Literary evidence of the practice of agogai before the Roman Era
Abstract
Based on the Greek magical papyri, it is not possible to prove the existence of Greek charms of attraction (known as agogai) in earlier times. The lack of real documents prior to Roman Era is fortunately overcome by Greek literature, which left us sufficient evidence of the existence of erotic magic practices (in general, and agogai in particular) in very ancient times. We will focus on the three literary texts that we consider most significant in this matter and which leave us with the guarantee that agogai, so famous in the Greek world, do have indeed an extraordinary and long history.
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