The magi are either fools or imposters. They are a genus vanissimum.[68] They believe such absurdities as that herbs can dry up swamps and rivers, open all barriers, turn hostile battle-lines in flight, and insure their possessor, wherever he may be, abundant provision for every, need.[69] They make statements which Pliny thinks must have been dictated by a feeling of contempt and derision for the human race. They affirm that gems carved with the names of sun and moon and attached to the neck by hairs of the cynocephalus and feathers of the swallow will neutralize the effect of potions, win audience with kings, and, with the aid of some additional ceremony, ward off hail and locusts.[70] They have the impudence to assert that the stone “heliotropium,” combined with the plant of the same name and with due incantations, renders its bearer invisible.[71] “Vanitas” is Pliny’s stock-word for their statements. Nero proved how hollow are their pretenses by the fact that, although he was most eagerly devoted to the pursuit of magic arts and had every opportunity to acquire skill in them, he was unable to effect any marvels through their agency and abandoned the study of them.[72]
Moreover, magi or magicians deal with the inhuman, the obscene and the abominable. Osthanes, and even the philosopher Democritus, are led by their devotion to magic into propounding such remedies as drinking human blood or utilizing in magic compounds or ceremonies portions of the corpses of men violently slain.[73] Magic is a malicious and criminal art. Its devotees attempt the transfer of disease from one person to another or the exercise of baleful sorcery.[74] “It cannot be sufficiently estimated how great a debt is due the Romans who did away with those monstrous rites in which to slay a man was most pious; nay more, to eat men most wholesome.”[75] In fine, we may rest persuaded that magic is “execrable, ineffectual and inane.” Yet it possesses some shadow of truth, but is of avail through “veneficas artes. . non magicas,”[76] whatever that distinction may be.
III. Illustrations of Pliny’s fundamental belief in magic
Pliny, we have seen, made a bold pretense of utter disbelief in magic, and also censured the art on grounds of decency, morality and humanity. Yet despite this wholesale condemnation, in some places in his work it is difficult to tell where his quotations from magicians cease and where statements which he accepts recommence. Sometimes he explicitly quoted theories or facts from the writings of the “magi” without censure and without any expression of disbelief. If it is contended that he none the less regarded them as false and worthless, we may fairly ask, why then did he give them such a prominent place in his encyclopedia? Surely we must conclude either that he really had a liking for them himself and more than half believed them, or that previous works on nature were so full of such material and his own age so interested in such data that he could not but include much of this lore. Probably both alternatives are true. Finally, many things which Pliny states without any reference to the magi seem as false and absurd as the far-fetched assertions which he attributes to them and for which he shows so much scorn. Indeed, it hardly seems paradoxical to say that he hated the magi but liked their doctrines.
What clearer example of magic could one ask than the conclusion that the odor of the burning horn of a stag has the power of dispelling serpents, because enmity exists between stags and snakes, and the former track the latter to their holes and extract the snakes thence, despite all resistance, by the power of their breath? Or that on this same account the sovereign remedy for snake-bite comes “ex coagulo hinnulei matris in utero occisi?” Or that, since the stag is not subject to fever, the eating of its flesh will prevent that disease, especially if the animal has died of a single wound? What more magical than to fancy that the longest tooth of a fish could have any efficacy in the cure of fever? Or that excluding the person who had tied it on from the sight of the patient for five days would complete a perfect charm? Or that wearing as an amulet the carcass of a frog, minus the claws and wrapped in a piece of russet-colored cloth, would be of any aid against disease?[77] Yet the Natural History is full of such things.
To plants, for example, Pliny assigns powers no less marvelous than those which he has attributed to animals. There is one plant which, held in the hand, has a beneficial effect upon the groin;[78] another overcomes the asp with torpor, and hence, beaten up with oil, is a remedy for the sting of that snake.[79] Fern, he says, if mowed down with the edge of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare on which a reed has been placed, will not spring up again.[80] Moreover, in his twenty-fourth book, immediately after having announced that he has sufficiently discussed for the present the marvel our properties attributed to herbs by the magi,[81] he proceeds to mention the following remedies. One ds a quick cure for headache, and consists in gathering a plant growing on the head of a statue and attaching it to your neck with a red string. Another is a cure for tertian fever, and consists in plucking a certain herb before sunrise on the banks of a stream and in fastening it to the patient’s left arm without his knowledge. A third recipe instructs us that plants which have taken root in a sieve that has been thrown into a hedge-row “decerptae adalligataeque gravidis partus adcelerant.” A fourth would have herbs growing on dunghills a cure for quinzy, and a fifth assures us that sprains may be speedily cured by the application of a plant “iuxta quam canes urinam fundunt,” tom up by the roots and not allowed to touch iron.[82]
Coming to minerals we find Pliny rather more reticent in regard to strange qualities. His account of gems is written mainly from the jeweler’s point of view. When marvelous powers are mentioned, the magi are usually made responsible, and such powers are frequently rejected as absurd. Pliny, however, grants some magic properties in certain stones. Molochitis, by some medicinal power which it possesses, guards infants against dangers;[83] and eumecas, placed beneath the head at night, causes oracular visions.[84] To water Pliny allows powers which we must regard as magical, for according to him certain rivers pass under the sea because of their hatred of it.[85]
In man, moreover, as well as in other creatures upon earth, there is magic power. Pliny mentions men whose eyes are able to exert strong fascination,[86] others who fill serpents with terror and can cure snake-bite by merely touching the wound, and others who by their presence addle eggs in the vicinity.[87] Pliny takes up the power of words and incantations in connection with man. Whether they have potency beyond what we expect ordinary speech to possess is a great and unanswered question. Our ancestors, Pliny says, always believed so, and in every-day life we often unconsciously accept such a view ourselves. If, for instance, we believe that the Vestal virgins can, by an imprecation, stop runaway slaves who are still within the city limits, we must accept the whole theory of the power of words. But, taken as individuals, the wisest men lack faith in the doctrine.[88] Pliny, then, believed in the possession of magic properties by well-nigh all varieties of terrestrial substances, nay even by colors and numbers, and in strange relations of occult sympathy, love and hatred between different things in the realm of nature. His acceptance of ceremony as efficacious has also been brought out to some extent. We have seen him attributing importance to death from a single wound, to suspension by a single hair, to fastening an amulet without the patient’s knowledge, or to the absence for a time from the patient’s sight of the person who attached it. We will consider one or two more such instances among the many which exist in his pages.
70
Bk. xxxvii, ch. 40. The word in this passage which I render as “potion” is in the Latin “veneficiura” — a word difficult to translate owing to its double meaning. “Venenum” signifies a drug or potion of any sort, and then in a bad sense a drug used to poison or a potion used to bewitch. In a passage soon to be cited Pliny contrasts “veneficae artes” to “magicai artes” but I doubt if he always preserved such a distinction. A similar confusion exists in regard to the Greek word
71
Bk. xxxvii, ch. 60. “Magorum inpudentiae vel manifestissimum in hac quoque exemplum est...”
73
Bk. xxviii, ch. 2. Pliny’s own medicine, is not prudish, and elsewhere he gives instances of devotees of magic guarding against defilement. (Bk. xxx, ch. 6 and xxviii, ch. 19).
74
Bk. xxviii, ch. 23. “Quanta vanitate,” adds Pliny, “si falsum est, quanta vero noxia, si transferunt morbos!”
76
Bk. xxx, ch. 6. “Proinde ita persuasum sit, intestabilem, inritam, inanem esse, habentem tamen quasdam veritatis umbras, sed in his veneficas artis pollere non magicas.”
77
Concerning the stag, see bk. viii, ch. 50. On the use of frogs and fishes to cure fevers, bk. xxxii, ch. 38.
82
Bk. xxiv, chs. 106, 107, 109, no, in. Evidently these last remedies derive their force not merely from magic powers inherent in vegetation. The effect of ceremony and of circumstance becomes a factor.
86
Bk. vii, ch. 2. “...Qui visu quoque effascinent interimantque quos diutius intueantur, iratis praecipue oculis, quod eorum malum facilius sentire puberes. Notabilius esse quod pupillas binas in singulis habeant oculis.”
87
Bk. xxviii, ch. 6. The eggs, however, it should be said, are represented as being beneath a setting hen.
88
Bk. xxviii, ch. 3. “Ex homine remediorum primum maxumae quaestionis et semper incertae est, polleatne aliquid verba et incantamenta carminum. Quod si verum est, homini acceptum fieri oportere conveniat, sed viritim sapientissimi cuiusque respuit fides. In universum vero omnibus horis credit vita .... Vestalis nostras hodie credimus nondum egressa urbe mancipia fugitiva retinere in loco precationibus, cum, si semel recipiatur ea ratio et deos preces aliquas exaudire aut illis moveri verbis, confitendum sit de tota coniectione. Prisci quidem nostri perpetuo talia credidere, difficilimumquc ex his etiam fulmina elid, ut suo loco docuimus.”
Pliny seems inclined to narrow down the problem of the power of words to the question whether the gods answer prayer or not, a question which takes us out of the field of magic imless he regarded prayer as a means of coercing the gods.