Ocular Pathologies and the Evil Eye in the Early Roman Principate

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/156852712X641769

Numen 59 (2012) 295–321 brill.nl/nu

Ocular Pathologies and the Evil Eye in the Early Roman Principate

Antón Alvar NuñoDepartamento de CC. de la Educación, la Cultura, el Lenguaje y las Artes,

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Camino del Molino s/n, 28943, Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain

[email protected]

AbstractOcular pathologies are a natural phenomenon that can be detected empirically. All over the world, such phenomena are often interpreted as an index of inherent personal capacity for causing harm. The Graeco-Roman world was no exception. During the early Roman Principate, the literary representation of such malformations was clearly influenced by two genres that had been developed in the Greek world during the Hel-lenistic period. The first was the paradoxographic or mirabilia tradition, a literary genre that in the aftermath of Alexander’s conquests inventoried supposed natural and anthropological wonders, reports that were subsequently brought up to date and adapted by Roman authors such as Cicero and Varro. The second was physiognomics, the systematization, mainly by the Peripatetics but also by some Hippocratic authors, of the popular idea that ethical character can be read from somatic signs. This paper understands Pliny the Elder’s accounts of peoples and families able to cast the evil eye, objectified in the possession of a double pupil, as a significant aspect of his socio-moral account of the effects of world-empire upon Rome. In transposing the theme to his figure of the procuress Dipsas almost a century earlier, Ovid created a synecdoche for moral disorder at Rome itself shortly before the two Augustan laws of 18 b.c.e. regu-lating sexual conduct. In short, if we are to progress in our understanding of Roman socio-moral instrumentalization of ocular malformation in relation to the evil eye, we must pay careful attention to the contexts and strategies of our texts.

Keywordsevil eye, jettatore, ocular pathologies, paradoxography, physiognomics, witchcraft

296 A. Alvar Nuño / Numen 59 (2012) 295–321

This paper focuses on the role of ocular peculiarities, both real and imaginary, in the creation of the image of the jettatore1 during the Prin-cipate. Three points regarding the conceptualization of the evil eye among Roman authors stand out. First of all, it is not ritualized: in contrast to the various forms of malign magic, the destructive power of the evil eye does not require being unleashed either by verbal utterance — carmina, voces magicae, or prayers — or by any other performative act. Divine mediation never plays a part. To that extent, the evil eye may be considered as a form of “pure” magical action, a natural phenomenon analogous to Evans-Pritchard’s category of witchcraft, based on the Zande notion of mangu, which is the natural and inherited ability attributed to some families to harm others by spirit means without recourse to rituals or spells (Evans-Pritchard 1968:21).2 Second, the evil eye at Rome is mainly involuntary. Admittedly, it is occasionally represented by Greek and Roman authors as a special quality possessed by some practitioners, but, despite claims to the contrary by some scholars, it is not something shared by all magicians (Tupet 1976:178–181). This seems typical: Evans-Pritchard never heard any Azande con-fess to using witchcraft, on the contrary, the defendants always denied their supposed power to do harm, which could, in fact, only finally be demonstrated by an examination after the witch’s death (Evans-Pritchard 1968:118–133). As for Graeco-Roman jettatori, there are no instances in the sources in which they acknowledge the existence of

This paper has been written in the context of research project FFI2008-01 Espacios de penumbra. Cartografía de la actividad mágico-religiosa en el Occidente del Imperio romano directed by prof. Francisco Marco Simón. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Irene Pajón Leyra for her bibliographical references on paradoxography. I am also deeply grateful to Prof. Richard Gordon for his numerous comments and suggestions, and for patiently correcting my English. The remaining barbarisms and possible holes in the argument are my sole responsibility.1) Since there is no suitable English word for a person who is able to cast the evil eye, I use the Italian word jettatore instead.2) Cf. Clerq 1995:88–89 for the use of Evans-Pritchard’s concepts of witchcraft and magic applied to the Graeco-Roman world. Lafaye in Daremberg-Saglio, (1896: s.v. fascinum, vol. 2, 983f.) was the first to note the difference between the natural power of mystical aggression and ritualized cursing.

A. Alvar Nuño / Numen 59 (2012) 295–321 297

such powers,3 and there are no surviving reports of accusations alleging the use of the evil eye that came to court.4 Third, the Romans consid-ered that just about anyone could, under the right circumstances, cast the evil eye. Envy and the evil eye are so intimately related that some-times it is not possible to differentiate between them.5 A mere feeling of envy might cause a person to cast the evil eye even if doing the victim actual harm was the last thing on his mind.6 In such cases, the jettatore is anonymous,7 and it is impossible to construct a typology based on external peculiarities or properties. However, we do find references to people whose ability to cast the evil eye is said to correlate with a visible ocular peculiarity, namely the “double pupil” ( pupula duplex), and it is this special category I want to look at more closely here, though I do extend the discussion at some points to the evil eye in general.

An impressive number of ocular pathologies can be found in ancient sources.8 But the double pupil was prized in certain discourses in that it appeared both to provide empirical confirmation of the existence of

3) The only account of the evil eye being cast is Apollonius, Argonautica 4.1638–1688. Here, the witch Medea conjures the Keres with prayers and bewitches the bronze giant Talos by fixing her fierce eyes on him, cf. Dickie 1990.4) In the Graeco-Roman world, it seems that it operates in the same invisible and uncontrolled milieu as gossip and Schadenfreude, cf. Versnel 1999.5) E.g. Cicero, Tusc. 3.20.1–9; Catullus 5.12 and 7.11–12 with Dickie 1993; Pliny, N.H. 19.50; 28.39. In amulets and apotropaic inscriptions, the evil eye is frequently termed invidia: Merlin 1940; Dunbabin and Dickie 1983; Kubinska 1992. The usual etymology of invideo is in+video, linked with the Greek baskainō. See A. Walde and J. B. Hoffman, Lateinisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch [Heidelberg 1982], s.v. Invideo: “einem etwas (mit dem bösen Blick) besehen”, and A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Diction-naire étymologique de la langue latine [Paris 1972], s.v. Invideo: “proprement « jeter le mauvais oeil à »”.6) Plutarch, Quaest.conv. 682b–d.7) E.g. Catullus, 5.12: aut nequis malus invidere possit. Virgil, Ecl. 3.103: nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos. 8) Pliny the Elder for example provides a long list of such pathologies (though in many cases they cannot be correlated with any condition recognized in modern nosologies) including: aegilops (Pliny, N.H. 35.34; Celsus, 7.7.7), albugo (Pliny, N.H. 24.19; 29.117), caligo (20.61; 20.254; 25.144), epinyctis (20.44), glaucoma (29.117, cf. Aris-totle, G.A. 780a17), hypochysis (Pliny, N.H. 25.143; Aelian, N.A. 7.14), lippitudo (Pliny, N.H. 28.169; cf. already Plautus, Rud. 3.2.18; Cicero, Tusc. 4.37.8. Lippitudo was similar to the Greek xerophtalmia: Celsus, 6.6). On ocular diseases and treatments in the Roman Empire, see briefly Jackson 1996.


the evil eye and to identify individuals capable of casting it. There can be little doubt that the double pupil, under that name or another, was originally a folk-category.9 As such, it was simply part of a wider set of signs used informally to provide prima facie evidence of witchcraft powers. In one form or other, however, it came to be instrumental-ized by other discursive traditions. As a member of a group of ocular anomalies allegedly found among particular far-flung ethnê, it featured in the Hellenistic ethnographic and paradoxographic literature.10 As a member of the class “ocular pathologies,” it was absorbed into physiog-nomics, that is, theories systematizing the claim that individual (moral) character is indexed by somatic signs.11 By thus emphasizing the ran-domness of evil, these Hellenistic discourses (especially the first) served to relativize the dominant theodicy of good fortune, the assumption, first articulated as a critical element in the ideology of domination by Max Weber, that just as an individual’s prosperity, health and success (or that of an entire class or order) are interpreted as indicators of divine favour, so his (or their) misfortunes are to be regarded as due to divine anger.12 This affirmation of the objective existence of the evil eye helped to mollify or even cancel the conclusion that misfortune and illness were preferentially to be understood in terms of personal responsibility.

The Pupula Duplex

Although the double pupil was no doubt originally a folk-category, so far as we know there were no systematic efforts to describe the anatomy

9) The extent to which popular categorizations stimulated and underpinned such learned discourses cannot be discussed here.10) OCD 31996 s.v. paradoxographers: “writers interested in the unexpected or unbe-lievable.” 11) It must be allowed at the outset, however, that the term “double pupil” is never found in the extant physiognomic texts, although some show great interest in various features of eyes. I suggest a possible reason below.12) I have only had access to the French translation of Weber 1996:338–345, “Einlei-tung in die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen,” originally published in Archiv für sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 41, 1915.


of the jettatore before the Hellenistic period.13 When such accounts begin, they disregard other bodily features, concentrating on the eyes, which are so important in the iconography of envy.14 The existence of this Hellenistic literature is known to us mainly, though not exclusively, through the Roman author Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History was composed under Vespasian (completed in 77 c.e.). He writes:

Isigonus and Nymphodorus report that there are families in the same part of Africa that practice sorcery. . . . Isigonus adds that there are people of the same kind among the Triballi and the Illyrians, who also bewitch with a glance and who kill those they stare at for a longer time, especially with a look of anger, and that their evil eye is most felt by adults; and that what is more remarkable is that they have two pupils in each eye. Apollonides also reports women of this kind in Scythia, who are called the Bitiae, and Phylarchus also the Thibii tribe and many others of the same nature in Pontus, whose distinguishing marks he records as being a double pupil in one eye and the likeness of a horse in the other. . . . Also among ourselves Cicero states that the glance of all women who have double pupils is injurious everywhere.15

Pliny the Elder confirms here an account given by some paradoxogra-phers of certain peoples and individuals who have a double pupil which enables them to harm anyone and anything they set their eyes upon.

In the following century, evidently stimulated by this passage, Aulus Gellius came across a bundle of rare and dusty book-rolls, which no

13) Although there are earlier descriptions of envious individuals and their physical symptoms, the close relation between envy and the evil eye does not legitimate the conclusion that an envious person always causes harm by means of the evil eye. The earliest surviving expression of the idea that the envious person suffers physical distress is Pindar Pyth. 2.89–91. 14) The earliest reference to an iconographic representation of envy is Lucian, Cal. 5 (an image created by the famous Hellenistic painter Apelles). For the iconography of envy in Graeco-Roman art and its relation to the evil eye, see Dunbabin and Dickie 1983.15) Pliny, N.H. 7.16–18: in eadem Africa familias quasdam effascinantium Isigonus et Nymphodorus, [. . .] notabilius esse quod pupillas binas in oculis singulis habeant. huius generis et feminas in Scythia, quae Bitiae vocantur, prodit Apollonides. Phylarchus et in Ponto Thibiorum genus multosque alios eiusdem naturae, quorum notas tradit in altero oculo geminam pupillam, in altero equi effigiem; [. . .]. feminas quidem omnes ubique visu nocere quae duplices pupillas habeant, Cicero quoque apud nos auctor est. (trans. by Rack-ham, Loeb 1969 [1942]).


one in his day was interested in, but which turned out to contain much the same material:

. . . and it is said that there are persons among the Illyrians who by their gaze kill those at whom they have looked for some time in anger; and that those persons themselves, both men and women, who possess this power of harmful gaze, have two pupils in each eye.16

Pliny was not, however, the first Roman to be interested in paradoxog-raphy. We know of two such earlier works written in Latin. The first is the lost Mirabilia written by Varro — in all likelihood as part of his Logistoricon libri LXXVI — whose surviving fragments do not however mention any ethnographic material but only zoological, botanico-medical and technological information.17 The second is Cicero’s Admi-randa, which is unfortunately also lost.18 It is not clear whether this work was part of his Chorographia, as Delcroix suggests (1996:429), or if the Chorographia and the Admiranda were actually the same book (Hafner 1927:33). In any case, around 59 b.c.e. Cicero was seduced by geographical and, presumably, paradoxographical literature.19 It is very likely that Pliny’s quotation of him derives from this work, and indi-cates Cicero’s concern to adapt to his Greek sources by adding local, Italic and, no doubt, Roman material.

It seems equally likely that Cicero’s material on Italic women with the double pupil inspired Ovid to introduce the detail into his descrip-tion of the literary witch-bawd Dipsas:

There is a certain — who wishes to know of a bawd, let him hear! — a certain old dame there is by the name of Dipsas. Her name accords with fact — she has never looked with sober eye upon black Memnon’s mother, her of the rosy steeds. She knows the ways of magic, and Aeaean incantations, and by her art turns back

16) N.A. 9.4.7–8: traditurque esse homines in Illyriis, qui interimant videndo, quos diu-tius irati viderint, eosque ipsos mares feminasque, qui visu tam nocenti sunt, pupillas in singulis oculis binas habere. (Trans. Rolfe, Loeb 1948 [1927]). The N.A. was published c. 180 c.e.17) Ziegler, RE XVIII 1949, s.v. paradoxographoi, cols. 1164–1165. The fragments were edited by Riese (1865:253–254). There are some problems concerning the title of his book, but they are not relevant here: vid. Delacroix 1996:428–429.18) This title is mentioned in Pliny, N.H. 31.12 and 51.19) Cicero, Att. 2.4; 2.6; 2.7.


the liquid waters upon their source; she knows well what the herb can do, what the thread set in motion by the whirling magic wheel, what the poison of the mare in heat. Whenever she has willed, the clouds are rolled together over all the sky; whenever she has willed, the day shines forth in a clear heaven. I have seen, if you can believe me, the stars letting drop down blood; crimson with blood was the face of Luna. I suspect she changes form and flits about in the shadows of night, her aged body covered with plumage. I suspect, and rumour bears me out. From her eyes, too, double pupils dart their lightnings, with rays that issue from twin orbs.20

The assumption must be that the transposition of the motif of the double pupil from the Hellenistic ethnographic tradition of mirabilia to the completely different context of Roman elegy was routed through the late-Republican Latin adaptations of the mirabilia tradition, just as the other details Ovid provides are derived from the contemporary Latin translations of relevant Greek epic and drama, particularly con-cerning the figure of Medea.21

But what is a double pupil? For a modern ophthalmologist, it is a sheer impossibility, since the pupil is nothing more than a hole through which light enters the eye and its black colour is just a void. What how-ever might the term have referred to in antiquity? More than a century ago, Kirby Flower Smith argued that it simply denoted heterochromia, the presence of a different-colored iris in each eye (Smith 1902). This theory was refuted some years later by W. B. McDaniel, who suggested translating it literally as “double pupil,” and identifying it as a special pathology of the eye, coloboma iridis, namely a hole or gap in the iris which could be construed as two pupils (McDaniel 1918).22 In my

20) Ovid, Am. 1.8.1–16: Est quaedam — quicumque volet cognoscere lenam, / audiat! — est quaedam nomine Dipsas anus. / ex re nomen habet — nigri non illa parentem / Mem-nonis in roseis sobria vidit equis. / illa magas artes Aeaeaque carmina novit / inque caput liquidas arte recurvat aquas; / scit bene, quid gramen, quid torto concita rhombo / licia, quid valeat virus amantis equae. / cum voluit, toto glomerantur nubila caelo; / cum voluit, puro fulget in orbe dies. / sanguine, siqua fides, stillantia sidera vidi; / purpureus Lunae sanguine vultus erat. / hanc ego nocturnas versam volitare per umbras / suspicor et pluma corpus anile tegi. / suspicor, et fama est. oculis quoque pupula duplex / fulminat, et gemino lumen ab orbe venit. (Trans. Showerman, Loeb 1977).21) See Gordon 1999:165f. Unfortunately, Tupet makes no mention whatever of these translations.22) Specialists nowadays distinguish between total coloboma, which usually produces a characteristic “key-hole” shape, and partial or superficial coloboma, usually of the


view, Smith and McDaniel were right to link the evil eye with ophthal-mic pathologies (with coloboma the preferred explanation). Neither study however went beyond the pathology to offer a deeper analysis of the use of these expressions and, oddly enough, there has been no sub-sequent discussion of the issue.

Even though the double pupil is the most commonly used expres-sion, there do seem to have been other expressions relating the evil eye to ocular pathologies. The Roman poet Horace, for instance, uses obliquus oculus, “squint eye,” presumably a metonym for strabismus.23 None of the standard editions of Horace’s Epistles comment on the expression,24 but Porphyrio, a late-antique commentator, equates obliquus oculus with invidus oculus.25 The same can be said of gemina pupilla, which Pliny uses as a synonym for pupula duplex.26 The most elaborate variant of the condition is the pupula duplex in one eye and a horse in the other, said to be found among the Thibii or Thibeis in Pontus.27

The Evil Eye and Physiognomics

During the period of the witch trials in Europe, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, it was alleged that a witch could be distin-

stroma. The condition tends to be heritable and is often associated with polydactyly and mental retardation. Non-congenital coloboma can be caused by an infection in the eye. There is a related iridal defect, pseudopolykoria, in which there appear to be several small misshapen pupils in the eye.23) Horace, Ep. 1.14.37–38: Non istic obliquo oculo mea commoda quisquam / limat, non odio obscuro morsuque uenenat. Deonna 1965:203–204 observes that cross-eyed persons are often perceived as witches and ill-fated.24) Cf. Wilkins, MacMillan 1929 [1885]; Fairclough, Loeb 1978 [1926]; Villeneuve, Les Belles Lettres 1955. The edition of the first book of the Epistles by R. Mayer (1994:211) does however comment on the relation between this expression and envy.25) Porphyrio, Comm. 1.14.38: Obliquo oculo: id est invido oculo.26) Pliny, N.H. 11.142: de geminis pupillis aut quibus noxii visus essent satis diximus.27) Pliny, N.H. 7.16–18. Cf. Aulus Gellius 9.4.7–8. In her commentary on the Pliny passage, Beagon (2005:142–144) assembles a rather heterogeneous set of speculations concerning a pupil in the “shape of a horse.” Among suggestions from comparative religion, the most plausible is that of Deonna (1965:30–32), who argued that it is a typical witch-sign; from the point of view of ophthalmology, McDaniel’s persistent pupillary membrane seems the likeliest candidate (1918:343–345).


guished through specific bodily marks. These were generally thought to result from their contract with the Devil, with the mark as Satan’s sig-nature. It was standard practice at trials to prick suspects with a needle or shave off the defendant’s hair so as to reveal such “Devil’s marks.” In other words, somatic features were read as signs of an historical event (the pact with the Devil) and correlated with psychic or ethical disposi-tions, so as to fit them into a learned discourse that established the accepted grounds for accusation (Monter 1976:157–165).28 Similarly, the Graeco-Roman world developed a method of detecting individual moral tendencies and general character with reference to physical appearance.

The general association in Antiquity between the body and the mind, or personality, is based on an idea clearly stated by Pliny the Elder:

Nobody has eyes of only one colour: with everyone the general surface is white but there is a different colour in the middle. No other part of the body supplies greater indications of the mind — this is so with all animals alike, but specially with man — that is, indications of self-restraint, mercy, pity, hatred, love, sorrow, joy. The eyes are also very varied in their look — fierce, stern, sparkling, sedate, leering, askance, downcast, kindly: in fact the eyes are the abode of the mind (in oculis animus habitat).29

The saying “the eyes are the mirror of the soul,”30 was initially con-ceived as a catch-phrase,31 but later was turned into a program by the

28) Another example is the “witch’s teat,” a kind of supernumerary teat for nourishing the witch’s familiar demon (Rosen 1991:29–32). The modern bibliography on the topic of witch trials is massive. A general survey is in Ankarloo, Clark, and Monter 2002. 29) Pliny, N.H. 11.145–146: Oculus unicolor nulli; communi candore omnibus medius colos differens. neque ulla ex parte maiora animi indicia cunctis animalibus, sed homini maxime, id est moderationis, clementiae, misericordiae, odii, amoris, tristitiae, laetitiae. contuitu quoque multiformes, truces, torvi, flagrantes, graves transversi, limi, summissi, blandi. Profecto in oculis animus habitat. (Trans. by Rackham, Loeb 1967 [1940]).30) The first known statement is by Heraclitus ap. Sextus Empiricus, Math. 7.130 = DK 22 A 16; Callimachus, Comm. §237 p. 272, 6 Wr.31) E.g. its use in metoposcopy, a form of divination, cf. Montero Herrero 1993; in oratory, as a non-verbal way of stressing the emotional content in a discourse (Cicero, Orat. 3.216–223; Cf. Tusc. 1.20.46), or its application in literature as seen in Apuleius’ tale of Amor and Psyche (Apuleius, Met. 5.22: Tunc Psyche, et corporis et animi alioquin infirma . . .).


physiognomical tradition, which appears to be Pliny’s source in this case. Just by looking at the body, the face and more specifically the eyes, physiognomists claimed to be able to establish a person’s ethos, character, or disposition.

Intellectual speculation on the somatic reflection of one’s emotional tendencies or character can be dated at least as far back as the early fifth century b.c.e.,32 and was first explicitly related to the philosophic dis-cussion about the nature of the soul by the Socratics. An account of a meeting between Socrates and a physiognomist with the “foreign” name of Zopyrus, which probably derives from the lost dialogue Zopyros by Phaedo of Elis, is usually thought to be the earliest evidence of an encounter between physiognomy and philosophy.33 This moralizing story, in which the physiognomist’s ability to read Socrates’ character through his physical appearance is ridiculed, is used by Phaedo to argue in favor of non-determinism.34 It is worth mentioning that physiogno-mic ideas are not refuted here — it is a basic assumption that each individual has a specific nature that can be read through physical signs — but philosophic virtuosity can do away with this pre-established nature. At roughly the same time we find the Hippocratics picking up similar theories in medicine, in order to explore the link between men-tal activity and physiology.35 Nevertheless, the interest of medical writ-ers in physiognomics was not as programmatic as in the case of certain philosophical schools (mainly Peripatetic); there are passages in which physiognomic influences can be detected, but there is no surviving sys-tematic treatment of the topic (Boys-Stones 2007:94–110).

However that may be, the practice of physiognomy in Greece began neither within medical nor philosophical discourse but in folk-culture (Boys-Stones 2007:99). As the prologue to treatise A of the pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomonika explains, there were three types

32) The traditions regarding the Pythagorean origin of physiognomics (Hippolytus, Haer. 1.2; Porphyry, V.P. 13; Iamblichus, V.P. 17) should be contextualized within their theoretical concerns with the independent nature of body and soul; see Boys-Stones 2007:111–124.33) The fullest report is Cicero, De fato 10, also Tusc. 4.80 and other passages collected by Förster, Phys. vol. I (Teubner 1994:viii–x); see now the newer edition by Rossetti 1980.34) See Vogt 1999:114–116; Boys-Stones 2007:22–33; McLean 2007.35) Galen, Anim. Mor. Corp. Temp. 7 = Kühn 4, p. 798.


of proto-physiognomic approaches: one based on temperaments or emotions, which can first be found in Homer;36 a second based on the physical resemblances between men and animals, which is already pres-ent in an elegy composed by the sixth-century b.c.e. poet Phocylides,37 and a third physiognomical approach based on geographical and ethnic differences. The physiognomic tradition proper, as represented by Phy-siognomonika, resulted from the systematic application of sign-inference theories, that is, “the discovery of non-evident truths by means of evi-dent signs” (Sedley 1982:240).38 It is a commonplace in the Peripatetic tradition that the psychological traits inferable from an individual’s physical appearance have the same formal causes as the species traits.39

Physiognomics shares three assumptions with the popular category of the evil eye: 1) the disposition of the (invisible) soul is read off from external signs; 2) the eyes are fitted into an evaluatory scheme; and 3) ocular irregularity is used as a device for social exclusion. In the Physiognomonika, for instance, small, bright, wide-open eyes with heavy blood-shot lids indicate shamelessness,40 while small eyes indicate faint-heartedness.41 Such claims continue right through the tradition. If we take the text by the well-known sophist M. Antonius Polemon of Laodicea (c. 88–144 c.e.), for example, who developed an extremely elaborate semiology of the eye, we find him maintaining that a small pupil is a sign of an evil character,42 while small, “concave” eyes indicate

36) E.g. Il. 1.104, where the description of Agammenon’s rage includes a fire-like glance, and 12.466, where Hector is described in a similar fashion.37) Phocylides, Gnom. 2 (2 D), Gentili-Prato I 1986 = Stobaeus, 4.22. According to Phocylides, there are four kind of women: those who bear a resemblance to a dog, those who resemble a bee, those who look like a boar, and those who can be likened to a mare. This account was then trumped by the famous description of types of women by Semonides, frg. 7 (with Verdenius 1971).38) With regard to semiotic theories, cf. also Lloyd 1982 and Burnyeat 1982, with Vogt 1999:108–119.39) E.g. Aristotle, Pol. 1327b 23–35, (cf. the Hippocratic De aëre, aquis, locis); Hist. anim. 1.1.488b 12; [Aristotle], Phgn. 806b = 9 Förster.40) [Aristotle], Phgn. 807b = 17 Förster.41) [Aristotle], Phgn. 808a = 26 Förster.42) Polemon, Phgn. 1.5v Förster: Ubi pupillam cum oculo comparatam nimia invenis pro oculi ambitu magnitudine eiusque nigrum inaequale reperis, eius possessori in agendo malitiam adiudicato.


insidiousness and envy.43 Apart from lack of proportion, other indica-tions of malice and injustice are reddish or dry eyes;44 glistening, humid eyes, on the other hand, are a sign of a praiseworthy character.

The physiognomic tradition admittedly does not mention ocular pathologies or malformations. What it does is to offer a practical index of moral states that could be extrapolated to other discursive domains, such as the portrayal of ethnotypes. As I have mentioned, the prologue of Physiognomonika A alludes to criteria based on ecological and ethnic differences.45 The Hippocratic On Winds, Waters and Places had already claimed that climatic differences affect the physical and ethical features of the inhabitants, including the animals, of a given ecosystem. This ecological theory became a topos46 and Roman intellectuals adapted it to their own rhetoric. For instance, Vitruvius reproduced the basic aspects of the Greek ecological theory in a well-known passage in which he emphasises the differences between the inhabitants of the North and the South: Northerners are extremely tall, have red hair, grey eyes and are good fighters but unintelligent and slow, whereas Southerners are small, dark-skinned with curly hair, and are intelligent but cowardly.47

Literary portrayals are another domain where physiognomic influ-ences can easily be detected.48 For instance, Ovid describes Lucretia, the wife of the Roman mythical king Tarquinius, as a woman both physi-cally and spiritually beautiful: “and her face was worthy of its peer, her

43) Polemon, Phgn. 1.12r: Si oculum parvum et cavum vides, possessori eius dolum et insidias, invidiam et aemulationem tribuito.44) Polemon, Phgn. 1.7v, 1.16r.45) The psycho-somatic excellence of a nation was not programmatized in the physiog-nomical treatises until Polemon. The underlying reason for Polemon’s motive for emphasizing the physical appearance and character of Greeks can no doubt be linked to the Second Sophistic’s nostalgic view of a once-glorious nation now under the rule of a foreign power, cf. Swain 2007:197–200. 46) E.g. Aristotle, Pol. 1327b; Polybius 4.21; Diodorus 2.36. Cf. Barton 1994:119–124 and Isaac 2004:55–109. 47) Vitruvius, 6.1.3–11. On his sources, see Isaac 2004:83 n.109.48) The association between character and physical appearance can first be found in the epitaph of L. Cornelius Scipio (Barbatus) (cos. 298 b.c.e.) where his excellence of body and character are (briefly) noted (C.I.L. I2 2.7 = 6.7 = ILS 1). For the influence of physiognomics in Roman literary portraits, see E Evans 1935 and Elsner 2007.


soul.”49 He says something similar of Claudia Quinta, who supposedly welcomed the Mater Magna in 204 b.c.e.: “her face matched her nobility”;50 and rightfully so, for she was a member of the Claudian house, whose ancestor, Clausus, had been a Sabine leader who assisted Aeneas in the battle against his rival Turnus.51 Most striking in this context is the description of Envy in the Metamorphoses:

[Her] face was sickly pale, her whole body lean and wasted, and she squinted hor-ribly; her teeth were discoloured and decayed, her poisonous breast of a greenish hue, and her tongue dripped venom. Only the sight of suffering could bring a smile to her lips. She never knew the comfort of sleep, but was kept constantly awake by care and anxiety, looked with dismay on men’s good fortune, and grew thin at the sight. Gnawing at others, and being gnawed, she was herself her own torment.52

This ekphrasis — it is hard to decide amid the play of focalizations whether the scene represents a picture or not — forges a direct link between physical appearance and character.53 The best example of an explicit rapprochement between physiognomics and (fraudulent) claims to magical power is Polemon’s description in the Hadrianic period of a Gaulish magician as a person who has eyes of the worst sort and cheats everyone with his tricks.54 What is missing however is any allusion to the double pupil. This omission was surely made necessary by Polemon’s “cynic” self-distancing from the reality of the evil eye — the Gaulish magician is a fraud and an imposter, not someone actually capable of causing harm.

49) Ovid, Fasti 2.758: et facies animo dignaque parque fuit, with a further description of her physical and ethical attributes in the following lines. 50) Ovid, Fasti 4.305f. Her historicity has often been doubted, see most recently Berneder 2004:75–81.51) Virgil, Aen. 7.706; cf. G. Wissowa, RE III 1897, s.v. “Claudia”, cols. 2650–51.52) Ovid, Met. 2.775f. (tr. M. M. Innes, Penguin 1955): Nusquam recta acies, livent robigine dentes, / pectora felle virent, lingua est suffusa veneno; / risus abest, nisi quem visi movere dolores; / nec fruitur somno, vigilantibus excita curis, / sed videt ingratos intabes-citque videndo / successus hominum carpitque et carpitur una / suppliciumque suum est.53) On ambivalent ekphrases in the Aeneid, see Fowler 1996.54) Polemon, Phgn. 1.18r Förster. Cf. Marco Simón 2002.


Ocular Peculiarities and the Ethnographic-Paradoxographic Tradition

As sources for his information about jettatore-families and peoples, as we saw, Pliny lists a number of Hellenistic writers, Isigonus, Nym-phodorus, Phylarchus, Damon and Apollonides.55 In his related account, Aulus Gellius lists among the authors of the books of mirabilia that he had found in a bookshop: Ctesias of Cnidus, Isigonus of Nicaea, and Onesicritus of Astypaleia.56 These writers (most of whose works are lost), who variously wrote histories, geographies, ethnographies, and other works of erudition, exemplify the Hellenistic interest in describ-ing strange things in nature (paradoxography).57 There certainly were many others, however, for example Didymus, the famous Alexandrian grammarian, contemporary of Augustus, whose Symposiaka are cited by Stephanus of Byzantium for information about the Thibii or Thibeis of Pontus.58

Although earlier examples of paradoxography are known from Hero-dotus and Ctesias of Cnidus, the first representative of the literary genre is generally acknowledged to have been the Alexandrian scholar and poet Callimachus of Cyrene (late fourth to first half of third century

b.c.e.), who produced a work entitled Compilation of All the Wonders of the World Organized by Places (Gianni 1666).59 This was typical of its

55) In general, see Giannini 1966 for the edition of Hellenistic paradoxography; cf. Ziegler, RE XVIII 1949, s.v. paradoxographoi, col. 1155. With regard to the authors not strictly considered paradoxographers, see Berger, RE II 1896, s.v. Apollonides, col. 120; Laqueur, RE XVII 1937, s.v. Nymphodoros, col. 1625; and Spada 2002.56) N.A. 9.4.7. On these authors see Schepens 1996.57) On the transmission of paradoxography to Rome, see Delcroix 1996. Dickie 1990 views the episode of the giant Talos being cursed by Medea (Apollonius, Arg. 4.1638–1688) as part of the Hellenistic paradoxographic tradition. 58) Steph. Byz. s.v. thibais, who provides the detail, also in Pliny, that they would not sink in water; Didymus was the teacher of Heracleides of Pontus, cited as a source for Book VII by Pliny. On the other hand, the historian Phylarchus, a close contemporary of Callimachus, whom Pliny cites for this Book, and indeed in this passage relating to the double pupil, provided a detailed account of the Thibii and their command of the evil eye (FGrH 81 F 79a = Plutarch, Quaest. conv. 680e). According to Phylarchus, not only their glance (blemma) but also their breath (anapnoē) and their utterance (dia-lektos) were harmful.; see Ziegler, s.v. “Thiba”, RE VIa 1936, col. 272.59) I T 1 = Suda s.v. Kallimachos.


successors in that it was a compilation in list form from earlier written sources — gathered from histories, geographies and other literature — of wonders (thaumata) he thought might be of interest to the emergent audience for diverse learning; personal experience was never taken into consideration.60 He was, however, like his successors, not just a copyist, but rewrote the entries afresh, thus bringing the materials unevenly up to date with the current social and cultural context.61 Created for a particular cultural milieu, the genre was thus a response to the surge of ethnographic reports following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the expansion of the oikoumenē. Information from this new world was thus taken out of its original context in a history, a geography or an ethnography, which itself had subjected it to an unknowable degree of distortion, and inserted into a new ideological framework that operated its own rules of exclusion, fusion and excerption.

The process of adaptation of marvels continued at Rome. A number of reasons for the Roman reception of this Hellenistic literature have been suggested (Delcroix 1996). Of these, four are worth citing here: 1) The interest in locating ethnographic monstrosities inside the limits of the known world, which is part of a general pattern in the construc-tion of the centre-periphery discourse in any cosmovision. 2) The regard for mirabilia located within a well-known bio-sphere, inside or close to the centre of Rome’s imaginary map of the world. 3) The Romans’ voyeuristic interest in the grotesque and the monstrous. 4) The specific interest of Rome’s political elites in publicly displaying the exotic and the marvelous, thus connoting the Empire’s universal dominion. On points 3 and 4, we may add that the display of physical anomalies was partly institutionalized at Rome — there was even a regular market for monsters in the city.62 Anecdotes record people with physical anomalies

60) See the general account in Jacob 1983; on the Hellenistic interest in specialist book-learning, see Vegetti 1984 and, on the specific features of organizing knowledge in the Empire, König and Whitmarsh 2007.61) The paradoxographer Antigonus of Carystus (c. 240 b.c.e.) describes his procedure more or less as follows: [Callimachus of Cyrene made a compilation of wonders, from which] we have written down those we think are worth mentioning: Mir. 129.62) Plutarch, de curios. 520c. Cf. Longinus, De subl. 44.5, where he refers to the artifi-cial production of dwarfs, who were placed in boxes to make them appear even smaller.


sent as gifts by embassies from far-off countries,63 the occasional exhibi-tion of dwarfs in theatres,64 and the cast-museum in Pompey’s theatre of people such as Alcippe, the woman who gave birth to an elephant.65 The Roman women with a pupula duplex cited by Pliny (quoting Cicero) or Ovid’s witch Dipsas, both confirmed the Hellenistic tradition of paradoxography and served to adapt it to Rome’s own experiences.

The Pupula Duplex in Practice

So far I have tried to illustrate the three main discourses I see behind the Latin expression pupula duplex: a popular informal registration of ocular pathology, and two learned discourses: physiognomic theories that indexicalized physical appearance in a moral sense, and Hellenistic paradoxography as received at Rome. In this last section I argue that the assimilation of these Greek traditions by Roman authors such as Ovid and Pliny was not merely passive but that they were adapting them to the new reality of the early Principate.

63) Strabo, 15.1.73, who mentions among the presents sent by the Indian king Poros to Augustus a man without arms; Cassius Dio, 54.9.8, who reports another Indian delegation to Augustus offering a boy without shoulders or arms. On teratology in the Graeco-Roman world, see Wittkower 1942 and Bianchi 1981. Both authors comment on the moral implications of physical monstrosity developed during the Middle Ages, but fail to see them in Antiquity. They likewise limit themselves to the analysis of human monsters within the limits of the known world, without regard to their pres-ence at the heart of Rome. During the Roman Principate, anomalous newborn babies were either labelled prodigia within the religious sphere or the pater familias gave orders for them to be exposed (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 2.15). If they reached adulthood, their status was not much better than that of a pet, being considered a mere object of entertainment (e.g. Pliny, N.H. 7.75; Suetonius, Tib. 61; Tacitus, Ann. 15.34; Seneca, Ep. 50.2). Even people with anomalies born into aristocratic families were mistreated, as in the case of Claudius, who had a motor disease (allegedly spastic diple-gia) and was for this reason hidden from public view (Suetonius, Claud. 2). See in general Allély 2004.64) Suetonius, Aug. 43.3.65) Pliny, N.H. 7.34.


Dipsas

Ovid’s portrait of the witch Dipsas is where one can best appreciate the shift from the general issue of paradoxography to the specificity of physiognomics. Dipsas is presented as a procuress who arranges sexual contacts for money. The first-person narrator presents himself as the true lover, who views Dipsas’ intervention as a cynical threat to his “sincere” relationship.66 The presence of magic in the brothel is a major topos in Latin amatory poetry.67 Procuresses are presented either as enemies of the “true” lover, as in this case,68 or as his aide in preparing magic philters, to force a girl to submit.69 In either case, their physical ugliness and/or wickedness are stock traits. Ovid’s Dipsas is not just a witch: she has been seen as the syncretic image of the witch in the social imaginaire (Caro Baroja 1961); or as a metaphor of Ovid’s anti-Augustanism (Davis 1999); Dipsas, and the witches of Latin poetry more generally, have likewise been interpreted as inversions of the ideal feminine model (Stratton 2007:73–79, 93–99).

It is here that I see a link between physiognomic ideas and the pupula duplex, since it is this more than anything else that epitomizes Dipsas’ vicious character. Dipsas is an old woman, constantly drunk, who shuns the light of day; she works in the sexual underworld of the brothel; she knows all the tricks of love-magic; and she has a pupula duplex. All this means that in social terms she is beyond the pale (Ker 2004). The way in which her fierce glance is depicted, rays that constantly dart from her eyes, resembles Homer’s expression “eyes like blazing fire,” used for pic-turing Agamemnon’s and Hector’s unrestrained rage. Moreover, the name Dipsas may refer to a snake called dipsas, whose poison causes the

66) For the bawd-witch as rival of the poet, see Wallinger 1994:103–111 and Gross 1996.67) For the general role of magic in the brothel, Gordon 1999:194–204, pointing out that magical attack offered a useful explanation for male sexual failure and “inexpli-cable” infatuation.68) Cf. Propertius, 4.5.5f.69) Tibullus, 1.2.41–66. In general, see Wallinger 1994:103–131. There is a contro-versy about the nature of Horace’s witch Canidia (Horace, Epod. 5). While Dickie 2001:180–181 argues that Canidia is the literary image of real prostitutes who resort to erotic magic once they get too old to keep their clients, Stratton 2007:83 sees her as another example of sexual insult in Roman literature.


sufferer acute thirst.70 If so, Ovid may be alluding to the physiognomic theories that linked a person’s character to the animal he resembles. Dipsas’ inhumanity is further specified in her metamorphic powers: she can turn herself into a night-bird, a strix.71 This correlates with all her other inversions of the natural order: she can make the rivers run backwards,72 can control meteorological phenomena,73 or can create dreadful portents, by making the moon and stars sweat blood.74

The portrait of Dipsas may be understood as an image of the moral disorder rampant in Rome shortly before the Augustan laws of 18 b.c.e. on sexual relations.75 The Augustan moral program regarded adultery, prostitution, and non-marital relationships in general as indecent, as “un-Roman.” The three leges Iuliae — a marriage law lex Iulia de mari tandis ordinibus, the lex Papia Poppaea concerning the bearing of children, and a law repressing adultery (lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis) — aimed not merely to bolster the endogamy of the ruling class and its capacity for self-reproduction, but also to safeguard its social dignity.76 Ovid’s selection of the pupula duplex here is not accidental; it seems rather a conscious choice seeking to dynamize the classic discourse of erotic magic according to the given socio-political reality: for Dipsas also represents the desire for easy and quick access to sexual intercourse and the threats of misfortune once the limits of moral permissiveness regarding sexual relations are crossed.

70) Nicander, Ther. 334f, and Lucan, Bell. civ. 9.737f. There is a controversy in relation to Dipsas’ name (see McKeown 1989:202), though it seems clear that Ovid is playing with the snake’s poison at the end of the poem: Di tibi dent [. . .] / et longas hiemes perpetuamque sitim, “May the gods send long winters and a perpetual thirst upon you.”71) On the power of witches to metamorphose see e.g. Propertius 4.5.13f.; Ovid, Met. 15.359f., and F. 6.141f.; Apuleius, Met. 3.21.72) These powers are topoi in the Roman literary portrait of the witch, cf. McKeown 1989, ad loc. For changing the course of rivers, cf. e.g. Vergil, Aen. 4.489; Ovid, Am. 2.1.26 and 3.7.32; Tibullus, 1.2.46.73) Tibullus 1.2.49f; Ovid, Met. 7.199f.; Lucan, Bell. civ. 6.461f.; Petronius, 134.12.74) References to the stars sweating blood are not common in Graeco-Roman litera-ture; for a reddish moon in a magical context, Ovid, Met. 4.332f.75) Ovid’s Amores was published around 20 b.c.e., though this is a second edition of a lost previous work in 5 books. It has been suggested that Ovid began to compose the poems around 26–25 b.c.e., see McKeown 1987:74–89. On the political implications of the Amores, see supra n. 80.76) See McGinn 1998; Kienast 1982:137f.


Pliny’s Familiae Effascinantium

If Ovid’s treatment of the double pupil operates in the field of personal relationships with significant implications for individual fates, Pliny’s ethnographic reports move to the level of the collective, institutional theodicy of good fortune. Book VII of the Natural History, which con-tains the passage relating to the double pupil and the evil eye, is devoted to mankind and its excesses, part of it being devoted to exemplary moral virtues.77 It has been pointed out that there are two distinct procedures in Pliny’s account of humankind.78 The first (Book 2.242 through Book 6) is a general account of human geography: “The bare names of places will be set down, and with the greatest brevity available, their celebrity and its reasons being deferred to their proper sections.”79 It is not until Book 7 that Pliny examines human peculiarities:

And about the human race as a whole we have in large part spoken in our account of the various nations. Nor shall we now deal with manners and customs, which are beyond counting and almost as numerous as the groups of mankind; yet there are some that I think ought not to be omitted, and especially those of the people living more remote from the sea; some things among which I doubt not will appear portentous and incredible to many.80

In this book, then, he is not interested in universal features but in extreme cases, both positive and negative, thus accentuating his moral-istic intentions. The material on the double pupil occurs as an illustra-tion of the negative pole. As an index of power to do harm by magical means, the pupula duplex is thus part of a wider strategy, both to estab-lish the existence of a variety of ethnotypes in the Roman Empire and a corresponding socio-moral hierarchy.

More than a century ago, J. Riess pointed out that in the Graeco-Roman world, as in many other cultures, witches are frequently located

77) Pliny, N.H. 7.91–129. This section has not only strong ideological but also politi-cal implications, since he compares public figures to delineate ethical models (Naas 2002:311–317).78) A general survey of Pliny’s encyclopaedia is in Murphy 2004.79) Pliny, H.N. 3.2 (trans. Rackham, Loeb, 1947 [1942]).80) Pliny, N.H. 7.6 (trans. Rackham, Loeb, 31969 [1942]).


at the limits of the known world.81 The Paris School broadened this point in the 1970s to establish that in Antiquity geographic distance correlates with cultural difference.82 Pliny conducts two different ver-sions of these strategies here. The first consists in locating the magical other on the margins of the Mediterranean world in its Hellenistic-Roman form, essentially the North-African desert and the most remote part of the Black Sea area; the other in operating with an implicit dis-tinction between the established polis-culture of Greece and Illyria and Thrace, that is, the Balkan mountain peoples.

It is no surprise that some of the groups mentioned by Pliny inhabit the edges of the known world given that, as he puts it, he is most inter-ested in the particularities of “the peoples living more remote from the sea” (maximeque longius ab mari degentium). With reference to families from unknown tribes of the Libyan desert, all he says is that they live in the same part of Africa as the Nasamones and the Machlyes. These two tribes lived in the region of Cyrenaica, the eastern part of present-day Libya, though their exact location cannot be determined.83 With regard to the remote tribe of the Pharmaces, their existence seems to be unat-tested elsewhere.84 In a similar way, Pliny includes the Bitiae, a special group of women among the Scythians, and the Thibii,85 located in the most remote part of the Black Sea. It has been suggested that they may have been from Colchis, since that is where the witch Medea lived

81) Riess, RE III 1897, s.v. Bitiae, col. 544.82) The classic papers are Vidal-Naquet 1970 and Rosellini and Saïd 1978. For an overview of the topic with further bibliography see Nippel 2002.83) Herodotus 4.172–173; Pliny, N.H. 5.33–34; Ptolemy, Geogr. 4.5.12. A detailed description of the Nasamones in Windberg, RE XVI 1935, s.v. Nasamones, cols. 1776–1778 and Desanges 1962, s.v. Nasamones, pp. 152–154 with a hypothesis on the rea-sons for their imprecise location, varying from the Gulf of Sidra (ancient Syrtis Maior) and the oasis of Awjila.84) Beagon 2005:145 suggests that Pliny might be toying with the Greek term pharmakēus, “sorcerer.”85) Strabo makes no mention of the Thibii/Thibeis in his Book 12.3, though he does mention some people(s) named Tibaranoi/Tibarenoi and the area of Pontus named Tibarania several times, e.g. in 2.5.31, 129C, 7.4.3, 309C and 12.3.18, 548C, which implies what he thought of such reports.


(Beagon 2005:144),86 although there is no circumstantial evidence to support this theory.

The focus of the second strategy are the Triballii and the Illyrians.87 The stubborn resistance of the Thracians against external powers, used by Greek authors as an evocation of barbarism and lack of civilization, was experienced by Rome herself, since she had to undertake constant policing in the central and eastern Balkans from the third century b.c.e. until c. 15 c.e., when the province of Moesia was finally created. Yet still, throughout the first century c.e., it was merely the place where military expeditions to the Danube were organized (Mócsy 1974:80ff.). Furthermore, the local elite failed to be integrated into the Roman aris-tocracy before the second century, and no Thracian city was granted the status of Roman colony until that time (Velkov 1989).

As for the inclusion of Italic women in Pliny’s list of jettatori with a double pupil, a detail he took from Cicero’s Admiranda, we can assume it is an instance of the strategy of adaptation and modernization that was already typical of the Hellenistic genre. While following the tradi-tional generic rule of concentrating on mirabilia in remote regions, therefore, Pliny also updated the tradition regarding the double pupil by emphasizing “wild places” resonant at Rome in his own day, and taking over Cicero’s material locating the phenomenon in Italy itself.

Max Weber’s theodicy of good fortune acts in Pliny’s ethnographic account mostly at an institutional level. Rome’s wealth and successful imperialism is owed to divine favor. Those reluctant to integrate, such as the Thracians, or those at the fringes of the Empire suffer divine misfortune rationalized in the form of physical malformations inte-grally bound up with malign mystical powers. By moving with Cicero from the level of empire down to individual women in Italy, Pliny rationalizes the incidence of misfortune at the individual level, thus blending the learned traditions created in the Hellenistic period with folk culture.

86) Cf. Ziegler, RE VIa 1937, s.v. Thiba, col. 272, who considers them just a mythical tribe. 87) For the history of Thrace see Tacheva 1976 and Theodossiev 2000. The perception of the Other in the Greek World has been extensively studied. Gruen 2006 is a suitable synthesis and provides a considerable bibliography. Reverdin and Grange 1990 is a fundamental reference; particularly interesting is Asheri’s contribution.


Conclusion

Ocular pathologies are a natural phenomenon that can be objectively detected. In the Graeco-Roman period we find one such phenomenon, the double pupil, used as an empirical sign of a random, widespread capacity for evil and malign magic in its pure form. Such socio-moral instrumentalization drew on three different sources. Firstly, a popular tradition that noted such anomalies. Secondly, the Greek tradition of reporting the marvelous as systematized in the Hellenistic literary genre of paradoxography, which was received at Rome in the Late Republic. Finally, the basic thesis of physiognomics, that the character is reflected in the body, helped to reinforce the intuitions of the popular tradition. Nevertheless, the assimilation of these Greek traditions by Roman authors such as Ovid and Pliny was not passive: they renewed them for the Roman consumer and adapted them to the new socio-moral demands of the early Principate.

Read in Weberian terms, the double pupil is the complete opposite of the theodicy of good fortune: divine anger is stereotyped somatically in the form of ocular pathologies, and psychologically in the form of un-neighborly resentment and immorality. Besides, the double pupil shifts from the collective level as seen in the ethnographic and para-doxographic reports, to the random individual level of folk culture.

Overall, belief in the ability of certain socially-disadvantaged indi-viduals to cause mystical harm can be understood as a concrete expres-sion of the ethical resentment of those suffering long-term, “structural” misfortune. The major function of this rationalization was to minimize the sense of personal responsibility for misfortunes that was the con-verse of the major theodicy of good fortune: our misfortune is caused by the malice of X or Y, not by our own lack of piety or unwillingness to sacrifice. From this point of view the double pupil guaranteed the existence of a “natural” witchcraft and so reinforced the idea of unmer-ited misfortune. But it could also be employed tactically in conflicts with neighbors. Even though there are no surviving reports of trials of accused jettatori, we may assume that the inchoate suspicion of witch-craft might gain credibility by means of bodily marks such as the double pupil. The alleged witch could easily be stigmatized in his local milieu through gossip and rumor, thus alleviating social tensions without reaching the null-point of involving the magistrates and so setting a


judicial process in train.88 The public sphere has an interest in sustain-ing this popular strategy of alleviating social tensions, fuelling it with a variety of rhetorical devices. At the same time, it finds its place in the religio-political worldview as part of a wider strategy of identifying the religious interests of the mass of the population with those of the elite (Gordon 2008).

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Ocular Pathologies and the Evil Eye in the Early Roman Principate

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