In AD 19 Germanicus the popular 34-year-old hero of the Roman army and overall commander of the legions of the Eastern provinces, was suddenly stricken by an illness that proved fatal. There was no doubt in the general’s mind that he had been poisoned and he knew that the only person who would dare to strike at him in such a manner was Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso (circa 44 BC-AD 20), the governor of Syria, who had tried to undermine his authority.
But before Piso could be caught and put on trial, he fled from Syria. According to Tacitus, when Germanicus’ men searched through the governor’s home they found ‘human bodies, spells, curses, leaden tablets engraved with the name of Germanicus, charred and blood-smeared ashes and others of the implements of witchcraft’ (Annals, 2.69.3).
In AD 20 Piso was put on trial in Rome in front of the Senate but, although his accusers proved that Germanicus was poisoned, Piso maintained his innocence and denied he played any part in the murder. Ostensibly he committed suicide before sentence was passed although some believed he, too, was murdered.
The death of Germanicus and the trial of Piso show just how closely poison was associated with sorcery in Roman times. The crime of poisoning was known as veneficium. Yet the Latin term venena did not only mean ‘poisons’, it was also used to describe potions and other magical substances. So, a veneficus could be either a poisoner or a sorcerer, or sorceress, skilled in magic, or both.
This strong link between magic and poison originated in Greek mythology: Hecate the often triple headed goddess of magic, crossroads, ghosts and necromancy, was a sorceress with a deep knowledge of poisons. According to Ovid in Metamorphoses (14.55-62), it was Hecate who taught the enchantress Circe spells, which she combined with the use of poisonous herbs to attack her rival, the beautiful nymph Scylla:
"And Circe dyed this pool with bitter poisons,
Poured liquids brewed from evil roots, and murmured,
With lips well-skilled in magic, and thrice nine times,
A charm, obscure with labyrinthine language.
There Scylla came; she waded into the water,
Waist-deep, and suddenly saw her loins disfigured
With barking monsters, and at first she could not
Believe that these were parts of her own body."
The tale of Circe using poison to transform the lovely Scylla into a monster is not the only time she employs magical potions to achieve her nefarious ends. In the Odyssey, Homer tells us that Circe gave his hero a drink containing pharmaka that would transform him into a pig – she had already turned his crew into swine. But, luckily for Odysseus, the god Hermes had supplied him with a plant called moly that countered these magical effects.
Poison also played a central role in the story of the demi-god Herakles. After slaying the Lernean Hydra, the epic warrior dipped the tips of his arrows into the venom still in the creature’s carcass. Herakles went on to use the poisonous arrows on several occasions, but this often led to tragedy for the hero or those closest to him. The poisoned arrows caused the death of two of his friends, Chiron and Pholus, and another was responsible for Herakles’ own demise.
When the centaur Nessus kidnapped Herakles’ wife, Deianeira, the hero fired one of the venom-tipped arrows into the creature’s back. The missile penetrated deep and struck Nessus’ heart but, before he died, he gave Deianeira his blood-soaked tunic, telling herthat it had aphrodisiac powers. Years later, hearing that she had a rival for Herakles’ affection, she sent her servant Lichas (5) to him with the magnificent tunic (still stained with the toxic blood) hoping that it would make her more attractive to him. But the minute Herakles put it on, he felt such horrific pain that he burned himself alive to end his suffering. As well as appearing in mythology, the term pharmakis (witch) also crops up in plays, such as The Clouds by Aristophanes. It describes any sorceress that could be hired in Thessaly, the birthplace of witchcraft in ancient Greece – not surprisingly it was Medea’s homeland.
Plato, on the other hand, had a much more rational, practical, ‘modern’ view on what he referred to as the two different types of magic known as pharmakeia. The first kind was essentially psychological – it generated fear in its victims. The second was any substance, such as poison found infood or drink, that caused harmful biological effects. If someone was harmed by a pharmakon, Plato thought that it had more to do with toxins in the substance rather than any magical qualities.
But even if the nature of poison was not entirely understood, the Greeks were fully aware that certainindividuals knew the effects of pharmaka and that they used them to deliberately harm others. For this reason, special laws were created to deal with crimes involving poison, and trials were held to determine whether the accused knew the substances they had given to the victim were harmful or not.
Like homicide, cases in which pharmaka caused the death of an individual were tried at the Areopagus in Athens, the most important court of the city-state. If the court found the accused guilty of murder using poison, execution was the punishment that followed, unless the guilty party managed to escape before the final verdict was proclaimed. But, even if the criminals escaped with their lives, they were forced into exile in perpetuity, or, as a 5th-century BC inscription, known as the Teian Curses states, the penalty could be far worse. If someone was found guilty of the manufacture of harmful pharmaka in Teos (near modern Izmir), the entire family of the accused was executed together with the criminal.
A common trend for the accused in Greek poison cases was that they claimed that the pharmakon they had given to the victim was a love-potion and they were completely unaware of its negative effects. Many accused wives even cited the story of Deianeira accidentally poisoning Herakles when she thought she was giving him a love-potion in their defence.
As it was often unclear as to exactly what ingredients pharmaka contained, or whether or not those substances were toxic, it was very difficult to provide evidence of criminal intent. One of the most well-known cases concerning poisons and love-potions occurred in Athens in 420 BC and is described in the speech Against the Stepmother by Antiphon. A man named Philoneus was preparing to sell his concubine but, before he could do so, she gave him and his friend wine containing a pharmakon. Because the desperate concubine wanted the love-potion to have a greater effect on Philoneus she gave him much more of the concoction and he died instantly, while his friend suffered for 20 days before meeting his end. The former mistress-slave was then immediately tried for murder, found guilty, tortured and executed.
What made the Attic poison case even more complicated was that before the death of the friend, he told Philoneus’ son that his stepmother was the real culprit behind the murder for she had given the naive concubine the supposed love-potion, knowing that it was poison. He knew Philoneus’ wife had attempted to kill him before, thus her plan had succeeded the second time. The victim’s son pleaded with the Areopagus to convict his stepmother. It is not known whether or not the stepmother was found guilty for the crime of supplying the mistress with the pharmakon, but what is certain is that the prosecutor had to prove that the stepmother intended to kill the two men with the substance. Otherwise, it was simply a love-potion that failed to work, with disastrous consequences.
According to Livy, the first trial involving veneficium on the Roman record occurred in 331 BC. Similar to Greek poison cases, the trial centred on the difficulty of determining whether a substance was medicine or poison. After many male aristocrats had become ill from some unknown sickness, a maid-servant confessed to the Senate that she knew several matrons were manufacturing venena. When the matrons were caught in the act, it was discovered that some 20 noble-women may have been involved.
Two of the accused, Sergia and Cornelia, were adamant that their intention was to create medicamenta (medicine), not poison. The noblewomen were then challenged to consume their supposed medicine. Eventually, all agreed to drink the concoctions and every one of them died shortly afterwards.
Several other cases involving veneficium or pharmaka in the Graeco-Roman world centred on the trial of sorceresses, mages and witches involved in all sorts of witchcraft, not just poisoning. In the 350s or 340s BC, for example, the priestess Nino was put to death for manufacturing pharmaka, and for many other crimes. Furthermore, around 338 BC, a witch named Theoris was tried and executed with her whole family when found guilty of selling incantations and pharmaka.
Yet not all poison experts were put on trial and charged. King Mithridates VI of Pontus (r 120-63 BC), who was fascinated by poisons and their cures, was almost always escorted by a group of Scythian shamans who had a deep in love with him. His accusers cited several examples of his strange actions in order to prove their case, one of which was asking his slave to acquire a poisonous type of mollusc. The speech Apuleius gave in his own defence before Claudius Maximus, the proconsul of Africa, was however so convincing that the charge was ultimately dropped.
The law on veneficium may have worked in many homicide cases but, by the time of the Imperial Era, the rulers of Rome had grown so powerful they had become impervious to such legislation. Although Piso was put on trial for the murder of Germanicus his uncle, Tiberius(r AD 14-37) almost certainly appointed Piso as governor in order to check the rising power of his nephew who was a direct successor to the imperial title. Tiberius may have even approved of the poisoning in order to remove the threat posed by his popular nephew, but he was never officially accused.
Nero (r AD 54-68) was considerably more blatant when defying the poison law. Like Mithridates, Nero brought a poison expert into his service, the notorious Locusta. Following his orders, Locusta created a poison and slipped it into a drink for the emperor’s half-brother, Britannicus. Once the boy drank the concoction, he mmediately began to convulse violently and died shortly afterwards. Many at the dinner suspected Nero but no one dared to accuse him, the body was removed and the dinner resumed. Despite the emperors disregard for the veneficium law, poison cases were still tried in the Roman empire, but as Christianity rapidly grew in popularity, the legislation began to change. Eventually, the intent behind the use of venena no longer mattered because every type of magic potion and poison was seen as pagan and heretical, and so illegal, regardless of intention.
By Erich B. Anderson in "Minerva" UK, volume 27, n. 5, September-October 2016, excerpts pp. 22-26. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.