Some aspects of the Romans' religion we might consider more superstitions than formal religious beliefs. Many of the current superstitions that people follow today are directly traceable to ancient ones, including black cats crossing your path and stepping under ladders as harbingers of bad luck.
Superstitions were widespread in the Roman world and were not limited to uneducated or unsophisticated Romans. The Roman general Sulla always carried around a little statue of the god Apollo, and whenever he got in trouble, he would kiss it and pray to it. Even many emperors were highly superstitious. If the emperor Augustus put the wrong shoe on upon getting out of bed, he thought it was a bad omen for the day. If dew was present when he started a long journey, he considered it a good sign. At all times, he carried around a piece of sealskin, which he thought would protect him from thunderstorms. He also liked to repeat stories about omens that had foretold his rise to power. One of these claimed that as a very young child on the family farm, he once ordered some frogs to stop croaking; to everyone's astonishment, they promptly stopped and never croaked again. Some superstitions were associated with good-luck icons.
Augustus's successor, Tiberius, was particularly superstitious as the following anecdote suggests: Tiberius had a favorite pet snake that he took with him everywhere. One time, when he had just set out on a journey for Rome, he opened up its box and discovered that his snake had been eaten by ants. Seeing this, he immediately turned around and canceled his journey. Tiberius was an enthusiastic follower of astrology, and during the latter half of his reign, he spent all his time on an island with his personal astrologer, Thrasyllus. Many people believed that Thrasyllus really ran the empire since Tiberius would not do anything without consulting his astrologer; if he received a negative horoscope, he would cancel that activity or decree.
Another aspect of Roman religion that seems akin to magic is that the Romans tried to place curses on their enemies to bring them bad luck. Individuals would invoke magical powers to place curses on their enemies. Oddly enough, the exact details of many of these curses are known to us today because of the way they were created. The text of the curse was written on a tablet, often by a professional sorcerer. It was then in essence mailed to the gods of the underworld by being dropped down a well, thrown in a cave, or buried. The usual form that the curse took was to address one or several of the gods of the underworld (such as Pluto), promise him or her something in exchange for helping you, and then consign your enemy to him or her. To make the curse even more explicit, it was common to list all of your enemy's body parts that were to be affected by the curse. One such curse tablet reads, "Spirits of the underworld, I dedicate and hand into your power, Ticene of Carisius. Let everything she attempts turn out badly. Spirits of the underworld, I dedicate to you her limbs, her face, her body, her head, her hair, her shade, her brain, her forehead, her eyebrows, her mouth, her nose, her chin, her cheeks, her lips, her speech, her breath, her neck, her liver, her shoulders, her heart, her lungs, her intestines, her stomach, her arms, her fingers, her hands, her navel, her entrails, her thighs, her knees, her calves, her heels, her soles, her toes. Spirits of the underworld, if I witness her wasting away, I promise that I will joyfully present to you a sacrifice every year" (C/L 10.8249).
In addition to general curses condemning an entire person, there were also curses that asked for specific actions. Archaeologists have found a number of these hidden in the walls of horse stables. Chariot racing was an extremely popular sport, and fans apparently tried to curse the horses of opposing teams. Inevitably, another way that people used magic was to attempt to make others love them. A large number of magic spells and incantations survive, testifying to desperate people's attempts to make the objects of their obsession return their love or lust. Curses were made not just on an individual level, but even on a national one. After the ritual of evocatio, by which the Romans invited the gods of a cify they were attacking to come over to the Roman side, they then usually followed up with the devotio, which was in essence a curse pledging the enemy city to the gods of the underworld.
Foretelling the future has always been a topic of interest. The various forms of prophecy connected to reading signs from the gods have been described in the section on priests and ritual. However, there even exists a reference to the Roman equivalent of a Ouija board. A group of people who wanted to know the future made a magic device. They fashioned a tripod of laurel twigs, from the top of which they suspended a ring on a fine, cotton thread. The tripod was placed over a metal dish whose outer rim was engraved with the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. This object was consecrated with spells and magic rites. They then asked it a question that they wanted answered and put the ring into motion; the ring swung in the direction of individual letters, spelling out an answer. One of the questions they asked was who the next emperor would be, and when word of this came to the current emperor, he had them tried for treason and executed.
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