Magikon zōon
| ,II. Le monde gréco-romain et byzantin
The Echenêis-Fish and Magic
Texte intégral
- 1 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, Classical Quarterly, vol. 60, 2010, p. 639-46. (...)
- 2 Historia Animalium 505b 18-20: Ἔστι δ’ ἰχθύδιόν τι τῶν πετραίων, ὃ καλοῦσί τινες ἐχενηΐδα, καὶ χρῶ (...)
1In an article published some years ago,1 Lindsay Watson drew attention to a series of passages in the natural historians about the strange power of the echenêis-fish to stop the forward motion of ships in full sail, and its use in magical spells. The series begins with Aristotle, who says briefly: “There is a certain little fish dwelling amongst the rocks, which they call the echenêis and some people use it for lawsuits (dikas) and for philtra.”2 As Watson rightly saw, this passage provides us with important evidence for the practice of magic in classical Greece, but his argument needs some fine-tuning. He argued in the main that the fish was used as a kind of “binding spell” (katadesmos), and certainly the name of the fish, literally “restrainer-of-ships”, points in this direction, as does Aristotle’s mention of its use in trials, for in Athens at least, katadesmoi were indeed often launched against legal adversaries. But Watson also suggested that by using the word philtra at the very end of the passage Aristotle was referring to a genre of erotic curses called philtrokatadesmoi, an explanation that, as we shall see, falls short of the mark. Nor did he address the practical question of precisely how a fish could be used to obtain either result. Indeed, as we shall see, in the Greek world, binding curses were usually bound effigies or texts inscribed on lead and placed in graves or other places. Was a fish to be used in a similar manner? Pliny and two later Greek texts attest, in fact, to the use of this same fish in amulets, and I will argue below that parts of this the fish were used as amulets to impede the forward motion of lawsuits, the love affairs of others, as well as premature birth or the prolapse of the uterus.
- 3 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 640-41 citing Oppian, Halieutica(...)
- 4 Ibid., p. 640-41 citing Nonnus, Dionysiaca 21.45-46.
- 5 C. A. Faraone, “The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells”, in Id. and D. Obbink (ed.), (...)
- 6 See, e.g., PGM III 161 (one of four 4-5th CE rubrics for an omnibus spell), IV 296 (4th CE rubric (...)
- 7 Theocritus 2.159; see L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 640 n. 18.
2For his argument Watson relies heavily on the metaphorical vocabulary used by two later authors, Oppian and Aelian, who describe how this fish “binds” ships and thereby prevents them from moving.3 Both of these authors, however, use words related to pedê, “shackle”, a poetic term that to my knowledge is never used in our extant binding spells; only Nonnus, in fact, a poet of the late 4th- or early 5th-century CE, while describing this same fish, uses the verb dein, “to bind”, 4the simplex form of one of the most common verb used in Greek binding spells (katadein) to restrain rivals or enemies from competing in a variety of agonistic settings, including legal trials and love affairs.5 The technical term philtrokatademos, moreover, appears rarely and almost always as a rubric in late-antique handbooks, 6although a phrase used in an elaborate love charm narrated in Theocritus’s second Idyll, “I will bind (i.e. him) with philtra” suggests that such a word may have existed much earlier.7

Illustration of the echenêis or remora from Ichthyologie; Histoire naturelle des poissons by Mark Elieser Bloch (1796), image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
- 8 C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1999, chapter 2.
3The philtrokatadesmos was, in fact, a hybrid spell that aims somewhat paradoxically at both binding the usually female victim (to prevent her from having sexual relations with other men), but at the same time at inflicting her with various forms of torture, until she comes and submits herself sexually to the person performing the spell (or on whose behalf it is performed).8 The term is used, for example, in a papyrus curse from Roman Egypt against a woman named Theodotis that begins with a simple speech act, “I bind you down (se katadesmeuô), Theodotis”, and then switches to prayer:
“Bring to perfection the content of this philtrokatadesmos… so that Theodotis, the daughter of Eus, may no longer have experience with another man than me alone, Ammonion, because she is enslaved, stung with madness and flies through the night in search of Ammonion, son of Hermitaris, and so that she bring her thigh to my thigh and her sexual organ to my sexual organ for continual sexual intercourse.”
- 9 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 646.
4Here we see the inherent paradox of this hybrid magical spell, which is designed to bind Theodotis and thereby prevent her from having sex with other men, but at the same time is designed to incite her with mad desire to come quickly to Ammonion for sex. If the echenêis-fish was useful as a philtrokatadesmos, it could logically induce the first action of binding (katadesmeuein), but it is hard to see how it could induce Theodotis to become agitated and “fly through the air” in a frantic search for Ammonion. Watson addressed this problem by concluding that, given the fish’s ability to glue itself to the side of the ship (and thereby impede its motion), we should understand that “those deploying it (i.e. the echenêis-fish) must have purposed with unabashed specificity that the object of their lust should conjoin (kollan) their private parts with those of the spell-caster.”9 There are, indeed, as he shows and as we have seen at the end of the curse against Theodotis, good parallels for such “gluing” of the private parts in erotic curses and penis creams, but as we shall see, the logic of the accounts of both Aristotle and Pliny points to the restraint of sexual action, rather than the encouragement of it.
- 10 Although he finds it “tempting to speculate that some part of the echenêis might have been used as (...)
- 11 DT 111-12: “Just as this puppy is prone (aversus) and unable to rise up, so, too, may they be unab (...)
- 12 Yet another lead tablet from Carthage curses seven victims to silence (DT 222B1-5) and in the proc (...)
- 13 Marcie Handler kindly made me aware of this interesting find and I thank her for the description I (...)
- 14 C. A. Faraone, “Animal-Effigies in Ancient Curses”, art. cit.
5Watson, in short, reconstructs the magical actions mentioned by Aristotle primarily as binding magic on the basis of similarities in vocabulary in a number of late-antique texts, some nearly a millennium later, and he never explains precisely how the fish was to be used in such a binding spell.10 As was mentioned above, although they are indeed contemporary with Aristotle, katadesmoi are primarily oral or written because the name of the victim is a crucial element (as we saw in the case of Theodotis above). Was this saltwater fish, then, to be placed in a grave or well with a prayer or incantation spoken over it? There are, in fact, a handful of instances where small animals – including a fish – accompanied in binding spells as effigies for the victim. A pair of first-century CE lead tablets from Aquitania, for example, aim at preventing two men from winning a law-suit and they seem to describe a puppy that was impaled and buried with the tablets,11 and another from a 2nd-century CE grave in Carthage adjures a number of superhuman entities to bind a charioteer named Victoricus “just as this rooster (alektôr) has been bound down in its feet, hands and head” (DT 241.15-20).12 This use of animal effigies, moreover, might have been known to Aristotle. A strange ensemble was recently unearthed in the Athenian Agora: a terracotta cooking pot of Hellenistic date (325-270 BC) that was buried in the floor of a workshop and contained the skull and leg bones of a very young chicken. An iron spike had been driven through the bottom of the pot, which had been inscribed with more than twenty names.13 Here, then, the severed head and feet, the spike and the inscribed names all suggest that someone in Athens performed an elaborate curse ritual in which a chicken served as an effigy for a large number of victims. It is also significant that, like the puppy in Aquitania, the effigy was a young, immature animal.14
- 15 A. Barta (“Ito Pater, Eracura and the Messenger: A Preliminary Report on a Curse Tablet from Aquin (...)
6I know of only one instance of a fish used as an effigy in a binding curse. In the Fasti, Ovid describes an annual ritual performed for the “Silent Goddess” (2.577-78):15
And here an old woman, seated among girls, performs rites in honour of Tacita (i.e. “the Silent Goddess”)… and she roasts in the fire the head of a maena fish which she has sewed up, made fast with pitch, and pierced through and through with a bronze needle… Then, as she goes off, she says, “We have bound fast hostile tongues and unfriendly mouths.”
- 16 The treatment of the front paws, suggests, perhaps, a curse designed especially for an orator: if (...)
7This was presumably some annual Roman rite performed by women and girls in order to bind malicious gossip within the community. The use of any fish would make sense, of course, because unlike birds and mammals, fish are silent by nature and share only two obvious anatomical features with humans – the eyes and a relatively large mouth. Writing in his autobiography a few centuries after Ovid, Libanius describes another animal effigy; after he became sick with headaches and gout and was unable to read, write or speak, the mutilated and contorted body of another relatively silent creature – a chameleon – was discovered in his lecture room (Orat. 1.245-29): “… and we saw the thing with its head tucked in between its hind legs, one of its front legs missing, and the other closing its mouth for silence”.16
8Could the echenêis-fish have been used in such fashion as an effigy for the victim in curses against rival litigants or lovers? Most likely not, because those animals used as effigies are never chosen because of their natural ability as an agent of binding, but because of their appropriateness as a victim of binding, either because they are quite similar to the victim in gender and vitality (e.g., the competitive adult rooster used as an effigy for a robust male charioteer or orator) or because they are entirely dissimilar, for example, the use of immature animals that are helpless by nature, like the small puppy in Aquitania or the young chick, whose head and feet were found in the inscribed pot from Athens. The special ability of the echenêis-fish to induce binding suggests a different logic to the recipe, similar to the use of a special kind of airborne animal in an insomnia spell (PGM XII 376-79): “Take a living bat and on the right wing paint with myrrh the following figure and on the left the seven names of the gods as well as: ‘Let her, Ms. So-and-so, lie awake until she consents!’ And so release the bat again…” Here, of course, the recipe presupposes that the animal’s natural restlessness at night will be transferred to the victim. By this same logic, then, if this echenêis-fish were inscribed with the name of a person, this person would by assimilation obtain the power to bind, just as the fish does, rather than to be bound, since it is clear from Aristotle and other writers – and also from the very name of the fish – that its talent lay in its ability to restrain, rather than be restrained.
- 17 Pliny’s claims, for example, that animal teeth can make a baby’s teething easier or cure a toothac (...)
9In two different passages Pliny the Elder suggests, in fact, that the Greeks used part of this same fish as an amulet, and we have lots of evidence that the Greeks did indeed use parts of animals – their feet, eyes, bones etc. – as amulets.17 Pliny’s initial account follows Aristotle rather closely, with an important addition near the end:
- 18 Pliny, Historia Naturalia 9.79: Est paruum admodum piscis adsuetus petris echeneis appellatus. Hos (...)
There is a somewhat small fish accustomed to the rocks, which is called the echenêis. They believe that these fish by cleaving to the hulls of a ship make them go more slowly, from which the name has been given (i.e. “restrainer of ships” from Greek echein, “to hold” and naus “ship”), for which reason it is infamously used in love-magic and love-potions and delays a judgment or a lawsuit, which crimes are compensated by one praiseworthy thing: it stops the false labour of woman and brings their pregnancy to term.18
10We should note first of all that for Pliny the fish’s “natural” ability to restrain ships and its name are directly connected (quem ob causam) and directly explain why they are used in love magic, in restraining legal proceedings, and in restraining premature labour. It seems rather straightforward that its use in love magic was indeed restraint of some kind.
- 19 Pliny, Historia Naturalia 32.1: … mirumque, e graecis alii lubricos partus atque procidentes conti (...)
- 20 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 642.
- 21 Julius Africanus, Cestes, fr. T8 16-18 in M. Wallraf et al. (ed.) Iulius Africanus, Cesti: The Ext (...)
11Pliny does not tell us in the passage above explicitly that the echenêis-fish was used as or in an amulet, but when he returns to discussing the same fish much later in the Historia Naturalia, he says that “among the Greeks they tell us that, if carried as an amulet as we have said (i.e. in Book 9), it prevents false labour and leads pregnancies in peril to term”.19 Now one might suggest that such amulets could be used maliciously to prevent the birth of a child,20 but this cannot be what Pliny means, at least, when he says in the first passage that the only redeeming quality of the fish is its power to prevent premature births. A Greek author, Julius Africanus (c. 160 – c. 240), reports that this fish was also used to prevent the prolapse of the uterus:21
As for the echenêis-fish, does it not provide a restraint for prolapsed wombs (ταῖς ὀλισθηραῖς ὑστέραις κατοχὴν ποιεῖ)? Does not the same fish act as a counterweight to the ship travelling at full speed, when it goes under its prow?
- 22 Other examples in this same section include: “Does not the brain of the frog induce infertility?”, (...)
- 23 Cyranides 1.13.30-32: Τῆς δὲ ἐχενηίδος βραχὺ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων ἐὰν καταρράψῃς εἰς ἵππου δέρμα καὶ ἔχῃς(...)
12Africanus does not say specifically that the fish was used as an amulet, but this passage occurs in a series of rhetorical questions about the natural abilities of plants, stones or animal parts to affect human fertility and child-birth, including one stone known elsewhere as an amulet: “Does not the gagates-stone (probably “jet”) ease childbirth?”22 We can, therefore, see a general pattern to the use of this fish in medicine: it restrains the forward motion of premature foetuses or prevents the uterus from exiting the womb after a birth. It seems reasonable, too, that these birth-restraining amulets were made from some small part of the fish and, in fact, the Cyranides, a late Greek handbook for amulets, tells us another use of part of this fish: “If you wrap up in horse-skin a piece of bone from an echenêis fish and then keeping it on your person embark on a ship and conceal it, the ship will not sail, until you stop concealing it or until you come off the ship”.23
13To conclude quickly. In the first passage quoted earlier, Pliny mentions in a single breath that the fish was used for “love-magic and love-potions” (amatoria and veneficia) as well as for “the delay of judgments or lawsuits” (iudicium ac litium mora) and for premature birth, suggesting that the process and the logic are similar, if not identical, in each case. Since in the second passage he states that, according to the Greeks, premature birth was restrained by an amulet, it seems probable that all of these goals were accomplished by carrying the fish or part of it as an amulet. Likewise, when Aristotle reports that “some people use the echenêis-fish for lawsuits (dikas) and for philtra”, he, too, was probably referring to the late-classical use of similar amulets in Athens or at least in Greece – indeed Pliny says it is a Greek habit. Such amulets are easy to imagine in the case of a legal trial: all a defendant had to do was wear the bone of the fish as an amulet to the trial or hide it in the courtroom. It was used, in short, to delay legal proceedings that were probably deleterious to the person wearing the amulet. But how was such an amulet deployed “for philtra”?
- 24 C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, op. cit.
- 25 Ibid., p. 96-110.
14The word philtron originally meant a device or an action that brings on the state of philia, “friendship” or “affection” and, in fact, as I have argued elsewhere the Greeks did not have a category of “love-magic” per se, but rather they seemed to use two diametrically opposed types: “erotic magic” and “philia-magic”.24 The first usually took the form of inscribed curses used by men to torture women until they submitted sexually, as we saw in the curse against Theodotis discussed earlier. Philia-magic, on the other hand, seems to have been used mainly by women against their husbands or boyfriends to keep them faithful to the relationship, primarily by dulling their sexual urges.25 I suggest, then, that the use of the echenêis-fish “for philtra” probably refers to “restraining” a partner in an existing relationship.
- 26 Plutarch, Moralia 139a; see C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, op. cit., p. 112-114 for disc (...)
15The two primary forms of philia-magic were, in fact, love-potions, another important meaning of the word philtra, or amulets. Plutarch in his essay “Marital Advice” warns women against using such magic against their husbands:26
Fishing with pharmaka is a quick and easy way to catch fish, but it renders them inedible and paltry. In the same way, women who use love potions (philtra) and sorcery (goêteia) against their husbands, and who gain mastery over them through pleasure, end up living with stunned, senseless, crippled men.
- 27 Antiphon 1.19 and Magna Moralia 16 (= [Aristotle] 1188b30-38); see C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Lo (...)
16The idea here seems to be that in the process of restraining their husbands’ sexual adventures outside of the house, these women run the risk of paralyzing them permanently, and, in fact, both Antiphon and the Aristotelian Magna Moralia preserve stories of women who, after killing their husbands or lovers, escaped capital punishment by claiming that they thought they were giving them love potions not poisons.27 It is quite possible, of course, that Aristotle was thinking of a love potion made from this fish, but it is hard to see how such a potion could also delay a legal trial. I suggest, in fact, that when he mentions “lawsuits (dikas) and philtra”, Aristotle was recalling the use of a part of this fish (perhaps a bone as in the Cyranides recipe) as an amulet worn by a person or hidden in an appropriate place.
Bibliographie
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Notes
1 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, Classical Quarterly, vol. 60, 2010, p. 639-46. T. Galoppin (Animaux et pouvoir rituel dans les pratiques “magiques” du monde romain, thesis supervised by N. Belayche, EPHE, Paris, 2015, p. 521-27) provides a full review of the evidence and emphasizes the use of the fish in amulets, although he does not disagree with Watson’s interpretation of Aristotle’s testimony.
2 Historia Animalium 505b 18-20: Ἔστι δ’ ἰχθύδιόν τι τῶν πετραίων, ὃ καλοῦσί τινες ἐχενηΐδα, καὶ χρῶνταί τινες αὐτῷ πρὸς δίκας καὶ φίλτρα.
3 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 640-41 citing Oppian, Halieutica 1.232-43 passim and Aelian, Natura Animalium 2.17.
4 Ibid., p. 640-41 citing Nonnus, Dionysiaca 21.45-46.
5 C. A. Faraone, “The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells”, in Id. and D. Obbink (ed.), Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 3-32.
6 See, e.g., PGM III 161 (one of four 4-5th CE rubrics for an omnibus spell), IV 296 (4th CE rubric for erotic curse), VII 191 (3rd-4th CE rubric for a penis ointment), VIII 1 (4th-5th CE rubric for a statue to bring prosperity and charm to a shopkeeper and his shop). It is, however, used once in an activated erotic curse to refer to itself (SM 38.8) in a request to “bring to perfection the content of the philtrokatadesmos”. See below for further discussion. SM 38 has been dated variously to the 2nd through 4th centuries CE; see the commentary ad loc.
7 Theocritus 2.159; see L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 640 n. 18.
8 C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1999, chapter 2.
9 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 646.
10 Although he finds it “tempting to speculate that some part of the echenêis might have been used as a penis salve”; ibid., p. 646.
11 DT 111-12: “Just as this puppy is prone (aversus) and unable to rise up, so, too, may they be unable to rise. May they be transfixed, just as the puppy has been transfixed”. Archaeological evidence from another place in southern France gives us a more precise sense of how the puppy may have been “transfixed”. In the 1980s archaeologists working at a late Hellenistic site near the mouth of the Rhône River discovered a sealed ritual deposit containing the body of a very young fox pierced with three needles, perhaps one that was never weaned; see B. Bouloumie, “Dépôts votifs du iie s. av. J.-C. à Sainte-Blaise (Bouches-du-Rhône): un rite d’envoûtement?”, Archéologie du midi méditerranéen, vol. 11, 1985, p. 63-67 for full discussion.
12 Yet another lead tablet from Carthage curses seven victims to silence (DT 222B1-5) and in the process alludes to another rooster used in effigy: “[Just] as I have ripped out the tongue of this rooster (gallus)… and pierced it, so, too, may they (presumably the ghosts of the people buried in the tomb) silence the tongues of my enemies!” For a fuller discussion of this phenomenon, see C. A. Faraone, “Animals-Effigies in Ancient Curses: The Role of Gender, Age and Natural Behavior in their Selection”, Mediterraneo Antico, vol. 22, 2019, p. 289-315.
13 Marcie Handler kindly made me aware of this interesting find and I thank her for the description I have used here; she gave a preliminary report at the 2009 APA Meetings in Philadelphia entitled: “Chicken Soup for the Soul: New Evidence for the Practice of Magic in Hellenistic Athens”. The objects have recently been published in Lamont (2021).
14 C. A. Faraone, “Animal-Effigies in Ancient Curses”, art. cit.
15 A. Barta (“Ito Pater, Eracura and the Messenger: A Preliminary Report on a Curse Tablet from Aquincum”, Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis, vol. 51, 2015, p. 101-113) publishes a curse tablet from Aquincum that addresses the same goddess Tacita: “Mute and Silent Goddess! Just as the infernal souls are mute and silent, so are those who will bring a curse-in-reply to you may be mute and silent” (Muta et Tacita! Quomodo manes muti et taciti sunt, sic qui tibi antepistulam adferent, muti et taciti sint).
16 The treatment of the front paws, suggests, perhaps, a curse designed especially for an orator: if the missing forefoot was the right one, presumably its removal aimed at preventing Libanius from orating effectively, because this was the hand with which orators gestured when they performed. The left paw, of course, silenced the mouth.
17 Pliny’s claims, for example, that animal teeth can make a baby’s teething easier or cure a toothache: of a horse (Pliny, Naturalis Historia 28.258), a wolf (28.257), a mole (30.20), a dog (30.21-22), a serpent (30.137) or even a dolphin (32.48) – these recipes are collected and discussed by P. Gaillard-Seux (“Traitement magique des maux de dents à l’époque impériale romaine (ier-ve siècles)”, in E. Samama and F. Collard (ed.), Dents, dentistes et art dentaire. Histoire, pratiques et représentations, Antiquité, Moyen Âge, Ancien Régime, colloque international de Villetaneuse, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense, Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (8-10 mars 2012), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2012, p. 196, n° 30). The Greeks also used the feet or leg sinews of swift or graceful animals as amulets in order to transfer the speed and agility of that animal to an arthritic or gouty patient. Aelius Promotus recommends, for example, that we tie on to the patient the feet of a hare for arthritis and the tendons of a mule for gout, while Alexander of Tralles preserves more elaborate recipes that deploy the feet of a chameleon or involve plaiting together the sinews of wild animals or birds. For Aelius Promotus, see M. Wellmann (“Aelius Promotus Ἰατρικὰ φυσικὰ καὶ ἀντιπαθητικὰ”, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, vol. 37, 1908, 775.17 (hare) and 775.20-24 (mule); for Alexander of Tralles: 2.583.14-29 (chameleon); 2.581.14-19 (vulture); 2.583.4-13 (crane) and 2.579.20-31 (ass, pig, and stork). For the popular use of various parts of the swallow in Greek amulets, see P. Gaillard-Seux, “De l’Orient à l’Occident: les recettes médico-magiques tirées de l’hirondelle”, V. Dasen and J.-M. Spiesser (ed.), La transmission des savoirs magiques, Antiquité-Renaissance, Fribourg (Suisse), 17-18 mars 2011, Tavarnuzze, SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014, p. 259-281.
18 Pliny, Historia Naturalia 9.79: Est paruum admodum piscis adsuetus petris echeneis appellatus. Hos carinis adhaerante navis tardius ire creduntur inde nomine inposito, quem ob causam amatoriis quoque veneficiis infamis est et iudicium ac litium mora, quae crimina una laude pensat fluxus gravidarum utero sistens partusque continens ad puerperium. T. Galoppin (Animaux et pouvoir rituel, op. cit., p. 525-26) gives a full discussion of this passage and its debt to Aristotle up to the words litium mora, after which he argues rightly that Pliny turns to some other source.
19 Pliny, Historia Naturalia 32.1: … mirumque, e graecis alii lubricos partus atque procidentes continere ad maturitatem adalligatum, ut diximus, prodiderunt. The passage continues on as follows: “Others say that, if conserved in salt and carried as an amulet, it delivers women from labour, from whence comes its name odinolytes”. This name seems to be Greek in origin – ôdinolutês (?), “the loosener of pain” – for which see E. de Saint-Denis, Pline l’Ancien, Histoire naturelle XXXII, Paris, Les Belles-Lettres, 1966, loc. cit. Unless the salt is thought to reverse the natural restraining power of the fish, it seems likely that Pliny, his source or the manuscript tradition has conflated two different kinds of fish each with a different nom parlant: “the restrainer of ships” and the “loosener of pains”. The confusion is in part generated by Pliny’s use of the Latin terms mora and remora to refer to the same fish; see T. Galoppin, Animaux et pouvoir rituel, op. cit., p. 524-525.
20 L. C. Watson, “The Echeneis-Fish and Erotic Magic”, art. cit., p. 642.
21 Julius Africanus, Cestes, fr. T8 16-18 in M. Wallraf et al. (ed.) Iulius Africanus, Cesti: The Extant Fragments, Berlin, de Gruyter, 2012, p. 20-21 for this text and translation.
22 Other examples in this same section include: “Does not the brain of the frog induce infertility?”, “Is not fat of the lion a contraceptive?” or “Is not sap a fertility drug?” These were probably used as ointments. For the gagates stone as a “quick-birther” amulet, see Aelius Promotus 774.24-27 in M. Wellmann, Aelius Promotus Ἰατρικὰ φυσικὰ καὶ ἀντιπαθητικὰ, op. cit., p. 774-777.
23 Cyranides 1.13.30-32: Τῆς δὲ ἐχενηίδος βραχὺ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων ἐὰν καταρράψῃς εἰς ἵππου δέρμα καὶ ἔχῃς ἐντός σου καὶ ἐπιβῇς εἰς πλοῖον καὶ κρύψῃς, οὐκέτι πλεύσει τὸ πλοῖον, εἰ μὴ βασταχθῇ τὸ κεκρυμμένον ἢ ἐξέλθῃς τοῦ πλοίου.
24 C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, op. cit.
25 Ibid., p. 96-110.
26 Plutarch, Moralia 139a; see C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, op. cit., p. 112-114 for discussion.
27 Antiphon 1.19 and Magna Moralia 16 (= [Aristotle] 1188b30-38); see C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, op. cit., p. 110-119.
Table des illustrations
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Légende | Illustration of the echenêis or remora from Ichthyologie; Histoire naturelle des poissons by Mark Elieser Bloch (1796), image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, licensed under CC BY 2.0. |
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