In Christian Latin, the word maleficia is used for "witchcraft" or "sorcery": supernatural powers that don't come from God, and are probably associated with demons. A person who uses these powers is a maleficus or a malefica. (For example, Exodus 22:18, maleficōs non patieris vivere: "you shall not allow sorcerers to live".)
I'm curious if the Romans had a similar conception: not of demons or Satanic pacts, but of barbarians doing unclean, uncivilized magicks that were an affront to Roman propriety. Is there a Classical word for this sort of "sorcery", or for someone who uses it?
(Off the top of my head, Lucan describes a grove sacred to strange, horrifying "old gods", and some blasphemous rituals to converse with the dead. But necromantia in and of itself isn't inherently uncivilized: Aeneas and Odysseus both talked to ghosts to divine the future. The sorcerous meaning of maleficia also seems to be post-classical: most of the examples of L&S use it to mean simply "doing harm".)
