Page images
PDF
EPUB

We

very short time, and attributed great power to amulets and to certain words, as we learn by his Abracadabra. Marcellus the empiric, Ætius, and Alexander Trallian, have, as defenders of magic, both used and described such means. Several of the emperors, moreover, threw themselves into the lists of the champions of magic; amongst whom the most eminent were Antonine, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus. Under the elder Tarquin, Attius Nævius was well known as a very remarkable clairvoyant, who in his soothsayings even revealed to the king his thoughts, and gained such a reputation that the Romans erected a statue to him. perceive here and there, moreover, clear traces of a magnetic manipulation resembling our own, by passes with the hands, etc. Unquestionably," says Kluge," is the manipulation with strong contact, rubbing and stroking with the hands, which according to him was borrowed principally from the Sclaves, or shampooing, the oldest and most general of all manipulations" (Description of Animal Magnetism, pp. 403 and 404). Seneca (Epist. 66) says, "Shall I deem Mucius happy, who handles fire, as if he had lent his hand to the magical performer ?" And the poet Martial sings (Martial, iii. Epigr. 82) :

[ocr errors]

"Percurrit agile corpus arte tractatrix,

Manumque doctam spargit omnibus membris."

In Plautus it is said:"How if I stroke him slowly with the hand, so that he sleeps ?" (Plautus in Amphitryo). It has not been well understood what this touching by passes really meant. Here I find more than I sought. It is said, "with a soft and uplifted hand" (Basilii Fabri Thesaurus eruditionis scholasticæ, t. ii. p. 25, 38).

As to what relates to the curative means employed by the Oracles in different cases of illness, there are sufficiently detailed accounts to inform us that they used manyinscribed them on sacred tables-represented them by pictures, and often engraved their uses and benefits on pillars. To produce metamorphoses, they had various magical means, such as are mentioned by Homer-pápμaka λvypà; Taνдáрμакоs—and which Circe, to effect metamorphoses, mixed together, and touched with her magic wand. We

should probably know more if we had the writings of Antipater, Demetrius Phalareus, Artemon, Milet, Nicostratus, and Geminus of Tyre, etc.; still there is here and there a trace to be found; and probably the curative means of Hippocrates were chiefly such temple formulæ as he had collected from the sacred tables.

Pliny and Galen also have made some of these known. According to the first, amongst others, the roots of the wild rose were recommended by the Oracle against the bite of a mad dog (Pliny, H. N. lib. xxv. c. 3); according to the latter, the root of the dittany was particularly recommended by the Oracle of Phthas. The magnetic passes for the healing of sickness were not unusual in the times of the Romans. King Pyrrhus cured the spleen by a touch of the foot; and it was believed that in the great toe of the right foot resided a divine power. The Emperor Hadrian cured blindness merely by touching, and was cured himself of a violent fever by a similar touch (Ælius Spartian. vita Hadrian.) In the same manner Vespasian cured blindness and lameness.

Of the inscriptions themselves on the pillars, very little is known to us. In the time of Pausanias there yet remained, as I have already shown, six such inscriptions in the temple of Epidaurus, and these inscriptions were composed in the Doric dialect (Pausan. lib. ii. c. 27; Strabo, lib. viii.) In modern times there have been, on the Tiber island at Rome, a marble tablet with four different inscriptions from the temple of Esculapius dug up, all referring to magnetical modes of treatment. They were first published by Mercurialis in his work, "De arte gymnastica ;" and Gruter has given us a copy of them. Fabret, Tomasius, Hundertmark, Sprengel, and Wolf, have communicated them. The inscriptions collected by Gruter from various Roman monumental stones all say:-Visu monitus; ex visu positus; in somno admonitus, etc. Marc. Antoninus thanks the gods for the means revealed in sleep which healed him. Such monuments were also dedicated to Serapis. Many such inscriptions are to be found in the "Bibliothèque du Magnétisme animal, par MM. les Membres de la Société du Magnétisme," tom. vi. vii. and especially viii. 1819.

The inscriptions on what were called the mosaic tables

were as follows:-1st. "In the days which are past, one Caius who was blind received the Oracle, that he should approach the sacred altar; go from the right to the left; lay the five fingers of the hand on the altar, and then hold the hand on his eyes. And behold! the blind man received sight in the presence of the applauding people, who rejoiced that so splendid a miracle should still take place in the days of the Emperor Antonine."

2nd. "The god commanded the son of Lucius, who suffered under a stitch in the side without intermission, by a nocturnal apparition, that he should come and take ashes from the altar, mix these with wine, and lay them on the ailing side. And he was cured, and thanked the god publicly before all the people, who wished him happiness.'

3rd. "Julian, who spat blood, and was given over by every one, received from the god an answer, that he should come and take from the altar the seeds of the fir-tree, and take these for three days mixed with honey. And the man becane sound, and thanked the god before all the people."

4th. "Valerius Apex, a blind soldier, received an answer from the god that he should mix the blood of a white cock with milk, and bathe his eyes with it for three days. And behold! he received his sight, and thanked the god publicly."

In the sentences of Solon which Stobæus has collected, according to the edition of the Greek Gnomic, Von Brunk, Strasburg, 1784; of Solon, Fragment v. B. 56-62, it says:

"Great suffering often from trivial cause has arisen,

And vainly the means of assuagement been sought for:
Yet, bitterly tortured with heavy and racking disorder,
Touched by the hand, the man has been suddenly healèd.”

Brunk himself attributed this to the magnetism of life. Another place in Apuleius is also frequently quoted, which says:-"Quin et illud mecum repeto; posse animum humanum, et puerilem præsertim simplicemque, seu carminum avocaminto, seu odorum delineamento soporari et ad oblivionem præsentium externari, et paulisper remota corporis memoria redigi ac redire ad naturam suam, quæ est immortalis scilicet et divina, atque ita veluti quodam sopore, futura rerum præsagire."

As to what regards the theory of magnetism amongst the

Romans, we may pass that over, as all their science was derived from the Greeks, and they were therefore, more or less, imitators of that people, but did not by any means equal them in it; though Cicero endeavoured zealously to prove that his countrymen far exceeded all others in learning (Cicero de oratore, lib. i. sect. 15). "Ingenia nostrorum hominum multum cæteris hominibus omnium gentium præstiterunt." (Tuscul. Quæst. lib. i. c. 1):-" Sed meum judicium semper fuit, omnia nostros aut invenisse per se sapientius, quam Græcos, aut accepta ab illis fecisse meliora," etc. At the same time, I have already given the views of Cicero in a former section on soothsaying, and that fully, from which we may understand both his own opinions and those of many others which he has brought together in a very masterly manner. As respects the opinions of later Italian magicians, there are in their very diffuse writings grains of genuine gold buried in the heaps of dross, but more especially in the long dream-stories of apparizions, mixed with much superstition; and their doctrines are, more or less, of modern Platonic origin.

How greatly the practice of conjuration was exercised amongst the Romans, Pliny, amid various other instances, gives us abundant evidence in his Natural History (xxx. 1, etc.) He complains, however, greatly of the foreign gods; that is, of invoking foreign divinities with native ceremonies as he instances in the case of the Druids in Britain,— "vatum medicorumque genus.' The arts of necromancy were by no means practised so secretly in Rome as in Greece; but they fell into far greater misuse and excess in Rome, though they were often most strictly forbidden. "Cum multa sacra susciperent Romani, magica semper damnarunt," says Servius. Divination by fruits was already forbidden by the twelve tables (Pliny, xxviii. 2). As something similar, the Bacchanalian orgies were prohibited in 568, and human sacrifices in 657; as Pliny says (xxx. 1): "Palamque in tempus illud sacra prodigiosa celebrata." Sully condemned to death all "qui susurris magicis hominem occiderint, qui mala sacrificia fecerint vel habuerint, venenaque amatoria habuerint." Valerius Maximus (i. 3) relates that it was forbidden to enquire of the "sortes fortune" at Präveste. In the meantime, by the pressing in of foreign

divinities a multitude of necromantic arts in Rome, the resolve to drive out these was taken along with the prohibition of the strange deities. "Profani ritus; superstitionis externæ rea; divi sacrum ritus; actum est de sacris Ægyptiis Judæisque pellendis," etc. says Tacitus.

66

Necromancy was, however, so prevalent that it was classed with treason and other offences, and especially with the mixing of poisons. "Proinde ita persuasum sit intestabilem, irritam, inanam esse, habentem tamen quasdam veritatis umbras, sed in his veneficas artes pollere, non magicas" (Pliny, xxx. 2). But all the prohibitions and the punishments were unable to suppress either the thing or the belief in it, and the soothsaying of the Chaldæans and the Egyptians continued in vogue. Thus Agrippina inquired of the Chaldæans (the soothsayers) as to the future fortunes of Nero. The evil of the times, the corruption of morals, and the decline of faith in the native gods, were not without a great influence in the matter; and the natural disposition, e cœlo futura et verissima," to learn, displayed itself, according to Pliny, all the stronger. The black magic became eventually the affair of the common people; and magic had that singular fate that it was diffused by soothsayers and old women-" cantatrices aniculæ ;" and amongst the upper classes it was cherished, though a misunderstood new-Pythagorean and new-Platonic philosophy, and acquired such force that it was used as a weapon against Christianity, which its enemies were not able to combat with the power of the Olympian gods. On the other hand, it was by no means denied by the Christians, as they regarded the magical reign produced by the Chaldæans as the "legio fulminatrix" of the devil. The art of necromancy soon, therefore, stood no longer in opposition to the GræcoRoman religion, but united itself with these in a new alliance to weaken the credibility of the miracles of Christianity.

As, therefore, the miracles, as we have already seen, were imitated by the heathen, especially within the province of natural history, and as the powers of nature may be wielded by a scientific hand in a manner which is unknown to the majority of the world, it is plain that the heathen were able in part to produce like wonders, but in part sought

« PreviousContinue »