There were many instances of magic in those times. If anyone has watched HBO's Rome series they will have seen a character cursing their enemies utilising a defixione. This idea was adopted from the Greeks, who called them katadesmoi. They were basically a thin sheet of usually lead which was inscribed with some kind of wish. These usually fell into 3 distinct categories - cursing an enemy, love and lust, gambling wishes. The plates were dedicated to the cthonic (underworld) dieties - Hades, Persephone, sometimes the furies. They were rolled up and deposited underground. This could be in wells, dug into the ground, under starting/finishing posts. In 'Rome' the defixione was secreted in a crack in the wall of an enemy.

The Orphic sect, which evolved as a form of 'civilised' Bacchic worship in 6th century bc Greece, eventually degraded and by the Hellenistic period (post 300 bc) itinerant orphic priests would travel from city to city selling magical charms and spells to all comers. Some of these spells were known as Ephesian letters and were inscribed on the feet of the statue of Artemis at Ephesus. Infact there is a play of either Euripides or Aeschylus, memory fails me at this point, called The Cyclops, which centres around Odysseus's adventures in the cave of Polythemus. The Ephesian letters are directly referred to.

Time doesn't permit me to elaborate as I'm in work time. But there's a whole host of magical/shamanic ideas concerning the Pythagoreans and the Ionian Greeks. Maybe next time.