the new emotional blackmailer's handbook

margaret barnard carefully places the goddess hekate and the objects used by the sorceress in what may have been "her own back yard"

theocritus ... IDYLL II. THE SPELL

This monologue, which preserves the dialogue-form by a dumb character, consists of two parts; in the first a Coan girl named Simaetha lays a fire-spell upon her neglectful lover, the young athlete Delphis, and in the second, when her maid goes off to smear the ashes upon his lintel, she tells the Moon how his love was won and lost.

The scene lies not far from the sea, at a place where three roads meet without the city, the roads being bordered with tombs. The Moon shines in the background, and in the foreground is a wayside shrine and statue of Hecate with a little altar before it.

Upon this altar, in the first part of the rite, the poor girl burns successively barley-meal, bay-leaves, a waxen puppet, and some bran; next, the coming of the Goddess having been heralded by the distant barking of dogs and welcomes with the beating of brass, amid the holy silence that betokens her presence Simaetha pours the libations and puts up her chief prayer; lastly she burns the herb hippomanes and a piece of the fringe of her lover’s cloak.

The incantation which begins and ends the four-line stanza devoted to the burning of each of these things, as well as two central stanzas belonging to the holy silence and the libation, is addressed to the magic four-spoked wheel which still bears the name of the bird that was originally bound to such wheels, and which is kept turning by Simaetha throughout the rite.

When Thestylis withdraws with the collected ashes in the libation-bowl, her mistress begins her soliloquy. This consists of two halves, the first of which is divided, by a refrain addressed to the listening Moon, into stanzas, all, except the last, of five lines; then instead of the refrain comes the climax of the story, put briefly in two lines, and the second half begins, with its tale of desertion. In the latter half the absence of the refrain with its lyric and romantic associations is intended to heighten the contrast between then and now, between the fulness of joy and the emptiness of despair.

Towards the end both of the first and of the second parts of the poem there is a suggestion that Simaetha only half believes in the efficacy of her spell; for she threatens that if it fails to bring back Delphis’ love to her, poison shall prevent his bestowing it elsewhere.

[1] Where are my bay-leaves? Come, Thestylis; where are my love-charms? Come crown me the bowl with the crimson flower o’ wool; I would fain have the fire-spell to my cruel dear that for twelve days hath not so much as come anigh me, the wretch, nor knows not whether I be alive or dead, nay nor even hath knocked upon my door, implacable man. I warrant ye Love and the Lady be gone away with his feat fancy. In the morning I’ll to Timagetus’ school and see him, and ask what he means to use me so; but, for to-night, I’ll put the spell o’ fire upon him.

[10] So shine me fair, sweet Moon; for to thee, still Goddess, is my song, to thee and that Hecat infernal who makes e’en the whelps to shiver on her goings to and fro where these tombs be and the red blood lies. All hail to thee, dread and awful Hecat! I prithee so bear me company that this medicine of my making prove potent as any of Circe’s or Medea’s or Perimed’s of the golden hair.