About

Christopher Faraone is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1988. His research interests focus on Ancient Greek poetry, religion, and magic. Professor Faraone has contributed significantly to the study of ancient Greek magical practices, amulets, and ritual texts, authoring and editing numerous works in these areas. He has co-edited several volumes on Greek magic and religion, including Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, Masks of Dionysus, and Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives. His publications also include Talismans and Trojan Horses, Ancient Greek Love Magic, and The Stanzaic Structure of Early Greek Elegy. His recent work explores topics such as Greek amulets, curse tablets, and the structure of Greek hexametric poetry, with publications in various scholarly journals and books. Professor Faraone is also involved in editing Greek magical handbooks and related projects supported by the Neubauer Collegium, contributing to the understanding of ancient Greek and Greco-Egyptian magical practices.

Research topics

• Art
• Literature
• Classics
• Philosophy
• Traditional medicine
• Medicine
• Geology

Selected publications

• : <i>The Orphic Hymns: Poetry and Genre, with a Critical Text and Translation</i>

  Classical Philology · 2025-10-07

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• The New Curse Tablet from Cos and the Lost Magical Handbook That Produced It

  Symbolae Osloenses · 2025-11-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• GEMF 52 (PGM XXIVa)

  Early Christianity · 2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This contribution analyzes the nature of GEMF 52/PGM XXIVa, a third century papyrus fragment with incomplete instructions for some kind of oracular consultation. We provide context to this papyrus through comparison with other Greek and Egyptian divinatory texts and artifacts, to understand the process of consultation and its methods.

  PublisherDOI

• Inscribed Lead Tablets in Small Animal Bodies: An Intersection of Greek and Egyptian Cursing in Late-Roman Egypt?

  Archiv für Religionsgeschichte · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

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  Article Inscribed Lead Tablets in Small Animal Bodies: An Intersection of Greek and Egyptian Cursing in Late-Roman Egypt? was published on January 1, 2024 in the journal Archiv für Religionsgeschichte (volume 26, issue 1).

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• Semonides, Fragment 1 as an Iambic Catalogue in Stanzas

  2023-11-21

  other1st authorCorresponding
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• Two Fragmentary Greek Magical Recipes (GEMF 51.74–94 and 9.8–21) and the Handbook Traditions They Display

  Kernos · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

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  This article suggests how two somewhat damaged papyri might be restored and how they give us insight into patterns of design found more widely in the extant magical texts. The first, an invocation that describes the significant actions of Hekate-Selene, each followed by nonsensical magical name, a pattern that we find elsewhere in the Greek magical papyri and the aretalogies of Isis and the second is recipe for an amulet that combines a sequence of magical names arranged in a block (plinthos), followed by a prayer, that seems to have been particularly popular in amulets against gout, a tradition that continues down into the fifth century CE.

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• The Typical and the Outlier in Ancient Greek Cursing

  2023-05-15 · 1 citations

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• The Echenêis-Fish and Magic

  2022-01-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In an article published some years ago, Lindsay Watson drew attention to a series of passages in the natural historians about the strange power of the echenêis-fish to stop the forward motion of ships in full sail, and its use in magical spells. The series begins with Aristotle, who says briefly: “There is a certain little fish dwelling amongst the rocks, which they call the echenêis and some people use it for lawsuits (dikas) and for philtra.” As Watson rightly saw, this passage provides us ...

  PublisherDOI

• Rubric Confusion in <i>SM</i> 96A.24–47: A Fragment of Erotylos’ <i>Orphica</i> or a Recipe for a Rotulus Amulet?

  Symbolae Osloenses · 2022-12-31 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  SM 96A is a vertical papyrus roll (14 × 86 cm) that dates to the fifth–sixth centuries CE and seems to be dedicated mainly to recipes for amulets or curative incantations. The rubric ηρυτυλος at line 24 introduces a long narrow list of words and it is usually interpreted as Ἐρωτύλος, the name of an author quoted in PGM XIII 946–953, from whose Orphika the scribe quotes a long magical word. Another possibility, and one more in line with the fifth–sixth-century CE date of this formulary, is that ηρυτυλος is the Latin term rotulus transliterated imperfectly into Greek ῥυτυλος, which in late Latin refers to a tall, thin roll, usually of parchment, that is scrolled up and down in the mediaeval fashion, rather than side to side, as a typical papyrus handbook.

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• THE LATE-ANTIQUE TRANSFER OF CIRCULAR GEM-DESIGNS TO PAPYRI AND FOIL:

  Peeters Publishers eBooks · 2022-09-29 · 2 citations

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Frequent coauthors

• Jessica L. Lamont

  36 shared

• Celia Sánchez Natalías

  Universidad de Zaragoza

  36 shared

• Greg Woolf

  University of Birmingham

  36 shared

• Philip Venticinque

  Bryn Mawr College

  36 shared

• Ra‘anan S. Boustan

  10 shared

• Clifford Ando

  University of Chicago

  9 shared

• F. S. Naiden

  5 shared

• Bruce Lincoln

  University of Chicago

  5 shared