Home -> Articoli -> Roma - Magia

Legal curses

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

To curse, but in legal way
At Rome to deal with witches, magicians and all kind of people who practiced the black art was considered a capital crime, but to curse someone it was not necessary to go to one of them. All Romans could easily do so but they had to do it by themselves and using only the ancient holy formulae of their own country. Such was the curse of Ateius Capito, a Roman who not only was strictly attached to his ideas, but was always disposed to attack the ones who not only didn’t heed his words but, what was even worse, ignored his advices. Plutarch tells us all about this story. What afterward happened proved that Capito was right and that he had a lot of good reasons to disapprove a war against the dreadful Parths. All the portents were against it, but, hoping in great victories and even greatest spoils, Crassus didn’t want to desist.
Capito decided that he had to do something drastic to punish him, and having been informed that Cicero had asked Crassus to take part to a dinner that had to be served in the gardens of Crassipedes, his son in law, he built an altar at the gate from which. Crassus had to go out. Here, as soon as, among ceaseless libations and thick fumigations, he saw him coming, he pronounced dire curses calling by their names some strange and frightful divinities, and asking them to punish Crassus for his misdeeds. These secret and ancient curses were hurled with such a force that whoever was hit by them could not escape. However also them who practiced this magic didn’t get away free. Everybody knew that the misfortune would not only hit the ones who had been cursed, but also those who cursed them: Thus very rarely the Romans took recourse to those rites and even more rarely they did them light heartedly.
Also Cassius Dio talk about those terrible rites. However Capito didn’t change his mind and didn’t let the fright for what could happen to himself dissuade him from his purpose. The general and his son met their defeat and an awful death: to punish Crassus for his avidity the Parths poured melted gold in his throat.
We still don’t know what happened to Capito.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. BAYET, La malediction du tribun C. Ateius Capiton in Latomus XLIII, Bruxelles 1960
CICERO, Ep. ad Fam., I.9-20
PLUT. Cicero, 26.1
PLUT. Crassus, 16.4.8.