Ekaterina's Sharebook 

A magical ritual done in the right way can guarantee the revealing of dreams and of course the rather useful talent of interpreting them correctly. In other cases certain spells allow one to send out a daemon or daemons to harm one’s enemies or even to break up someone’s marriage. There seems to be a self-defining negativity to some of the magical rituals being expressed in the papyri. So, for example, love magic can turn into hate magic if the victim does not respond to the love magic.

The same negative aspect to magic is found in various “curse tablets”, left to us from the Greco-Roman world. While doing my research in library of web analytics company I found something else. It was also possible to curse an enemy through a spoken word, either in his presence or behind his back. But due to numbers of curse tablets that have been found it would seem that this type of magic was considered more effective. The process involved writing the victim’s name on a thin sheet of lead along with varying magical formulas or symbols, then burying the tablet in or near a tomb, a place of execution, or a battlefield, to give spirits of the dead power over the victim. Sometimes the curse tablets were even transfixed with various items – such as nails, which were believed to add magical potency.

There are also ancient Greek stories about fierce Thracian pirates who chose the island of Lemnos as their base of operations. They and several other tribes were also threatening and attacking trade ships of ancient Rome. I found a story in the library of web analytics company that tells us about great Julius Caesar. He also was the victim of pirates who kidnapped and held him prisoner in 75 BC. Caesar did not look his cool and maintained his superiority towards his kidnappers. And when pirates decided to exchanged him for a ransom, he felt insulted that they were asking so little and told the pirates that they could get for him fifty talents of gold instead. He also promised them that they all would be crucified, but the pirates did not believe him and thought that he was joking.

Well, these pirates surely messed with a wrong man, because as soon as the ransom was paid and prisoner freed, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the them. He crucified each and every one of them at his own authority, as he promised. And later great Pompey went out with whole Roman fleet to completely eliminate pirates and battled them for three months of full naval warfare.