be found of the inherent antagonism
between religion and magic.

Private magic may be divided into two kinds, according as it was used to
damage another, or only to benefit oneself. In the former case the State
interfered to protect the person threatened with damage, and treated
this kind of magic as a crime. The commonest form of it was that of the
spell, or _carmen_, no doubt often sung, and accompanied by some action
which would bring it under the head of sympathetic magic; but the spell
alone is taken cognisance of by the State. Pliny has preserved three
words from the XII. Tables which tell their own tale: "qui fruges
excantassit."[109] Servius, commenting on the line of Virgil's 8th
_Eclogue_, "atque satas alio vidi traducere messes," writes, "magicis
quibusdam artibus hoc fiebat, unde est in XII. Tabb. 'Neve alienam
segetem pellexeris.'" These last words, with the verb in the second
person, are probably not quoted exactly from the ancient text,[110] but
they help to show us the nature of this hostile spell. There must have
been a belief that the spirit, or life, or fructifying power of your
neighbour's crops could be enticed away and transferred to your own.
This is confirmed by a remark of St. Augustine in the _de Civitate
Dei_;[111] after quoting the same line from Virgil, he adds, "eo quod
hac pestifera scelerataque doctrina fructus alieni in alias terras
transferri perhibentur, nonne in XII. Tabulis, id est Romanorum
antiquissimis legibus, Cicero commemorat esse conscriptum et ei qui hoc
fecerit supplicium constitutum?" Given the belief, the temptation can be
well understood if we reflect that the arable land of the old Romans was
divided in sections of a square, and that each man's allotment would
have that of a neighbour on two sides at least.[112] If one man's corn
were found to be more flourishing than that of his neighbours, what more
likely than that he should have enticed away the spirit of their crops?
The process reminds us, as it reminded Pliny, of the _evocatio_ of the
gods of foreign communities, a rite which belongs to religion and not to
magic, though it doubtless had its origin in the same class of ideas as
the _excantatio_.

In more general terms the old Roman law (_i.e._ originally the _ius
divinum_) forbade the use of evil spells, as we see in another fragment
of the Tables, "qui malum carmen incantassit." In later times this was
usually taken as referring to libel and slander, but there ca