Venefica

What it is

A venefica was, in the Roman world, a woman said to work her craft through drugs, potions and poison. The Latin word names her bluntly: a woman who poisons. Roman writing treats the poisoner and the sorceress as a single figure, so the term sits where poisoning and witchcraft meet. A masculine form, veneficus, stood for a man of the same trade. What she did with her mixtures is described only in broad outline: her work could serve a number of ends. The word belongs to the Latin classics and travelled far beyond them. Ovid gave it to Medea, the sorceress of classical story, and Bacon quoted it in an English essay as a name for a man said, by way of insult, to have enchanted Caesar.

Where it comes from

The word is Latin, meaning a female who poisons, with veneficus as its masculine counterpart. Among the writers who used it were the Roman authors Cicero and Horace. Ovid attached the term to Medea the sorceress in his poem the Metamorphoses. The word outlived the classical world. Bacon's essay 'Of Friendship' recalls that one man's favour was such that Antonius, in a letter recited word for word in one of Cicero's Philippics, called him 'venefica', witch, as though he had enchanted Caesar. In recent times the term has drawn fresh attention from writers on witchcraft, and Raven Grimassi has examined it in that setting.

Peoples and places

The term belongs to Roman writing. Cicero and Horace use it, and Ovid reaches for it when he needs a name for Medea, the sorceress of story. It could serve Roman argument too: a letter of Antonius, recited word for word in one of Cicero's Philippics, uses it against a man, as Bacon's essay records. In English hands the term survives as a borrowing, glossed as 'witch'. Alongside the feminine form stood veneficus, so men too could be so named.

What people believe

The word encodes a Roman way of seeing: brewing a potion and working harm by magic were read as one and the same business. A woman's drugs and concoctions could be taken as instruments of sorcery, so the name for a poisoner doubled as the name for a witch. The term could also serve as a charge. In the letter Bacon preserves, Antonius calls a man venefica to imply that the man's power over Caesar came not from politics but from enchantment. Ovid's usage points the same way: in his telling, Medea's poisons and potions belong to her magic rather than to any ordinary craft.

Compare and confuse

Bacon's English gloss makes the nearest pairing: he renders venefica as 'witch', reading the Roman poisoner-sorceress through the language of later witchcraft. The masculine veneficus names a man accused or described in the same terms. The figure most often tied to the word is Medea, Ovid's sorceress, a byword for a woman whose potions work magic.

Questions people ask about Venefica

Good reading and sources

• Venefica (sorceress) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data