Greek culture not free from magic.
One remarkable corollary of the so-called Italian Renaissance or Humanistic movement at the close of the middle ages with its too exclusive glorification of ancient Greece and Rome has been the strange notion that the ancient Hellenes were unusually free from magic compared with other periods and peoples. It would have been too much to claim any such immunity for the primitive Romans, whose entire religion was originally little else than magic and whose daily life, public and private, was hedged in by superstitious observances and fears. But they, too, were supposed to have risen later under the influence of Hellenic culture to a more enlightened stage,[81]only to relapse again into magic in the declining empire and middle ages under oriental influence. Incidentally let me add that this notion that inthe pastorientals were more superstitious and fond ofmarvels than westerners in the same stage of civilization and that the orient must needs be the source of every superstitious cult and romantic tale is a glib assumption which I do not intend to make and which our subsequent investigation will scarcely substantiate. But to return to the supposed immunity of the Hellenes from magic; so far has this hypothesis been carried that textual critics have repeatedly rejected passages as later interpolations or even called entire treatises spurious for no other reason than that they seemed to them too superstitious for a reputable classical author. Even so specialized and recent a student of ancient astrology, superstition, and religion as Cumont still clings to this dubious generalization and affirms that “the limpid Hellenic genius always turned away from the misty speculations of magic.”[82]But, as I suggested some sixteen years since, “the fantasticalness of medieval science was due to ‘the clear light of Hellas’ as well as to the gloom of the ‘dark ages.’”[83]
Magic in myth, literature, and history.
It is not difficult to call to mind evidence of the presence of magic in Hellenic religion, literature, and history. One has only to think of the many marvelous metamorphoses in Greek mythology and of its countless other absurdities; of the witches, Circe and Medea, and the necromancy of Odysseus; or the priest-magician of Apollo in theIliadwho could stop the plague, if he wished; of the lucky and unlucky days and other agricultural magic in Hesiod.[84]Then there were the Spartans, whose so-called constitution and method of education, much admired by the Greek philosophers, were largely a retention of the life of the primitive tribe with its ritual and taboos. Or we remember Herodotus and his childish delight in ambiguous oracles or his tale of seceders from Gela brought back by Telines single-handed because he “was possessed of certain mysterious visible symbols of the powers beneath the earth which were deemed to be ofwonder-working power.”[85]We recall Xenophon’s punctilious records of sacrifices, divinations, sneezes, and dreams; Nicias, as afraid of eclipses as if he had been a Spartan; and the matter-of-fact mentions of charms, philters, and incantations in even such enlightened writers as Euripides and Plato. Among the titles of ancient Greek comedies magic is represented by theGoetesof Aristophanes, theMandragorizomeneof Alexis, thePharmacomantisof Anaxandrides, theCirceof Anaxilas, and theThettaleof Menander.[86]When we candidly estimate the significance of such evidence as this, we realize that the Hellenes were not much less inclined to magic than other peoples and periods, and that we need not wait for Theocritus and the Greek romances or for the magical papyri for proof of the existence of magic in ancient Greek civilization.[87]
Simultaneous increase of learning and occult science.
If astrology and some other occult sciences do not appear in a developed form until the Hellenistic period, it is not because the earlier period was more enlightened, but because it was less learned. And the magic which Osthanes is said to have introduced to the Greek world about the time of the Persian wars was not so much an innovation as an improvement upon their coarse and ancient rites ofGoetia.[88]
Magic origin urged for Greek religion and drama.
This magic element which existed from the start in Greek culture is now being traced out by students of anthropology and early religion as well as of the classics. Miss Jane E. Harrison, inThemis, a study of the social origins of Greek religion, suggests a magical explanation for many a myth and festival, and even for the Olympic games and Greek drama.[89]The last point has been developed in moredetail by F. M. Cornford’sOrigin of Attic Comedy, where much magic is detected masquerading in the comedies of Aristophanes.[90]And Mr. A. B. Cook sees the magician in Zeus, who transforms himself to pursue his amours, and contends that “the real prototype of the heavenly weather-king was the earthly” magician or rain-maker, that the pre-Homeric “fixed epithets” of Zeus retained in the Homeric poems “are simply redolent of the magician,” and that the cult of Zeus Lykaios was connected with the belief in werwolves.[91]In still more recent publications Dr. Rendel Harris[92]has connected Greek gods in their origins with the woodpecker and mistletoe, associated the cult of Apollo with the medicinal virtues of mice and snakes, and in other ways emphasized the importance in early Greek religion and culture of the magic properties of animals and herbs.
These writers have probably pressed their point too far, but at least their work serves as a reaction against the old attitude of intellectual idolatry of the classics. Their views may be offset by those of Mr. Farnell, who states that “while the knowledge of early Babylonian magic is beginning to be considerable, we cannot say that we know anything definite concerning the practices in this department of the Hellenic and adjacent peoples in the early period with which we are dealing.” And again, “But while Babylonian magic proclaims itself loudly in the great religious literature and highest temple ritual, Greek magic is barely mentioned in the older literature of Greece, plays no part at all in the hymns, and can only with difficulty be discovered as latent in the higher ritual. Again, Babylonianmagic is essentially demoniac; but we have no evidence that the pre-Homeric Greek was demon-ridden, or that demonology and exorcism were leading factors in his consciousness and practice.” Even Mr. Farnell admits, however, that “the earliest Hellene, as the later, was fully sensitive to the magico-divine efficacy of names.”[93]Now to believe in the power of names before one believes in the existence of demons is the best possible evidence of the antiquity of magic in a society, since it indicates that the speaker has confidence in the operative power of his own words without any spiritual or divine assistance.
Magic in Greek philosophy.
Moreover, in one sense the advocates of Greek magic have not gone far enough. They hold that magic lies back of the comedies of Aristophanes; what they might contend is that it was also contemporary with them.[94]They hold that classical Greek religion had its origins in magic; what they might argue is that Greek philosophy never freed itself from magic. “That Empedocles believed himself capable of magical powers is,” says Zeller, “proved by his own writings.” He himself “declares that he possesses the power to heal old age and sickness, to raise and calm the winds, to summon rain and drought, and to recall the dead to life.”[95]If the pre-Homeric fixed epithets of Zeus are redolent of magic, Plato’sTimaeusis equally redolent of occult science and astrology; and if we see the weather-making magician in the Olympian Zeus of Phidias, we cannot explain away the vagaries of theTimaeusas flights of poetic imagination or try to make out Aristotle a modern scientist by mutilating the text of theHistory of Animals.
Plato’s attitude toward magic and astrology.
Toward magic so-called Plato’s attitude in hisLawsis cautious. He maintains that medical men and prophets and diviners can alone understand the nature of poisons (or spells) which work naturally, and of such things as incantations, magic knots, and wax images; and that since other men have no certain knowledge of such matters, they ought not to fear but to despise them. He admits nevertheless that there is no use in trying to convince most men of this and that it is necessary to legislate against sorcery.[96]Yet his own view of nature seems impregnated, if not actually with doctrines borrowed from theMagiof the east, at least with notions cognate to those of magic rather than of modern science and with doctrines favorable to astrology. He humanized material objects and confused material and spiritual characteristics. He also, like authors of whom we shall treat later, attempted to give a natural or rational explanation for magic, accounting, for example, for liver divination on the ground that the liver was a sort of mirror on which the thoughts of the mind fell and in which the images of the soul were reflected; but that they ceased after death.[97]He spoke of harmonious love between the elements as the source of health and plenty for vegetation, beasts, and men, and their “wanton love” as the cause of pestilence and disease. To understand both varieties of love “in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed astronomy,”[98]or, as we should say, astrology, whose fundamental law is the control of inferior creation by the motion of the stars. Plato spoke of the stars as “divine and eternal animals, ever abiding,”[99]an expression which we shall hear reiterated in the middle ages. “The lower gods,” whom he largely identified with the heavenly bodies, form men, who, if they live good lives, return after death each to a happy existence in his proper star.[100]Such a doctrine is not identical with that of nativitiesand the horoscope, but like it exalts the importance of the stars and suggests their control of human life. And when at the close of hisRepublicPlato speaks of the harmony or music of the spheres of the seven planets and the eighth sphere of the fixed stars, and of “the spindle of Necessity on which all the revolutions turn,” he suggests that when once the human soul has entered upon this life, its destiny is henceforth subject to the courses of the stars. When in theTimaeushe says, “There is no difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfills the perfect year when all the eight revolutions ... are accomplished together and attain their completion at the same time,”[101]he seems to suggest the astrological doctrine of themagnus annus, that history begins to repeat itself in every detail when the heavenly bodies have all regained their original positions.
Aristotle on stars and spirits.
For Aristotle, too, the stars were “beings of superhuman intelligence, incorporate deities. They appeared to him as the purer forms, those more like the deity, and from them a purposive rational influence upon the lower life of the earth seemed to proceed,—a thought which became the root of medieval astrology.”[102]Moreover, “his theory of the subordinate gods of the spheres of the planets ... provided for a later demonology.”[103]
Folk-lore in theHistory of Animals.
Aside from bits of physiognomy and of Pythagorean superstition, or mysticism, Aristotle’sHistory of Animalscontains much on the influence of the stars on animal life, the medicines employed by animals, and their friendships and enmities, and other folk-lore and pseudo-science.[104]Butthe oldest extant manuscript of that work dates only from the twelfth or thirteenth century and lacks the tenth book. Editors of the text have also rejected books seven and nine, the latter part of book eight, and have questioned various other passages. However, these expurgations save the face of Aristotle rather than of Hellenic science or philosophy generally, as the spurious seventh book is held to be drawn largely from Hippocratic writings and the ninth from Theophrastus.[105]
Differing modes of transmission of ancient oriental and Greek literature.
There is another point to be kept in mind in any comparison of Egypt and Babylon or Assyria with Greece in the matter of magic. Our evidence proving the great part played by magic in the ancient oriental civilizations comes directly from them to us without intervening tampering or alteration except in the case of the early periods. But classical literature and philosophy come to us as edited by Alexandrian librarians[106]and philologers, as censored and selected by Christian and Byzantine readers, as copied or translated by medieval monks and Italian humanists. And the question is not merely, what have they added? but also, what have they altered? what have they rejected? Instead of questioning superstitious passages in extant works on the ground that they are later interpolations, it would very likely be more to the point to insert a goodly number on the ground that they have been omitted as pagan or idolatrous superstitions.
More magical character of directly transmitted Greek remains.
Suppose we turn to those writings which have been unearthed just as they were in ancient Greek; to the papyri, the lead tablets, the so-called Gnostic gems. How does the proportion of magic in these compare with that in the indirectly transmitted literary remains? If it is objected that the magic papyri[107]are mainly of late date and thatthey are found in Egypt, it may be replied that they are as old as or older than any other manuscripts we have of classical literature and that its chief storehouse, too, was in Egypt at Alexandria. As for the magical curses written on lead tablets,[108]they date from the fourth century before our era to the sixth after, and fourteen come from Athens and sixteen from Cnidus as against one from Alexandria and eleven from Carthage. And although some display extreme illiteracy, others are written by persons of rank and education. And what a wealth of astrological manuscripts in the Greek language has been unearthed in European libraries by the editors of theCatalogus Codicum Graecorum Astrologorum![109]And occasionally archaeologists report the discovery of magical apparatus[110]or of representations of magic in works of art.
Progress of science among the Greeks.
In thus contending that Hellenic culture was not free from magic and that even the philosophy and science of the ancient Greeks show traces of superstition, I would not, however, obscure the fact that of extant literary remains the Greek are the first to present us with any very considerable body either of systematic rational speculation or of classified collection of observed facts concerning nature. Despite the rapid progress in recent years in knowledge of prehistoric man and Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, the Hellenictitle to the primacy in philosophy and science has hardly been called in question, and no earlier works have been discovered that can compare in medicine with those ascribed to Hippocrates, in biology with those of Aristotle and Theophrastus, or in mathematics and physics with those of Euclid and Archimedes. Undoubtedly such men and writings had their predecessors, probably they owed something to ancient oriental civilization, but, taking them as we have them, they seem to be marked by great original power. Whatever may lie concealed beneath the surface of the past, or whatever signs or hints of scientific investigation and knowledge we may think we can detect and read between the lines, as it were, in other phases of older civilizations, in these works solid beginnings of experimental and mathematical science stand unmistakably forth.
Archimedes and Aristotle.
“An extraordinarily large proportion of the subject matter of the writings of Archimedes,” says Heath, “represents entirely new discoveries of his own. Though his range of subjects was almost encyclopædic, embracing geometry (plane and solid), arithmetic, mechanics, hydrostatics and astronomy, he was no compiler, no writer of text-books.... His objective is always some new thing, some definite addition to the sum of knowledge, and his complete originality cannot fail to strike anyone who reads his works intelligently, without any corroborative evidence such as is found in the introductory letters prefixed to most of them.... In some of his subjects Archimedes had no forerunners,e. g., in hydrostatics, where he invented the whole science, and (so far as mathematical demonstration was concerned) in his mechanical investigations.”[111]Aristotle’sHistory of Animalsis still highly esteemed by historians of biology[112]and often evidences “a large amount of personalobservations,”[113]“great accuracy,” and “minute inquiry,” as in his account of the vascular system[114]or observations on the embryology of the chick.[115]“Most wonderful of all, perhaps, are those portions of his book in which he speaks of fishes, their diversities, their structure, their wanderings, and their food. Here we may read of fishes that have only recently been rediscovered, of structures only lately reinvestigated, of habits only of late made known.”[116]But of the achievements of Hellenic philosophy and Hellenistic science the reader may be safely assumed already to have some notion.
Exaggerated view of the scientific achievement of the Hellenistic age.
But in closing this brief preliminary sketch of the period before our investigation proper begins, I would take exception to the tendency, prevalent especially among German scholars, to center in and confine to Aristotle and the Hellenistic age almost all progress in natural science made before modern times. The contributions of the Egyptians and Babylonians are reduced to a minimum on the one hand, while on the other the scientific writings of the RomanEmpire, which are extant in far greater abundance than those of the Hellenistic period, are regarded as inferior imitations of great authors whose works are not extant; Posidonius, for example, to whom it has been the fashion of the writers of German dissertations to attribute this, that, and every theory in later writers. But it is contrary to the law of gradual and painful acquisition of scientific knowledge and improvement of scientific method that one period of a few centuries should thus have discovered everything. We have disputed the similar notion of a golden age of early Egyptian science from which the Middle and New Kingdoms declined, and have not held that either the Egyptians or Babylonians had made great advances in science before the Greeks. But that is not saying that they had not made some advance. As Professor Karpinski has recently written:
“To deny to Babylon, to Egypt, and to India, their part in the development of science and scientific thinking is to defy the testimony of the ancients, supported by the discoveries of the modern authorities. The efforts which have been made to ascribe to Greek influence the science of Egypt, of later Babylon, of India, and that of the Arabs do not add to the glory that was Greece. How could the Babylonians of the golden age of Greece or the Hindus, a little later, have taken over the developments of Greek astronomy? This would only have been possible if they had arrived at a state of development in astronomy which would have enabled them properly to estimate and appreciate the work which was to be absorbed.... The admission that the Greek astronomy immediately affected the astronomical theories of India carries with it the implication that this science had attained somewhat the same level in India as in Greece. Without serious questioning we may assume that a fundamental part of the science of Babylon and Egypt and India, developed during the times which we think of as Greek, was indigenous science.”[117]
Nor am I ready to admit that the great scientists of the early Roman Empire merely copied from, or were distinctly inferior to, their Hellenistic predecessors. Aristarchus may have held the heliocentric theory[118]but Ptolemy must have been an abler scientist and have supported his incorrect hypothesis with more accurate measurements and calculations or the ancients would have adopted the sounder view. And if Herophilus had really demonstrated the circulation of the blood, so keen an intelligence as Galen’s would not have cast his discovery aside. And if Ptolemy copied Hipparchus, are we to imagine that Hipparchus copied from no one? But of the incessant tradition from authority to authority and yet of the gradual accumulation of new matter from personal observation and experience our ensuing survey of thirteen centuries of thought and writing will afford more detailed illustration.