This book is the latest to be published by the research group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) project ‘Religión, Magia y Adivinación en Grecia y Roma’, following Mito y Magia en Grecia y Roma (2013), Los papiros mágicos griegos: entre lo sublime y lo cotidiano (2013) and Magikè Téchne. Formación y consideración social del mago en el Mundo Antiguo (2017). The present, fourth, volume primarily explores the connections between magic and religion (Part 1), science (Part 2) and literature (Part 3), and then addresses terminological questions (Part 4). The book comprises mostly studies in Spanish, but there are also contributions in English, French, Italian and German.

The first part contains six chapters dedicated to themes of magic and religion: magic in the Hittite world (A. Bernabé Pajares), classification of deities in the Papyri Graecae Magicae (PGM) (Canzobre Martínez), Aphrodite in the PGM (Suárez de la Torre), magic and civic cult (F. Marco Simón), the possible Ampurian origins of a Latin defixio (C. Sánchez Natalías) and the practice of magic among the early Christians (M. Monaca). Bernabé Pajares summarises and analyses magical practices in Hittite culture and divides them into aggressive and positive magic, stating that our knowledge of the aggressive sort is far more limited. Canzobre Martínez studies the presence of deities in the PGM, how they are mentioned, their main characteristics and how they are expected to interact with the practitioners of spells. Suárez de la Torre explores the presence of Aphrodite in the PGM, giving particular attention to the contents and structure of the agôgê spell of PGM IV.2891–942 and to the divination spell of PGM IV.3209–54. Suárez de la Torre calls attention to Aphrodite's omnipotence throughout these spells, looking beyond the typical associations with love. Marco Simón investigates the relation between magical rituals and civic cult, counteracting the idea that these practices were separate from civic religion. This analysis is strongly supported by a wide range of epigraphic sources, mainly from Cirene, Teos and Ephesus. Sánchez Natalías investigates the provenance of the aforementioned Latin defixio (published by P. Rothenhöfer, ‘Römische Offiziere auf einer tabella defixionum’, Epigraphica 78 [2016], 235–51), through a comparative study with other defixiones from Ampurias, which leads her to raise the hypothesis that it is of the same origin. Noteworthy, too, is the work of Monaca on magical papyri considered to be Christian, focusing on their healing attributes and connections with other papyri.

While this first part of the book examines a wide range of magical practices in defixiones and the PGM, investigating their relation to the religiosity of the ancient world, the second part is devoted to the connection between magic and science. It comprises four studies, on alchemy (M. Blanco Cesteros), botany (N. López Carrasco) and astrology (A. Pérez Jiménez and K. Geus). Blanco Cesteros provides a new critical text of PGM XII and proposes, among other things, that this papyrus was composed in the context of alchemical experimentation and had a wide range of possible uses. López Carrasco examines PGM IV.2451–67 and IV.2782–886 and elaborates on the relation between plants and herbs connected to Hecate (σμύρνα, λιβανός, στύραξ, πήγανον and δάφνη) and their use in magical and medical contexts. Pérez Jiménez analyses the terminology applied to practitioners of magic and astral influence on the lives of sorcerers. This discussion would have benefited from acknowledging and engaging with J.N. Bremmer's influential study, ‘The Birth of the Term “Magic”’, ZPE 126 (1999), 1–12. Lastly, Geus offers a fresh analysis of the case of Mettius Pompusianus, the suffect consul of 70–75 ce who, he suggests, may have been executed for using a magical horoscope against Domitian.

The third part is dedicated to episodes concerning supernatural and magical practices in literature: the use of excerpts of Homer in aggressive magic is the subject of F. Maltomini and E. Chronopoulou, who study Homeric verses and formulas and how they work in the magical texts, and note that the dactylic hexameter was appropriated for the composition of curses. The contribution of Sánchez-Mañas analyses a brief episode of lycanthropy in Herodotus 4.105, mostly in relation to Od. 10.210–15 and PGM XIII.270–9. It would have been interesting if examples from the Latin literary tradition had been developed and explored, namely Virg. Ecl. 8, Petr. 61–2 and Plin. HN 8.80, which would have enriched the chapter. J. Vela Tejada takes an original approach to Strabo's Geography and explores the theme of impostors and soothsayers therein, analysing passages of the Geography and highlighting Strabo's scepticism regarding magical rites practised in distant territories of the empire. A. Vicente Sánchez's study on magic in Greek epistolography discusses mostly passages concerning reports of magic rituals related to love from Alciphron, Philostratus, Aristaenetus and Aelian and their connection with PGM. Vicente Sánchez notes the powers of Aphrodite's magical belt mentioned in some of the epistles and also raises the question of the connection between Persuasion (Πειθώ) and Aphrodite's techniques, a topic that goes back at least to Pindar's Pythian 4.219. To enrich the discussion on this subject, the only improvement I could suggest would be the inclusion of the example of Pindar and the discussion in S.I. Johnston's ‘The Song of the Iynx: Magic and Rhetoric in Pythian 4’, TAPhA 125 (1995), 177–206. The chapter by M. Escolano-Poveda studies the necromantic practices in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (6.14–15) and compares this episode with other Demotic texts and rituals.

The last part of the book concerns mostly terminological questions. R. Martín Hernández studies the relationship between PGM VII and the papyri of the so-called Archive of Hermonthis, looking at the traces of both texts and their cultural and religious similarities. A. García Molinos focuses on σύστασις and συνίστημι in the PGM and offers interesting reflections on how these two terms, not usually associated with magical speech, found their way into the PGM. The last contribution, by F. Audureau, is dedicated to the word ἀνατολή and how it is applied to the moon in the magical papyri.

Without calling into question the value of the present volume, it should be noted that there is an imbalance in the scope of the essays presented therein: this is a collection of eighteen chapters called Magia, cultura y sociedad en el Mundo Antiguo, but only two are strictly dedicated to the Roman world. In the second part, concerning magic and science, a greater emphasis could have been given to scientific literature and the close connection between magic and medicine, as is done in the chapter by López Carrasco.

Nonetheless, this book is an important work for all those interested in the topic of ancient magic, and it only confirms the growing interest in this field. The wide range of themes treated makes the volume attractive to a bigger audience of readers, not only to scholars working on ancient magic.