“Night’s Black Agents: Witches, Wizards and the Dead in the Ancient World” by Daniel Ogden

"Night’s Black Agents offers a lucid and highly readable introduction to the world of witches and wizards in Greek and Roman antiquity, and to the ghosts of the dead that were often associated with them. In its pages Daniel Ogden introduces us to the ancient equivalents, and often the actual prototypes, of the cherished ingredients of the modern horror movie: the witch, beautiful and lovelorn or ugly and gruesome, the venerable sorcerer, the haunted house, the werewolf, the dragon, the vampire, the zombie, the Frankenstein’s monster and even the Island of Dr. Moreau. The book allows the lively ancient texts to speak for themselves as much as possible: we hear testimony from long-buried curse tablets, amulets and magical recipe books, as well as from the great poets such as Homer and Horace. The central focus is the stories that the ancients loved to tell each other about magical adventures, tales of a deeply traditional nature and with strong affinities to folktale. And this is why these tales, which made the world of magic a real and immediate one for the ancients, retain the power to captivate and engage us still today with their vibrancy."

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