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Per Lancem Et Licium: A Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

P. G. Maxwell-Stuart
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Extract

Detection of theft ‘by plate and girdle’ was one of the odder Roman customs and has never been explained satisfactorily. It appears that when a theft had taken place, a man could be called in to search the house for clues or stolen property. He wore only a licium, a small belt round his waist, so that he could not be suspected of bringing into the house articles which he could then claim were stolen—in modern parlance, ‘plant evidence’. He also held in front of his face a plate (lanx) so that he would not be recognized by the women of the household (Gaius, Institutes 3. 192—3).

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , April 1976 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1976

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References

NOTES

1. As Horak says at the end of his comprehensive article, ‘Quaestio lance et licio’, RE 24. 788–801. It is my intention here to revive and expand a suggestion made by E. Goldmann in a review article in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 45. 1 (germanische Abteilung) (1925), 457–71.

2. Cf. Festus, Paul ex, De verborum significatu etc. sub LANCE (ed. Lindsay, , Leipzig 1913).Google Scholar

3. In Sympotica Franz Wieacker sexagenario Sasbachwaldeni a suis libata (Göttingen 1970).

4. I am aware that Gaius regards this as a method of finding the stolen thing rather than the thief. The man on whose premises the thing was found after the ritual search (presumably having refused to allow it voluntarily) was guilty of furtum manifestum, even if he had not himself stolen the article. But doubtless in early times a distinction was not made between a conscious receiver of stolen goods and the thief himself.

5. e.g. Paus. 3. 25. 8, Damascius, Vita Isidori Reliquiae fr. 191 (ed. Zintzen, C., Hildesheim 1967).Google Scholar Cf. P. Magic. Lond. 46, and an account of a similar practice carried out by an Egyptian magician in the early nineteenth century: Lane, E. W., Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London 1846), ii. 90–9.Google Scholar Wilkie Collins also made use of the practice in his novel The Moonstone. On ancient hydromancy, see further Bouché-Leclerq, A., L'Astrologie grecque (Paris 1899), i. 185 ff. and 339 ff.Google Scholar

6. Ar. Ach. 1130 ff., Lucian, VH 1. 26, Aug. Civ. Dei 7. 35.

7. Registrum Radulpbi Baldock (ed. Fowler, Canterbury and York Series), i. 144–5. Cf. the Prussian ‘Zerkolutti’, who predicted the future from glass or mirrors: Schrader, O., ‘Aryan Religion’, Encyclopaedia of Ethics and Religion, ii. 55.Google Scholar

8. Frere, W. H., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation (London 1910), iii. 227–8.Google Scholar

9. Dee's own words. See Deacon, R., John Dee (London 1968), 116.Google Scholar Before 1581, his ‘magical glass’ was probably a concave mirror; he was certainly fascinated by mirrors, not only for their magical but also for their technological possibilities. See Deacon, , op. cit. 81, 37–8.Google Scholar

10. Miscellanies, quoted by Besterman, Th., Crystal Gazing (London 1924), 56.Google Scholar

11. Heywood, Oliver, Autobiography, Diaries, etc. (ed. Turner, J. Horsfall, Brighouse, 1881–), iv. 31–2Google Scholar; Bernard, , A Guide to Grand Jury Men (London 1629), 134.Google Scholar Cf. the technique of discovering a witch by looking for his image in a mirror: Gifford, G., Two Sermons upon I Peter 5, verses 8 and 9 (London 1597), 67–8.Google Scholar See also an example from the Auvergne described by Frazer, J. G. in The Golden Bough (London 1911), iii. 93.Google Scholar

12. La Catoptromancie grecque et ses dérivés (Liège 1932), 133–84. Many of the magic mirrors found at Tarentum have a hole bored through their handle. It appears likely that a cord was passed through it and would allow the mirror to be suspended, as at Patrae, or simply hung round the magician's neck. See Cumont, F., ‘Disques ou miroirs magiques de Tarente’, Rev. Arch. 5th series, 5 (1917), 106.Google Scholar A remarkably useful summary of English mirror-magic can be found in Kittredge, G. L., Witchcraft in Old and New England (Harvard 1929), 182–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Many of them are conveniently collected in Heckenbach, J., De nuditate sacra sacrisque vinculis (Giessen 1911), 69–112.Google Scholar See also Fahz, L., De poetarum Romanorum doctrina magica (Giessen 1904), 122–43.Google Scholar

14. Fasti 2. 571–82. Cf. Plato, , Laws 11 (933a)Google Scholar, where ‘bindings’ are classed as harmful magic. Cf. also Rep. 2 (364 b—c). Notice too the dance of the Erinyes which is intended to bind Orestes to their will: ὓμνον δ ' ⋯κο⋯ση τόνδε δέσμιον σέθεν, Aesch. Eum. 306. Cf. Orphic Lithica 588–9, and also the Hebrew asar ‘to bind herself to be a bond’, Numbers 30: 3 ff., which there implies binding an object by a powerful spell in order to prevent its use.

15. See Heckenbach, , op. cit. 88Google Scholar, to which add P. Magic. Lond. 46. 321–6; 121. 299, though these are both very late. The companion practice is to bind oneself in order to ward off maleficent magic; hence the use of amulets. Notice that the Jewish phylactery developed from figurative reference and simile in Deuteronomy 6: 8 and 11: 18 to obligatory wearing of a real object. The Greek term shows that the phylactery was regarded as a form of amulet.

16. Daube, , op. cit. 289.Google Scholar See also Gellius, , NA 11. 18.9Google Scholar; 16. 10. 8.