Nocturnae aves: their religious symbolism and magical function in the roman world

Abstract

In his paper “Towards Interpreting Demonic Powers in Hellenistic and Roman Antiquity”, J. Z. Smith concludes stressing the paradox between demonic powers, associated with the marginal, the peripheral and chaos, and the rigorously ordered way they are constantly described in graecoroman sources. Nocturnal animals can also be included here: even if they are generally associated with death and destruction, they are object of taxonomic classification and present slight differences among them. This paper focus on the religious symbolism and magical function of the barn owl (noctua/tyto alba in the Linnaean classification), the eagle-owl (bubo/ Bubo bubo) and the phantastic strix, in order to emphasize how in the Roman world the taxonomic variety of nocturnal birds is also considered in the religious sphere.