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In one of the bucolic Idyls of the Greek poet Theocritus (c. 310–c. 250 B.C.) the maiden Simaetha, in love with Delphis, who has abandoned her, attempts to regain his love by performing certain magic rites and making invocations to Selene, Aphrodite, and the horrendous Hecate.

She fashions a wax image of Delphis and by sympathetic magic anticipates the melting of his heart in correspondence with the melting of the image.

In addition, she makes use of the magic wheel, and her refrain throughout the performance is:

My magic wheel, draw home to me

The man I love!

Intertwined with these rituals is the further refrain, addressed to Selene, the moon goddess:

Bethink thee of my love,

And whence it came,

My Lady Moon!

In his De Sanitate Tuenda Praecepta, Advice on keeping Well, Plutarch, the Greek philosopher and biographer, comments on lust and potions:

While we loathe and detest women who contrive philtres and magic to use upon their husbands, we entrust our food and provisions to hirelings and slaves to be all but bewitched and drugged. If the saying of Arcesilaus, addressed to the adulterous and licentious, appears too bitter, to the effect that ‘it makes no difference whether a man practices lewdness in the front parlor or in the back hall,’ yet it is not without its application to our subject. For in very truth, what difference does it make whether a man employ aphrodisiacs to stir and excite licentiousness for the purpose of pleasure or whether he stimulate his taste by odors and sauces to require, like the itch, continual scratchings and ticklings.