163 Arethusa 54 (2021) 163–184 © 2021 by Johns Hopkins University Press PERFORMING THEOCRITUS’S PHARMAKEUTRIA: REVEALING HELLENISTIC WITCHCRAFT MARGUERITE JOHNSON AND NICOLE KIMBALL I. INTRODUCTION Our study of eocritus’s Idyll 2, or Pharmakeutria, used practice-based research to inform a staging of the work in 2019 with the title Love Magic. While the translator-director, Michael Ewans, investigated the recreation of Idyll 2 for a modern audience, the authors of this article, the dramaturge (Johnson) and research assistant (Kimball), concentrated on what such a process could reveal about both the ancient Greek magic contained in the text and its representation of the sorceress Simaitha. By experimenting with Ewans’s emerging translation, developed in tandem with a workshopped performance that led to a professional production, the scholarly process of practice-based research provided nuanced understandings of both the magic and its practitioner. 1 II. CONTENT AND ESTABLISHED SCHOLARSHIP eocritus’s Idyll 2, or Pharmakeutria, is one of the most famous descrip- tions of magical practice of the Hellenistic period. Possibly set on the This article is a companion piece to Ewans 2019 in which he discusses staging Theocri- tus’s works and the performance of mime in the Hellenistic age. Therefore, these topics are not addressed in detail here (for an overview, see Section III below). Translation of Idyll 2 is by Michael Ewans, The University of Newcastle, Australia. © 2019. The authors wish to thank The Centre for 21 st Century Humanities, The University of Newcastle, for providing a research grant to facilitate the project. 1 For a video recording of the 2019 production, Love Magic, see: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=E14tUy5a1Nk For an interview with the research team, see: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=-KswqT598zU