simple ways to summarize the evidence for binding magicand, as an outflow of it, erotic magic.We have seen, for example, that theunderlying notion of binding in earlier tablets is often metaphorical,whatever the specific genre of curse, while in later antiquity the metaphortends to become literalized.Some attempts are made to restrain the 9781405132381_4_003.qxd 30/10/2007 12:12 Page 102102 Binding Magic and Erotic Figurinesrelevant body parts as they relate to specific realms of activity sotongues and minds are restrained in judicial curses, since these are therelevant features of one s judicial adversaries, while in competitivechariot race curses (which we have not discussed here in any depth) therunning, power, soul, onrush, speed, and legs of individually namedhorses are bound since these are the most salient features to disable.178There is also the curious, and perhaps non-Greek,179 feature that bindingcurses which enumerate body parts typically flow from head to toe.In somesense, then, we can say that the curse formulae envisage or project itstarget person standing as its language unfolds, body part by bodypart, but the reasons for this pattern as yet are unclear.Nor is it clear whybody parts accumulate in curses over time, as if a developing sense of completeness were at issue.Erotic magic extends the metaphor of binding into the realm ofMediterranean passion.Despite recent research in this area,180 someimportant unanswered questions remain about Greco-Egyptian eroticspells.For example, the binding of external body parts is consistent withcurse tablets in other genres.However, in the second- to third-century ceSarapammon and Ptolemais spell from Middle Egypt we considered,181 thespeaker also makes reference to dragging Ptolemais by her inward parts(Äv ÃÀ»i³Ç½±, l.23) until she comes to Sarapammon.This formula is alsofound in other Greco-Egyptian curses,182 but does not appear to be com-mon in Attic or other curse tablets.183 There are other references to the innerbody parts of people in the Greek magical papyri some of which are quiteshocking, as in the slander spell to Selene that claims as part of its slan-der of the goddess that she has made a headband from a man s intestines (Äv w½ÄµÁ±).184 If it is true, as we have noted, that spells in theGreek magical papyri and those adapted from it were composed byEgyptian temple priests, it may be worth investigating whether theirtypical practice of mummification of the dead, with its elaborate preser-vation of internal organs, contributed this kind of local color.Interestingly,the Middle Egypt spell for Sarapammon does, after all, address itself tonumerous divinities including Anoubis, the underworld jackal god whopresides over mummification.Figurines used in binding curses and especially the erDtes used in eroticspells dramatically illustrate the need to contextualize the use of figurineswithin the broader attitudes toward Greek and Roman statuary generally.I have offered Alfred Gell s model of social agency as an approach toinanimate objects that avoids the trap of symbolism. But this is a com-plicated issue and approaches to it have never fully divorced themselvesfrom Emile Durkheim s formulation of symbolic forms, or collectiverepresentations , which separate a literal and symbolic meaning in ritual 9781405132381_4_003.qxd 30/10/2007 12:12 Page 103Binding Magic and Erotic Figurines 103action.185 One effect of viewing magical figurines of any kind within thebroader context of Greek and Roman social agency is that it subsumesmagical behavior into ritual behavior generally toward objects, in this casestatuary.186 I have not dwelt at any length here on the scholarly use ofthe term magic and its underlying conceptions, apart from the briefconsiderations in chapter 2, partly because good treatments are availableelsewhere, but mainly because I think the discussion is largely mislead-ing to the extent that it focuses on terminology rather than on specificritual practices.187 It is not, ultimately, a question of whether the Greeksor Romans called a given practice magic , let alone whether we call it that.Rather, the task at hand is to show which social understanding socialto include visible and invisible agents constructions of communication,emotion, health, disability, the fragmented body, or integrated personhoodunderlie the rituals of binding and erotic magic that we find in theancient world. 9781405132381_4_004.qxd 30/10/2007 12:12 Page 104CHAPTER 4Homeric Incantations1212121Homer presents the earliest examples of magic in Greek literature,including the episodes we have seen with Circe, the drugs of Helen (onwhich see below), the healing of Odysseus thigh with an incantation,1 andAphrodite s magical strap (kestos himas) used to incite erotic passion.2 Curseswere attributed to him3 and there is some evidence that late authors, suchas Philostratus, conceived of Homer as a necromancer
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