Comparative Witchcraft

Comparative Witchcraft “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too”, a famous quote from The Wizard of Oz, warns Dorothy that she cannot escape from the Wicked Witch of the West’s wrath. A threat that according to the ancient Greek and Roman authors is something to fear and while the witches of their time did not have green skin, they were just as horrifying. Apuleius, Lucan, and Petronius demonstrate the horrors that witches are capable of in their accounts of experiences with Magical women. The first author Petronius claims, “what is up they can make down” (Petronius, 63) indicating that they can change the natural order of the world around them. Using their magic ability to turn themselves invisible and render victims unable to defend
If unable to achieve this then she must wait to retrieve the limbs of the deceased from the mouths of hungry wolves. Lucan supplies the information, that witches have such a strong love of violence and death. Citing that someone observed Erictho using a love spell to keep the god of war, Mars, to keep him in Thessalian land. That he allow her the opportunity to get many powerful spirits under her control and steal what she needs from very influential corpses, such as from Julius Caesar (Lucas, 569). In opposition to Lucas’s views, the witches would transform into an animal in order to reach the deceased and retrieve what they need. However, if someone is watching for this, as was the case in The Golden Ass, then the witches use a sleep spell and reanimate the corpse so it can walk to a more accessible location (Apuleius, 2.30). In this interpretation, witches only steal corpses to have ingredients to use in their spells against the living (Apuleius, 2.17) and that their true passions lay
With Lucan describing it that the herbs and plants of the earth respond to the witchcraft (Lucan, 6.434). Apuleius contributes that the witches use plants in their poisons (Apuleius, 2.29), used to murder those that are in their way. This power over plants that they have however does not explain all of the powers that they have, that they say come from one of two options.
The first possibility given is that Witches have the power to restrain the gods themselves. This is thought to both prove how powerful the witchcraft of these women are and be the prime characteristic of what makes a witch (Ogden, 123). Seen in Erictho’s attempt to place the god of war under a love spell (Lucas, 569) and when Pamphile uses the force of the gods she has restrained to animate the bodies of those she had placed an erotic spell on (Apuleius, 3.18).
Overall, both Apuleius and Lucas have very fleshed out descriptions of what a compared to what is left of Petronius’s writing. Petronius seems to view witches as a very powerful evil that is sneaky in carrying out its plans, agreeing with what Apuleius and Lucas seem to think. However, while Apuleius and Lucas agree in how the witches get their power, they seem to disagree with what witches desire the most from their arts. While the witches that people tend to think of may not be driven by lust for sex or power, they are just as powerful