Profs & Pints Northern Virginia: Ancient Terrors of the Night

The Story

[Profs and Pints Northern Virginia](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“Ancient Terrors of the Night,”** an introduction to what terrified the Greeks and Romans of antiquity, with Barbette Stanley Spaeth, professor emerita of classical studies at William and Mary and scholar of magic and the supernatural in the ancient world. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/northern-virginia-ancient-terrors](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/northern-virginia-ancient-terrors) .] Literature, papyrus scrolls used for magic, and archaeological finds show that ancient Greeks and Romans believed in demons, ghosts, vampiric beings, reanimated dead, shape‑shifters, and night‑hags. Get to know what might have spooked Nero or Sophocles with the help of Barbette Stanley Spaeth, who has spent 25 years researching, teaching, and publishing on the supernatural of antiquity. Dr. Spaeth, who previously has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks, will make clear that ancient Greek and Roman tales of the “terror that comes in the night” were not relegated to folklore but woven into religion, law, medicine, and the sincere practice of magic. These stories explained the unexplained, enforced social norms, and supplied tools for protection or attack such as amulets, curse tablets, exorcisms, and other various spells. You’ll learn how belief in daimones (demons) went from regarding them as ambiguous, semi‑divine beings to assigning them malign character and making them the targets of exorcism. People thought the dead returned as incorporeal spirits or ghosts as a result of improper burials or in response to unresolved business with the living, and that they also could be exorcised with the proper rituals. Necromancy typically summoned such shades to ask them for information, yet texts also describe how animated corpses were harnessed to harm others, becoming a

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