The goddess Hecate plays a crucial role in my murder mystery Poetic Justice, something I
did not expect when I embarked upon my research of the poet Ovid and his life in exile. It all
started when I read a pamphlet from the Museum of History and Archaeology in Constanta –
the modern Romanian city which stands upon the ruins of Tomis, where Ovid was exiled in
9CE.

In 1962, work was being carried out on a marshalling yard for the Constanta railway.
Archaeologists were on hand of course and in this case, the marshalling yard proved to be the
site of a remarkable find – a trove of religious statues, an altar, inscriptions, all telling us of
the rich variety of worship in Tomis in Roman times. Among them was a statue of the
goddess Hecate, her three heads looking in three directions. You can’t sneak up on Hecate.

I was intrigued by this statue because Hecate has long been associated with magic and
witchcraft, though it isn’t the “black magic” of modern horror films. The earliest writer to
mention her, Hesiod, depicts her as respected by gods and venerated by men for her interest
in their affairs and the help she offers, and by Roman times Hecate was identified with the
goddess of the hunt, Diana, and the Moon. She seems to have become one of three aspects of
the divinity. Hecate also appears briefly in Ovid’s work The Fasti where she has another
name – Trivia, the goddess where three roads meet. The poet tells us that she had a face to
watch over each road, just like the statue found in Constanta, so I searched for other
references to her in Ovid’s work.

Hecate of the three roads meeting was a goddess associated with charms and witchcraft, and
in Ovid’s Metamorphoses she lends her skill in potions to her followers, and even to the
goddess Athene who changes the hapless Arachne into a spider using one of Hecate’s
potions. The two most famous enchantresses in ancient literature, Medea and Circe, appear in
the Metamorphoses as devotees of Hecate. Medea meets Jason by an altar to Hecate and the
faithless Argonaut swears by the rites of Hecate that he will marry Medea. The other famous
enchantress, Circe, when under attack in the Metamorphoses calls upon Hecate.

All this was too good to miss out, and so in Poetic Justice, Ovid encounters Hecate not in the
pages of a poem about mythology but in Tomis, a Greek town about to enter the Roman
Empire. He would meet the goddess in a place he did not want to be, enduring an exile whose
origins he did not know, and at any moment his past could betray him further. All three of
Hecate’s faces would be kept busy as she watched the strands of history coming together for
Ovid.

Fiona Forsyth is a historical fiction author who specialises in novels set in the ancient Roman period. You can read more of her work here.