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Apuleius's witches

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

We have just seen a very good magic trick: The one that made the moon come down from the sky, but if it had not been for Medea’s casket falling on them the Thessalian women would never have been able to perform such a thing. However we are convinced that also without Medea’s help these girls were already on their way to become quite good at their trade, and many were the stories told about them. One of this has been written by Apuleius who, as we can easily see reading his “Golden Ass”, seems to have always been attracted by magic, enchantments and spells Besides when he lived in Sabratha, a Lybian town, where he married a rich widow, the mother of one of his fellow-students, he was accused to practice this black art, and in his “De Magia” we can read how he defended himself.
The following story gives us a good insight on how ancient men imagined witches and their crimes.
Apuleius’s witches – This tale is found in the second book of Apuleius “Metamorphosis”, and it is full of magic: Evil witches, spells, Egyptian prophets, dead men who speak, everything in short. Apuleius tells us that one day a student called Telephron, arrived at Larisa, a Thessalian town: He had no money and, not knowing what else to do he was wandering about, when, standing on a big rock, he saw an old man who at the top of his voice was reading an announcement and proclaimed that anyone who would accept to watch over a corpse would earn a good reward. Amazed Telephron asked to the old man if by any chance in Thessaly dead men had the custom to escape and take to the wood, but offended the old man told him that, as soon as it was known that someone died, all the Thessalian witches rushed there to rip with their teeth pieces of his body and use them for their spells. Therefore, to avoid that this could happen, it was necessary to find someone who would accept to picket it. Then the penniless young student asked what he had to do to get this job, and he was told that he had to stay awake all the night, that he must always look in front of him, never turning to the right or the left and, what was more important, never shut his eyes,.
This was absolutely necessary because the witches could transform themselves in birds, dogs, mice and their art was such that they could also came as flies and, throwing a spell, make the guard doze. If he had really felt asleep and the witches have taken parts of the dead man’s body, the same pieces lacking from the corpse would have been cut to the young man and substituted to the stolen ones. It looked quite dreary, however for a substantial sum of money the young man accepted to keep guard, and, arriving at the room where the dead man had been laid down, he found a person who was taking note of all the part of his face and certified that they were all there. Then an oil lamp was given to Telephron and he was left alone. For some time everything went well except that for the fear he kept on trembling. Then in the middle of the night a weasel entered the room looking hard at him; he understood that she was a witch and succeeded in chasing her away. However she must have had the time to put a spell on him because after this he felt in a deep slumber
At the dawn of the day after, Telephron was awakened by the soldiers’s trumpets
Almost after this came the widow with seven witnesses who made certain that the dead man’s body was intact. Then the woman, after having ordered to her administrator to pay him the fixed sum, highly praised the young man and even told him that, if only he wanted this, she could hire him. Telephron wanted to express his thanks to her, but doing this he pronounced some words that in Larisa were believed to bring bad luck. Immediately the widow’s servants rushed at him, beat him thoroughly and tore both his hairs and his clothes. Then they threw him out of the house.
The poor young man was still nearby when he saw the funeral cross the agora. Immediately a weeping and sobbing man jumped in front of the coffin and told to the crowd that, for inheriting his fortune and marry her lover, the widow had poisoned his nephew. At this the people wanted to lapidate the woman and burn her house but she protested her innocence and called all the gods to witness it.
Then the old man said “Well, divine providence shall judge. Lets call that famous prophet Zaclas, the Egyptian who lives here. He assured me that for a substantial sum of money he can make the soul of a deceased man return from the death reign, also if it will only last a brief moment”.
After he had said so, he called Zaclas, and a white clad man with thatched palm-leaves sandals and a shaved head like all the Egyptian priests, came along. Then, the uncle of the deceased, after having kissed his hand and embraced his knees, implored the prophet for all the stars, for the gods below, for the Nile’s island, for the flood and for all the other things that came to his mind, to give life back to the dead man so that he could witness the truth of his accusation against the widow. Thus he pleaded, and Zaclas with his very special herbs touched for three times the mouth and the breast of the deceased. Then, after turning toward east, he began to pray. Little by little the dead man lungs began to swell and his heart to beat and, lifting his head, and his shoulder he asked why they hadn’t left him be, and entreated them to leave him rest in peace.
But Zaclas intervened and told him that, if he would refuse to reveal what had been the cause of his death, the most terrible demons would come to torture him. At this menace the questioned man answered that he had died because he drank some poison given to him by his new wife. The woman of course denied everything and in the assistance some believed the deceased and some her. But the husband asserted that he was able to proof the truth of what he had told and pointing to Telephron, the young man who had guarded his body, he told them that after having tried for a long time to elude his attention, the witches had succeeded to throw a spell on him and that he felt asleep. Then these evil beings called the dead man “Telephron”, because he and the young man had the same name, and while the deceased tried feebly to obey their orders, Telephron, the live one, rose and in a sleep-walking state went toward them. At this point the witches who had entered the room cut his ears and his nose and replaced them by wax models.
Everybody turned to look at the young man who instinctively touched his ears and his nose. Immediately those pieces of his face disconnected from it and, gliding through his hands, fell on the ground.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
APULEIUS, Metamorphosis II
E.A. WALLIS BUDGE, Egyptian Magi, Bury St.Edmunds, Suffolk, 1975, first published in 1899 pp. 11-12