Magic and divination.
Pliny has a clearer comprehension of the extensive scope of magic and of its essential characteristics, at least as it was in his day. “No one should wonder,” he says, “that its authority has been very great, since alone of the arts it hasembraced and united with itself the three other subjects which make the greatest appeal to the human mind,” namely, medicine, religion, and the arts of divination, especially astrology. That his phraseartes mathematicashas reference to astrology is shown by his immediately continuing, “since there is no one who is not eager to learn the future about himself and who does not think that this is most truly revealed by the sky.” But magic further “promises to reveal the future by water and spheres and air and stars and lamps and basins and the blades of axes and by many other methods, besides conferences with shades from the infernal regions.” There can therefore be no doubt that Pliny regards the various arts of divination as parts of magic.
Magic and religion.
While we have heard Pliny assert in general the close connection between magic and religion, the character of theNatural History, which deals with natural rather than religious matters, does not lead him to enter into much further detail upon this point. His occasional mention of religious usages in his own day, however, supports our information from other sources that the original Roman religion was very largely composed of magic forces, rules, and ceremonial.
Magic and medicine.
Nearly half the books of theNatural Historydeal in whole or in part with remedies for diseases, and it is therefore of the relations between magic and natural science, and more particularly between magic and medicine, that Pliny gives us the most detailed information. Indeed, he asserts that “no one doubts” that magic “originally sprang from medicine and crept in under the show of promoting health as a loftier and more sacred medicine.” Magic and medicine have developed together, and the latter is now in imminent danger of being overwhelmed by the follies of magic, which have made men doubt whether plants possess any medicinal properties.
Magic and philosophy.
In the opinion of many, however, magic is sound and beneficial learning. In antiquity, and for that matter at almost all times, the height of literary fame and glory hasbeen sought from that science.[192]Eudoxus would have it the most noted and useful of all schools of philosophy. Empedocles and Plato studied it; Pythagoras and Democritus perpetuated it in their writings.
Falseness of magic.
But Pliny himself feels that the assertions of the books of magic are fantastic, exaggerated, and untrue. He repeatedly brands themagior magicians as fools or impostors, and their statements as absurd and impudent tissues of lies.[193]Vanitas, or “nonsense,” is his stock-word for their beliefs.[194]Some of their writings must, in his opinion, have been dictated by a feeling of contempt and derision for humanity.[195]Nero proved the falseness of the art, for although he studied magic eagerly and with his unlimited wealth and power had every opportunity to become a skilful practitioner, he was unable to work any marvels and abandoned the attempt.[196]Pliny therefore comes to the conclusion that magic is “invalid and empty, yet has some shadows of truth, which however are due more to poisons than to magic.”[197]
Crimes of magic.
The last remark brings us to charges of evil practices made against the magicians. Besides poisons, they specialize in love-potions and drugs to produce abortions;[198]and some of their operations are inhuman or obscene and abominable. They attempt baleful sorcery or the transfer of disease from one person to another.[199]Osthanes and even Democritus propound such remedies as drinking human blood or utilizing in magic compounds and ceremonies parts of the corpses of men who have been violently slain.[200]Pliny thinks that humanity owes a great debt to the Roman governmentfor abolishing those monstrous rites of human sacrifice, “in which to slay a man was thought most pious; nay more, to eat men was thought most wholesome.”[201]
Pliny’s censure of magic is mainly intellectual.
Pliny nevertheless lays less stress upon the moral argument against magic as criminal or indecent than he does upon the intellectual objection to it as untrue and unscientific. Indeed, so far as decency is concerned, his own medicine will be seen to be far from prudish, while he elsewhere gives instances of magicians guarding against defilement.[202]Moreover, among the methods employed and the results sought by magic which he frequently mentions there are comparatively few that are morally objectionable, although they seem without exception false. But many of their recipes aim at the cure of disease and other worthy, or at least admissible, objects. Possibly Pliny has somewhat censored their lore and tried to exclude all criminal secrets, but his censure seems more intellectual than moral. For instance, he fills a long chapter with extracts from a treatise on the virtues of the chameleon and its parts by Democritus, whom he regards as a leading purveyor of magic lore.[203]In opening the chapter Pliny hails “with great pleasure” the opportunity to expose “the lies of Greek vanity,” but at its close he expresses a wish that Democritus himself had been touched with the branch of a palm which he said prevents immoderate loquacity. Pliny then adds more charitably, “It is evident that this man, who in other respects was a wise and most useful member of society, has erred from too great zeal in serving humanity.”
Vagueness of Pliny’s scepticism.
Pliny himself fails to maintain a consistently sceptical attitude towards magic. His exact attitude is often hard to determine. Often it is difficult to say whether he is speaking in sober earnest or in a tone of light and easy pleasantry and sarcasm, as in the passage just cited concerning Democritus. Another puzzling point is his frequent excuse that he will list certain assertions of the magicians in order toexpose or confute them. But really he usually simply sets them forth, apparently expecting that their inherent and patent absurdity will prove a sufficient refutation of them. On the rare occasions when he undertakes to indicate in what the absurdity consists his reasoning is scarcely scientific or convincing. Thus he affirms that “it is a peculiar proof of the vanity of the magicians that of all animals they most admire moles who are condemned by nature in so many ways, to perpetual blindness and to dig in the darkness as if they were buried.”[204]And he assails the belief of themagi[205]that an owl’s egg is good for diseases of the scalp by asking, “Who, I beg, could ever have seen an owl’s egg, since it is a prodigy to see the bird itself?” Moreover, he sometimes cites assertions of the magicians without any censure, apology, or expression of disbelief; and there are many other passages where it is practically impossible to tell whether he is citing the magicians or not. Sometimes he will apparently continue to refer to them by a pronoun in chapters where they have not been mentioned by name at all.[206]In other places he will imperceptibly cease to quote themagiand after an interval perhaps as imperceptibly resume citation of their doctrines.[207]It is also difficult to determine just when writers like Democritus and Pythagoras are to be regarded as representatives of magic and when their statements are accepted by Pliny as those of sound philosophers.
Magic and science indistinguishable.
Perhaps, despite Pliny’s occasional brave efforts to withstand and even ridicule the assertions of the magicians, he could not free himself from a secret liking for them and more than half believed them. At any rate he believed very similar things. Even more likely is it that previous works on nature were so full of such material and the readers of his own day so interested in it, that he could not but includemuch of it. Once he explains[208]that certain statements are scarcely to be taken seriously, yet should not be omitted, because they have been transmitted from the past. Again he begs the reader’s indulgence for similar “vanities of the Greeks,” “because this too has its value that we should know whatever marvels they have transmitted.”[209]The truth of the matter probably is that Pliny rejected some assertions of the magicians but found others acceptable; that he gets his occasional attitude of scepticism and ridicule of their doctrines from one set of authorities, and his moments of unquestioning acceptance of their statements from other authors on whom he relies. Very likely in the books which he used it often was no clearer than it is in theNatural Historywhether a statement was to be ascribed to themagior not. Very possibly Pliny was as confused in his own mind concerning the entire business as he seems to be to us. He could no more keep magic out of hisNatural Historythan poor Mr. Dick could keep Charles the First’s head out of his book. One fact at any rate stands out clearly, the prominence of magic in his encyclopedia and in the learning of his age.
Magicians as investigators of nature.
Let us now further examine Pliny’s picture of magic, not as he expressly defines or censures it, but as he reflects its own assertions and purposes in his fairly numerous citations from its literature and perhaps its practice. Here I shall rather strictly limit my survey to those statements which Pliny definitely ascribes by name to themagior magic art. The most striking fact is that the magicians are cited again and again concerning the supposed properties, virtues, and effects of things in nature—herbs, animals, and stones. These virtues are, it is true, often employed in an effort to produce wonderful results, and often too they are combined with some fantastic rite or superstitious ceremonial performed by a human agent. But in many cases either norite at all is suggested or merely some simple medicinal application; and in a few cases there is no mention of any particular operation or result, the magicians are cited simply as authorities concerning the great but unspecified virtues of natural objects. Indeed, they stand out in Pliny’s pages not as mere sorcerers or enchanters or wonder-workers, but as those who have gone the farthest and in most detail—too far and too curiously in Pliny’s opinion—into the study of medicine and of nature. Sometimes their statements, cited without censure, supplement others concerning the species under discussion;[210]sometimes they are his sole source of information on the subject in hand.[211]
Themagion herbs.
Pliny connects the origin of botany rather closely with magic, mentioning Medea and Circe as early investigators of plants and Orpheus among the first writers on the subject.[212]Moreover, Pythagoras and Democritus borrowed from themagiof the orient in their works on the properties of plants.[213]There would be little profit in repeating the names of the herbs concerning which Pliny gives opinions of the magicians, inasmuch as few of them can be associated with any plants known to-day.[214]Suffice it to say that Pliny makes no objection to the herbs which they employed. Nor does he criticize their methods of employing them, although some seem superstitious enough to the modern reader. A chaplet is worn of one herb,[215]others are plucked with the left hand and with a statement of what they are to be used for, and in one case without looking backward.[216]The anemone is to be plucked when it first appears that year with a statement of its intended use, and then is to be wrapped in a red cloth and kept in the shade, and, whenever anyone falls sick of tertian or quartan fever, is to be bound on the patient’s body.[217]The heliotrope is not to be plucked at all buttied in three or four knots with a prayer that the patient may recover to untie the knots.[218]
Marvelous virtues of herbs.
Pliny does not even object to the marvelous results which themagithink can be gained by use of herbs until towards the close of his twenty-fourth book, although already in his twentieth and twenty-first books such powers have been claimed for herbs as to make one well-favored and enable one to attain one’s desires,[219]or to give one grace and glory.[220]At the end of his twenty-fourth book[221]he states that Pythagoras and Democritus, following themagi, ascribe to herbs unusually marvelous virtues such as to freeze water, invoke spirits, force the guilty to confess by frightening them with apparitions, and impart the gift of divination. Early in his twenty-fifth book[222]Pliny suggests that some incredible effects have been attributed to herbs by themagiand their disciples, and in a later chapter[223]he describes themagias so mad about vervain that they think that if they are anointed with it, they can gain their wishes, drive away fevers and other diseases, and make friendships. The herb should be plucked about the rising of the dog-star when there is neither sun nor moon. Honey and honeycomb should be offered to appease the earth; then the plant should be dug around with iron with the left hand and raised aloft. By the time he reaches his twenty-sixth book Pliny’s courage has risen, so to speak, enough to cause him at last to enter upon quite a tirade against “magical vanities which have been carried so far that they might destroy faith in herbs entirely.”[224]As examples he mentions herbs supposed to dry up rivers and swamps, open barred doors at their touch, turn hostile armies to flight, and supply all the needs of the ambassadors of the Persian kings. He wonders why such herbs have never been employed in Roman warfare or Italian drainage. Pliny’s only objection to magic herbs therefore seems to be the excessive powers which are claimed for some of them.He adds that it would be strange that the credulity which arose from such wholesome beginnings had reached such a pitch, if human ingenuity observed moderation in anything and if the much more recent system of medicine which Asclepiades founded could not be shown to have been carried even beyond the magicians. Here again we see Pliny failing to recognize magic as a primitive social product and regarding it as a degeneration from ancient science rather than science as a comparatively modern development from it. But he may well be right in thinking that many particular far-fetched recipes and rites were the late, artificial product of over-scholarly magicians. Thus he brands as false and magical the assertion of a recent grammarian, Apion, that the herb cynocephalia is divine and a safeguard against poison, but kills the man who uproots it entirely.[225]
Animals and parts of animals.
In a few cases Pliny objects to the animals or parts of animals employed by themagi, as in the passage already cited where he complains that they admire moles more than any other animals.[226]But his assertion is inconsistent, since he has already affirmed that they hold the hyena in most admiration of all animals on the ground that it works magic upon men.[227]Their promise of readier favor with peoples and kings to those who anoint themselves with lion’s fat, especially that between the eyebrows, he criticizes by declaring that no fat can be found there.[228]He also twits themagifor magnifying the importance of so nasty a creature as the tick.[229]They are attracted to it by the fact that it has no outlet to its body and can live only seven days even if it fasts. Whether there is any astrological significance in the number seven here Pliny does not say. He does inform us, however, that the cricket is employed in magic because it moves backward.[230]A very bizarre object employed by the Druids and other magicians is a sort of egg produced by the hissing or foam of snakes.[231]The blood of the basilisk may also beclassed as a rarity. Apparently animals in some way unusual are preferred in magic, like a black sheep,[232]but the logic in the reasons given by Pliny for their selection is not clear in every instance. In some other cases not criticized by Pliny[233]we have plainly enough sympathetic magic or the principle of like cures like, as when the milt of a calf or sheep is used to cure diseases of the human spleen.
Further instances.
The magicians, however, do not scorn to use familiar and easily obtainable animals like the goat and dog and cat. The liver and dung of a cat, a puppy’s brains, the blood and genitals of a dog, and the gall of a black male dog are among the animal substances employed.[234]Such substances as those just named are equally in demand from other animals.[235]Minute parts of animals are frequently employed by the magicians, such as the toe of an owl, the liver of a mouse given in a fig, the tooth of a live mole, the stones from young swallows’ gizzards, the eyes of river crabs.[236]Sometimes the part employed is reduced to ashes, perhaps a relic of sacrificial custom. Thus for toothache themagiinject into the ear nearer the tooth the ashes of the head of a mad dog and oil of Cyprus, while they prescribe for affections of the sinews the ashes of an owl’s head in honied wine with lily root.[237]Other living creatures which Pliny mentions as used by themagiare the salamander, earthworm, bat, scarab with reflex horns, lizard, tortoise, bed-bug, frog, and sea-urchin.[238]The dragon’s tail wrapped in a gazelle’s skin and bound on with deer-sinews cures epilepsy,[239]and a mixture of the dragon’s tongue, eyes, gall, and intestines, boiled in oil, cooled in the night air, and rubbed on morning and evening, frees one from nocturnal apparitions.[240]
Magic rites with animals and parts of animals.
Sometimes the parts of animals are bound on outside the patient’s body, sometimes the injured portion of his bodyis merely touched with them. Once the whole house is to be fumigated with the substance in question;[241]once the walls are to be sprinkled with it; once it is to be buried under the threshold. Some instances follow of more elaborate magic ritual connected with the use of animals or parts of animals. The hyena is more easily captured by a hunter who ties seven knots in his girdle and horsewhip, and it should be captured when the moon is in the sign of Gemini and without the loss of a single hair.[242]Another bit of astrology dispensed by themagiis that the cat, whose salted liver is taken with wine for quartan fever, should have been killed under a waning moon.[243]To cure incontinence of urine one not only drinks ashes of a boar’s genitals in sweet wine, but afterwards urinates in a dog kennel and repeats the formula, “That I may not urinate like a dog in its kennel.”[244]The magicians insist that the sex of the patient be observed in administering burnt cow-dung or bull-dung in honied wine for cases of dropsy.[245]For infantile ailments the brains of a she-goat should be passed through a gold ring and dropped in the baby’s mouth before it is given its milk.[246]After the fresh milt of a sheep has been applied to the patient with the words, “This I do for the cure of the spleen,” it should be plastered into the bedroom wall and sealed with a ring, while the charm should be repeated twenty-seven times.[247]In treating sciatica[248]an earthworm should be placed in a broken wooden dish mended with an iron band, the dish should be filled with water, the worm should be buried again where it was dug up, and the water should be drunk by the patient. The eyes of river crabs are to be attached to the patient’s person before sunrise and the blinded crabs put back into the water.[249]After it has been carried around the house thrice a bat may be nailed head down outside a window as an amulet.[250]For epilepsy goat’s flesh should begiven which has been roasted on a funeral pyre, and the animal’s gall should not be allowed to touch the ground.[251]
Marvels wrought with parts of animals.
Pliny occasionally speaks in a vague general way of his citations from themagiconcerning the virtues of parts of animals as lies or nonsense or “portentous,” but he does not specifically criticize their procedure any more than he did their methods of employing herbs, and he does not criticize their promised results as much as he did before. Indeed, as we have already indicated, the object in a majority of cases is purely medicinal. The purpose of others is pastoral or agricultural, such as preventing goats from straying or causing swine to follow you.[252]The blood of the basilisk, however, is said to procure answers to petitions made to the powerful and prayers addressed to the gods, and to act as a safeguard against poison or sorcery (veneficiorum amuleta).[253]Invincibility is promised the wearer of the head and tail of a dragon, hairs from a lion’s forehead, a lion’s marrow, the foam of a winning horse, a dog’s claw bound in deer-skin, and the muscles alternately of a deer and a gazelle.[254]A woman will tell secrets in her sleep if the heart of an owl is applied to her right breast, and power of divination is gained by eating the still palpitating heart of a mole.[255]
Themagion stones.
In the case of stones the names are again, as in the case of herbs, of little significance for us.[256]The accompanying ritual is slight. There are one or two suspensions from the neck or elsewhere by such means as a lion’s mane—the hair of the hyena will not do at all—nor the hair of the cynocephalus and swallows’ feathers.[257]There is some use of incantations with the stones, a setting of iron for one stone, burial of another beneath a tree that it may not dull the axe, and placing another on the tongue after rinsing the mouth with honey at certain days and hours of the moon in order to acquire the gift of divination.[258]Indeed, the results promisedare all marvelous. The stones benefit public speakers, admit to the presence of royalty, counteract fascination and sorcery, avert hail, thunderbolts, storms, locusts, and scorpions; chill boiling water, produce family discord, render athletes invincible, quench anger and violence, make one invisible, evoke images of the gods and shades from the infernal regions.
Other magical recipes.
We have yet to mention a group of magical recipes and remedies which Pliny for some reason collects in one chapter[259]but which hardly fall under any one head. A whetstone on which iron tools are sharpened, if placed without his knowledge under the pillow of a man who has been poisoned, will cause him to reveal all the circumstances of the crime. If you turn a man who has been struck by lightning over on his injured side, he will speak at once. To cure tumors in the groin, tie seven or nine knots in the remnant of a weaver’s web, naming some widow as each knot is tied. The pain is assuaged by binding to the body the nail that has been trod on. To get rid of warts, on the twentieth day of the moon lie flat in a path gazing at the moon, stretch the hands above the head and rub the warts with anything that comes to hand. A corn may be extracted successfully at the moment a star shoots. Headache may be relieved by a liniment made by pouring vinegar on door hinges or by binding a hangman’s noose about the patient’s temples. To dislodge a fish-bone stuck in the throat, plunge the feet into cold water; to dislodge some other sort of bone, place bones on the head; to dislodge a morsel of bread, stuff bits of bread into both ears. We may add from a neighboring chapter a very magical remedy for fevers, although Pliny calls it “the most modest of their promises.”[260]Toe and finger nail parings mixed with wax are to be attached ere sunrise to another person’s door in order to transfer the disease from the patient to him. Or they may be placed near an ant-hill, in which case the first ant who tries to drag one inside the hill should be captured and suspended from the patient’s neck.
Summary of the statements of themagi.
Such is the picture we derive from numerous passages in theNatural Historyof the magic art, its materials and rites, the effects it seeks to produce, and its general attitude towards nature. Besides the natural materials employed and the marvelous results sought, we have noted the frequent use of ligatures, suspensions, and amulets, the observance of astrological conditions, of certain times and numbers, rules for plucking herbs and tying knots, stress on the use of the right or left hand—in other words, on position or direction, some employment of incantations, some sacrifice and fumigation, some specimens of sympathetic magic, of the theory that “like cures like,” and of other types of magic logic.
From themagito Pliny’s magic.
We may now turn to the still more numerous passages of theNatural Historywhere themagiare not cited and compare the virtues there ascribed to the things of nature and the methods employed in medicine and agriculture with those of the magicians. We shall find many striking resemblances and shall soon come to a realization that there is more magic in theNatural Historywhich is not attributed to themagithan there is that is. Pliny did not need to warn us that medicine had been corrupted by magic; his own medicine proves it. It is this fact, that virtually his entire work is crammed with marvelous properties and fantastic ceremonial, which makes it so difficult in some places to tell when he begins to draw material from themagiand when he leaves off. By a detailed analysis of this remaining material we shall now attempt to classify the substances of which Pliny makes use and the virtues which he ascribes to them, the rites and methods of procedure by which they are employed, and certain superstitious doctrines and notions which are involved. We shall thus find that almost precisely the same factors are present in his science as in the lore of the magicians.
Habits of animals.
Of substances we may begin with animals,[261]and, before we note the human use of their virtues with its strong suggestion of magic, may remark another unscientific and superstitious feature which was very common both in ancient and medieval times. This is the tendency to humanize animals, ascribing to them conscious motives, habits, and ruses, or even moral standards and religious veneration. We shall have occasion to note the same thing in other authors and so will give but a few specimens from the many in theNatural History. Such qualities are attributed by Pliny especially to elephants, whom he ranks next to man in intelligence, and whom he represents as worshiping the stars, learning difficult tricks, and as having a sense of justice, feeling of mercy, and so on.[262]Similarly the lion has noble courage and a sense of gratitude, while the lioness is wily in the devices by which she conceals her amours with the pard.[263]A number of the devices of fishes to escape hooks and nets are repeated by Pliny from Ovid’sHalieuticon, extant only in fragments.[264]The crocodile opens its jaws to have its teeth picked by a friendly bird; but sometimes while this operation is being performed the ichneumon “darts down its throat like a javelin and eats away its intestines.”[265]Pliny also marvels at the cleverness displayed by the dragon and the elephant in their combats with one another,[266]which, however, almost invariably terminate fatally to both combatants, the elephant falling exhausted in the dragon’s coils and crushing the serpent by its weight. Others say that in the hot summer the dragons thirst for the blood of the elephant which is very cold; in their combat the elephant falls drained of its blood and crushes the dragon who is intoxicated by the same.
Remedies discovered by animals.
The dragon’s apparent knowledge that the elephant is cold-blooded leads us to a kindred topic, the remedies used by animals and often discovered by men only by seeing animals use them. This notion continued in the middle ages, as we shall see, and of course it did not originate with Pliny. As he says himself, “The ancients have recorded the remedies of wild beasts and shown how they are healed even when poisoned.”[267]Against aconite the scorpion eats white hellebore as an antidote, while the panther employs human excrement.[268]Animals prepare themselves for combats with poisonous snakes by eating certain herbs; the weasel eats rue, the tortoise and deer use two other plants, while field mice who have been stung by snakes eatcondrion.[269]The hawk tears open the hawkweed and sprinkles its eyes with the juice.[270]The serpent tastes fennel when it sheds its oldskin.[271]Sick bears cure themselves by a diet of ants.[272]Swallows restore the sight of their young with chelidonia or swallow-wort,[273]and the historian Xanthus says that the dragon restores its dead offspring to life with an herb calledbalis.[274]The hippopotamus was the original discoverer of bleeding,[275]opening a vein in his leg by wounding himself on sharp reeds along the shore, and afterwards checking the flow of blood by plastering the place with mud.[276]Pliny, however, states in one passage that animals hit upon all these remedies by chance and even have to rediscover them by accident in each new case, “since,” he continues in conformity with recent animal psychologists, “reason and practice cannot be transmitted between wild beasts.”[277]
Jealousy of animals.
Yet in another passage Pliny deplores the spitefulness of the dog which, while men are looking, will not pluck the herb by which it cures itself of snake-bite.[278]Probably Pliny is using different authorities in the two passages. Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, had written a work onJealous Animals. More excusable than the spitefulness of the dog is the attitude of the dragon, from whose brain the gemdraconitismust be taken while the dragon is alive and preferably asleep. For if the dragon feels that it is mortally wounded, it takes revenge by spoiling the gem.[279]Elephants know that men hunt them only for their tusks, and so bury these when they fall off.[280]
Occult virtues of animals.
Animals have marvelous virtues of their own other than the medicinal uses to which men have put them. For instance, the mere glance of the basilisk is fatal, and its breath burns up vegetation and breaks rocks.[281]But the medicinal effects which Pliny ascribes to animals and parts of animalsare well nigh infinite. Many animal substances will have to be introduced in other connections so that we need mention now but a very few: the heads and blood of flies, honey in which bees have died,cinere genitalis asini, chicks in the egg, and thrice seven centipedes diluted with Attic honey,[282]—this last a prescription for asthma and to be taken through a reed because it blackens every dish by its contact. Another passage advises eating a rat or shrew-mouse in order to bear a baby with black eyes.[283]These items are enough to convince us that the animals and parts of animals employed by the magicians were not one whit more bizarre and nauseating than the others found in theNatural History, nor were the cures which they were expected to work any more improbable. In order to illustrate, however, the delicate distinctions which were imagined to exist not only between the virtues of different parts of the same animal, but also between slightly varied uses of the same part, we may note that scales scraped from the topmost part of a tortoise’s shell and administered in drink check sexual desire, considering which, it is, as Pliny remarks, the more marvelous that a powder made of the entire shell is reported to arouse lust.[284]But love turns readily to hatred in magic as well as in romance, and it is nothing very unusual, as we shall find in other authors, for the same thing on slight provocation to work in exactly opposite ways.
The virtues of herbs.
Pig grease, Pliny somewhere informs us, possesses especially strong virtue, “because that animal feeds on the roots of herbs.”[285]From the virtues of animals, therefore, let us turn to those of herbs.[286]Pliny met on every hand assertion of their wonderful powers. The empire-builders of Rome employed the sacred herbssagminaandverbenaein their embassies and legations. The Gauls, too, use the verbena inlot-casting and prophetic responses.[287]Pliny also states more sceptically that there is another root which diviners take in drink in order to feign inspiration.[288]The Scythians know of a plant which prevents hunger and thirst if held in the mouth, and of another which has the same effect upon their horses, so that they can go for twelve days without meat or drink,[289]—an exaggerated estimate of the hardihood of the mounted Asiatic nomads and their steeds. Musaeus and Hesiod say that one anointed withpolionwill attain fame and dignities.[290]
Pliny perhaps did not intend to subscribe fully to such statements, although he cannot be said to call many of them into question. He did complain that some writers had asserted incredible powers of herbs, such as to restore dragons or men to life or withdraw wedges from trees,[291]yet he seems on the whole in sympathy with the opinion of the majority that there is practically nothing which the force of herbs cannot accomplish. Herophilus, illustrious in medicine, had said that certain herbs were beneficial if merely trod upon, and Pliny himself says the same of more than one plant. He tells us further that binding the wild fig tree about their necks makes the fiercest bulls stand immobile;[292]that another plant subjects fractious beasts of burden to the yoke;[293]while cows who eatbuprestisburst asunder.[294]Another herbcontacto genitalikills any female animal.[295]Betony is considered an amulet for houses,[296]and fishermen in Pliny’s neighborhood mix a plant with chalk and scatter it on the waves.[297]“The fish dart towards it with marvelous desire and straightway float lifeless on the surface.” Dogs will not bark at persons carryingperistereos.[298]The “impious plant” prevents any human being who tastes it from having quinsy, while swine are sure to have that disease if they do not eat it.Some place it in birds’ nests to prevent the voracious nestlings from strangling. Bitter almonds provide another amusing combination of effects. Eating five of them permits one to drink without experiencing intoxication, but if foxes eat them they will die unless they find water near by to drink.[299]There are some herbs which have a medicinal effect, if one merely looks at them.[300]In two cases the masculine or feminine variety of a herb is used to secure the birth of a child of the desired sex.[301]