Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Persians: Philo on true Magian skill and its criminal counterfeit (early first century CE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified April 7, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=19053.
Ancient author: Philo of Alexandria (early first century CE), On Special Laws 3. 93-103 (link).
Comments: In the midst of his discussion of Moses’ laws on poisoning (Exodus 22:18), Philo addresses the problem of distinguishing true Magian skill from countfeit techniques. Philo is affirmative of such techniques as practiced by elite Persian Magians themselves, who come out as wise “barbarians.” For Philo’s placement of Persian Magians within that category, see his discussion of Essenes (link). However, Philo criminalizes what he considers more popularized adaptations of similar techniques by beggars, women, and slaves. He equates the latter cases with poisoning and refers to Moses’ instruction to not let poisoners live. Exodus 22:18, which is very brief, reads as follows in the Greek Septuagint translation: “You should not keep poisoners (pharmakoi) alive.”
Contrast the contemporary Pliny the Elder who seems to dismiss all forms of Magian practice, including Persian versions (link). Compare, however, Apuleius approach to the issue in the context of being accused of engaging in Magian skill while nonetheless affirming the value of Magian ways (link).
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[Magians and poisoners in the context of interpreting Exodus 22:18]
But there are others, the most wicked people, accursed in both action and thought, the Magians (magoi) and poisoners (pharmakeutai), who provide themselves with leisure and retirement to prepare the onslaughts they will make when the right time comes, and think up multiform schemes and devices to harm their neighbours. So Moses orders that poisoners, men or women, should not survive for a day or even an hour, but die as soon as they are detected, since no reason can be given for delaying or postponing their punishment. Hostile intentions, if undisguised, can be guarded against, but those who secretly frame and concoct their plans of attack with the aid of poisons employ devices which cannot easily be observed. The only course of action, then, is to anticipate them by subjecting such actors to treatments which others would expect to suffer as a result of their actions [i.e. an eye for an eye concept]. For apart from other considerations, the murderer who openly uses a sword or any similar weapon will kill a few on one particular occasion. However, if he mixes an injection of deadly poison with some articles of food, his victims who have no foreknowledge of the plot will be in the thousands.
We have certainly heard of banquets where a large gathering of guests drawn by friendship to eat of the same salt and sit at the same table were suddenly destroyed. For them, the cup of peace has brought the bitterness of war and celebration has been transformed into death. So it is right that even the most reasonable and mild-tempered people should seek the blood of those such as these [Magians and poisoners], losing no time in becoming their executioners. They should also consider it a sacred duty to keep their punishment in their own hands and not pass it on to others. For it is surely the most horrendous thing to manufacture out of life-giving food an instrument of death, and to engage in a destructive transformation in the natural means of sustenance. The result of this is that, when the compulsion of nature sends them to take food and drink, they do not see the danger that lies in front of them and they put their lips on something that will annihilate the existence which they think it will preserve.
The same punishment must be dispensed on anyone who, although the compounds which they make are not deadly, acquires something that will cause chronic diseases. For death in many cases is preferable to diseases, particularly those that drag on through long periods of time without any favourable end. For illnesses caused by poisoning have been found difficult to cure and sometimes entirely untreatable. However, the bodily troubles of the sufferers from these machinations are often less serious than those which affect their souls. Fits of delirium, insanity, and intolerable frenzy swoop down upon them. By this means, the greatest gift which God has assigned to human kind, namely the mind, is subject to every sort of affliction. When the mind despairs of salvation it departs and makes its home elsewhere, leaving in the body the baser kind of soul, the irrational, which the animals also share. For everyone who is left without reason, the better part of the soul, has been transformed into the nature of an animal, even though the outward characteristics of his body still retain their human form.
[True Magian knowledge among Persians]
Now true Magian knowledge (magikē), which is the vision of understanding through which the characteristics of nature are clearly viewed, is considered to be an appropriate object for reverence and a source of competition. It is also carefully studied not only by the common people (idiōtai) but also by kings and the greatest kings, and particularly those of the Persians. This is so much the case that it is said that no one in that country is promoted to the throne unless he has first been admitted into the class (genos) of the Magians (magoi).
[Counterfeit criminal-technique under the “Magian” name]
However, there is a counterfeit of this, most properly called a criminal-technique (kakotechnia), pursued by monthly-beggers (mēnargytai), by those who try to take sacrificial meat around altars (bōmolochoi), and by the lowest among women and slaves. These people profess an ability to clean and purify and promise to turn men’s love into deadly enmity or their hatred into profound affection using some sort of love-charms (philtroi) and chants (epōdai). The simplest and most innocent characters are deceived by the bait until, finally, the worst misfortunes happen to them. Through this, the wide membership which unites great populations of friends and relatives falls gradually into decay and is rapidly and silently destroyed.
[Reaffirming Moses’ law against such practicers of fake Magian techniques and poisonings]
I believe that our lawgiver had all these things in view when he prohibited any postponement in bringing poisoners (pharmakeutai) to justice and established that the punishment should be exacted immediately. For postponement encourages the guilty to use the little time they have to live as an opportunity for repeating their crimes, while it fills those who already have worries regarding their safety with a still more horrifying fear, since they think that the survival of the poisoners means death to themselves. So just as the mere sight of vipers and scorpions and all venomous creatures even before they sting, wound, or attack us at all leads us to kill them without delay as a precaution against injury necessitated by their inherited viciousness, in the same way it is right to punish human beings who though they have received a nature mellowed through the possession of a rational soul (from which springs the sense of community) have been so changed by their habits of life that they show the savageness of ferocious wild animals and find their only source of pleasure and profit in harming everyone they can.
Enough has been said for the present on the subject of poisoners, but we must not fail to observe that occasions often unexpectedly arise in which a man commits murder . . . [omitted following discussion of fighting and murder].
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Source of translation: F.H. Colson, G. Whitaker, and R. Marcus, Philo, 12 volumes, LCL (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1929-41), public domain (Colson passed away in 1943; Whitaker passed away in 1929; Marcus passed away in 1956), adapted by Harland.