Qui fruges excantassit. Messi incantate nella Naturalis Historia di Plinio tra superstizione e politica

Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia (18, 41-43), tells the famous anecdote of the freedman Gaius Furius Chresimus, accused of using spells to attract the crops of neighbouring landowners to his small property. There are few clues to help date the episode, one of which is the mention of the magistrate presiding over the trial, the curule aedile Spurius Albinus. Although with caution, the available data would allow us to date the episode to the early decades of the 2nd century BCE, at a time when the chances for freedmen’s and their descendants’ advancement were at the centre of political debate.