Hello podcast listeners, a quick notice before we get started on today's episode of Emperors

of Rome.

Riannan and I will be recording a Q&A episode.

We need your cues in order to A. I think that's how that works.

So if you have any questions on a Roman topic that you have a burning desire to be answered,

now is the moment that you can grasp.

You can send us a tweet on Twitter, you can send us a message on Facebook, I'll have

a link pinned to my Twitter account that gives you a little form that you can fill in,

or for those who want bonus points, you can use your phone, record your question yourself,

and email it to emperorspodcast.gmail.com.

That way if we like it, we can have you yourself asking the question.

Suppose a podcast, do it right now, I'll wait, and after that, enjoy Emperors of Rome.

R.V., and welcome to Emperors of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host, Matt Smith, and with me today is a associate professor, Riannan Evans,

head of the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Latrobe University.

This is episode C-L-X-X-V-I-I, which is in Roman literature.

Romans had the reality of witches, those who made the brews and prepared the curses,

but also the witches of fiction, in their poems and stories, a witch took on a horrific persona,

one that skews much more closely to the modern idea of a witch. He is Riannan Evans.

Candidia, her unkempt hair bound with slender snakes, orders fig trees to be abrooted from tombs,

she orders funerial cypress, and a feather and eggs from a nocturnal streak.

Smeared with the blood of a hideous frog, and herbs that yolk us in hiberia, fertile

...