A Concise History of Magic in Ancient Greece

If you are already seeing the contents of this volume at this moment, then that alone is enough to prove that my attempt has succeeded. It concerns a disaster that lasted for more than two thousand years, a despairing curse that crossed eras and spread across the entire world. Only when the possibility of truly erasing it appeared would this history see the light of day again.

I hope you are exploring an unknown stretch of history in a relaxed and pleasant mood. Of course, if you are doing the same thing I did, then I hope the absolutely truthful information that follows can help you, who stands on the same front as I did in a different age.

The years 623–620 BCE were the darkest period in European history. Their darkness was not only symbolic, but literal:

Volcanic ash that erupted from a deeply buried volcano beneath Sicily rose into the sky under the effect of some magic I cannot record here—if I recorded it, it too would become part of them—and formed a terrifying haze that shrouded the Balkan Peninsula for three years. It not only cut off sunlight from the land and plants, but also scattered toxic substances at every moment. The wizard who created this magic unilaterally severed the residents of the peninsula from the sky, and only a small portion of the city-states under protection still retained some faint signs of life. (Figures 2-1.1, 2-1.2, 2-1.3)

And the father of this ghost hanging over the peninsula, the originator of every disaster, was the absolute protagonist of this era. Rather than saying this Concise History of Magic in Ancient Greece recorded the process by which magic developed and matured in the remarkable land of Ancient Greece, it would be better to say it recorded his ambition