Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Burning for it: Erotic spells for fever and compulsion in the ancient Mediterranean world
LiDonnici, Lynn
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1998; 39, 1; ProQuest
pg. 63

Burning for It: Erotic Spells 
for Fever and Compulsion in the 
Ancient Mediterranean World 

Lynn LiDonnici 

T
HE INTERPLAY between personal emotions and political 
and social factors is an essential component to the 
understanding of erotic and sexual relationships in the 

Greco-Roman world, as many significant and ground-breaking 
studies in recent years have demonstrated.1 This perspective 
has been employed in the interpretation of a broad range of an­
cient sources: legal texts, literary works, visual representations, 
and religious literature. Of this last type, religious literature, a 
particular sub-set, the so-called "magical" erotic spelh} for the 

1 For basic introduction to the issues, see Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On 
Desire and the Body in Antiquity, trans!' Felicia Pheasant (London 1988: 
hereafter ROUSSELLE); David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin, 
edd., Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient 
Greek World (Princeton 1990); Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, 
Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York 1988); Maud 
Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Prince­
ton 1995: hereafter GLEASON); Simon Goldhill, Foucault's Virginity: Ancient 
Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (Cambridge 1995). 

2This field of study is presently engaged in a re-evaluation of terms such as 
"magic" and "spell" and their usefulness, or lack of usefulness, as terms and 
even as categories separate from religion or ritual overall. As no consensus on 
amended terminology has yet been achieved, I ask the reader's indulgence for 
my continued use of this problematic term. The arguments and conclusions of 
this article do not in fact apply broadly for ritual or religion overall, but 
rather assume a sub-category of religious practice that is known to be, or felt 
to be, socially problematic in one way or another. Any term we substitute for 
"magic" must, in my opinion, preserve the distinction between actions per-

Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 39 (1998) 63-98 
© 2000 GRBS 

63 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

64 BURNING POR IT 

attainment of a particular lover, has been a particularly 
important focus of interest and inquiry, despite the inconvenient 
uncertainty about the demographic and even cultural context 
from which these texts emerge.3 

The longer preserved handbooks of the Greek Magical Papyri 
are composite anthologies that, although copied for the most 
part in the third and fourth centuries, may preserve earlier and 
smaller compilations from a variety of sources.4 Scholarly tradi­
tion attributes to the majority of these manuscripts a find-spot 
in Thebes,s and some of the rituals contained in them clearly do 
reflect the religious life of Upper Egyptian temples. But they 
also contain much material that is, as Christopher Faraone has 
recently argued, a part of a wide multicultural tradition that is 
attested throughout the Mediterranean world, from the Clas­
sical period through late antiquity.6 Consideration of the 
ingredients required for the performance of many of the rituals 
contained in the handbooks also suggests that, while many are 
simple to perform and use affordable ingredients, a significant 

formed with full cultural approval and actions that are frowned upon. Until a 
better term comes along, "magic" will have to do. 

3Specifically, the question whether these materials should be considered 
"Greco-Roman" at all for any useful purpose, or whether they reflect contin­
uities from Egyptian (or Greco-Egyptian) temple practices; for full discussion 
of the problem and the latter point of view, see David Frankfurter, Religion in 
Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton 1998). 

4 For the composite nature of PGM handbooks, see Morton Smith, "P Leid J 
395 (PGM XllI) and Its Creation Legend," in A. Caquot, M. Hadas-Lebel, and 
J. Riaud, edd., Hellenica et Judaica: Hommage a Valentin Nikiprowetzky 
(Leuven/Paris 1986) 491-498; "The Eighth Book of Moses and How It 
Grew," Atti del XVII Congresso internazionale di papirologia II (Naples 1984) 
683-693; L. LiDonnici, "The Disappearing Magician: Literary and Practical 
Questions about the Greek Magical Papyri," in Benjamin G. Wright, ed., A 
Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of 
Robert A. Kraft (Atlanta 1999) 227-243. 

spar full discussion of the complex problem of the provenance of these texts 
see William Brashear, "The Greek Magical Papyri," ANRW II.18.5 (1995) 
3398-3412. 

6Christopher A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge [Mass.] 
1999), esp. 1-40. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 65 

proportion appear to assume relatively wealthy and leisured 
individuals who are either living in major market centers (cities) 
or have easy access to them? These factors suggest that there is 
really no single cultural (or temporal) context for every element 
that is now part of a handbook, and that, however they came to 
be compiled into their present forms, they preserve the interests 
and practices of very different groups of people, from very 
different worlds. 

At least one of these "worlds" appears to fit very comfort­
ably with the new discussions of elite and bureaucratic-class 
males, and the connection between some of the PGM spells to 
issues of power and prestige in these circles has frequently been 
explored.8 However, in light of the composite nature of PGM 
formularies, it should be remembered that while some examples 
may reflect this population, interpretations of these examples 
do not explain PGM as a whole. 

This paper focuses upon the more complicated and deluxe 
erotic rituals that require lots of time and very expensive 
ingredients, rituals that may be linked to the higher tevels of 
society, and compares some of the ideas they reflect about 
passion and health to those found in the otherwise unrelated 
corpus of medical writing, for which an intended audience of 

7Many of these ingredients are Arabian, Indian, and Far Eastern import 
goods that would be equally easy to obtain in any city under Roman rule; see 
L. LiDonnici, "Single-Stemmed Wormwood, Pinecones and Myrrh: Expense 
and Availability of Recipe Ingredients in the Greek Magical Papyri" (forth­
coming). 

8John J. Winkler's classic essay "The Constraints of Desire: Erotic Magical 
Spells," in Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in 
Ancient Greece (New York 1990) 71-100; fuller version "The Constraints of 
Eros" in Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink, edd., Magika Hiera: 
Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (New York 1991) 214-243; John G. Gager, 
ed., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells From the Ancient World (New York 1992: 
hereafter GAGER); Christopher A. Faraone, "The Agonistic Context of Early 
Greek Binding Spells," Magikil Hiera 3-32, and "Sex and Power: Male-Target­
ing Aphrodisiacs in the Greek Magical Tradition," Helios 19 (1992) 92-103; 
for interpretation in terms of misogyny see Bernadette J. Brooten, Love between 
Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago 1996) 
73-114. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

66 BURNING FOR IT 

elite males is more secure. Through this comparison, it may be 
possible to increase the understanding of the particular motif of 
fever and inflammation in certain spells, and to understand the 
social meanings and consequences of fever and passion in the 
public world of Greco-Roman men. 

Overview 

The surviving erotic spells can be broken down into unequal 
sub-groups: those that "work" in a neutral manner (a relatively 
small number), and those that use harm to the object (or victim) 
to achieve the ritual's goal (a much larger proportion of pre­
served spells).9 Of these, the type of harm invoked or sent is 
overwhelmingly illness, a method of erotic attraction that is 
hard for us to understand. Although several strands of modern 
medical and popular-medical thinking are increasingly prepared 
to admit that our own mental and emotional states may affect 
the health of our bodies, we reject any idea that the mental or 
emotional states of others may affect our health, except where 
their emotional agitation leads them to acts of overt violence. 10 

But the effect of another's emotional state upon the health of a 
victim appears regularly in the erotic spells, involving every kind 
of illness as the motivating factor designed to bring about the 
consummation of an attraction and its transformation into a 
relationship that has apparently not yet begun at the times the 
spells were cast. The illnesses are not "payback" or revenge for 
rejection, but function as modes of attraction. 

Not all erotic spells are harmful or involve the sending of 
illnesses. Many handbooks preserve recipes for substances to be 

9This grouping relates only to the issues of illness and harm. For an 
excellent and systematic overview of erotic spells, see Faraone (supra n.6) 
41-13l. 

IOOur revulsion toward this immediately causes a category reassignment 
that divorces these violent acts from the concept "love"; we search for other 
explanations in the psychology of the aggressor or in the power dynamics of 
our culture, thereby protecting the idea of "love" (and in modern times, the 
protected idea of "sexuality" as well). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 67 

"delivered" to the woman by the man's putting them on his 
penis just before sexual intercourse. These recipes should, I 

think, not be categorized with spells, but rather as aphrodisiacs, 
designed to increase pleasure in an existing relationship, and I 
am excluding them from the present study.l1 But there are spells 
for love or sex that are relatively benign in nature. One involved 
seven consecutive days of murmuring Aphrodite's name over 
and over to a woman while gazing into her eyes (PGM IV.1265-
1274)-whether she was successfully overcome by the spell or 
not, she certainly" got the message." It should be noted that this 
spell requires relatively easy, daily access to the "victim," and 
therefore probably implies an appropriate or licit relationship. 
The majority, however, of preserved erotic spells do utilize 
ideas of general or specific harm to the object,12 and of these, 
the majority use physical discomfort or illness,13 notably fevers, 
insomnia, and/or anorexia, to assault the victim with pain that, 
seemingly, will remit only in the presence of the spell-caster, 
perhaps even only during sexual intercourse. 

One extremely dramatic example of a "deluxe" erotic bind­
ing spell, probably from the fifth century, survives because it 
was wrapped around wax models of an embracing couple and 

11 Which is not to say that aphrodisiacs are without interest and completely 
free from the idea of harm; see Faraone, "Sex and Power" (supra n.8); also his 
"Aphrodite's Kestos and Apples for Atalanta: Aphrodisiacs in Early Greek 
Myth and Ritual," Phoenix 44 (1990) 219-243. 

12Sometimes, the spell is a slander of the victim, and informs various divine 
powers that the intended victim has blasphemed or dishonored them; in their 
outrage, these powers will supposedly punish the victim with desperate love 
for their new friend, the spell-caster. 

J3Using Betz's PGM translation (Greek Magical Papyri [Chicago 1986]) as 
a closed corpus for statistical purposes, we find the following: 31 erotic spells 
that send harm (of these, 19 use specific language of flaming, burning, etc.) com­
pared with 24 that do not (excluding 2 to be said "while kissing passionately" 
[PGM VII.40S-406, 661-663] and 14 "penis lotions," both of which types I 
exclude from this study as they involve increase of pleasure in ongoing rela­
tionships). It should be noted that, of the few spells cast by women, all but two 
are in the non-harmful category. Of the two women's spells in Betz that are 
harmful, both are of the slander type, neither invokes fever, and both are de­
signed to reclaim errant husbands. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

68 BURNING FOR IT 

placed, along with them, into a pottery vessel before being 
buried.14 Although the figures might suggest a loving relationship 
of a modern, egalitarian kind, the language of the spell is quite 
different:15 

Fetch Euphemia, whom Dorothea bore, for Theion, whom his 
mother Proechia bore, to love me with love and longing and 
affection and intercourse, with mad love. Burn her members, 
her liver, her female parts, until she comes to me, longing for 
me and not disobeying me ... 

In another long and complicated spell, the language is even more 
powerful: 16 

... [let her] be unable either to drink or eat, that she not be 
contented, not be strong, not have peace of mind, that she, NN, 
not find sleep without me ... Drag her, NN, by the hair, by her 
heart, by her soul, to me, NN, at every hour of life, day and 
night, until she comes to me ... and join[s] head to head and 
fasten[s] lip to lip and join[s] belly to belly and draw[s] thigh 
close to thigh and fit[s] black (pubic hair) together with 
black, and let her, NN, carry out her own sex acts with me, 
NN, for all eternity. 

This recipe also calls for a wax or clay image of a bound 
woman, kneeling, hands tied behind her back, threatened by the 
sword of Ares; this image is to be pierced by thirteen copper 
nails, through the brain and twelve other important body 
centers. A figurine of almost exactly this description has been 
foundY 

14Discussion in Gager 101-106. 

15Transl. Betz, GMP 307-309. 
16 This one is an erotic binding spell, but does not involve the use of fever or 

inflammatory language; PGM IV.296-466, transl. E. N. O'Neil, in Betz, GMP 
44-47. 

17Discussion in Winkler, "Constraints of Eros" (s upra n .8) 230-234. It 
was found with a lead tablet, the text of which is clearly related to PGM 
IV.296-466, important evidence that material in magical handbooks actually 
reflects real practice, even in elaborate and expensive spells like this one. 
Other examples of the text have been found: Gager 97-100. For full discussion 
see David G. Martinez, P.Michigan XVI: A Greek Love Charm from Egypt 
(P.Mich. 757) (Atlanta 1991). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIDONNICI 69 

The use of fever or inflammation in these harmful erotic 
spells is not designed to make the victim feel "warm" in the 

presence of the would-be lover, but rather to make her feel hot 

or inflamed, like a person coming down with fever, in his ab­
sence. By what pattern of thought did so many men of the later 

Greco-Roman world understand these measures as a reasonable 
form of courtship?18 I address this question by first tracing four 
trajectories through ancient ideology, whose convergence 

suggests a basic connection between power, health, and esteem. 

Body Heat: Illness and Emotion in Popular Medicine 

And not a few men, however many years they were ill through 
the disposition of their souls, we have made healthy by 
correcting the disproportion of their emotions. No slight 
witness of the statement is also our ancestral god Asc1epius 
who ordered not few to have odes written as well as to compose 
comical mimes and certain songs (for the motions of their 
passions, having become more vehement, have made the 
temperature of the body warmer than it should be); and for 
others, these not few either, he ordered hunting and horse 
riding and exercising in arms .... For he not only desired to 
awake the passion of these men because it was weak but also 
defined the measure by the form of the exercises.19 

18r say "men," because although popular literature and plays often depicted 
women, especially old and ugly women, as using erotic magic to gain strapping 
youths as lovers, the overwhelming majority of both "used" erotic spells and 
versions in magical handbooks indicate that they were cast by men in pursuit 
of women. The disparity has been explained in a variety of ways. Winkler 
argued that men dealt with eros by denial and transference or projection, 
therefore the lustful, magic-practicing women in literature by men. To account 
for the dearth of evidence for erotic spells used by women, he suggested that 
women (or girls) were in general watched so strictly that when they were 
experiencing eros, they were unable to go to the marketplace to buy a spell and 
its ingredients; he also hypothesizes a "women's magic" that leaves no archae­
ological trace, mostly on the basis of Theocritus ("Constraints of Eros" [supra 
n.81227-228). Gager (80) notes several examples of spells cast by women, and 
correctly remarks that these spells bear out the literary portrait, without com­
ment on why then the literary portrait fails to note the overwhelming amount 
of magical activity performed by men. 

19Gal. De san.tuend. 1.8 (VI 41-42 KUhn); transl. Ludwig and Emma Edel­
stein, edd., Asc/epius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies I 
(Baltimore 1945) 208-209 (T 413). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

70 BURNING FOR IT 

Galen's boast makes explicit a strong connection between the 
emotional and physical health of ancient men. Although this 
connection bears a great superficial resemblance to one that is 
growing in popularity in modern Western medicine,2o for Galen 
there is nothing mysterious or arcane in the relationship between 
physical health and the emotional life. It simply was a function 
of the interplay and proportions within the body of the various 
substances (sometimes called humors) and qualities of which 
the body and its appetites21 were composed. Although this 
general view (with variations) would have been shared by a 
broad section of Greco-Roman people, it is developed by Galen 
in many works that are addressed to the educated layman or 
the practicing physician, most of whose patients would have 
been drawn from bureaucratic or elite circles.2l 

1. Rationality and Immortality 

The ease and naturalness of the connection reflect ancient 
assumptions about the constitution of the human personP and 

2°In the idea that the mental attitude of the patient is an important con­
tributor to his or her response to treatment. Significantly, this view is invoked 
most often today in cases of diseases that, in Susan Sontag's words, are 
"mysterious and intractable," such as cancer or collagen disease, and which 
therefore challenge both the patient's and society's overall concepts of health 
and the body (and of reward and punishment): Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and 
AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York 1990) 5, 58, 104. A similar observation 
was made by Edward Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among 
the Azande (Oxford 1937) 194-199. 

21 The material nature of desires and appetites for non-rational things is 
implicit throughout Galen's work; some specific articulations are Mixt. 2.1,6 
(42-43, 73-75 Helmreich); Anim.mor.corp. 1, 3, 4, 5 (II 32, 41, 43-45, 48-49 
Mueller). 

22That this is not simply an academic medical view is clearly demonstrated 
by Galen's use of the treatments offered at Asklepian shrines as an example of 
the same kind of method. Galen's accuracy as a witness to contemporary 
practices at Asklepian shrines needs to be investigated. But the Asklepian 
games certainly did always include rhapsodic and other such competitions 
from the earliest times; Galen may have this in mind. 

23 And the difficulty of the connection, for twentieth-century medical 
science, is likewise related to such assumptions, but of a radically different 
nature. Modem medicine is not as free of paradigms in need of "shift" (Thomas 
Kuhn's term) as its blithe invocations seem to suggest. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 71 

the place and relative merit of its different elements, the body, 
the soul/spirit/personality, and the self. Many of the important 
elements of what we think of as personality or the self, which 
simply uses the body for locomotion, were regarded in antiquity 
as themselves physical properties, generated by and part of the 
body.24 These elements, which included strong emotions and 
personal tastes, could be discussed under the title "psyche," 
and so are sometimes read today as reflective of a trans­
physical psychological self. But in many sources from antiquity, 
we see that psyche was part of the body and died with the 
body; it was not the self or the soul in the usual modern senses 
of those terms.25 The non-physical part of a person, the "soul," 
could be called psyche, but was also called the pneuma, or 
spirit.26 Where both terms are discussed together, pneuma is 

24The identification is implicit but pervasive. It is most clearly to be seen in 
inverted fashion, through discussions of illnesses or manipulations of the body 
having direct effect on appetites, desires, and thoughts; see Galen references 
supra n.21. For full discussion see Rousselle. 

25Galen uses a tripartite model for the self or soul, in which each of the 
three parts is associated with a particular organ or location in the body: 
heart, liver, and brain. Though he remarks that Plato saw the third part, the 
"rational" soul resident in the brain, as immortal, Galen himself remains 
unconvinced: Anim.mor.corp. 3 (II 36-37 M.); see also Dale B. Martin, The 
Corinthian Body (New Haven 1995: hereafter MARTIN) 117-120, though 
Martin argues that pneuma also is still somehow physical. 

26Both terms derive from words for "breath," and in early Greek literature 
are in fact used interchangeably for that part of a person which carries "the 
self" and which is going to survive death (if anything will). It is in the later 
Hellenistic and Greco-Roman periods that we begin to see the separation of 
emotions and memories away from the potentially immortal "spirit" and the 
differentiation between the terms "psyche" and "pneuma." For discussion of 
the period before 400 B.C., see Jan Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul 
(Princeton 1983). Bremmer uses a dual soul model, but opposite terminology; 
i.e., "psyche" (the "free soul") can live after death, etc. But note that Bremmer 
is discussing a very different time period and a very different set of sources. 
My differentiation is based upon the uses in Greco-Roman philosophical and 
medical writers, and the "psychic" conditions that the latter will and will not 
treat. Bremmer's prime focus is Homeric epic. See also K. V. Wilkes, "Psuche 
Versus the Mind," in Martha C. Nussbaum and Amelie O. Rorty, edd., Essays 
on Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford 1992) 109-128. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

72 BURNING FOR IT 

privileged over psyche27 which is associated with passion, con­
fusion, and death (in the sense that it is mortal).28 Many of the 
elements that today are part of how we construct our identities, 
elements such as favorite foods, colors, ideas, our emotional 
responses, level of commitment or perfectionism, preferred tem­
perature ranges, degree or nature of sexual impulses, and even 
our ability to actually live by whatever moral code we hold, 
were regarded as either wholly parts of, or greatly influenced 
by, the physical makeup of our bodies, and their conditions of 
health at any given time. 

In the popular forms of Stoic philosophy of the Greco-Roman 
period the ideas of pneuma, psyche, desire, rationality, nature, 
and health came together in an all-encompassing world-view 
that associated the personal appetites of the psyche with ill­
ness, destructive disorder, and death,29 and the non-affective 
pneuma with rationality and the highest good,3° and even with 
personal immortality.31 In Cicero's treatise On the State, the 
famous and very popular Dream of Scipio section clearly 
presents the idea that the pneuma could live on forever and 
ascend through the seven heavenly spheres after death, if the 

27 As in 1 Cor. 1-4. See valuable discussions of this distinction in Birger A. 
Pearson, The Pneumatikos-Psychikos Terminology in 1 Corinthians (Missoula 
1973), and in Martin passim. 

28 Outside of Stoicism opinions varied widely on what would become of the 
pneuma after death; see Martin 6-15, 104-123; Martha C. Nussbaum, The 
Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton 1994). 

29 E.g. Soranus Gyn. 1.7.30, 32: " .. . the body is made ill by desire. Indeed, 
they say, we see the bodies of lovers pale, weak and thin ... men who remain 
chaste are stronger and bigger than others and pass their lives in better 
health"; Owsei Temkin, transl., Soranus' Gynecology (Baltimore 1956) 27, 29; 
discussion of ideas in Martin, esp. 139-228. 

30 For full discussion see Nussbaum (supra n.28). 
31 For the Classical Epicurean position from which later Stoic and popular 

ideas may derive, see Bartel Poortman, "Death and Immortality in Greek 
Philosophy From the Pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic Era," in J. M. Bremer, Th. 
P. J. van den Hout, and R. Peters, edd., Hidden Futures: Death and Immortality in 
Ancient Egypt, Anatolia, the Classical, Biblical and Arabic-Islamic World 
(Amsterdam 1994) 197-220, esp. 202-206. Later transformations are also 
discussed by Martin 104-136. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 73 

living person had worked sufficiently hard during life to allow it 
the strength to reach the "escape velocity" required to do SO.32 
The strength of the pneuma was related to the weakness of the 
hold of psyche, and the practices for creating the necessary bal­
ance were carried out on two fronts. The positive step~" actions 
that gave energy or force to pneuma, consisted of such things as 
spending time in the study of philosophy, and especiaUy, max­
imizing one's service to one of the great divine forces of nature, 
primary among which was duty, ideally duty to the Roman 
Empire and its structured sOciety.33 This duty could be defined 
broadly: heroic self-sacrifice, certainly, but even the apparently 
mundane tasks of a mid-level imperial bureaucrat could, by 
promoting the harmony and rationality of the great system, 
have for that individual a redemptive, salvific value, in the 
possibility of life after death.34 

On the opposite front, the appetites and desires would be 
weakened through manipulation of the body (of which they 
were part) through diet and exercise as well as mental or 
emotional disciplines. 35 Strong emotions, happy or painful 
memories, and unsatisfied or even satisfied desires, all 
distracted the attention of the person away from the timeless, 
or left him too exhausted to perform his duties to the state; 
exhaustion (or "stress") was in fact one of the main reasons 
educated professional men consulted their physicians, and a 

32Scipio's Dream was originally a portion of Book VI of On the State, but 
circulated separately and widely, a testament to its popularity beyond those 
who revered and studied Cicero, or those who were interested in the construc­
tion of the ideal state. Although this may have not been Cicero's original 
intention, this section presents a scenario for life after death that was both 
comforting and rational; its popularity independent of its parent text is not 
surprising. 

33 Discussion of the various practices and techniques throughout Nussbaum 
(supra n.28); Rousselle, esp. 107-193. Pneuma could also be strengthened 
through physical regimen (of which the study of philosophy was a part): Gal. 
Anim.pass. 2.5 (I 68-69 Marquardt). 

34 Again, suggested by the great independent popularity of Scipio's Dream. 
35Gal. Anim.pass. 1.6 (I 24-25 M.); Rousselle 19, 76-77. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

74 BURNING FOR IT 

common prescription was the blunting of desire. Desire in 
almost all forms was dangerous and negative, to be mastered or 
controlled at all costs.36 To form a strong attachment to an 
inappropriate person (because of class, age, gender, or marital 
status), and to give in to that attachment, was in one sense a 
world-disrupting act: if Rome is identified with Nature, and life 
in accordance with its values the definition of rationality, then 
any illegitimate act or desire is, by definition, irrational and 
contrary to nature. But even to feel strong emotions for one's 
legitimate spouse might ultimately prove disruptive of duty, in 
any way from an eagerness to get horne at night to unwillingness 
to order the politically necessary execution of a wife's relatives, 
out of emotional considerations. At the very least, excessive 
indulgence in even legitimate happiness or sexual activity might 
harm the state by creating exhaustion in key people, or by over­
stimulating their appetites, thus making them less trustworthy 
and more prone to corruption.37 Whether the goal was social 
stability, personal success, or immortal salvation, it was clear to 
many that mastery of the emotions and the appetites increased 
power, by eliminating the vulnerability that each need created. 

2. Desire and Popular Values 

The word £pco~ is used for many widely divergent things, but 
the note shared by all is desire-desire for a person, for a thing, 
for peace, war, or even for excellence. Although the latter few 
references present £pco~ as a good motivator, in the case of 
personal desires such as the psyche might generate, it was 
generally regarded as a powerfully destructive force acting 

36 Again, the literature is voluminous; see the basic references supra n.l. 

37In actuality or in perception; either possibility was dangerous to 
stability and to personal success. This last connection is most clear in the 
physiognomic treatises, where interior states are deduced from physical 
condition with no hesitation whatsoever; see esp. Gleason 55-130; Rousselle 
5-23; Tamsyn S. Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomies, and 
Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1994), esp. 95-132. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIDONNICI 75 

against health, virtue, and even the stability of the state. 
Whether or not an individual adopted the version of Stoicism 
discussed above as a personal philosophy, the self-mastering 
behaviors and attributes of Stoic great men in public life became 
examples for the general stream of elite and bureaucratic-class 
men, who both wanted to control their desires in actuality, and 
to seem to have done so in appearance, when this control was 
not possible.38 Control of £p(J)~ could therefore form a sort of 
social "scale" on which people judged each other and them­
selves, and which provided terms and possibilities for social 
mobility-in both directions, up and down.39 This was applied 
on both individual and cultural levels, and used to create 
identity and "place" in many different ways. For example, at 
least one aristocratic Roman source regards Jews in general as 
weak and lacking in self-control, on the evidence of their having 
many children; it was clear that these men could not stay away 
from their wives.4o On an individual level, those with great self­
control were admired, and admiration created success in the 
influence-based political and oratorical world of Greco-Roman 
men, in which trust, connections, but most of all reputation, 
were the primary means by which advancement and power 
were obtained.41 

While an extreme degree of self-mastery was a high ideal 

38Gal. Mixt . 2.4, 6 (61-62, 72-75 H.); Anim.mor.corp. 7-10 (II 55-73 M.). 
The relationship between unregulated desire and social untrustworthiness is 
a consistent feature of the physiognomic tradition; Gleason passim; Barton 
(supra n.37) 95-132, 169-178. 

39John J. Winkler, "Laying Down the Law: The Oversight of Men's Sexual 
Behavior in Classical Athens," in Constraints (supra n.8) 45-70. Though the 
article concerns an earlier period, it is relevant for the later period as well, for 
comparative purposes. 

40 Aline Rousselle, "Body Politics in Ancient Rome," in Pauline Schmitt Pan­
tel, ed., A History of Women in the West: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian 
Saints (Cambridge [Mass.] 1992) 307 with n.57, 322, on Tac. Hist. 5.5. 

41 For full discussion of this issue, see Gleason, also her "The Semiotics of 
Gender: Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning in the Second Century CE," in 
Before Sexuality (supra n.1) 389-416, in which Gleason describes the world of 
elite men in the Greco-Roman city as a "forest of eyes." 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

76 BURNING FOR IT 

usually associated with philosophical teachers and great 
leaders, we should not think that many people were truly able 
to dismiss and ignore their emotions and desires. People were 
tortured or delighted by their feelings even if they did not think 
they should be, though the social conditions discussed so far 
make it unlikely that they would discuss them openly. Galen 
and others devote lengthy discussion to levels of wisdom and 
rationality (and control of emotion), levels that range from the 
passionate man who acts in public in a disgusting manner, to 
the man who still feels great anger but manages to control his 
behavior, to the man who successfully controls the anger itself.42 
While the occasional exceptional person (among whom Galen 
happily includes himself) did in fact live a rigidly controlled life, 
an even greater number would settle for the second level, 
wanting the benefits in admiration and prestige that came from 
being thought to truly control their desires, while at the same 
time being able to satisfy the body's physical and emotional 
appetites. We see therefore a great interest in appearing to con­
form to the ideal, while still living as one pleasedY Few people 
would want to be seen to be indulging in personal £p(O~, because 
of the social value attached to self-denial and self-mastery. In 
addition, admission of desire was admission of weakness, 
which in turn raised all whom you told up above yourself on the 
imaginary scale of control of £p(O~. Even desire mastered, a 
staple of modern confessional autobiography, was probably not 
bandied about among bureaucratic-class men as a potential 
source of praise, since only the poorly-regulated psyche would 
generate strong desires in the first place. 

42Anim.pass. 1.4 (I 12-16 M.); discussion in James Hankinson, "Actions 
and Passions: Affection, Emotion, and Moral Self-Management in Galen's 
Philosophical Psychology," in Jacques Brunschwig and Martha C. Nussbaum , 
edd., Passions and Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophies of Mind 
(Cambridge 1993) 184-222. 

43Rousselle 7-23. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 77 

In the erotic context with which this essay is concerned, the 
experience of "love," whether frustrated or returned, could have 
been a great handicap in terms of the daily language of power 
and prestige spoken by men in the Greco-Roman city. Wise men, 
philosophers, and, by extension, trustworthy men with well­
regulated selves should be largely beyond the effects of strong 
emotions, particularly desire. If it is a popular assumption that 
wisdom and rationality protect one from love and desire, who 
would be willing to admit to feeling these things? The admission 
is the equivalent of an announcement that one's mind and soul 
are not totally under one's control, an admission with the 
potential for much more serious consequences than a period of 
good-natured teasing. Suspicion of one's judgment and honesty, 
unwillingness of others to enter into political, legal, or economic 
arrangements, and many other such problems might await the 
lover who confided in the wrong friend, and the danger became 
greater, the more he had to lose, or the higher he hoped to rise. 

3. Popular Values and Illness 

Just as openly sighing over a particular object of love could 
lay one open to suspicion and mistrust, certain illnesses or 
physical features were similarly associated with unregulated 
desire or other moral failings. 44 Such conditions were widely 
"read" as legitimate markers of the interior state,45 and people 
both desired to be able to read the illnesses of others and to 
keep any messages their own bodies might be sending rigidly 
within their own control. One reason many professional men 

44Barton (supra n.37: 97-98,133-168) argues that in fact the origins of the 
physiognomic tradition are in Hippocratic medicine, and clearly demonstrates 
how Galen provides a "scientific" basis for it in humoral physiology. 

45Illnesses are transitory (it is to be hoped), and as such mark transitory 
emotional states. The bulk of physiognomic writing concerns permanent fea­
tures, such as head-shape or the distance between the eyes, seen as diagnostic 
of permanent personality elements. The proportion of physiognomic writing on 
transitory features and illness is therefore small, but can be amplified with 
many examples from medical discussions of diagnosis. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

78 BURNING FOR IT 

went to doctors was to find ways to appear healthy and con­
trolled-and therefore moral and trustworthy-even if they 
indulged their appetites. They sought many kinds of emetics so 
that they could eat whatever they wanted but not suffer the 
physical effects of actually digesting the food;46 men asked 
doctors how they could still have a lot of sex without suffering 
exhaustion.47 Though the doctors might offer sober advice about 
continence and the mastery of desire,48 they also provided 
strategies and substances to help with these problems. The 
connection worked in both directions, as physicians used recent 
thoughts, opinions, appetites, and emotions of their patients to 
arrive at conclusions about their physical health.49 

Disease was felt to be a symptom of a general imbalance in 
the four major substances or humors5o that made up the body: 
blood, bile, phlegm, and black bile or melancholy. Improper 
proportions of these materials could result in all sorts of com­
plaints, both physical and emotionaPl For example, too much 
blood could be associated with fever and stroke or anger;52 too 
much black bile could result in coldness and lethargy, or de-

46Gleason 82-102. 
47Rousselle 15. 

48Gal. Anim.pass. 1.6 (122, 24-25 M.); Rousselle 5-23. 

49Gal. Ars med. 21-25 (1358-376 K). 

soOr, more properly, unbalanced relationship between the humors and the 
conditions of heat, coldness, moisture, and dryness which also govern the 
body's health. 

sIGal. Anim.mor.corp. 4-7 (II 45-54 M.); Mixt. 2.6 (78 H .), where "emo­
tional" factors clearly affect bodily functioning. 

s2The association between blood and fever in men is pervasive. For the 
association specifically in women see e.g. the Hippocratic Nat.Puer. 4.3; dis­
cussion in A. E. Hanson, "Hippocrates: Diseases of Women 1," Signs 1 (1975) 
567-584. Excessive blood interferes with rationality: Lesley Dean-Jones, 
"The Cultural Construct of the Female Body in Classical Greek Science," in 
Sarah B. Pomeroy, ed., Women's History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill 
1991) 111-137. If women were specifically associated with blood and 
moisture, it becomes all the more important for the status-oriented male to 
appear "bloodless" and "dry." But if a man loses or bums up too much blood, 
he risks becoming melancholic: Gal. Mixt. 2.6 (82-85 H.). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 79 

pression.53 An imbalance in the humors might first be detected 
as depression, but might easily progress if left untreated either 
to suicidal depression, or to cold lethargy and natural death. As 
a result, doctors took careful note not only of physical symp­
toms and the minute details of all bodily discharges, but of the 
types of thoughts and feelings the patient was experiencing.54 

This "holistic" approach to diagnosis and treatment was based 
on the assumption that both emotions and bodily organs are 
composed of the same substances and are part of a single sys­
tem of balances. It is for this reason that certain procedures, for 
example bloodletting, could be used for an extremely broad 
range of conditions that to the modern way of thinking have 
little or nothing to do with each other. 

While sometimes the appetites were regarded as helpful indi­
cators of the substances the body had too much of or lacked, 
the physical and emotional appetites (and the behaviors that 
they generated) themselves could lead to further, more severe 
imbalances, and therefore to increasingly serious problems with 
health. For this reason, certain appetites had to be rigidly con­
trolled, no matter what the presenting illness was. In the specific 
case of fever, a patient could be judged to be suffering a "burn­
ing of the blood"; for this the patient would be given fluids, lest 
the burning reduce the blood too much, creating an imbalance in 

53Gal. Anim.mor.corp. 3 (II 39-41 M.). 
54The discussion of these issues in Rousselle 24-46 and 63-77 deals spe­

cifically with diseases of women, but her observations there extend in practice 
and principle to men as well; specific discussion of men's health issues in 3--23. 
A great deal of the recent work on views of women in medical writers and 
popular medical imagination relates to this issue, because that material 
specifically addresses traits and conditions that render a man "feminine," 
which is a category that includes dishonesty, weakness, untrustworthiness, 
etc. Excellent discussions in A. E. Hanson, "The Medical Writers' Woman," in 
Before Sexuality (supra n.1) 309-338, and "Continuity and Change: lhree Case 
Studies in Hippocratic Gynecological Therapy and Theory," in Pomeroy 
(supra n.52) 73-110; Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity, trans!' Arthur Gold­
hammer (Cambridge [Mass.] 1990). See also Owsei Temkin, Hippocrates in a 
World of Pagans and Christians (Baltimore 1991). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

80 BURNING FOR IT 

which black bile, the residue, would predominate. 55 But this 
treatment would depend on the gender, age, and appearance of 
the patient. Gender and age would suggest a "recommended 
moisture content" for human beings, which was much lower for 
men than for women and children;56 therefore a man's fever 
might be regarded as a beneficial drying out of an unheaIthy-or 
effeminate57-condition. On the other hand, Galen advises a 
consideration of many aspects of body appearance, to deter­
mine the underlying mixtures that predominate for a specific 
patient, and which are indicators of illnesses of the past as well 
as those that are still to come. In this way, he will judge, e.g., a 
hairy man to be in general on the colder and wetter side, 58 pre­
sumably adjusting his treatments accordingly. These considera­
tions might lead to counter-intuitive, but socially meaningful 
treatments; some fever patients who cried for water might not 
be given it, if they were judged to be suffering ultimately from a 
surfeit of moisture.59 

Like moisture or heat, the emotions were valuable diagnostic 
indicators, providing useful diagnostic information about the 
overall health of a patient. 60 Emotional patterns could be 
symptomatic of imbalances in humors that might go on to cause 
other, more severe physical problems; for example, emotional 
upset might be the presenting sign of a condition that could later 
progress to fever, jaundice, or coma. Perception of this relation­
ship could be used in the other direction as well, using bodily 

55Gal. Mixt. 2.6 (84-85 H.). Galen disagrees with this idea, but reports it as 
an example of a mistake made by"a majority of doctors." 

56Rousselle 59. 
57For full discussion of the relationship between moisture and categories of 

masculinity, see Gleason, esp. 58-70; Dean-Jones (supra n.52). 
58 Especially if he seems to have suddenly become hairy or to have lost hair: 

Mixt. 2.4 (60-61 H .). 
59 Galen (Mixt. 3.5 [111-113 H.D seems to be trying to argue against this, by 

presenting an elaborate discussion, the main point of which appears to be that 
cold water cannot cause heating. 

6OGal. Ars med. 6-23 (I 319- 370 K.). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIDONNICI 81 

symptoms to predict future emotional states. For example, the 
cold and damp condition known as the "plethora" could lead 
to emotional imbalances.61 In women the disease hysteria, a 
physical malady with physical symptoms, could rapidly 
progress into an extreme emotional derangement.62 Such strong 
emotional symptoms could lead the patient into behavior that 
could in turn throw off the health and balance of completely 
different body systems, just as a person with a blister, by favor­
ing the afflicted foot, may cause muscular problems in the back 
at some future time. In the same way, says Galen in the passage 
quoted, disproportionate emotions can cause illnesses of a 
variety of types, not always easy to predict (or to diagnose). 

While it is easy to be amazed that any patient in antiquity 
ever lived to tell the tale of his treatment, it is important to 
remember that these treatments "worked" quite often. From the 
perspective of cultural ideology and patterns of thought, even 
medical failures support prevailing attitudes, by transferring the 
blame for the most part onto the patient, who can frequently be 
assumed to have lacked the will or other intrinsic capacity that 
would have enabled him either to bear down mentally to help 
throw off the disease, to follow the stringent and difficult pre­
scriptions properly, or to have lived by the appropriate regimen 
of diet, emotion, work, and exercise beforehand for the preven­
tion of the imbalance in the first place. Such "infelicitices"63 in 
the performance of ritual also sustain belief in divine cures, even 
in the face of apparent disconfirmation. In this sense, medical 
practices and I or theories can sometimes function as much (or 

61 Because plethora is a disease of moisture, it occurred most frequently in 
women and children, but could afflict men as well-men who were too 
"moist," perhaps therefore effeminate. Rousselle 8-9, 35-36, 42; see James 
Longrigg, Greek Rational Medicine: Philosophy and Medicine From Alcmaeon to 
the Alexandrians (New York 1993) 216-217. 

62Rousselle 63-77. 

63Terminology from J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge 
[Mass.] 1962); see further discussion n.93 infra. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

82 BURNING FOR IT 

more) to comfort the well, and to maintain their conceptual 
stability, as to actually cure the patient.64 

On the other hand, the kinds of treatments prescribed by 
ancient physicians are not unlike some still used today, in 
essence if not in substance. We might not think that bathing in 
itself was a particularly effective cure for depression, but, if the 
patient believed he or she was actively taking control of the 
illness, this sense of power and mastery might indeed help him 
or her to feel better, as would the time focusing upon the self 
that would be spent in the cure,6S and the solicitous attentions 
of friends and family. Overwhelming anger might well be 
"helped" by bloodletting, both from the perspective of the 
general if temporary weakening the patient felt as a result of 
treatment, and from a behavior-modification "avoidance 
therapy" perspective. It is therefore possible to interpret Galen's 
claim in modern, clinical psychological terms-he cures people 
"ill through disposition of their souls" by "correcting the 
disproportion of their emotions" -their illnesses are emotional 
and coming from inside themselves, and it is the head that cures 
them. But this interpretation is undercut by Galen's corroborat­
ing example, in which Asklepios clearly is healing tangible and 
measurable physical conditions, specifically body temperatures 
that are excessively high or low. The connection of poorly dis­
posed souls made here is not with fatigue, pain, or increased 
vulnerability to disease,66 but with high temperatures, caused by 

64 As continues to be true in modem medicine, in cases of conditions that are 
both highly feared and poorly understood: see Sontag (supra n.20) 5, 58. 

65 This is one of the main benefits to the casters of erotic spells suggested by 
Winkler (supra n.8) 82-93. I would like to make clear that while I agree with 
Winkler, and with Gager (82), about the importance of this psychological­
therapeutic benefit to the spell-caster, this benefit partly derives from his 
satisfaction in contemplating the literal, objective harm to the victim which is, 
in my opinion, a major component of the spell-easter's hopes and beliefs about 
the ritual he is performing. 

661 refer here to the modern constellation of complaints most usually at­
tributed to emotional factors. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 83 

the very literal friction resulting from "motions of ... [vehement] 
passions." This attitude may begin to explain why, of all 
conditions, fever is the one considered most useful for the 
practitioner of erotic magic. If the friction of vehement passions 
may raise body temperature, then, if we approach from the op­
posite direction, by raising the temperature independently, the 
passions may similarly become strong, possibly strong enough 
to overwhelm the victim's rationality. Further, if fever is asso­
ciated with unregulated desire, it could pose a social threat for 
ancient men in search of trust and prestige, or be used by them 
in attempts to right their position on the imagined scale of £pro~. 

4. Burning with Shame 

Societies (and subgroups within them) often attach very 
specific cultural meanings to different ailments,67 meanings with 
both negative and positive associations. The negative or posi­
tive valence of a given condition has, strangely, far less to do 
with the threat it poses to survival and well-being, than with the 
aesthetic effect it has upon the patient, and the events or 
behaviors that are its presumed cause. In the United States in 
the 1950s, before the current health craze, there was a certain 
cachet surrounding the "sudden-death" heart attack, the 
disease that proved a man really was as driven and hard­
working as the stereotypical businessman was supposed to be. 
People today wear their knee braces as badges of honor, and 
despite their very real pain, can proudly discuss the various 
athletic feats that resulted in the destruction of their joints. In 
the academic world, slipped disks and carpal tunnel syndrome 
carry the positive resonance of long hours sitting in a chair, 

67Sontag (supra n.20) focuses upon the cultural resonances of tuberculosis 
and cancer, with interesting side discussions of syphilis and madness. The 
history of syphilis is fascinating in this regard; at one time, the French called it 
" the Neapolitan disease" at the same time the Neapolitans were calling it "the 
French disease"; Claude Quetel, The History of Syphilis, transl. Judith Brad­
dock and Brian Pike (Baltimore 1990) 10. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

84 BURNING FOR IT 

typing away, with the occasional break to carry heavy loads of 
huge books from one workspace to another. I do not mean to 
suggest that people seek out these conditions and that they do 
not cause them suffering. But when they occur, their sufferers 
can expect sympathy and support, and evince little embarrass­
ment or shame about the specifics of their conditions.68 On the 
other hand, some conditions subject their sufferers to a great 
deal of humor and teasing, or even to the risk of social ostra­
cism. In young teenage populations, those unfortunate enough to 
contract mononucleosis, known to this group as "the kissing 
disease," can expect a good deal of teasing and rampant 
speculation about the source of the condition-and the kiss. 
Much more serious suspicions and reactions to, for example, 
HIV are part of the same pattern of thought, but have far less 
lighthearted effects. 

There are some conditions, ailments which we know from ad­
vertising and from statistics to be extremely common, to which 
our culture has attached very negative associations. People do 
not want to admit having these conditions, certainly not in a 
public setting, and sometimes not even to themselves or their 
most intimate associates. I am speaking here not only of ob­
jectively terrifying conditions such as AIDS.69 This category also 
includes such things as prostate and colon cancer which, though 
life threatening, have high rates of cure if detected early. But the 
reluctance of male patients to discuss any sort of anomalies in 
the genital area presents a formidable obstacle to early detec­
tion in many cases; indeed, a recent television documentary on 
the subject was entitled, sadly, "Embarrassed to Death." In 
addition to such potentially life-threatening conditions, popular 
culture has coopted a whole variety of ailments, such as en-

68This depends, however, upon the patient's comfort level with the issue of 
aging. 

69Fully examined by Sontag (supra n.20). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN UOONNICI 85 

croaching baldness, hemorrhoids, incontinence, impotence, every 
type of bowel irregularity, and injuries that occur not during 
sports but during shameful or illegal activities, for use as coded 
ways to express ideas about the ideal and the unaco?ptable 
person. Few people would be comfortable if widely known to 
suffer from one of these conditions; this social freight greatly 
increases the burden of suffering that these patients experience. 
Such conditions are staple elements of teasing, putdowns, and 
jokes. Comedians and entertainers make fun of them; and 
except for medical literature, entertainment is really the only 
public setting in which they are discussed. 

One of the great "entertainers" of the second century, the 
orator Favorinus, had as one of his most popular performance 
pieces a satirical Praise of Quartan Fever, which unfortunately 
does not survive?O The choice of subject was particularly clever 
for Favorinus, who in his own person clearly challenged the 
definitions both of masculinity and of health,71 and it is only at 
the intersection of these categories that there is much potential 
for amusement in the discussion of fever. 

In our modem medical tradi tion, informed by the germ theory 
of disease and by microscopic observation of anomalies in the 
blood, fever is seen not as a disease in itself but as a symptom 
of infection or breakdown in one or another bodily system. 
Ancient medicine, however, relying upon external observation, 
made its distinctions of types of fevers based only their progres­
sion. The major distinction was between periodic fevers (tertian, 
quartan) and fevers which were either constant or randomly 
intermittent. Each type had several different causes, almost all 

70 Its existence is attested by Aulus Gellius (NA 17.12.1). 

71 Favorinus was a major category-destroyer. Born without testicles, he 
was a "natural eunuch" who not only was able to achieve success as an 
orator, but also became known as a passionate lover: Philostr. VS 489-490. 
For discussion of all aspects of Favorinus' biography and intersection with 
categories of health and masculinity, see Gleason passim, and Barton (supra 
n.37) 95-132, 183-185. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

86 BURNING FOR IT 

of which involved the patient's behavior and constitution; bad 
behavior or unwise diet could alter the progress of the fever, 72 

just as good care could reduce or cure it. 
Fever could be a value-neutral condition, but it was 

frequently regarded as a secondary heating that resulted from 
passion or desire, as in the example from Galen discussed 
above. It is specifically associated with a hot liver or with bile,73 
in themselves associated with the passions of anger and erotic 
desire. The frequent mentions of periodic fevers, those that peak 
and break with regularity on the second, third, or fourth days, 
probably indicate both the rhythm of exhaustion and a high 
proportion of cases of malaria74 among ancient fever patients, 
although the parasitic nature of periodic fevers was never noted 
in ancient medicine. According to modern findings, the malarial 
parasite never disappears from the blood of the infected 
person, but rather, after the initial onset, lies dormant until 
circumstances are right for it to begin its tertian or quartan life 
cycle again. In certain strains of malaria recurrence can be 
triggered by physical (or emotional) exertion. Because of this, 
the connection between fever and the passions might seem, 
frequently, to be reinforced when extremes of emotional agita­
tion, or the physical exertions of sexual intercourse, triggered a 
flare-up of a dormant periodic fever?5 But this perception also 

72 Barton (supra n.37) 145. 

73Gal. Ars med. 12 (I 337-339 K.); Natjac. 2.8 (II 122 K.). 

74Mirko D: Grmek, Diseases in the Ancient Greek World, transl. Mireille 
and Leonard Muellner (Baltimore 1989), with mention of malaria in tertian 
and quartan types, esp. 277-278. Modern medicine identifies four parasites of 
the same genus as causes of malaria; of these, Plasmodium malariae causes 
quartan malaria, while Pl. vivax, ovale, and falciparum cause tertian fevers of 
varying intensity; all four parasites date back to at least the Pleistocene Age. 
See also W. H. S. Jones, Malaria and Greek History (Manchester 1909). 

75Malaria provides a case in contrast to the usual absence of socially­
accepted ways to address fever. The city of Rome had several Temples of Fever; 
one, on the Palatine, was constructed at state expense (Plin. HN 2.16), and this 
may indicate that it and the others were erected in response to particularly 
bad fever years. In other words, these temples may have related to fever on a 
plague level, to which no personal embarrassment would attach. The temples 
are not extant. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 87 

works in both directions, and a patient who suddenly fell into a 
bout of fever might reasonably be asked by his physician 
whether or not he was in the grip of an unmanageable desire, or 
in what other health-weakening practices he had been indulging. 
To competitive men in the public eye, these questions could 
have severe consequences in the loss of respect, power, or oppor­
tunities that might corne with the questionable reputation of 
being someone who might secretly be a slave to appetite, and 
therefore untrustworthy. For them, fever, especially recurrent 
fever, might be regarded as a social disease, an illness that was 
feared not only for itself, but for its social consequences as well. 
If the well-regulated person need never fear disease/6 both 
illness and its treatment are shameful; for men who lived and 
worked in a "forest of Eyes," in Gleason's wonderful phrase,77 
it could be shameful and dangerous. In such an environment, 
even to be the object of good-natured teasing was to be 
avoided. 

The Gaulish eunuch Favorinus, of course, succeeded wildly 
despite assuredly enormous teasing,78 but in his speeches men­
tioned his physical condition openly, sometimes deliberately 
challenging the assumptions and attitudes of the dominant 
culture of oratory.79 The Praise of Quartan Fever may even have 
been part of this program of ridicule.8o But though famous, 
Favorinus was no role model, and few could have felt their 

76"If [it] is true, if disease is an individual phenomenon due to an error of 
judgment, to wrong living, then it follows naturally that a truly educated man 
does not need a doctor and is, if nothing worse, a fool if he has to call upon 
one": Ludwig Edelstein, "The Distinctive Hellenism of Greek Medicine," in 
Ancient Medicine (Baltimore 1967) 391. As with illness, so with the harmful 
effects of magic, as Plotinus suggests at Enn. 4.4.40-41: the wise man or philoso­
pher is immune. 

77Gleason (supra n.41) 389. 
78In youth. In adulthood, his nature combined with his popularity to 

inspire not teasing but intense hatred on the part of at least one other orator; 
Gleason 7, 21-54. 

79Gleason xxvii-xxviii, 3-20. 

80 As is the defense of Fortuna discussed in Gleason 12. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

88 BURNING FOR IT 

natural rhetorical genius equal to the task of obtaining success, 
pushing against the uphill weight of a bad, or even ridiculous, 
reputation. 

Fever and "Inflammation" to Get a Lover 

The connections that can be drawn between these four 
interrelated complexes of ideas may help us understand the 
persistent presence of language of fever, burning, and illness in a 
large number of harmful erotic spells from the ancient Medi­
terranean. Fever or generalized heating could effect the other 
bodily systems that might in turn weaken control and 
rationality to an extent sufficient to lead the object or victim to 
respond favorably to the spell-easter's advances or even to seek 
him out, appearing to do so independently. The great majority 
of erotic spells that function through harm of the victim clearly 
employ illnesses for this purpose, utilizing either specifically 
named febrile conditions or a generalized "inflammation" of the 
soul and vital organs. In fact, in almost every case where a man 
is using a love spell that contains harmful elements, fever and 
burning are prominently featured.81 If these illnesses are caused 
by desire (at least in some cases), and indeed are believed to 
promote desire in their turn, then the spell-·caster is aiming to 
create in his victim a level of desire that is great enough to create 
this side-effect. As I will argue below, this level of desire is, pre­
sumably, greater than his own. 

The preliminary question that must be asked about these 
elements of ancient spells is whether they intend to create real, 
physical illnesses, or rather are metaphoric descriptions of 

81 This is so whether the male spell-caster is trying to gain a woman or a 
man. Interestingly, spells cast by women, though occasionally involving harm 
elements, generally do not include this particular element of heat or fever. I am 
aware of only one example, Supp/'Mag. 142, a spell cast by one woman to gain 
another. Brooten (supra n.8: 88-89) discusses evidence that this particular 
spell was copied from some handbook by a scribe. This may explain the 
presence of "burning," though I cannot see, in that case, why more women 
would not have been sold this kind of spell. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 89 

desire itself, in which case the spell-caster is doing nothing more 
than attaining relief through verbalizing, in a ritually formalized 
manner, the wish that the one he loves will feel the same 
towards him, though in a more powerless and degrading way. 82 

A brief survey of metaphors associated with love or strong 
desire in ancient literary sources does suggest a connection83 

between desire and heating. However, when fever, burning, or 
inflammation are used as tropes expressive of love or desire, 
this is a negative representation, the inflammation definitely sug­
gesting fever and illness and a condition to be avoided or 
ameliorated, rather than benign warmth. 

Love or desire as fever or burning is also a commonplace of 
our own cultural repertoire of metaphors, as in "have the hots," 
"red-hot," and "heat of passion"; but in these metaphors the 
heating is neutral or beneficial, and individuals seek to prolong 
this "heat" or to rekindle it in long-term relationships. We 
recognize that strong emotions can have the physical effect of 
blood-vessel dilation, with the concomitant reddening of the 
skin and experience of warmth in flushing or blushing; people in 
popular literature or television, when experiencing desire, may 
innocently ask, "ls it hot in here?" to general laughter .. But we 
do not take aspirin in response to these heatings, nor do we 
expect them to be followed by chills, coughing, runny noses-or 
liver failure. They are regarded as completely separate from the 
temperature shifts of illness, and are not expected (with the 
exception of the possibility of massive coronary suffered in 
flagrante delicto) to affect overall health in any way. But the 
neutral or positive resonance of desire's inflammation is foreign 
to literary usage of ancient writers on romantic 10ve,84 where, as 
in the medical writing already surveyed, these heatings are 

82This is the conclusion ultimately reached by Winkler (supra n.8) 82-93, 
and Gager 82. 

83 As well as the "scientific," medical connection discussed above. 

S4 For a brief survey of examples, see Martin 213. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

90 BURNING FOR IT 

unpleasant and dangerous, leading potentially to shameful and 
evil behavior, as for example in Theocritus. Moreover, even if it 
could be demonstrated that the use of heating in literature on 
love was exclusively metaphoric, there is little reason to group 
our surviving spells with poetry or fiction; in function and form, 
they most resemble technical literature,8S such as medical 
writing, and should therefore be interpreted first in that context. 

The strongest argument for interpreting the erotic inflamma­
tion spells as designed to send real illnesses lies in comparing 
them to spells relating to illness overall. Many spells, whether 
erotic in nature or not, are designed to send illnesses of several 
kinds, and even death, to the practitioners' victims. In most of 
these it is clear that the illnesses are understood literally, and 
that there is a real desire to cause them. This is no metaphor:86 

... Take gallows wood and carve a hammer. With the hammer 
strike the eye [of Horus, drawn on papyrus] while saying the 
formula: "I conjure you by the holy names; hand over the thief 
... Hand over the thief who stole it. As long as 1 strike the eye 
with this hammer, let the eye of the thief be struck, and let it 
swell up until it betrays him ... " 

Examples of spells that send explicitly literal illnesses could be 
multiplied, and include both chronic and critical conditions, up 
to and including death. In such cases of non-erotic spells, there 
is little likelihood that the object is a metaphor for the effects of 
desire. This conclusion is not as firm as I would like, however, 
since these non-erotic illness-sending spells do not in fact utilize 
fever or inflammation, except for a single example.87 All the 
"burning-type" spells are in fact erotic. In the absence of 
significant non-erotic comparanda, it.is extremely difficult to 

85This is not to say that poetical prayer does not form an important part of 
many of the lengthier spells. But these poetical sections are hymns to the gods 
or powers being invoked; they are not descriptions of the results of the spells 
or the interior states of their casters. 

86 PGM V.70-95, transL W. C. Grese, in Betz, GMP 102. 
87 PGM XIV.16-27, an invocation of Typhon. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 91 

determine whether the terms are being used literally or meta­
phorically. A decision in either direction involves assumption 
and extension, assumption that ancient metaphors for love 
parallel our own, or extension from the literal illnesses of non­
erotic spells to the burnings of erotic spells. 

Obviously, the position of this study favors the latter. If the 
spells are using heat and inflammation in a metaphoric sense to 
stand for warm and acceptable emotional responses in both 
himself and his object, it is difficult to understand why the 
spell-caster would choose one of the more difficult, cumber­
some, and potentially dangerous ritual modes to address and 
express these feelings. In such a case, the desiring person could 
simply have talked to friends, read poems, sung sad songs, etc.: 
the usual activities of the brokenhearted. As an ancient man, he 
might also have tried a course of baths or a change in diet; or 
even prayer to Aphrodite or Isis or anyone of dozens of per­
fectly acceptable religious loci easily available to anyone in an 
ancient community, which was filled with religious avenues and 
therapeutic techniques of every kind.88 The people reflected in 
or assumed by these spell texts are going to some risk, expense, 
and bother in the purchase of the spell89 and all of the many 
substances that are usually required for its performance,9o as 
well as in staying up all night to perform the rituals the texts 
describe. But as the previous discussions have suggested, for 
some individuals a desire so strong that it must be addressed 
might in itself be a problematic condition, beyond its own un-

88lt should be noted that while some of the preserved texts of neutral or 
beneficial erotic spells and aphrodisiacs sometimes suggest other means being 
brought to bear simultaneously, there are no such suggestions in the harmful 
spells. 

89 Prom whatever source-Egyptian temple priest, or bookseller, etc. 
90Whether the required substances really are strange and exotic, such as 

"the hairs of a hamadryas baboon," or these exotic requirements are code for 
simple substances as suggested by PGM XI1.401-444, is still an open question. 
However, even if the substances are simple, their preparations are elaborate; 
and the purchase of the spell itself was an expense. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

92 BURNING FOR IT 

pleasantness and frustration. To be seen arriving at, e.g., the 
Temple of Aphrodite with fillets in hand, to air feelings to the 
wrong person (remembering the multiple senses of both I;evo~ 
and amicus) and other such acts could be potentially dangerous, 
the equivalent of a modern executive asking, in a job interview, 
about the company's policy toward drug addiction. Personal 
desires and wishes were not neutral, which is possibly why 
ancient medicine never developed a "talking cure" in the mod­
ern sense. The creation and success of the modern methods of 
confessional venting depends, in my opinion, on centuries of 
Christian conditioning to ideas of confession, humility, and sal­
vation; the cure comes not only from expression, but also from 
the transference of the pain, onto Christ, or onto the analyst. 
Confessional ideas were present in Greco-Roman antiquity, but 
they were not mainstream; even today, when they are more 
mainstream, their employment in public varies greatly with 
social location. 

The casters of harmful erotic spells may have felt their 
tension ease through the performance of their rituals, through 
unconscious projection of unpleasant feelings onto another per­
son, as both Winkler and Gager point OUt.91 I find it significant 
that the mode of projection chosen, magic, is a private and 
secret one; this accords with the dangers of projection or indeed 
any expression of certain feelings for men in public life in the 
Greco-Roman city. In addition to this, the erotic spells may 
provide further psychological benefits, by providing a regimen, 
however counter-cultural, by which the spell-caster may in fact 
be able to gain control of his desire, or by providing a mirror for 
self-perception. 

The longer and more complicated harmful erotic spells de­
scribe lengthy rituals with elaborate preparations requiring 

91 Winkler (supra n.8) 87-98; Gager 81-82. Neither Winkler nor Gager 
suggests that the spell-casting men were aware that they were engaged in 
therapeutic articulation, contra Brooten (supra n .8) 100. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNICI 93 

careful attention to detail. To complete such ritual requirements, 
the caster would need self-control for a period of purification of 
several days,92 and concentration for the careful preparation of 
the materials. It is more than just ironic that a spell designed to 
satisfy an out-of-control man depends for its success on the 
degree of control he can muster. It is possible that with the 
motivation of finally getting the woman he desires, he will be 
able to do for an illicit reason that which he could not do simply 
for his own good. But this paradoxical requirement may also in 
itself be of enormous benefit to the frustrated lover,93 through 
the effect of self-centering, concentration, and purification re­
quired before the performance of a ritual or a spell. The focus on 
the preparations might of itself create or restore an embattled 
sense of control; in this way, the preparations themselves may 
have obviated the need to go through with the incantation at all 
-equilibrium restored, mission accomplished. Additionally, pur­
chase of a spell and the materials for casting it might in some 
cases represent a psychological threshold some may have been 
unwilling to cross, presenting his own irrationality to him in a 
sharp light. 

However, these ideas of unconscious benefit explain neither 
what the spell's casters believed they were going to achieve 
through them that could justify the risk and bother, nor the 
choice of heating illnesses in the victim as the preferred method 
of bringing about the connection. As was suggested through the 
four trajectories followed earlier, illness can represent an ad­
vanced stage of development of a "harm" that is intrinsic to all 

92 As in PGM VII.981-983, and many others as well. 

93It is also of practical benefit to the spell-seller (if any) and to the general 
social belief in efficacious magic or ritual. Through the provision of elaborate 
preliminary procedures, an explanation is provided for the instances in which 
a ritual or a spell does not achieve its result, through the "infelicities" in the 
performance of the procedure; see Austin (supra n .63); Evans-Pritchard (supra 
n.20) 146-199; Stanley J. Tambiah, "The Form and Meaning of Magical Acts: 
A Point of View," in Robin Horton and Ruth Finnegan, edd.; Modes of Thought 
(London 1973) 199-229. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

94 BURNING FOR IT 

forms of desire, in all its manifestations. The illnesses that 
desire can generate weaken the body, making it more vulnerable, 
both to other diseases and to more desires, because the focus of 
attention of the mind upon the body's suffering can distract 
whatever resistance the patient might otherwise bring to bear 
against the invasion of illness, emotion, or the effects of a spell. 
Even if the frustrated lovers reflected in the spell texts did not 
become physically ill, widespread knowledge of their unmanage­
able passion could result in a damaging loss of respect that 
could be every bit as harmful to reputation and career as an ill­
ness of several months' duration. The strength of the passions 
was the result of indulging the appetites of the body, each 
appetite strengthening the others and combining with them to 
delude the person into accepting the emotions as important and 
real; such a failure of judgment could be considered a reason­
able predictor of other personal or moral failures to come. In a 
competitive world based on trust and reputation, such failures, 
if known, will be remembered and taken into account. 

From this perspective, there was little effective difference be­
tween erotic desire and the craving for chocolate that we may 
feel despite knowing well that we are allergic to it. Romantic 
love was neither beneficial to or desired by the state; marriages 
were much better if arranged for reasons of inheritance or politi­
cal connections.94 Although the popular literature of this period 
betrays a wish that it could be otherwise, even these romance 
novels eventually end in marriages that, despite appearances at 
the beginning, are age- and class-appropriate .. thereby creating a 
benefit to the state in the provision of the next generation of the 
elite. 

That desire might create insomnia, anorexia, and irritability 

94 Ambivalence toward romantic love is also a feature of our own society, 
despite its rhetoric. Extreme and passionate feelings are regarded as dangerous 
and uncontrollable, and are associated with teen pregnancy, stalking, viol­
ence, suicide, and murder in the popular imagination, as has been the case at 
least since Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LIOONNlCI 95 

seems obvious. But in addition, this survey of the cultural 
resonance attached to fever has suggested that a connection 
between fever or inflammation and these other "illnesses of 
desire" was also clear. If one measure of self-worth was the de­
gree to which desire and its effects were eliminated, controlled, 
or concealed, then there can have been few legitimate, socially­
sanctioned practical or religious ways (other than self-mastery, 
diet, and exercise) to eliminate fP(()~, and none to satisfy it. But 
when basic needs cannot be addressed by legitimate sodal and 
religious complexes, they usually do not simply disappear but 
rather go underground, and are addressed by religious forms 
that are hidden-in other words, magic. 

These observations suggest two explanations for inflicting 
fever upon an object of affection, as a means of restoring lost 
self-esteem to the frustrated lover. First, by creating in his object 
an even higher degree of desire than he is experiencing, he 
effectively raises himself higher on the scale of mastery of fP(()~, 
by rendering someone else lower. Second, on a more practical 
level, the inflicting of illness, especially of this kind, may create 
a sufficient imbalance in the victim's humors to afflict her 
reason, to the point that she will accept him as a lover. This is 
probably not an either / or situation, but rather a case of two re­
lated ideas working together for the spell-caster in a particularly 
satisfying way. 

Raising oneself by lowering someone else may strike us as 
petty and shameful, but in antiquity covert self-praise at the 
expense of others was an acceptable practice even among those 
who were celebrated for their wisdom and goodness. Such 
behavior was well represented in the large stock of jokes and 
stories used as examples:95 

This might be a good time to mention the story of Phryne. This 
woman was at a drinking party once; and they started playing 

95Gal. Adhort. 10 (I 120 M.), transl. P. N. Singer, Galen: Selected Works 
(New York 1997) 46. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

96 BURNING FOR IT 

one of those games where everyone takes it: in turn to give a 
command to his drinking companions. Phryne had noticed that 
there were women present who had made themselves up with 
alkanet, white lead and seaweed. She ordered water to be 
brought; the women had to take some in their hands and dip 
their faces in it once, then immediately wipe them with a 
napkin. Phryne herself went first. The other women's faces 
were of course covered with slime, and they looked perfectly 
monstrous. But Phryne looked better than before: she alone 
had used no makeup, but relied on her natural beauty, without 
recourse to cosmetic tricks. 

The background of this story, which Galen overlooks, is of 
course the obnoxious Phryne's pale and washed-out appear­
ance relative to that of the blooming decorated women. Phryne 
starts out "low," and raises herself in two ways, correcting the 
deficits in her "natural beauty" by leveling the playing field, and 
concealing her own vanity with the same stroke by which she 
criticizes-and spotlights-theirs. 

John J. Winkler argued that the erotic spells are aimed at 
creating in the victim the same symptoms that the spell-caster 
already feels;96 in this sense the spells are reflexive and aimed 
at creating a reciprocal relationship. Although no extant spell 
makes any mention of the symptoms or condition of the spell­
caster, our look at popular and medical ideas about the physi­
cal effects of unregulated desire does provide some support for 
the view that the symptoms wished upon the victim are related 
to his own. But I doubt that the goal is a strict reciprocity of 
emotion, unless we assume that the casters of these fever spells 
actually experienced their passions as a rise in body tempera­
ture. Much more likely, in the context of the scale of power and 
EP(o<;, is that the spell-caster desires to create an even greater 
degree of EP(o<;, and therefore of weakness and vulnerability, in 
the victim of the spell. This enables the lover to regain his place 
on the social (and internal) scale of prestigious self-control by 

96Winkler (supra n.8) 88-90. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

LYNN LlOONNICI 97 

effectively lowering someone else, the victim, and lowering her in 
a way that will be visible to others: illness. By weakening his 
"opponent," he strengthens himself. The actuality is that the vic­
tim has a greater control of EP(J)<; than the spell-caster, because 
she has resisted his charms. He is lower, she is "better." The 
goal of the spell is that the caster, like Phryne, not only gets his 
desire, but also is raised higher than his victim, by sending her 
not to his own level of desire, but beyond it, to the level of 
physical illness (or even death). It is an effective social remedy, 
as well as a personal one, however repellent to modern sen­
sibilities.97 It "works," because the context of love or EP(J)<; is not 
affectionate and egalitarian and well-wishing, but self"esteem, 
shame, identity, and power. 

These concepts themselves have a context: in the public, 
reputation-based life of elite and bureaucratic-class men. The 
four linked discussions of the nature of desire and its relation­
ship to divinity, wisdom, illness, and reputation reflect the 
concerns, pressures, and prejudices of elite males, who must 
depend almost exclusively upon reputation and relationships to 
survive in the only world they value. These considerations might 
have somewhat less impact on the livelihoods of farmers or 
even artisans, for whom the censure of family and friends for 
unacceptable thoughts and behavior would have less direct 
effect on their businesses98 than a reputation for productivity or 
skil1.99 

This study provides an inferential support for the intuitive 
connection of harmful erotic spells to elite or near-elite males. 
The medical and philosophical discussions of heating and de-

97In ideology, if not in actuality. The strong power component of modern 
relationships is masked by our rhetoric, but revealed in the same way as in 
antiquity: by self-help manuals and by popular entertainment. 

98Though any farmer hoping to secure a loan or other form of patronage 
would certainly strive to appear thrifty, honest, and controlled. 

99Indeed, many of the philosophical and medical attitudes reflected in 
Galen, Cicero, and others are "popular" in the very limited sphere of elite 
males; but that is a subject for another paper. 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

98 BURNING FOR IT 

sire clearly reflect and assume this audience and its needs, and 
application of these discussions to the diseases invoked in the 
harmful erotic spells has suggested similar patterns of thought. 
It should be said that this connection is not meant to extend to 
all preserved ritual types in the magical corpora; this literature 
is too various to be explained by anyone thing. What is 
explained by this connection is the use of heating, fever, and 
inflammation in the lengthy and complicated erotic spells that 
cause harm. One would naturally prefer an inscription or two 
over a network of inferences; perhaps new discoveries will one 
day allow this connection to rest on a more concrete footing. But 
given the present state of sources, it is only by inference and 
echo that we can get a sense of the secret inner lives of Greco­
Roman men. This is, in itself, a function of their shame. 

January, 2000 Dept. of Religion 
Vassar College 
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604