A History of Magic (by Bathilda Bagshot)

Early Magical Communities: Ancient Greek and Rome: Ancient Rome

The Romans were a little less lenient about magic than the ancient Greeks, however they were still a very deity-centred society, so most magic still passed unnoticed. At its very beginning, in the 8th century B.C., Rome was just many huts filled with men.

Because of the lack of women, they knew that their race would eventually die out. Those men learned in the magical arts, prominent among them Romulus, Rome' founder, made love potions and gave some to women of the neighbouring Sabine tribe. Under the potions' power, the Sabine women became the mothers of the future Roman race. Although it may seem unethical to a modern audience to use a love potion simply to procreate, in those times it was not frowned upon, and the potions masters were even celebrated as heroes. (In Muggle legend, the men just kidnap the Sabine women because the Muggles at the time could not understand why the women were suddenly interested in the Roman men.)

Roman wizards and witches did not remain the heroes of Rome forever, however. By 451 B.C., magic was curtailed by Roman law. The Twelve Tables of the Decemviri Legibus Scribundis forbid harmful incantations and the use of magic to move a neighbour's crops to one's own field. The dictator Sulla in 81 B.C. imposed further bans on magical practices, including love-spells and poisons, with his Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis. Laws against magic escalated and culminated in numerous calls for the banishment of all magic folk, which Roman wizards and witches circumnavigated by using their powers secretly or with discretion; banishment was decreed by numerous Roman rulers at different times. In 133 B.C. the senator Tiberius Gracchus, a wizard whose senatorial career is better remembered by Muggles for his radical ideas of land redistribution to the plebeian masses, proposed to the wizards that Muggles needed to learn their place under wizards. This is the first time that a wizard publicly claimed superiority over his non-magic fellow Roman citizens. Although he convinced a few, his ideas were so unpopular that he was killed. Whether the senators, including his own cousin, Scipio Nasica, who clubbed him to death were against his pro-plebeian or his anti-Muggle radicalism is a question no history books answer.

Rome at its height dominated most of the then-known world with an empire stretching from the shores of the Caspian Sea west to modern-day Spain, from the Northern African coast to Hadrian's Wall, the original border between Britain and the unconquered land of the Picts (modern-day northern Scotland). In the midst of this domination, wizards and witches of different cultures, brought together by learning of the empire's language, Latin, shared information. This trade of ideas led to the first meeting of the Consilium Imperii Magi (CIM or the Council of the Empire's Wizards), which met in Rome in 132 A.D. This council of international wizards examined magical history and culminated in the creation of the original Standard Book of Spells, a compilation of the most potent spells of the different cultures, comprising spells for every action yet done by magic. This first Book of Spells was published in Latin. Latin being the dominant language of the time, many of the spells included were based on this tongue. Other spells come from Aramaic and Greek to name a few. This Standard Book of Spells forms the basis for our modern Book. Additions are made by CIM, which has met every fifty years since for this purpose.