The idea of magic in Roman law

It has been said that the Romans always outlawed magic. In fact, the development of a law against magic per se was relatively late. Rome's earliest body of law, the XII Tables, contained one portion that was interpreted by later authors as a law against the magical theft of grain, but was, in fact, originally related to the practice of destructive weather-magic. A second law in the XII Tables addressed defamation, and that is how the majority of ancient authors understood it. Pliny the Elder, however, identified it as a law against magic, and many modern scholars have decided to endorse his view. This study shows that his interpretation is anachronistic and that the basis used by modern scholars for accepting it is flawed and without substance. The Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis, promulgated early in the 1st century BC, formed the basis for Rome's more comprehensive response to magic. This law bore no discernible relationship to that of the XII Tables, and, as it was meant to address veneficium, was originally concerned with poisoning. Its development into a law against magic was the result of certain specific ideas about poisoners that took shape after the 2nd Punic War and was not completed until as late as the middle of the 2nd century AD. The important role played in the transformation of this lex by Roman ideas about medicine, which has not received proper attention elsewhere, is shown to offer the best explanation for why it eventually became Rome's chief law against magic. It is therefore demonstrated that Romans did not always outlaw magic but came to do so only because of specific ideas held by them about veneficium or poisoning.