Fellowship Report

My fellowship in MagEIA lasted only a few months, from April to July 2026. It was a brief but extremely valuable period, characterised by interdisciplinary dialogue within a calm and friendly environment.

Most of my work was devoted to follow-up research on animals that bite and sting – the subject matter of my PhD thesis, which has interesting links to magic. I worked on two articles: one on an anonymous treatise On Rabies, the other on the scorpion hunts of the Persian Great King, as described by Theophrastus. Both papers were written in Würzburg, as an extension of my dissertation, and will be published by the end of 2026. The second article in particular is directly relevant to MagEIA’s interests: I sought to demonstrate that a fragment of Theophrastus (fr. 359 FHS&G) contains a misunderstood account of a Zoroastrian rite of “destruction of evil”. This interpretation was the subject of a presentation at a seminar led by my supervisor, Professor Daniel Kölligan; it also led to helpful discussions with Neda Darabian, who was also a junior fellow.

At the same time, I greatly enjoyed taking part in the biweekly team seminar. I presented some new work there on magical themes in Nicander’s most famous work, the Theriaca, a long Hellenistic poem about venomous animals. I also participated in a smaller reading group on the Cyranides, a collection of medical and magical recipes. Many questions – cultural transfers, time of composition, zoological or botanical identifications – remain open for future research, but we have at least made significant progress in understanding and translating the text.

Finally, alongside my work for MagEIA, my fellowship enabled me to present at two international events: a seminar in Rome on editing ancient medical texts and a conference at the University of Strasbourg on animals and symbolic language. I was also allowed to attended the annual conference of the APLAES (Association of Professors of Ancient Languages in Higher Education), where I received an award for my PhD dissertation.

I am very grateful to the MagEIA team for this freedom, as well as for the scientific interest, the quality of the discussions and the collegial organisation of the work. In particular, I would like to thank Professors Daniel Kölligan, Daniel Schwemer and Martin Stadler for welcoming me so generously. My thanks also go to Saverio Dalpedri and Anne Noster, and to the entire group of fellows, and to the Siebold-Collegium Institute for Advanced Studies, which provided me with accommodation in an ideal setting. Among the many pleasures of my stay in Würzburg, discovering this beautiful city, its lavish gardens and the museums of Bavaria were certainly not the least.