ABSTRACT
Much more is known about magic-working in the first three Christian centuries than in any period of Classical Antiquity. This is probably a function of the nature and richness of the sources for the period and not of any great upswing in the incidence of occult practices. Presenting a balanced picture of magic-working and magic-workers in a world in which Christianity enjoyed a degree of power and prestige that it had hitherto not known is not a simple task. It is all too easy to ignore the continuities and to overemphasize the discontinuities. Changes did take place in the way in which men looked at the world that affected the practice of magic and who it was who practised it, but at the same time inevitably much remained the same.
