In antiquity, both Greek and Roman, Medea is the arch sorceress, the supreme exemplar of witchcraft, the most powerful adept in the Black Arts of Colchis.
Seneca, the Stoic philosopher and dramatist, who was also the tutor of the Roman Emperor Nero, is the author of a drama entitled Medea, in which he depicts the protagonist herself in frenzied action.
Medea’s nurse appears upon the scene, speaking of her mistress.
She describes Medea gathering potent herbs with her magic sickle, by the light of the moon. Medea sprinkles the herbs with venom extracted from serpents. Into this compound she thrusts the entrails and organs of unclean birds: the heart of the screech owl, vampire’s vitals, torn from the living flesh. Over the entire foul brew she murmurs her magic incantations, concocting her philtres.
In spite of the frenzied commerce in philtres and other means of stimulation, both in ancient and in modern times, Ovid himself, the Roman poet who produced the superlative amatory guides in poetic form, asserts categorically that invocations and formulas, enchantments and sorcery, secretive recipes and exotic philtres are ultimately of no avail in their purpose. Even witches and enchantresses such as Medea and Circe, for all their skill in the goetic arts, could not circumvent man’s own personal perversities, or prevent Jason, for instance, or Ulysses, from amatory unfaithfulness.
In the contest of love, then, concludes the poet, philtres achieve nothing but imbalanced minds, wrecked health, and, sometimes, death itself.
Love philtres were not infrequently fatal in their effects. Such veneficia amatoria were forbidden by imperial decree. But there were furtive ways of circumventing these prohibitions.