2 posts tagged “future”

Seneca’s nephew Lucan in his work surpassed his uncle in portraying the horrors and powers of witchcraft. In his play, just before the decisive battle of Pharsalus, in which Julius Caesar defeats the forces of Pompey, the two armies are moving through Thessaly, the country of witchcraft in Lucan’s work. Here one of Pompey’s sons consults a famous witch called Erictho about the outcome of the future battle.

Erictho is the most powerful of witches, and because she is so powerful she is presented as being quite loathsome and disgusting. Such are her powers that she can even compel some of the lesser gods to serve her and even cause them to shudder at her spells. As exaggerated as these plays are they demonstrate knowledge of magical practices found in the Greek magical texts. These works also shows that Roman audience must have easily understood the concept of magic in a negative sense but also in the sense of being a practice aimed at influencing or controlling the forces of the cosmos, even the gods themselves.

In the beginning of the 4th century AD Persian Sassanid Kingdom was in bad shape. There was a chain of weak rulers that were losing big parts of the kingdom to Roman emperors.  Last one Hormizd II could not even control his nobles and was killed by Arab Bedouins  while hunting in 309.

The the situation got completely out of control. While Arabs continued to plunder Sassanid kingdom, Persian nobles killed the eldest son of Hormizd II. They did not stop there and blinded the second son and imprisoned the third son who managed to escape to Romans after years of imprisonment.  They wanted somebody that would completely control in future, so they stopped their choice on the unborn child!   One of Hormizd’s   wives was pregnant and she did not pose any threat to the nobles.

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