Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
On Chapter 52 page 313 “sees no reason why divination in darkness, in a wall, or
in sunlight, or by potions and incantations,” while well seems more
likely than wall the original text is unchanged.
Footnote 1477: century, fols. 156-74 has been replaced by 56-74.
The table of contents lists the contents of volume 2 as well as volume
1.
The footnotes have been placed at the end of the book.
Italics are represented thus _italic_, and superscripts thus y^{en}.
A
HISTORY OF MAGIC AND
EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
_VOLUME I_
A
HISTORY OF MAGIC AND
EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
DURING THE FIRST THIRTEEN
CENTURIES OF OUR ERA
BY LYNN THORNDIKE
VOLUME I
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Copyright 1923 Columbia University Press
First published by The Macmillan Company 1923
ISBN 0-231-08794-2
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ix
ABBREVIATIONS xiii
DESIGNATION OF MANUSCRIPTS xv
LIST OF WORKS FREQUENTLY CITED BY AUTHOR AND DATE OF
PUBLICATION OR BRIEF TITLE xvii
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION 1
BOOK I. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
FOREWORD 39
2. PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY 41
I. Its Place in the History of Science 42
II. Its Experimental Tendency 53
III. Pliny’s Account of Magic 58
IV. The Science of the Magi 64
V. Pliny’s Magical Science 72
3. SENECA AND PTOLEMY: NATURAL DIVINATION AND ASTROLOGY 100
4. GALEN 117
I. The Man and His Times 119
II. His Medicine and Experimental Science 139
III. His Attitude Toward Magic 165
5. ANCIENT APPLIED SCIENCE AND MAGIC: VITRUVIUS,
HERO, AND THE GREEK ALCHEMISTS 182
6. PLUTARCH’S ESSAYS 200
7. APULEIUS OF MADAURA 221
8. PHILOSTRATUS’S LIFE OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 242
9. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION:
CICERO, FAVORINUS, SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, LUCIAN 268
10. SPURIOUS MYSTIC WRITINGS OF HERMES, ORPHEUS, AND
ZOROASTER 287
11. NEO-PLATONISM AND ITS RELATIONS TO ASTROLOGY AND
THEURGY 298
12. AELIAN, SOLINUS, AND HORAPOLLO 322
BOOK II. EARLY CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
FOREWORD 337
13. THE BOOK OF ENOCH 340
14. PHILO JUDAEUS 348
15. THE GNOSTICS 360
16. THE CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA 385
17. THE RECOGNITIONS OF CLEMENT AND SIMON MAGUS 400
18. THE CONFESSION OF CYPRIAN AND SOME SIMILAR STORIES 428
19. ORIGEN AND CELSUS 436
20. OTHER CHRISTIAN DISCUSSION OF MAGIC BEFORE AUGUSTINE 462
21. CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL SCIENCE: BASIL, EPIPHANIUS,
AND THE PHYSIOLOGUS 480
22. AUGUSTINE ON MAGIC AND ASTROLOGY 504
23. THE FUSION OF PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT IN
THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES 523
BOOK III. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
24. THE STORY OF NECTANEBUS, OR THE ALEXANDER LEGEND
IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES 551
25. POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE 566
26. PSEUDO-LITERATURE IN NATURAL SCIENCE 594
27. OTHER EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING: BOETHIUS, ISIDORE,
BEDE, GREGORY 616
28. ARABIC OCCULT SCIENCE OF THE NINTH CENTURY 641
29. LATIN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION, ESPECIALLY IN THE
NINTH, TENTH, AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES 672
30. GERBERT AND THE INTRODUCTION OF ARABIC ASTROLOGY 697
31. ANGLO-SAXON, SALERNITAN AND OTHER LATIN MEDICINE
IN MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE NINTH TO THE TWELFTH CENTURY 719
32. CONSTANTINUS AFRICANUS (c. 1015-1087) 742
33. TREATISES ON THE ARTS BEFORE THE INTRODUCTION OF
ARABIC ALCHEMY 760
34. MARBOD 775
INDICES:
General 783
Bibliographical 811
Manuscripts 831
BOOK IV. THE TWELFTH CENTURY
35. THE EARLY SCHOLASTICS: PETER ABELARD AND HUGH
OF ST. VICTOR 3
36. ADELARD OF BATH 14
37. WILLIAM OF CONCHES 50
38. SOME TWELFTH CENTURY TRANSLATORS, CHIEFLY OF
ASTROLOGY FROM THE ARABIC 66
39. BERNARD SILVESTER; ASTROLOGY AND GEOMANCY 99
40. SAINT HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 124
41. JOHN OF SALISBURY 155
42. DANIEL OF MORLEY AND ROGER OF HEREFORD 171
43. ALEXANDER NECKAM ON THE NATURES OF THINGS 188
44. MOSES MAIMONIDES 205
45. HERMETIC BOOKS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 214
46. KIRANIDES 229
47. PRESTER JOHN AND THE MARVELS OF INDIA 236
48. THE PSEUDO-ARISTOTLE 246
49. SOLOMON AND THE ARS NOTORIA 279
50. ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL DREAM-BOOKS 290
BOOK V. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
FOREWORD 305
51. MICHAEL SCOT 307
52. WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE 338
53. THOMAS OF CANTIMPRÉ 372
54. BARTHOLOMEW OF ENGLAND 401
55. ROBERT GROSSETESTE 436
56. VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS 457
57. EARLY THIRTEENTH CENTURY MEDICINE: GILBERT OF
ENGLAND AND WILLIAM OF ENGLAND 477
58. PETRUS HISPANUS 488
59. ALBERTUS MAGNUS 517
I. Life 521
II. As a Scientist 528
III. His Allusions to Magic 548
IV. Marvelous Virtues in Nature 560
V. Attitude Toward Astrology 577
60. THOMAS AQUINAS 593
61. ROGER BACON 616
I. Life 619
II. Criticism of and Part in Medieval Learning 630
III. Experimental Science 649
IV. Attitude Toward Magic and Astrology 659
62. THE SPECULUM ASTRONOMIAE 692
63. THREE TREATISES ASCRIBED TO ALBERT 720
64. EXPERIMENTS AND SECRETS: MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL 751
65. EXPERIMENTS AND SECRETS: CHEMICAL AND MAGICAL 777
66. PICATRIX 813
67. GUIDO BONATTI AND BARTHOLOMEW OF PARMA 825
68. ARNALD OF VILLANOVA 841
69. RAYMOND LULL 862
70. PETER OF ABANO 874
71. CECCO D’ASCOLI 948
72. CONCLUSION 969
INDICES:
General 985
Bibliographical 1007
Manuscripts 1027
PREFACE
This work has been long in preparation—ever since in 1902-1903
Professor James Harvey Robinson, when my mind was still in the making,
suggested the study of magic in medieval universities as the subject
of my thesis for the master’s degree at Columbia University—and has
been foreshadowed by other publications, some of which are listed
under my name in the preliminary bibliography. Since this was set up
in type there have also appeared: “Galen: the Man and His Times,”
in _The Scientific Monthly_, January, 1922; “Early Christianity and
Natural Science,” in _The Biblical Review_, July, 1922; “The Latin
Pseudo-Aristotle and Medieval Occult Science,” in _The Journal of
English and Germanic Philology_, April, 1922; and notes on Daniel
of Morley and Gundissalinus in _The English Historical Review_. For
permission to make use of these previous publications in the present
work I am indebted to the editors of the periodicals just mentioned,
and also to the editors of _The Columbia University Studies in
History, Economics, and Public Law_, _The American Historical Review_,
_Classical Philology_, _The Monist_, _Nature_, _The Philosophical
Review_, and _Science_. The form, however, of these previous
publications has often been altered in embodying them in this book,
and, taken together, they constitute but a fraction of it. Book I
greatly amplifies the account of magic in the Roman Empire contained
in my doctoral dissertation. Over ten years ago I prepared an account
of magic and science in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries based on
material available in print in libraries of this country and arranged
topically, but I did not publish it, as it seemed advisable to
supplement it by study abroad and of the manuscript material, and to
adopt an arrangement by authors. The result is Books IV and V of the
present work.
My examination of manuscripts has been done especially at the British
Museum, whose rich collections, perhaps because somewhat inaccessibly
catalogued, have been less used by students of medieval learning than
such libraries as the Bodleian and Bibliothèque Nationale. I have
worked also, however, at both Oxford and Paris, at Munich, Florence,
Bologna, and elsewhere; but it has of course been impossible to examine
all the thousands of manuscripts bearing upon the subject, and the
war prevented me from visiting some libraries, such as the important
medieval collection of Amplonius at Erfurt. However, a fairly wide
survey of the catalogues of collections of manuscripts has convinced
me that I have read a representative selection. Such classified lists
of medieval manuscripts as Mrs. Dorothea Singer has undertaken for
the British Isles should greatly facilitate the future labors of
investigators in this field.
Although working in a rather new field, I have been aided by editions
of medieval writers produced by modern scholarship, and by various
series, books, and articles tending, at least, in the same direction
as mine. Some such publications have appeared or come to my notice
too late for use or even for mention in the text: for instance,
another edition of the _De medicamentis_ of Marcellus Empiricus by M.
Niedermann; the printing of the _Twelve Experiments with Snakeskin_
of John Paulinus by J. W. S. Johnsson in _Bull. d. l. société franç.
d’hist. d. l. méd._, XII, 257-67; the detailed studies of Sante Ferrari
on Peter of Abano; and A. Franz, _Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im
Mittelalter_, 1909, 2 vols. The breeding place of the eel (to which I
allude at I, 491) is now, as a result of recent investigation by Dr. J.
Schmidt, placed “about 2500 miles from the mouth of the English Channel
and 500 miles north-east of the Leeward Islands” (_Discovery_, Oct.,
1922, p. 256) instead of in the Mediterranean.
A man who once wrote in Dublin[1] complained of the difficulty of
composing a learned work so far from the Bodleian and British Museum,
and I have often felt the same way. When able to visit foreign
collections or the largest libraries in this country, or when books
have been sent for my use for a limited period, I have spent all
the available time in the collection of material, which has been
written up later as opportunity offered. Naturally one then finds
many small and some important points which require verification or
further investigation, but which must be postponed until one’s next
vacation or trip abroad, by which time some of the smaller points are
apt to be forgotten. Of such loose threads I fear that more remain
than could be desired. And I have so often caught myself in the act
of misinterpretation, misplaced emphasis, and other mistakes, that
I have no doubt there are other errors as well as omissions which
other scholars will be able to point out and which I trust they will.
Despite this prospect, I have been bold in affirming my independent
opinion on any point where I have one, even if it conflicts with that
of specialists or puts me in the position of criticizing my betters.
Constant questioning, criticism, new points of view, and conflict of
opinion are essential in the pursuit of truth.
After some hesitation I decided, because of the expense, the length of
the work, and the increasing unfamiliarity of readers with Greek and
Latin, as a rule not to give in the footnotes the original language
of passages used in the text. I have, however, usually supplied the
Latin or Greek when I have made a free translation or one with which I
felt that others might not agree. But in such cases I advise critics
not to reject my rendering utterly without some further examination of
the context and line of thought of the author or treatise in question,
since the wording of particular passages in texts and manuscripts
is liable to be corrupt, and since my purpose in quoting particular
passages is to illustrate the general attitude of the author or
treatise. In describing manuscripts I have employed quotation marks
when I knew from personal examination or otherwise that the Latin was
that of the manuscript itself, and have omitted quotation marks where
the Latin seemed rather to be that of the description in the catalogue.
Usually I have let the faulty spelling and syntax of medieval copyists
stand without comment. But as I am not an expert in palaeography
and have examined a large number of manuscripts primarily for their
substance, the reader should not regard my Latin quotations from them
as exact transliterations or carefully considered texts. He should also
remember that there is little uniformity in the manuscripts themselves.
I have tried to reduce the bulk of the footnotes by the briefest forms
of reference consistent with clearness—consult lists of abbreviations
and of works frequently cited by author and date of publication—and by
use of appendices at the close of certain chapters.
Within the limits of a preface I may not enumerate all the libraries
where I have been permitted to work or which have generously sent
books—sometimes rare volumes—to Cleveland for my use, or all the
librarians who have personally assisted my researches or courteously
and carefully answered my written inquiries, or the other scholars
who have aided or encouraged the preparation of this work, but I hope
they may feel that their kindness has not been in vain. In library
matters I have perhaps most frequently imposed upon the good nature
of Mr. Frederic C. Erb of the Columbia University Library, Mr. Gordon
W. Thayer, in charge of the John G. White collection in the Cleveland
Public Library, and Mr. George F. Strong, librarian of Adelbert
College, Western Reserve University; and I cannot forbear to mention
the interest shown in my work by Dr. R. L. Poole at the Bodleian. For
letters facilitating my studies abroad before the war or application
for a passport immediately after the war I am indebted to the Hon.
Philander C. Knox, then Secretary of State, to Frederick P. Keppel,
then Assistant Secretary of War, to Drs. J. Franklin Jameson and
Charles F. Thwing, and to Professors Henry E. Bourne and Henry Crew.
Professors C. H. Haskins,[2] L. C. Karpinski, W. G. Leutner, W. A.
Locy, D. B. Macdonald, L. J. Paetow, S. B. Platner, E. C. Richardson,
James Harvey Robinson, David Eugene Smith, D’Arcy W. Thompson, A. H.
Thorndike, E. L. Thorndike, T. Wingate Todd, and Hutton Webster, and
Drs. Charles Singer and Se Boyar have kindly read various chapters
in manuscript or proof and offered helpful suggestions. The burden
of proof-reading has been generously shared with me by Professors B.
P. Bourland, C. D. Lamberton, and Walter Libby, and especially by
Professor Harold North Fowler who has corrected proof for practically
the entire work. After receiving such expert aid and sound counsel I
must assume all the deeper guilt for such faults and indiscretions as
the book may display.
ABBREVIATIONS
Abhandl. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematischen
Wissenschaften, begründet von M.
Cantor, Teubner, Leipzig.
Addit. Additional Manuscripts in the British Museum.
Amplon. Manuscript collection of Amplonius Ratinck at
Erfurt.
AN Ante-Nicene Fathers, American Reprint of the
Edinburgh edition, in 9 vols., 1913.
AS Acta sanctorum.
Beiträge Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des
Mittelalters, ed. by C. Baeumker, G. v. Hertling,
M. Baumgartner, et al., Münster, 1891-.
BL Bodleian Library, Oxford.
BM British Museum, London.
BN Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Borgnet Augustus Borgnet, ed. B. Alberti Magni Opera
omnia, Paris, 1890-1899, in 38 vols.
Brewer Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita,
ed. J. S. Brewer, London, 1859, in RS,
XV.
Bridges The Opus Maius of Roger Bacon, ed. J. H.
Bridges, I-II, Oxford, 1897; III, 1900.
CCAG Catalogus codicum astrologorum Graecorum, ed.
F. Cumont, W. Kroll, F. Boll, et al., 1898.
CE Catholic Encyclopedia.
CFCB Census of Fifteenth Century Books Owned in
America, compiled by a committee of the Bibliographical
Society of America, New York,
1919.
CLM Codex Latinus Monacensis (Latin MS at Munich).
CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum,
Vienna, 1866-.
CU Cambridge University (used to distinguish MSS
in colleges having the same names as those at
Oxford).
CUL Cambridge University Library.
DNB Dictionary of National Biography.
EB Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition.
EETS Early English Text Society Publications.
EHR English Historical Review.
ERE Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J.
Hastings et al., 1908-.
HL Histoire Littéraire de la France.
HZ Historische Zeitschrift, Munich, 1859-.
Kühn Medici Graeci, ed. C. J. Kühn, Leipzig, 1829,
containing the works of Galen, Dioscorides,
etc.
MG Monumenta Germaniae.
MS Manuscript.
MSS Manuscripts.
Muratori Rerum Italicarum scriptores ab anno aerae christianae
500 ad 1500, ed. L. A. Muratori, 1723-1751.
NH C. Plinii Secundi Naturalis Historia (Pliny’s
Natural History).
PG Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series
graeca.
PL Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series
latina.
PN The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second
Series, ed. Wace and Schaff, 1890-1900, 14
vols.
PW Pauly and Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft.
RS “Rolls Series,” or Rerum Britannicarum medii
aevi scriptores, 99 works in 244 vols., London,
1858-1896.
TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der
altchristlichen Literatur, ed. Gebhardt und
Harnack.
DESIGNATION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Individual manuscripts are usually briefly designated in the ensuing
notes and appendices by a single word indicating the place or
collection where the MS is found and the number or shelf-mark of the
individual MS. So many of the catalogues of MSS collections which I
consulted were undated and without name of author that I have decided
to attempt no catalogue of them. The brief designations that I give
will be sufficient for anyone who is interested in MSS. In giving Latin
titles, _Incipits_, and the like of MSS I employ quotation marks when
I know from personal examination or otherwise that the wording is that
of the MS itself, and omit the marks where the Latin seems rather to
be that of the description in the manuscript catalogue or other source
of information. In the following _List of Works Frequently Cited_ are
included a few MSS catalogues whose authors I shall have occasion to
refer to by name.
LIST OF WORKS FREQUENTLY CITED BY AUTHOR AND DATE OF PUBLICATION OR
BRIEF TITLE
For more detailed bibliography on specific topics and for editions
or manuscripts of the texts used see the bibliographies, references,
and appendices to individual chapters. I also include here some works
of general interest or of rather cursory character which I have not
had occasion to mention elsewhere; and I usually add, for purposes
of differentiation, other works in our field by an author than those
works by him which are frequently cited. Of the many histories of the
sciences, medicine, and magic that have appeared since the invention
of printing I have included but a small selection. Almost without
exception they have to be used with the greatest caution.
Abano, Peter of, Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et praecipue
medicorum, 1472, 1476, 1521, 1526, etc. De venenis, 1472, 1476, 1484,
1490, 1515, 1521, etc.
Abel, ed. Orphica, 1885.
Abelard, Peter. Opera hactenus seorsim edita, ed. V. Cousin, Paris,
1849-1859, 2 vols.
Ouvrages inédits, ed. V. Cousin, 1835.
Abt, Die Apologie des Apuleius von Madaura und die antike Zauberei,
Giessen, 1908.
Achmetis Oneirocriticon, ed. Rigaltius, Paris, 1603.
Adelard of Bath, Quaestiones naturales, 1480, 1485, etc. De eodem et
diverso, ed. H. Willner, Münster, 1903.
Ahrens, K. Das Buch der Naturgegenstände, 1892.
Zur Geschichte des sogenannten Physiologus, 1885.
Ailly, Pierre d’, Tractatus de ymagine mundi (and other works), 1480
(?).
Albertus Magnus, Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, Paris, 1890-1899, 38
vols.
Allbutt, Sir T. Clifford. The Historical Relations of Medicine and
Surgery to the End of the Sixteenth Century, London, 1905, 122 pp.; an
address delivered at the St. Louis Congress in 1904.
The Rise of the Experimental Method in Oxford, London, 1902, 53 pp.,
from Journal of the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club, May,
1902, being the ninth Robert Boyle Lecture.
Science and Medieval Thought, London, 1901, 116 brief pages. The
Harveian Oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians.
Allendy, R. F. L’Alchimie et la Médecine; Étude sur les théories
hermétiques dans l’histoire de la médecine, Paris, 1912, 155 pp.
Anz, W. Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnostizismus, Leipzig, 1897.
Aquinas, Thomas. Opera omnia, ed. E. Fretté et P. Maré, Paris,
1871-1880, 34 vols.
Aristotle, De animalibus historia, ed. Dittmeyer, 1907; English
translations by R. Creswell, 1848, and D’Arcy W. Thompson, Oxford,
1910.
Pseudo-Aristotle. Lapidarius, Merszborg, 1473.
Secretum secretorum, Latin translation from the Arabic by Philip of
Tripoli in many editions; and see Gaster.
Arnald of Villanova, Opera, Lyons, 1532.
Artemidori Daldiani et Achmetis Sereimi F. Oneirocritica; Astrampsychi
et Nicephori versus etiam Oneirocritici; Nicolai Rigaltii ad
Artemidorum Notae, Paris, 1603.
Ashmole, Elias, Theatrum chemicum Britannicum, 1652.
Astruc, Jean. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la Faculté de
Médecine de Montpellier, Paris, 1767.
Auriferae artis quam chemiam vocant antiquissimi auctores, Basel, 1572.
Barach et Wrobel, Bibliotheca Philosophorum Mediae Aetatis, 1876-1878,
2 vols.
Bartholomew of England, De proprietatibus rerum, Lingelbach,
Heidelberg, 1488, and other editions.
Bauhin, De plantis a divis sanctisve nomen habentibus, Basel, 1591.
Baur, Ludwig, ed. Gundissalinus De divisione philosophiae, Münster,
1903.
Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Münster, 1912.
Beazley, C. R. The Dawn of Modern Geography, London, 1897-1906, 3 vols.
Bernard, E. Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in
unum collecti (The old catalogue of the Bodleian MSS), Tom. I, Pars 1,
Oxford, 1697.
Berthelot, P. E. M. Archéologie et histoire des sciences avec
publication nouvelle du papyrus grec chimique de Leyde et impression
originale du Liber de septuaginta de Geber, Paris, 1906.
Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, 1887-1888, 3 vols.
Introduction à l’étude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen âge, 1889.
La chimie au moyen âge, 1893, 3 vols.
Les origines de l’alchimie, 1885.
Sur les voyages de Galien et de Zosime dans l’Archipel et en Asie,
et sur la matière médicale dans l’antiquité, in Journal des Savants,
1895, pp. 382-7.
Bezold, F. von, Astrologische Geschichtsconstruction im Mittelalter,
in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, VIII (1892) 29ff.
Bibliotheca Chemica. See Borel and Manget.
Björnbo, A. A. und Vogl, S. Alkindi, Tideus, und Pseudo-Euklid; drei
optische Werke, Leipzig, 1911.
Black, W. H. Catalogue of the Ashmolean Manuscripts, Oxford, 1845.
Boffito, P. G. Il Commento di Cecco d’Ascoli all’Alcabizzo, Florence,
1905.
Il De principiis astrologiae di Cecco d’Ascoli, in Giornale Storico
della Letteratura Italiana, Suppl. 6, Turin, 1903.
Perchè fu condannato al fuoco l’astrologo Cecco d’Ascoli, in Studi e
Documenti di Storia e Diritto, Publicazione periodica dell’accademia
de conferenza Storico-Giuridiche, Rome, XX (1899).
Boll, Franz. Die Erforschung der antiken Astrologie, in Neue Jahrb. f.
d. klass. Altert., XI (1908) 103-26.
Eine arabisch-byzantische Quelle des Dialogs Hermippus, in Sitzb.
Heidelberg Akad., Philos. Hist. Classe (1912) No. 18, 28 pp.
Sphaera, Leipzig, 1903.
Studien über Claudius Ptolemaeus, in Jahrb. f. klass. Philol., Suppl.
Bd. XXI.
Zur Ueberlieferungsgeschichte d. griech. Astrologie u. Astronomie, in
Münch. Akad. Sitzb., 1899.
Boll und Bezold, Sternglauben, Leipzig, 1918; I have not seen.
Bonatti, Guido. Liber astronomicus, Ratdolt, Augsburg, 1491.
Boncompagni, B. Della vita e delle Opere di Gherardo Cremonese
traduttore del secolo duodecimo e di Gherardo da Sabbionetta astronomo
del secolo decimoterzo, Rome, 1851.
Della vita e delle opere di Guido Bonatti astrologo ed astronomo del
secolo decimoterzo, Rome, 1851.
Estratte dal Giornale Arcadico, Tomo CXXIII-CXXIV. Della vita e delle
opere di Leonardo Pisano, Rome, 1852.
Intorno ad alcune opere di Leonardo Pisano, Rome, 1854.
Borel, P. Bibliotheca Chimica seu catalogus librorum philosophicorum
hermeticorum usque ad annum 1653, Paris, 1654.
Bostock, J. and Riley, H. T. The Natural History of Pliny, translated
with copious notes, London, 1855; reprinted 1887.
Bouché-Leclercq, A. L’astrologie dans le monde romain, in Revue
Historique, vol. 65 (1897) 241-99.
L’astrologie grecque, Paris, 1899, 658 pp.
Histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité, 1879-1882, 4 vols.
Breasted, J. H. Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt,
New York, 1912.
A History of Egypt, 1905; second ed., 1909.
Brehaut, E. An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages; Isidore of Seville, in
Columbia University Studies in History, etc., vol. 48 (1912) 1-274.
Brewer, J. S. Monumenta Franciscana (RS IV, 1), London, 1858.
Brown, J. Wood. An inquiry into the life and legend of Michael Scot,
Edinburgh, 1897.
Browne, Edward G. Arabian Medicine (the Fitzpatrick Lectures of 1919
and 1920), Cambridge University Press, 1921.
Browne, Sir Thomas. Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1650.
Bubnov, N. ed. Gerberti opera mathematica, Berlin, 1899.
Budge, E. A. W. Egyptian Magic, London, 1899.
Ethiopic Histories of Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes and other
writers, Cambridge University Press, 1896.
Syriac Version of Pseudo-Callisthenes, Cambridge, 1889.
Syrian Anatomy, Pathology, and Therapeutics, London, 1913, 2 vols.
Bunbury, E. H. A History of Ancient Geography, London, 1879, 2 vols.
Cahier et Martin, Mélanges d’archéologie, d’histoire et de
littérature, Paris, 1847-1856, 4 folio vols.
Cajori, F. History of Mathematics; second edition, revised and
enlarged, 1919.
Cantor, M. Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik, 3rd edition,
Leipzig, 1899-1908, 4 vols. Reprint of vol. II in 1913.
Carini, S. I. Sulle Scienze Occulte nel Medio Evo, Palermo, 1872; I
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The Book of Enoch, Oxford, 1893; translated anew, 1912.
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Catalogi Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae Pars Tertia
Codices Graecos et Latinos Canonicianos complectens, Oxford, 1854.
Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum qui in collegiis aulisque
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Enoch, Book of. See Charles.
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Nimrod the Astronomer, Ibid., V (1914) 203-12.
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A Descriptive Catalogue of the MSS in the Library of St. John’s
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A Descriptive Catalogue of the MSS in the Library of Sidney Sussex
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Ratisbon, 1857; French translation, Paris, 1862; partial English
translation by T. A. Dixon, London, 1876.
Singer, Charles. Early English Magic and Medicine, 1920, 34 pp.
“Science,” pp. 106-48 in “Medieval Contributions to Modern
Civilization,” ed. F. J. C. Hearnshaw, 1921.
Studies in the History and Method of Science, Oxford, 1917; a second
volume appeared in May, 1921.
Stapper, Richard. Papst Johannes XXI, Münster, 1898, in Kirchengesch.
Studien herausg. v. Dr. Knöpfler, IV, 4.
Steele, R. Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, 1905-1920.
Steinschneider, Moritz. Abraham ibn Ezra, in Abhandl., (1880) 57-128.
Apollonius von Thyana (oder Balinas) bei den Arabern, in Zeitschrift
d. deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, XLV (1891) 439-46.
Arabische Lapidarien, Ibid., XLIX (1895).
Constantinus Africanus und seine arabischen Quellen, in Virchow’s
Archiv für pathologische Anatomie, etc., Berlin, XXXVII (1866) 351-410.
Der Aberglaube, Hamburg, 1900, 34 pp.
Die europäischen Uebersetzungen aus dem Arabischen bis Mitte des 17
Jahrhunderts, in Sitzungsberichte d. kaiserl. Akad. d. Wiss., Philos.
Hist. Klasse, Vienna, CXLIX, 4 (1905); CLI, 1 (1906).
Lapidarien, ein culturgeschichtlicher Versuch, in Semitic Studies in
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Mathematik und Physik, Leipzig, XVI (1871) 357-96.
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Graeci Latinitate donati, et Latini, 1567.
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Stuttgart, 1910, 120 pp. Without index or references.
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Puschmann-Stiftung an der Universität Leipzig, 1907-.
Sudhoff, Karl. His various articles in the foregoing publication
and other periodicals of which he is an editor lie in large measure
just outside our period and field, but some will be noted later in
particular chapters.
Suter, H. Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber, in Abhandl., X
(1900) 1-277; XIV (1902) 257-85.
Die astronomischen Tafeln des Muhammed ibn Musa-al-Khwarizmi,
Copenhagen, 1914.
Tanner, T. Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, London, 1748. Still much
cited but largely antiquated and unreliable.
Tavenner, E. Studies in Magic from Latin Literature, New York, 1916.
Taylor, H. O. The Classical Heritage, 1901.
The Medieval Mind, 2nd edition, 1914, 2 vols; 3rd edition, 1919.
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Theatrum chemicum Britannicum. See Ashmole.
Theophilus Presbyter, Schedula diversarum artium, ed. A. Ilg, Vienna,
1874; English translation by R. Hendrie, London, 1847.
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Thompson, D’Arcy W. Aristotle as a Biologist, 1913.
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of The Works of Aristotle edited by J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross.
Thorndike, Lynn. Adelard of Bath and the Continuity of Universal
Nature, in Nature, XCIV (1915) 616-7.
A Roman Astrologer as a Historical Source: Julius Firmicus Maternus,
in Classical Philology, VIII (1913) 415-35.
Natural Science in the Middle Ages, in Popular Science Monthly (now
The Scientific Monthly), LXXXVII (1915) 271-91.
Roger Bacon and Gunpowder, in Science, XLII (1915), 799-800.
Roger Bacon and Experimental Method in the Middle Ages, in The
Philosophical Review, XXIII (1914), 271-98.
Some Medieval Conceptions of Magic, in The Monist, XXV (1915), 107-39.
The Attitude of Origen and Augustine toward Magic, in The Monist, XIX
(1908), 46-66.
The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe, Columbia
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The True Roger Bacon, in American Historical Review, XXI (1916),
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Henri Cordier, 2 vols., London, 1903.
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Zetzner, L. Theatrum chemicum, 1613-1622, 6 vols.
A HISTORY OF MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
_VOLUME I_
A HISTORY OF MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND THEIR RELATION TO
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT DURING THE FIRST THIRTEEN CENTURIES OF OUR ERA
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Aim of this book—Period covered—How to study the history of
thought—Definition of magic—Magic of primitive man; does civilization
originate in magic?—Divination in early China—Magic in ancient
Egypt—Magic and Egyptian religion—Mortuary magic—Magic in daily
life—Power of words, images, amulets—Magic in Egyptian medicine—Demons
and disease—Magic and science—Magic and industry—Alchemy—Divination
and astrology—The sources for Assyrian and Babylonian magic—Was
astrology Sumerian or Chaldean?—The number seven in early
Babylonia—Incantation texts older than astrological—Other divination
than astrology—Incantations against sorcery and demons—A specimen
incantation—Materials and devices of magic—Greek culture not free from
magic—Magic in myth, literature, and history—Simultaneous increase
of learning and occult science—Magic origin urged for Greek religion
and drama—Magic in Greek philosophy—Plato’s attitude toward magic and
astrology—Aristotle on stars and spirits—Folk-lore in the _History
of Animals_—Differing modes of transmission of ancient oriental and
Greek literature—More magical character of directly transmitted
Greek remains—Progress of science among the Greeks—Archimedes and
Aristotle—Exaggerated view of the scientific achievement of the
Hellenistic age—Appendix I. Some works on Magic, Religion, and
Astronomy in Babylonia and Assyria.
“_Magic has existed among all peoples and at every
period._”—_Hegel._[3]
[Sidenote: Aim of this book.]
This book aims to treat the history of magic and experimental science
and their relations to Christian thought during the first thirteen
centuries of our era, with especial emphasis upon the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. No adequate survey of the history of either
magic or experimental science exists for this period, and considerable
use of manuscript material has been necessary for the medieval period.
Magic is here understood in the broadest sense of the word, as
including all occult arts and sciences, superstitions, and folk-lore.
I shall endeavor to justify this use of the word from the sources as
I proceed. My idea is that magic and experimental science have been
connected in their development; that magicians were perhaps the first
to experiment; and that the history of both magic and experimental
science can be better understood by studying them together. I also
desire to make clearer than it has been to most scholars the Latin
learning of the medieval period, whose leading personalities even
are generally inaccurately known, and on perhaps no one point is
illumination more needed than on that covered by our investigation.
The subject of laws against magic, popular practice of magic, the
witchcraft delusion and persecution lie outside of the scope of this
book.[4]
[Sidenote: Period covered.]
At first my plan was to limit this investigation to the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, the time of greatest medieval productivity, but I
became convinced that this period could be best understood by viewing
it in the setting of the Greek, Latin, and early Christian writers to
whom it owed so much. If the student of the Byzantine Empire needs
to know old Rome, the student of the medieval church to comprehend
early Christianity, the student of Romance languages to understand
Latin, still more must the reader of Constantinus Africanus, Vincent
of Beauvais, Guido Bonatti, and Thomas Aquinas be familiar with the
Pliny, Galen, and Ptolemy, the Origen and Augustine, the Alkindi and
Albumasar from whom they drew. It would indeed be difficult to draw a
line anywhere between them. The ancient authors are generally extant
only in their medieval form; in some cases there is reason to suspect
that they have undergone alteration or addition; sometimes new works
were fathered upon them. In any case they have been preserved to us
because the middle ages studied and cherished them, and to a great
extent made them their own. I begin with the first century of our
era, because Christian thought begins then, and then appeared Pliny’s
_Natural History_ which seems to me the best starting point of a
survey of ancient science and magic.[5] I close with the thirteenth
century, or, more strictly speaking, in the course of the fourteenth,
because by then the medieval revival of learning had spent its force.
Attention is centred on magic and experimental science in western Latin
literature and learning, Greek and Arabic works being considered as
they contributed thereto, and vernacular literature being omitted as
either derived from Latin works or unlearned and unscientific.
[Sidenote: How to study the history of thought.]
Very probably I have tried to cover too much ground and have made
serious omissions. It is probably true that for the history of thought
as for the history of art the evidence and source material is more
abundant than for political or economic history. But fortunately it is
more reliable, since the pursuit of truth or beauty does not encourage
deception and prejudice as does the pursuit of wealth or power. Also
the history of thought is more unified and consistent, steadier and
more regular, than the fluctuations and diversities of political
history; and for this reason its general outlines can be discerned
with reasonable sureness by the examination of even a limited number
of examples, provided they are properly selected from a period of
sufficient duration. Moreover, it seems to me that in the present stage
of research into and knowledge of our subject sounder conclusions and
even more novel ones can be drawn by a wide comparative survey than by
a minutely intensive and exhaustive study of one man or of a few years.
The danger is of writing from too narrow a viewpoint, magnifying unduly
the importance of some one man or theory, and failing to evaluate the
facts in their full historical setting. No medieval writer whether on
science or magic can be understood by himself, but must be measured in
respect to his surroundings and antecedents.
[Sidenote: Definition of magic.]
Some may think it strange that I associate magic so closely with the
history of thought, but the word comes from the _Magi_ or wise men of
Persia or Babylon, to whose lore and practices the name was applied
by the Greeks and Romans, or possibly we may trace its etymology a
little farther back to the Sumerian or Turanian word _imga_ or _unga_,
meaning deep or profound. The exact meaning of the word, “magic,” was
a matter of much uncertainty even in classical and medieval times,
as we shall see. There can be no doubt, however, that it was then
applied not merely to an operative art, but also to a mass of ideas or
doctrine, and that it represented a way of looking at the world. This
side of magic has sometimes been lost sight of in hasty or assumed
modern definitions which seem to regard magic as merely a collection
of rites and feats. In the case of primitive men and savages it is
possible that little thought accompanies their actions. But until these
acts are based upon or related to some imaginative, purposive, and
rational thinking, the doings of early man cannot be distinguished as
either religious or scientific or magical. Beavers build dams, birds
build nests, ants excavate, but they have no magic just as they have
no science or religion. Magic implies a mental state and so may be
viewed from the standpoint of the history of thought. In process of
time, as the learned and educated lost faith in magic, it was degraded
to the low practices and beliefs of the ignorant and vulgar. It was
this use of the term that was taken up by anthropologists and by them
applied to analogous doings and notions of primitive men and savages.
But we may go too far in regarding magic as a purely social product
of tribal society: magicians may be, in Sir James Frazer’s words,[6]
“the only professional class” among the lowest savages, but note that
they rank as a learned profession from the start. It will be chiefly
through the writings of learned men that something of their later
history and of the growth of interest in experimental science will be
traced in this work. Let me add that in this investigation all arts of
divination, including astrology, will be reckoned as magic; I have been
quite unable to separate the two either in fact or logic, as I shall
illustrate repeatedly by particular cases.[7]
[Sidenote: Magic of primitive man: does civilization originate in
magic?]
Magic is very old, and it will perhaps be well in this introductory
chapter to present it to the reader, if not in its infancy—for its
origins are much disputed and perhaps antecede all record and escape
all observation—at least some centuries before its Roman and medieval
days. Sir J. G. Frazer, in a passage of _The Golden Bough_ to which
we have already referred, remarks that “sorcerers are found in every
savage tribe known to us; and among the lowest savages ... they are
the only professional class that exists.”[8] Lenormant affirmed in his
_Chaldean Magic and Sorcery_[9] that “all magic rests upon a system
of religious belief,” but recent sociologists and anthropologists
have inclined to regard magic as older than a belief in gods. At any
rate some of the most primitive features of historical religions seem
to have originated from magic. Moreover, religious cults, rites, and
priesthoods are not the only things that have been declared inferior
in antiquity to magic and largely indebted to it for their origins.
Combarieu in his _Music and Magic_[10] asserts that the incantation
is universally employed in all the circumstances of primitive life
and that from it, by the medium it is true of religious poetry, all
modern music has developed. The magic incantation is, in short,
“the oldest fact in the history of civilization.” Although the
magician chants without thought of æsthetic form or an artistically
appreciative audience, yet his spell contains in embryo all that later
constitutes the art of music.[11] M. Paul Huvelin, after asserting with
similar confidence that poetry,[12] the plastic arts,[13] medicine,
mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry “have easily discernable magic
sources,” states that he will demonstrate that the same is true of
law.[14] Very recently, however, there has been something of a reaction
against this tendency to regard the life of primitive man as made up
entirely of magic and to trace back every phase of civilization to a
magical origin. But R. R. Marett still sees a higher standard of value
in primitive man’s magic than in his warfare and brutal exploitation of
his fellows and believes that the “higher plane of experience for which
_mana_ stands is one in which spiritual enlargement is appreciated for
its own sake.”[15]
[Sidenote: Divination in early China.]
Of the five classics included in the Confucian Canon, _The Book of
Changes_ (_I Ching_ or _Yi-King_), regarded by some as the oldest work
in Chinese literature and dated back as early as 3000 B.C., in its
rudimentary form appears to have been a method of divination by means
of eight possible combinations in triplets of a line and a broken line.
Thus, if _a_ be a line and _b_ a broken line, we may have _aaa_, _bbb_,
_aab_, _bba_, _abb_, _baa_, _aba_, and _bab_. Possibly there is a
connection with the use of knotted cords which, Chinese writers state,
preceded written characters, like the method used in ancient Peru. More
certain would seem the resemblance to the medieval method of divination
known as geomancy, which we shall encounter later in our Latin authors.
Magic and astrology might, of course, be traced all through Chinese
history and literature. But, contenting ourselves with this single
example of the antiquity of such arts in the civilization of the far
east, let us turn to other ancient cultures which had a closer and more
unmistakable influence upon the western world.
[Sidenote: Magic in ancient Egypt.]
Of the ancient Egyptians Budge writes, “The belief in magic influenced
their minds ... from the earliest to the latest period of their history
... in a manner which, at this stage in the history of the world, is
very difficult to understand.”[16] To the ordinary historical student
the evidence for this assertion does not seem quite so overwhelming
as the Egyptologists would have us think. It looks thinner when we
begin to spread it out over a stretch of four thousand years, and it
scarcely seems scientific to adduce details from medieval Arabic tales
or from the late Greek fiction of the Pseudo-Callisthenes or from
papyri of the Christian era concerning the magic of early Egypt. And it
may be questioned whether two stories preserved in the Westcar papyrus,
written many centuries afterwards, are alone “sufficient to prove that
already in the Fourth Dynasty the working of magic was a recognized art
among the Egyptians.”[17]
[Sidenote: Magic and Egyptian religion.]
At any rate we are told that the belief in magic not only was
predynastic and prehistoric, but was “older in Egypt than the belief
in God.”[18] In the later religion of the Egyptians, along with more
lofty and intellectual conceptions, magic was still a principal
ingredient.[19] Their mythology was affected by it[20] and they not
only combated demons with magical formulae but believed that they could
terrify and coerce the very gods by the same method, compelling them to
appear, to violate the course of nature by miracles, or to admit the
human soul to an equality with themselves.[21]
[Sidenote: Mortuary magic.]
Magic was as essential in the future life as here on earth among the
living. Many, if not most, of the observances and objects connected
with embalming and burial had a magic purpose or mode of operation; for
instance, the “magic eyes placed over the opening in the side of the
body through which the embalmer removed the intestines,”[22] or the
mannikins and models of houses buried with the dead. In the process of
embalming the wrapping of each bandage was accompanied by the utterance
of magic words.[23] In “the oldest chapter of human thought extant”—the
Pyramid Texts written in hieroglyphic at the tombs at Sakkara of
Pharaohs of the fifth and sixth dynasties (c. 2625-2475 B.C.), magic
is so manifest that some have averred “that the whole body of Pyramid
Texts is simply a collection of magical charms.”[24] The scenes and
objects painted on the walls of the tombs, such as those of nobles in
the fifth and sixth dynasties, were employed with magic intent and were
meant to be realized in the future life; and with the twelfth dynasty
the Egyptians began to paint on the insides of the coffins the objects
that were formerly actually placed within.[25] Under the Empire the
famous _Book of the Dead_ is a collection of magic pictures, charms,
and incantations for the use of the deceased in the hereafter,[26] and
while it is not of the early period, we hear that “a book with words of
magic power” was buried with a pharaoh of the Old Kingdom. Budge has
“no doubt that the object of every religious text ever written on tomb,
stele, amulet, coffin, papyrus, etc., was to bring the gods under the
power of the deceased, so that he might be able to compel them to do
his will.”[27] Breasted, on the other hand, thinks that the amount and
complexity of this mortuary magic increased greatly in the later period
under popular and priestly influence.[28]
[Sidenote: Magic in daily life.]
Breasted nevertheless believes that magic had played a great part in
daily life throughout the whole course of Egyptian history. He writes,
“It is difficult for the modern mind to understand how completely the
belief in magic penetrated the whole substance of life, dominating
popular custom and constantly appearing in the simplest acts of the
daily household routine, as much a matter of course as sleep or the
preparation of food. It constituted the very atmosphere in which the
men of the early oriental world lived. Without the saving and salutary
influence of such magical agencies constantly invoked, the life of an
ancient household in the East was unthinkable.”[29]
[Sidenote: Power of words, images, amulets.]
Most of the main features and varieties of magic known to us at
other times and places appear somewhere in the course of Egypt’s
long history. For one thing we find the ascription of magic power to
words and names. The power of words, says Budge, was thought to be
practically unlimited, and “the Egyptians invoked their aid in the
smallest as well as in the greatest events of their life.”[30] Words
might be spoken, in which case they “must be uttered in a proper
tone of voice by a duly qualified man,” or they might be written,
in which case the material upon which they were written might be of
importance.[31] In speaking of mortuary magic we have already noted the
employment of pictures, models, mannikins, and other images, figures,
and objects. Wax figures were also used in sorcery,[32] and amulets
are found from the first, although their particular forms seem to have
altered with different periods.[33] Scarabs are of course the most
familiar example.
[Sidenote: Magic in Egyptian medicine.]
Egyptian medicine was full of magic and ritual and its therapeusis
consisted mainly of “collections of incantations and weird random
mixtures of roots and refuse.”[34] Already we find the recipe and
the occult virtue conceptions, the elaborate polypharmacy and the
accompanying hocus-pocus which we shall meet in Pliny and the middle
ages. The Egyptian doctors used herbs from other countries and
preferred compound medicines containing a dozen ingredients to simple
medicines.[35] Already we find such magic logic as that the hair of
a black calf will keep one from growing gray.[36] Already the parts
of animals are a favorite ingredient in medical compounds, especially
those connected with the organs of generation, on which account they
were presumably looked upon as life-giving, or those which were
recommended mainly by their nastiness and were probably thought to
expel the demons of disease by their disagreeable properties.
[Sidenote: Demons and disease.]
In ancient Egypt, however, disease seems not to have been identified
with possession by demons to the extent that it was in ancient Assyria
and Babylonia. While Breasted asserts that “disease was due to hostile
spirits and against these only magic could avail,”[37] Budge contents
himself with the more cautious statement that there is “good reason
for thinking that some diseases were attributed to ... evil spirits
... entering ... human bodies ... but the texts do not afford much
information”[38] on this point. Certainly the beliefs in evil spirits
and in magic do not always have to go together, and magic might be
employed against disease whether or not it was ascribed to a demon.
[Sidenote: Magic and science.]
In the case of medicine as in that of religion Breasted takes the view
that the amount of magic became greater in the Middle and New Kingdoms
than in the Old Kingdom. This is true so far as the amount of space
occupied by it in extant records is concerned. But it would be rash to
assume that this marks a decline from a more rational and scientific
attitude in the Old Kingdom. Yet Breasted rather gives this impression
when he writes concerning the Old Kingdom that many of its recipes
were useful and rational, that “medicine was already in the possession
of much empirical wisdom, displaying close and accurate observation,”
and that what “precluded any progress toward real science was the
belief in magic, which later began to dominate all the practice of the
physician.”[39] Berthelot probably places the emphasis more correctly
when he states that the later medical papyri “include traditional
recipes, founded on an empiricism which is not always correct, mystic
remedies, based upon the most bizarre analogies, and magic practices
that date back to the remotest antiquity.”[40] The recent efforts of
Sethe and Wilcken, of Elliot Smith, Müller, and Hooten to show that the
ancient Egyptians possessed a considerable amount of medical knowledge
and of surgical and dental skill, have been held by Todd to rest on
slight and dubious evidence. Indeed, some of this evidence seems rather
to suggest the ritualistic practices still employed by uncivilized
African tribes. Certainly the evidence for any real scientific
development in ancient Egypt has been very meager compared with the
abundant indications of the prevalence of magic.[41]
[Sidenote: Magic and industry.]
Early Egypt was the home of many arts and industries, but not in so
advanced a stage as has sometimes been suggested. Blown glass, for
example, was unknown until late Greek and Roman times, and the supposed
glass-blowers depicted on the early monuments are really smiths engaged
in stirring their fires by blowing through reeds tipped with clay.[42]
On the other hand, Professor Breasted informs me that there is no basis
for Berthelot’s statement that “every sort of chemical process as well
as medical treatment was executed with an accompaniment of religious
formulae, of prayers and incantations, regarded as essential to the
success of operations as well as the cure of maladies.”[43]
[Sidenote: Alchemy.]
Alchemy perhaps originated on the one hand from the practices of
Egyptian goldsmiths and workers in metals, who experimented with
alloys,[44] and on the other hand from the theories of the Greek
philosophers concerning world-grounds, first matter, and the
elements.[45] The words, alchemy and chemistry, are derived ultimately
from the name of Egypt itself, Kamt or Qemt, meaning literally black,
and applied to the Nile mud. The word was also applied to the black
powder produced by quicksilver in Egyptian metallurgical processes.
This powder, Budge says, was supposed to be the ground of all metals
and to possess marvelous virtue, “and was mystically identified with
the body which Osiris possessed in the underworld, and both were
thought to be sources of life and power.”[46] The analogy to the
sacrament of the mass and the marvelous powers ascribed to the host
by medieval preachers like Stephen of Bourbon scarcely needs remark.
The later writers on alchemy in Greek appear to have borrowed signs
and phraseology from the Egyptian priests, and are fond of speaking
of their art as the monopoly of Egyptian kings and priests who carved
its secrets on ancient steles and obelisks. In a treatise dating from
the twelfth dynasty a scribe recommends to his son a work entitled
_Chemi_, but there is no proof that it was concerned with chemistry
or alchemy.[47] The papyri containing treatises of alchemy are of the
third century of the Christian era.
[Sidenote: Divination and astrology.]
Evidences of divination in general and of astrology in particular do
not appear as early in Egyptian records as examples of other varieties
of magic. Yet the early date at which Egypt had a calendar suggests
astronomical interest, and even those who deny that seven planets were
distinguished in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley until the last millennium
before Christ, admit that they were known in Egypt as far back as
the Old Kingdom, although they deny the existence of a science of
astronomy or an art of astrology then.[48] A dream of Thotmes IV is
preserved from 1450 B.C. or thereabouts, and the incantations employed
by magicians in order to procure divining dreams for their customers
attest the close connection of divination and magic.[49] Belief in
lucky and unlucky days is shown in a papyrus calendar of about 1300
B.C.,[50] and we shall see later that “Egyptian Days” continued to be
a favorite superstition of the middle ages. Tables of the risings of
stars which may have an astrological significance have been found in
graves, and there were gods for every month, every day of the month,
and every hour of the day.[51] Such numbers as seven and twelve are
frequently emphasized in the tombs and elsewhere, and if the vaulted
ceiling in the tenth chamber of the tomb of Sethos is really of his
time, we seem to find the signs of the zodiac under the nineteenth
dynasty. If Boll is correct in suggesting that the zodiac originated in
the transfer of animal gods to the sky,[52] no fitter place than Egypt
could be found for the transfer. But there have not yet been discovered
in Egypt lists of omens and appearances of constellations on days of
disaster such as are found in the literature of the Tigris-Euphrates
valley and in the Roman historians. Budge speaks of the seven Hathor
goddesses who predict the death that the infant must some time die, and
affirms that “the Egyptians believed that a man’s fate ... was decided
before he was born, and that he had no power to alter it.”[53] But I
cannot agree that “we have good reason for assigning the birthplace of
the horoscope to Egypt,”[54] since the evidence seems to be limited to
the almost medieval Pseudo-Callisthenes and a Greek horoscope in the
British Museum to which is attached the letter of an astrologer urging
his pupil to study the ancient Egyptians carefully. The later Greek and
Latin tradition that astrology was the invention of the divine men of
Egypt and Babylon probably has a basis of fact, but more contemporary
evidence is needed if Egypt is to contest the claim of Babylon to
precedence in that art.
[Sidenote: The sources for Assyrian and Babylonian magic.]
In the written remains of Babylonian and Assyrian civilization[55] the
magic cuneiform tablets play a large part and give us the impression
that fear of demons was a leading feature of Assyrian and Babylonian
religion and that daily thought and life were constantly affected by
magic. The bulk of the religious and magical texts are preserved in
the library of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria from 668 to 626 B.C.
But he collected his library from the ancient temple cities, the
scribes tell us that they are copying very ancient texts, and the
Sumerian language is still largely employed.[56] Eridu, one of the
main centers of early Sumerian culture, “was an immemorial home of
ancient wisdom, that is to say, magic.”[57] It is, however, difficult
in the library of Assurbanipal to distinguish what is Babylonian from
what is Assyrian or what is Sumerian from what is Semitic. Thus we are
told that “with the exception of some very ancient texts, the Sumerian
literature, consisting largely of religious material such as hymns
and incantations, shows a number of Semitic loanwords and grammatical
Semitisms, and in many cases, although not always, is quite patently
a translation of Semitic ideas by Semitic priests into the formal
religious Sumerian language.”[58]
[Sidenote: Was astrology Sumerian or Chaldean?]
The chief point in dispute, over which great controversy has taken
place recently among German scholars, is as to the antiquity of both
astronomical knowledge and astrological doctrine, including astral
theology, among the dwellers in the Tigris-Euphrates region. Briefly,
such writers as Winckler, Stücken, and Jeremias held that the religion
of the early Babylonians was largely based on astrology and that all
their thought was permeated by it, and that they had probably by an
early date made astronomical observations and acquired astronomical
knowledge which was lost in the decline of their culture. Opposing
this view, such scholars as Kugler, Bezold, Boll, and Schiaparelli
have shown the lack of certain evidence for either any considerable
astronomical knowledge or astrological theory in the Tigris-Euphrates
Valley until the late appearance of the Chaldeans. It is even denied
that the seven planets were distinguished in the early period, much
less the signs of the zodiac or the planetary week,[59] which last,
together with any real advance in astronomy, is reserved for the
Hellenistic period.
[Sidenote: The number seven in early Babylonia.]
Yet the prominence of the number seven in myth, religion, and magic
is indisputable in the third millennium before our era. For instance,
in the old Babylonian epic of creation there are seven winds, seven
spirits of storms, seven evil diseases, seven divisions of the
underworld closed by seven doors, seven zones of the upper world
and sky, and so on. We are told, however, that the staged towers of
Babylonia, which are said to have symbolized for millenniums the
sacred Hebdomad, did not always have seven stages.[60] But the number
seven was undoubtedly of frequent occurrence, of a sacred and mystic
character, and virtue and perfection were ascribed to it. And no one
has succeeded in giving any satisfactory explanation for this other
than the rule of the seven planets over our world. This also applies
to the sanctity of the number seven in the Old Testament[61] and
the emphasis upon it in Hesiod, the Odyssey, and other early Greek
sources.[62]
[Sidenote: Incantation texts older than the astrological.]
However that may be, the tendency prevailing at present is to regard
astrology as a relatively late development introduced by the Semitic
Chaldeans. Lenormant held that writing and magic were a Turanian or
Sumerian (Accadian) contribution to Babylonian civilization, but that
astronomy and astrology were Semitic innovations. Jastrow thinks that
there was slight difference between the religion of Assyria and that of
Babylonia, and that astral theology played a great part in both; but
he grants that the older incantation texts are less influenced by this
astral theology. L. W. King says, “Magic and divination bulk largely in
the texts recovered, and in their case there is nothing to suggest an
underlying astrological element.”[63]
[Sidenote: Other divination than astrology.]
Whatever its date and origin, the magic literature may be classified
in three main groups. There are the astrological texts in which the
stars are looked upon as gods and predictions are made especially for
the king.[64] Then there are the tablets connected with other methods
of foretelling the future, especially liver divination, although
interpretation of dreams, augury, and divination by mixing oil and
water were also practiced.[65] Fossey has further noted the close
connection of operative magic with divination among the Assyrians,
and calls divination “the indispensable auxiliary of magic.” Many
feats of magic imply a precedent knowledge of the future or begin by
consultation of a diviner, or a favorable day and hour should be chosen
for the magic rite.[66]
[Sidenote: Incantations against sorcery and demons.]
Third, there are the collections of incantations, not however those
employed by the sorcerers, which were presumably illicit and hence
not publicly preserved—in an incantation which we shall soon quote
sorcery is called evil and is said to employ “impure things”—but rather
defensive measures against them and exorcisms of evil demons.[67] But
doubtless this counter magic reflects the original procedure to a great
extent. Inasmuch as diseases generally were regarded as due to demons,
who had to be exorcized by incantations, medicine was simply a branch
of magic. Evil spirits were also held responsible for disturbances in
nature, and frequent incantations were thought necessary to keep them
from upsetting the natural order entirely.[68] The various incantations
are arranged in series of tablets: the _Maklu_ or burning, _Ti’i_ or
headaches, _Asakki marsûti_ or fever, _Labartu_ or hag-demon, and _Nis
kati_ or raising of the hand. Besides these tablets there are numerous
ceremonial and medical texts which contain magical practice.[69] Also
hymns of praise and religious epics which at first sight one would
not classify as incantations seem to have had their magical uses, and
Farnell suggests that “a magic origin for the practice of theological
exegesis may be obscurely traced.”[70] Good spirits are represented
as employing magic and exorcisms against the demons.[71] As a last
resort when good spirits as well as human magic had failed to check the
demons, the aid might be requisitioned of the god Ea, regarded as the
repository of all science and who “alone was possessed of the magic
secrets by means of which they could be conquered and repulsed.”[72]
[Sidenote: A specimen incantation.]
The incantations themselves show that other factors than the power of
words entered into the magic, as may be illustrated by quoting one of
them.
“Arise ye great gods, hear my complaint,
Grant me justice, take cognizance of my condition.
I have made an image of my sorcerer and sorceress;
I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause,
Because of the evil they have done,
Of the impure things which they have handled.
May she die! Let me live!
May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery be broken.
May the plucked sprig of the _binu_ tree purify me;
May it release me; may the evil odor of my mouth be scattered to
the winds.
May the _mashtakal_ herb which fills the earth cleanse me.
Before you let me shine like the _kankal_ herb,
Let me be brilliant and pure as the _lardu_ herb.
The charm of the sorceress is evil;
May her words return to her mouth, her tongue be cut off.
Because of her witchcraft may the gods of night smite her,
The three watches of the night break her evil charm.
May her mouth be wax; her tongue, honey.
May the word causing my misfortune that she has spoken dissolve
like wax.
May the charm she had wound up melt like honey,
So that her magic knot be cut in twain, her work destroyed.”[73]
[Sidenote: Materials and devices employed in the magic.]
It is evident from this incantation that use was made of magic images
and knots, and of the properties of trees and herbs. Magic images were
made of clay, wax, tallow, and other substances and were employed in
various ways. Thus directions are given for making a tallow image of
an enemy of the king and binding its face with a cord in order to
deprive the person whom it represents of speech and willpower.[74]
Images were also constructed in order that disease demons might be
magically transferred into them,[75] and sometimes the images are
slain and buried.[76] In the above incantation the magic knot was
employed only by the sorceress, but Fossey states that knots were
also used as counter-charms against the demons.[77] In the above
incantation the names of herbs were left untranslated and it is not
possible to say much concerning the pharmacy of the Assyrians and
Babylonians because of our lack of a lexicon for their botanical
and mineralogical terminology.[78] However, from what scholars have
been able to translate it appears that common rather than rare and
outlandish substances were the ones most employed. Wine and oil, salt
and dates, and onions and saliva are the sort of things used. There
is also evidence of the employment of a magic wand.[79] Gems and
animal substances were used as well as herbs; all sorts of philters
were concocted; and varied rites and ceremonies were employed such as
ablutions and fumigations. In the account of the ark of the Babylonian
Noah we are told of the magic significance of its various parts; thus
the mast and cabin ceiling were made of cedar, a wood that counteracts
sorceries.[80]
[Sidenote: 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 in
_the past_ orientals were more superstitious and fond of marvels 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]
[Sidenote: 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 the _Iliad_
who 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 of wonder-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 the _Goetes_ of Aristophanes, the _Mandragorizomene_
of Alexis, the _Pharmacomantis_ of Anaxandrides, the _Circe_ of
Anaxilas, and the _Thettale_ of 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]
[Sidenote: 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 of _Goetia_.[88]
[Sidenote: 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, in _Themis, 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 more detail by F.
M. Cornford’s _Origin 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, Babylonian magic
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.
[Sidenote: 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’s _Timaeus_ is 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 the _Timaeus_
as flights of poetic imagination or try to make out Aristotle a modern
scientist by mutilating the text of the _History of Animals_.
[Sidenote: Plato’s attitude toward magic and astrology.]
Toward magic so-called Plato’s attitude in his _Laws_ is 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 the _Magi_ of 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 nativities and the horoscope, but like it
exalts the importance of the stars and suggests their control of
human life. And when at the close of his _Republic_ Plato 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 the _Timaeus_ he 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 the _magnus annus_, that
history begins to repeat itself in every detail when the heavenly
bodies have all regained their original positions.
[Sidenote: 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]
[Sidenote: Folk-lore in the _History of Animals_.]
Aside from bits of physiognomy and of Pythagorean superstition, or
mysticism, Aristotle’s _History of Animals_ contains 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] But the 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]
[Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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
that they 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 the _Catalogus Codicum Graecorum
Astrologorum_![109] And occasionally archaeologists report the
discovery of magical apparatus[110] or of representations of magic in
works of art.
[Sidenote: 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 Hellenic title
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.
[Sidenote: 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’s _History of Animals_
is still highly esteemed by historians of biology[112] and often
evidences “a large amount of personal observations,”[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.
[Sidenote: 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 Roman Empire, 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.
APPENDIX I
SOME WORKS ON MAGIC, RELIGION, AND ASTRONOMY IN BABYLONIA
AND ASSYRIA
The following books deal expressly with the magic of Assyria and
Babylonia:
Fossey, C. La magie assyrienne; étude suivie de textes magiques,
Paris, 1902.
King, L. W. Babylonian Magic and Sorcery, being “The Prayers of the
Lifting of the Hand,” London, 1896.
Laurent, A. La magie et la divination chez les Chaldéo-Assyriens,
Paris, 1894.
Lenormant, F. Chaldean Magic and Sorcery, English translation, London,
1878.
Schwab, M., in Proc. Bibl. Archæology (1890), pp. 292-342, on magic
bowls from Assyria and Babylonia.
Tallquist, K. L. Die Assyrische Beschwörungsserie Maqlû, Leipzig, 1895.
Thompson, R. C. The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of
Nineveh and Babylon in the British Museum, London, 1900. Texts and
translations—all but three are astrological.
The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, London, 1904.
Semitic Magic, London, 1908.
Weber, O. Dämonenbeschwörung bei den Babyloniern und Assyrern, 1906.
Eine Skizze (37 pp.), in Der Alte Orient.
Zimmern. Die Beschwörungstafeln Surpu.
Much concerning magic will also be found in works on Babylonian and
Assyrian religion.
Craig, J. A. Assyrian and Babylonian Religious Texts, Leipzig, 1895-7.
Curtiss, S. I. Primitive Semitic Religion Today, 1902.
Dhorme, P. Choix des textes religieux Assyriens Babyloniens, 1907.
La religion Assyro-Babylonienne, Paris, 1910.
Gray, C. D. The Samas Religious Texts.
Jastrow, Morris. The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898.
Revised and enlarged as Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, Giessen,
1904.
Jeremias. Babylon. Assyr. Vorstellungen von dem Leben nach Tode,
Leipzig, 1887.
Hölle und Paradies, and other works.
Knudtzon, J. A. Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott, Leipzig, 1893.
Lagrange, M. J. Études sur les religions sémitiques, Paris, 1905.
Langdon, S. Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, Paris, 1909.
Reisner, G. A. Sumerisch-Babylonische Hymnen, Berlin, 1896.
Robertson Smith, W. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, London,
1907.
Roscher, Lexicon, for various articles.
Zimmern. Babylonische Hymnen und Gebete in Auswahl, 32 pp., 1905 (Der
Alte Orient).
Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Babyl. Religion, Leipzig, 1901.
On the astronomy and astrology of the Babylonians one may consult:
Bezold, C. Astronomie, Himmelschau und Astrallehre bei den
Babyloniern. (Sitzb. Akad. Heidelberg, 1911, Abh. 2).
Boissier, A. Documents assyriens relatifs aux présages, Paris,
1894-1897.
Choix de textes relatifs à la divination assyro-babylonienne, Geneva,
1905-1906.
Craig, J. A. Astrological-Astronomical Texts, Leipzig, 1892.
Cumont, F. Babylon und die griechische Astrologie. (Neue Jahrb. für das
klass. Altertum, XXVII, 1911).
Epping, J., and Strassmeier, J. N. Astronomisches aus Babylon, 1889.
Ginzel, F. K. Die astronomischen Kentnisse der Babylonier, 1901.
Hehn, J. Siebenzahl und Sabbat bei den Babyloniern und im Alten
Testament, 1907.
Jensen, P. Kosmologie der Babylonier, 1890.
Jeremias. Das Alter der babylonischen Astronomie, 1908.
Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur, 1913.
Kugler, F. X. Die Babylonische Mondrechnung, 1900.
Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, Freiburg, 1907-1913. To be
completed in four vols.
Im Bannkreis Babels, 1910.
Oppert, J. Die astronomischen Angaben der assyrischen Keilinschriften,
in Sitzb. d. Wien. Akad. Math.-Nat. Classe, 1885, pp. 894-906.
Un texte Babylonien astronomique et sa traduction grecque par Cl.
Ptolémeé, in Zeitsch. f. Assyriol. VI (1891), pp. 103-23.
Sayce, A. H. The astronomy and astrology of the Babylonians, with
translations of the tablets relating to the subject, in Transactions of
the Society of Biblical Archaeology, III (1874), 145-339; the first and
until recently the best guide to the subject.
Schiaparelli, G. V. I Primordi ed i Progressi dell’ Astronomia presso i
Babilonesi, Bologna, 1908.
Astronomy in the Old Testament, 1905.
Stücken, Astralmythen, 1896-1907.
Virolleaud, Ch. L’Astrologie chaldéenne, Paris, 1905-; to be completed
in eight parts, texts and translations.
Winckler, Himmels- und Weltenbild der Babylonier als Grundlage der
Weltanschauung und Mythologie aller Völker, in Der alte Orient, III,
2-3.
BOOK I. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Foreword.
Chapter 2. Pliny’s Natural History.
I. Its place in the history of science.
II. Its experimental tendency.
III. Pliny’s account of magic.
IV. The science of the _Magi_.
V. Pliny’s magical science.
” 3. Seneca and Ptolemy: Natural Divination and Astrology.
” 4. Galen.
I. The man and his times.
II. His medicine and experimental science.
III. His attitude toward magic.
” 5. Ancient Applied Science and Magic.
” 6. Plutarch’s Essays.
” 7. Apuleius of Madaura.
” 8. Philostratus’s _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_.
” 9. Literary and Philosophical Attacks upon Superstition.
” 10. The Spurious Mystic Writings of Hermes, Orpheus, and
Zoroaster.
” 11. Neo-Platonism and its Relations to Astrology and Theurgy.
” 12. Aelian, Solinus, and Horapollo.
BOOK I. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
FOREWORD
[Sidenote: A trio of great names.]
A trio of great names, Pliny, Galen, and Ptolemy, stand out above all
others in the history of science under the Roman Empire. In the use
or criticism which they make of earlier writers and investigators
they are also our chief sources for the science of the preceding
Hellenistic period. By their voluminousness, their generous scope in
ground covered, and their broad, liberal, personal outlooks, they have
painted, in colors for the most part imperishable, extensive canvasses
of the scientific spirit and acquisitions of their own time. Pliny
pursued politics and literature as well as natural science; Ptolemy
was at once mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and geographer;
Galen knew philosophy as well as medicine. The two latter men,
moreover, made original contributions of their own of the very first
order to scientific knowledge and method. It is characteristic of the
homogeneous and widespread culture of the Roman Empire that these three
representatives of different, although overlapping, fields of science
were natives of the three continents that enclose the Mediterranean
Sea. Pliny was born at Como where Italy verges on transalpine lands;
Ptolemy, born somewhere in Egypt, did his work at Alexandria; Galen
came from Pergamum in Asia Minor. Finally, these men were, after
Aristotle, the three ancient scientists who directly or indirectly
most powerfully influenced the middle ages. Thus they illuminate past,
present, and future.
[Sidenote: Plan of this section.]
We shall therefore open the present section of our investigation
by considering in turn chronologically, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Galen,
coupling, however, with our consideration of Ptolemy the work of
Seneca on _Natural Questions_ which shows the same combination of
natural science and natural divination. Next we shall consider some
representatives of ancient applied science and its relations to
magic, and the more miscellaneous writings of Plutarch, Apuleius, and
Philostratus’s _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_. From the hospitable
attitude toward magic and occult science displayed by these last
writers we shall then turn back again to consider some examples of
literary and philosophical attacks upon superstition, before proceeding
lastly to spurious mystic writings of the Roman Empire, Neo-Platonism
and its relations to astrology and theurgy, and the works of Aelian,
Solinus, and Horapollo.