THE ISSUE OF JUDICIAL BINDING SPELLS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Abstract

People as part of an effort to promote different interests of the legal parties and aiming to steal a march on others, at times, are resorting to a number of practices; feeling weak and helpless to cope with what they perceive as strong supporting networks of their opponents, they resort to magical practices. Judicial spells (κατάδεσμοι in Greek) can be viewed in the light of an attempt to gain legal advantages in the court. It is, therefore, a popular practice that has survived throughout the centuries and consists of a manifestation of the fact that it carries a deeprooted tendency towards large amounts of the archaic and classical population, who desire - in some way - to take the law into their own hands. One manner of sharing with these magical practices is to constitute a more general mistrust against the entire legal system and its components. Hence, the many people used the spells against their adversaries and their admirers as an attempt to gain as much as possible in the tribunal. In this way, spells take the form of atypical, resistant and are against the law practices; they take the form, rhetorical arguments which compete with the structure of the complex and possibly often uneven legal system.