Polemius was a man who either wore this ring to enhance his allure and sexual qualities or gave it to the object of his affections. The Trustees of the British MuseumĪ gold ring found in Corbridge, Northumberland, in 1935 is inscribed in Greek with ΠOΛEMIOYΦIΛTPON, “ The love charm of Polemius”. This visceral recipe is a variant of a spell that also added semen, and the hair of a dead man to the mixture. Recite seven times over it and you should make the woman drink it at a special time. Take the fragment of the tip of your fingernail and apple seed together with blood from your finger… Pound the apple, add blood to it and put it in the cup of wine. A Demotic (written in ancient Egyptian) spell proposed the following method: Love potions themselves have a long history and are discussed in several ancient texts. Several such gemstones matching this description have been found. One love spell asked the user to have an iron ring inscribed with Harpocrates (the Hellenistic god of silence) seated on a lotus in their hands while they shouted magical words at the moon from a rooftop. These spells don’t leave archaeological traces for us to find. Most spells required a special ingredient to be used in a specific way in combination with arcane words. Unsurprisingly, love charms feature prominently. They are a sort of do-it-yourself guide to magical rituals that offers solutions to problems like finding a thief, keeping calm, curing fevers and demonic possession. The Greek Magical Papyri are a series of ancient spell books from Egypt from between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD. Hope was placed on spells, mysterious words and magical objects to grant the gift of love on their users or to take it away from rivals. While we are left with apps to swipe on, a greater belief in magic in this period provided interesting opportunities to find love. The inhabitants of the Graeco-Roman world suffered the same heartaches and the same emotional highs and lows as we do today. Such problems of the heart span cultures and history. For the hapless in love, the day can be a yearly reminder of failed romances, unrequited love and the seemingly unending search for the illusive “one”. Valentine’s Days is not all love hearts and roses for everyone.
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