The practice of magic was common in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds. Curse tablets, astrology, divination and demonology were all common practices within the Ancient religions, but whether or not we can draw a distinct line between magic and religion in regards to ancient practices is a much more complicated and much discussed question. This study will be concerned with curse tablets in Latin from the Roman world. The time period will be focused on the second to the fourth centuries A.D. The ancient curse tablets can be divided into five categories, depending on what subject they are dealing with. These categories are: litigation curses, competition curses, trade curses, erotic curses and prayers for justice. This study will be looking at ways to define the modern concept of magic and set up a number of criteria that will be applied to different types of curse tablets in order to investigate if or to what degree curse tablets can be said to be dealing with magic. It will also investigate if certain categories of curse tablets can be said to be more magical than others. The study shows that all categories except prayers for justice relates well with the modern criteria for magic.

In the ancient world, magic and magical practice was in fact hugely common between people and within the society, different types of magical material has been proved to be importent instrument during those mysterious events. But how we see those ancient materials and how we read them is still one of the key questions that we cannot answer with our modern understanding. Yet, it is not totally impossible to try to solve this type of question. This study will be concerned with ancient amulets from the Roman world, and the time period will draw on the imperial period in ancient Rome. The amulet can be categorized into different types, depending on what subject and motives they are focusing on, for example, amulet to protect mothers during the childbirth is one of the common type of protecting amulet for women, because mortality rate for both mother and the child was extremely high during the ancient period; there’s even amulets that protect people from evil spirits, such as the evil eye, which will be explained in one of the chapter. In this case, this study will be focusing on one type named “bullae”, which is speculated to be used only by roman children. It will be interpret with ancient literature and modern researches, so we may be able to investigate a part of how and why ancient people were using magical materials in their common life, also what it could tell us about the society of ancient Rome, and at last, in which ways do we know that this type of thing can be recognize as “amulet” instead of other types of jewellery.