http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/obituaries/bs-md-ob-georg-luck-20130219,0,7859850,full.story
Georg H.B. Luck, Hopkins professor
Classics professor wrote widely about the role of witchcraft and magic
in ancient theology
Georg H.B. Luck, whose career teaching the classics at the Johns
Hopkins University spanned two decades and included studying the role
magic and witchcraft played in the theology and world of the ancient
Greeks and Romans, died Sunday from complications of cancer at
Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson.
He was 87 and a longtime resident of the city's Poplar Hill neighborhood.
[...]
His book "Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman
Worlds" was published in 1986; he added a second volume in 2006.
"I think 'Arcana' is his most famous work," said Dr. Roller. "He was
in his 80s when he issued the second volume and it showed that he was
still thinking about the subject."
"No one currently at work in ancient magic or related fields can
remotely compare with Luck for the breadth and profundity of his
knowledge of the literary texts, for the humanity and sympathy of his
exegeses of them, or for the humanity and lightness of touch with
which he conveys his scholarship," wrote Daniel Ogden in a 2007 review
for the Literature Resource Center.
He had contributed a chapter to the "Athlone History of Witchcraft,"
and a collection of his articles dealing with ancient morals, religion
and magic — "Ancient Pathways, Hidden Pursuits" — was published by the
University of Michigan.
"I am still interested in the history of magic and the occult sciences
in Antiquity," Dr. Luck wrote in an online Hopkins departmental
profile.
[...]
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