PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY
I. _Its Place in the History of Science_
Its importance in our investigation—As a collection of miscellaneous
information—As a repository of ancient natural science—As a source for
magic—Pliny’s career—His writings—His own description of the _Natural
History_—His devotion to science—Conflict of science and religion—Pliny
not a trained naturalist—His use of authorities—His lack of arrangement
and classification—His scepticism and credulity—A guide to ancient
science—His medieval influence—Early printed editions.
II. _Its Experimental Tendency_
Importance of observation and experience—Use of the word
_experimentum_—Experiments due to scientific curiosity—Medical
experimentation—Chance experience and divine revelation—Marvels proved
by experience.
III. _Pliny’s Account of Magic_
Oriental origin of magic—Its spread to the Greeks—Its spread outside
the Graeco-Roman world—Failure to understand its true origin—Magic
and divination—Magic and religion—Magic and medicine—Magic and
philosophy—Falseness of magic—Crimes of magic—Pliny’s censure of magic
is mainly intellectual—Vagueness of Pliny’s scepticism—Magic and
science indistinguishable.
IV. _The Science of the Magi_
Magicians as investigators of nature—The _Magi_ on herbs—Marvelous
virtues of herbs—Animals and parts of animals—Further instances—Magic
rites with animals and parts of animals—Marvels wrought with parts
of animals—The _Magi_ on stones—Other magical recipes—Summary of the
statements of the _Magi_.
V. _Pliny’s Magical Science_
From the _Magi_ to Pliny’s magic—Habits of animals—Remedies discovered
by animals—Jealousy of animals—Occult virtues of animals—The virtues of
herbs—Plucking herbs—Agricultural magic—Virtue of stones—Other minerals
and metals—Virtues of human parts—Virtues of human saliva—The human
operator—Absence of medical compounds—Sympathetic magic—Antipathies
between animals—Love and hatred between inanimate objects—Sympathy
between animate and inanimate objects—Like cures like—The principle of
association—Magic transfer of disease—Amulets—Position or direction—The
time element—Observance of number—Relation between operator and
patient—Incantations—Attitude towards love-charms and birth
control—Pliny and astrology—Celestial portents—The stars and the world
of nature—Astrological medicine—Conclusion: magic unity of Pliny’s
superstitions.
“_Salve, parens rerum omnium Natura, teque nobis Quiritium solis
celebratam esse numeris omnibus tuis fave!_”
—_Closing words of the Natural History._[119]
I. _Its Place in the History of Science_
[Sidenote: Important in our investigation.]
We should have to search long before finding a better starting-point
for the consideration of the union of magic with the science of the
Roman Empire, and of the way in which that union influenced the middle
ages, than Pliny’s _Natural History_.[120] The foregoing sentence, with
which years ago I opened a chapter on the _Natural History_ of Pliny
the Elder in my briefer preliminary study of magic in the intellectual
history of the Roman Empire, seems as true as ever; and although I
there considered his confusion of magic and science at some length, I
do not see how I can make the present work well-rounded and complete
without including in it a yet more detailed analysis of the contents of
Pliny’s book.
[Sidenote: As a collection of miscellaneous information.]
Pliny’s _Natural History_, which appeared about 77 A. D. and is
dedicated to the Emperor Titus, is perhaps the most important single
source extant for the history of ancient civilization. Its thirty-seven
books, written in a very compact style, constitute a vast collection
of the most miscellaneous information. Whether one is investigating
ancient painting, sculpture, and other fine arts; or the geography
of the Roman Empire; or Roman triumphs, gladiatorial contests, and
theatrical exhibitions; or the industrial processes of antiquity; or
Mediterranean trade; or Italian agriculture; or mining in ancient
Spain; or the history of Roman coinage; or the fluctuation of prices
in antiquity; or the Roman attitude towards usury; or the pagan
attitude towards immortality; or the nature of ancient beverages; or
the religious usages of the ancient Romans; or any of a number of other
topics; one will find something concerning all of them in Pliny. He is
apt both to depict such conditions in his own time and to trace them
back to their origins. Furthermore he repeats many detailed incidents
of interest to the political or narrative historian of Rome as well as
to the student of the economic, social, artistic, and religious life of
antiquity. Probably there is no place where an isolated point is more
likely to be run down by the investigator, and it is regrettable that
exhaustive analytical indices of the work are not available. We may
add that, although the work is supposedly a collection of facts, Pliny
contrives to introduce many moral reflections and sharp comments on the
luxury, vice, and unintellectual character of his times, suggesting
Juvenal’s picture of degenerate Roman society and his own lofty moral
standards.
[Sidenote: As a repository of ancient natural science.]
Indeed, Pliny’s title, _Naturalis Historia_, or at least the common
English translation of it, “Natural History,” has been criticized as
too limited in scope, and the work has been described as “rather a vast
encyclopedia of ancient knowledge and belief upon almost every known
subject.”[121] Pliny himself mentions in his preface the Greek word
“encyclopedia” as indicative of his scope. Nevertheless, his work is
primarily an account of nature rather than of civilization, and much
of its information concerning such matters as the arts and business
is incidental. Most of its books bear such titles as Aquatic Animals,
Exotic Trees, Medicines from Forest Trees, The Natures of Metals. After
an introductory book containing the preface and a table of contents and
lists of authorities for each of the subsequent books, the second book
treats of the universe, heavenly bodies, meteorology, and the chief
changes, such as earthquakes and tides, in the land and water forming
the earth’s surface. After four books devoted to geography, the seventh
deals with man and human inventions. Four more follow on terrestrial
and aquatic animals, birds, and insects. Sixteen more are concerned
with plants, trees, vines, and other vegetation, and the medicinal
simples derived from them. Five books discuss the medicinal simples
derived from animals, including the human body; and the last five books
treat of metals and minerals and the arts in which they are employed.
It is thus evident that in the main Pliny is concerned with natural
science, and that, if his work is a mine of miscellaneous historical
information, it should even more prove a rich treasure-house—“_quoniam,
ut ait Domitius Piso, thesauros oportet esse non libros_”[122]—for an
investigation concerned as intimately as is ours with the history of
science.
[Sidenote: As a source for magic.]
The _Natural History_ is a great storehouse of misinformation as well
as of information, for Pliny’s credulity and lack of discrimination
harvested the tares of legend and magic along with the wheat of
historical fact and ancient science in his voluminous granary. This may
put other historical investigators upon their guard in accepting its
statements, but only increases its value for our purpose. Perhaps it is
even more valuable as a collection of ancient errors than it is as a
repository of ancient science. It touches upon many of the varieties,
and illustrates most of the characteristics, of magic. Moreover, Pliny
often mentions the _Magi_ or magicians and discusses “magic” expressly
at some length in the opening chapters of his thirtieth book—one of
the most important passages on the theme in any ancient writer.
[Sidenote: Pliny’s career.]
Pliny the Elder, as we learn from his own statements in the _Natural
History_ and from one or two letters concerning him written by his
nephew, Pliny the Younger, whom he adopted, went through the usual
military, forensic, and official career of the Roman of good family,
and spent his life largely in the service of the emperors. He visited
various Mediterranean lands, such as Spain, Africa, Greece, and Egypt,
and fought in Germany. He was in charge of the Roman fleet on the
west coast of Italy when he met his death at the age of fifty-six by
suffocation as he was trying to rescue others from the fumes and vapors
from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
[Sidenote: His writings.]
Of Pliny’s writings the _Natural History_ is alone extant, but other
titles have been preserved which serve to show his great literary
industry and the extent of his interests. He wrote on the use of
the javelin by cavalry, a life of his friend Pomponius, an account
in twenty books of all the wars waged by the Romans in Germany, a
rather long work on oratory called _The Student_, a grammatical or
philological work in eight books entitled _De dubio sermone_, and a
continuation of the _History_ of Aufidius Bassus in thirty-one books.
Yet in the dedication of the _Natural History_ to the emperor Titus
he states that his days were taken up with official business and only
his nights were free for literary labor. This statement is supported
by a letter of his nephew telling how he used to study by candle-light
both late at night and before daybreak. Pliny the Younger narrates
several incidents to illustrate how jealous and economical of every
spare moment his uncle was. He would dictate or have books read to him
while lying down or in the bath, and on journeys a secretary was always
by his side with books and tablets. If the weather was very cold, the
amanuensis wore gloves so that his hands might not become too numb to
write. Pliny always took notes on what he read, and at his death left
his nephew one hundred and sixty notebooks written in a small hand on
both sides.
[Sidenote: His own description of the _Natural History_.]
Such were the conditions under which, and the methods by which, Pliny
compiled his encyclopedia on nature. No single writer either Greek or
Latin, he tells us, had ever before attempted so extensive a task. He
adds that he treats of some twenty thousand topics gleaned from the
perusal of about two thousand volumes by one hundred authors.[123]
Judging from his bibliographies and citations, however, he would
seem to have utilized more than one hundred authors. But possibly
he had not read all the writers mentioned in his bibliographies. He
affirms that previous students have had access to but few of the
volumes which he has used, and that he adds many things unknown to his
ancient authorities and recently discovered. Occasionally he shows an
acquaintance with beliefs and practices of the Gauls and Druids. Thus
his work assumes to be something more than a compilation from other
books. He says, however, that no doubt he has omitted much, since he
is only human and has had many other demands upon his time. He admits
that his subject is dry (_sterilis materia_) and does not lend itself
to literary exhibitions, nor include matters stimulating to write about
and pleasant to read about, like speeches and marvelous occurrences and
varied incidents. Nor does it permit purity and elegance of diction,
since one must at times employ the terminology of rustics, foreigners,
and even barbarians. Furthermore, “it is an arduous task to give
novelty to what is ancient, authority to what is new, interest to what
is obsolete, light to what is obscure, charm to what is loathsome”—as
many of his medicinal simples undoubtedly are—“credit to what is
dubious.”
[Sidenote: His devotion to science.]
It is a great comfort to Pliny, however, in his immense task, when
many laugh at him as wasting his time over worthless trifles, to
reflect that he is being spurned along with Nature.[124] In another
passage[125] he contrasts the blood and slaughter of military history
with the benefits bestowed upon mankind by astronomers. In a third
passage[126] he looks back regretfully at the widespread interest
in science among the Greeks, although those were times of political
disunion and strife and although communication between different lands
was interrupted by piracy as well as war, whereas now, with the whole
empire at peace, not only is no new scientific inquiry undertaken, but
men do not even thoroughly study the works of the ancients, and are
intent on the acquisition of lucre rather than learning. These and
other passages which might be cited attest Pliny’s devotion to science.
[Sidenote: Conflict of science and religion.]
In Pliny we also detect signs of the conflict between science and
religion. In a single chapter on God he says pretty much all that the
church fathers later repeated at much greater length against paganism
and polytheism. But his discussion would hardly satisfy a Christian.
He asserts that “it is God for man to aid his fellow man,[127] and
this is the path to eternal glory,” but he turns this noble sentiment
to justify deification of the emperors who have done so much for
mankind. He questions whether God is concerned with human affairs;
slyly suggests that if so, God must be too busy to punish all crimes
promptly; and points out that there are some things which God cannot
do. He cannot commit suicide as men can, nor alter past events, nor
make twice ten anything else than twenty. Pliny then concludes: “By
which is revealed in no uncertain wise the power of Nature, and that
is what we call God.” In many other passages he exclaims at Nature’s
benignity or providence. He believed that the soul had no separate
existence from the body,[128] and that after death there was no more
sense left in body or soul than was there before birth. The hope of
personal immortality he scorned as “puerile ravings” produced by the
fear of death, and he believed still less in the possibility of any
resurrection of the body. In short, natural law, mechanical force, and
facts capable of scientific investigation would seem to be all that
he will admit and to suffice to satisfy his strong intellect. Yet we
shall later find him having the greatest difficulty in distinguishing
between science and magic, and giving credence to many details in
science which seem to us quite as superstitious as the pagan beliefs
concerning the gods which he rejected. But if any reader is inclined to
belittle Pliny for this, let him first stop and think how Pliny would
ridicule some modern scientists for their religious beliefs, or for
their spiritualism or psychic research.
[Sidenote: Pliny not a trained naturalist.]
It is desirable, however, to form some estimate of Pliny’s fitness for
his task in order to judge how accurate a picture of ancient science
his work is. He does not seem to have had much detailed training
or experience in the natural sciences himself. He writes not as a
naturalist who has observed widely and profoundly the phenomena and
operations of nature, but as an omnivorous reader and voluminous
note-taker who owes his knowledge largely to books or hearsay, although
occasionally he says “I know” instead of “they say,” or gives the
results of his own observation and experience. In the main he is not
a scientist himself but only a historian of science or nature; after
all, his title, _Natural History_, is a very fitting one. The question,
of course, arises whether he has sufficient scientific training to
evaluate properly the work of the past. Has he read the best authors,
has he noted their best passages, has he understood their meaning?
Does he repeat inferior theories and omit the correcter views of
certain Alexandrian scientists? These questions are hard to answer.
On his behalf it may be said that he deals little with abstruse
scientific theory and mainly with simple substances and geographical
places, matters in which it seems difficult for him to go far astray.
Scientific specialists were not numerous in those days, anyway, and
science had not yet so far advanced and ramified that one man might not
hope to cover the entire field and do it substantial justice. Pliny the
Younger was perhaps a partial judge, but he described the _Natural
History_ as “a work remarkable for its comprehensiveness and erudition,
and not less varied than Nature herself.”[129]
[Sidenote: His use of authorities.]
One thing in Pliny’s favor as a compiler, besides his personal
industry, unflagging interest, and apparently abundant supply
of clerical assistance, is his full and honest statement of his
authorities, although he adds that he has caught many authors
transcribing others verbatim without acknowledgment. He has, however,
great admiration for many of his authorities, exclaiming more than once
at the care and diligence of the men of the past who have left nothing
untried or unexperienced, from trackless mountain tops to the roots
of herbs.[130] Sometimes, nevertheless, he disputes their assertions.
For instance, Hippocrates said that the appearance of jaundice on the
seventh day in fever is a fatal sign, “but we know some who have lived
even after this.”[131] Pliny also scolds Sophocles for his falsehoods
concerning amber.[132] It may seem surprising that he should expect
strict scientific truth from a dramatic poet, but Pliny, like many
medieval writers, seems to regard poets as good scientific authorities.
In another passage he accepts Sophocles’ statement that a certain
plant is poisonous, rather than the contrary view of other writers,
saying “the authority of so prominent a man moves me against their
opinions.”[133] He also cites Menander concerning fish and, like almost
all the ancients, regards Homer as an authority on all matters.[134]
Pliny sometimes cites the works of King Juba of Numidia, than whom
there hardly seems to have been a greater liar in antiquity.[135] He
stated among other things in a work which he wrote for Gaius Caesar,
the son of Augustus, that a whale six hundred feet long and three
hundred and sixty feet broad had entered a river in Arabia.[136] But
where should Pliny turn for sober truth? The Stoic Chrysippus prated of
amulets;[137] treatises ascribed to the great philosophers Democritus
and Pythagoras[138] were full of magic; and in the works of Cicero
he read of a man who could see for a distance of one hundred and
thirty-five miles, and in Varro that this man, standing on a Sicilian
promontory, could count the number of ships sailing out of the harbor
of Carthage.[139]
[Sidenote: His lack of arrangement and classification.]
The _Natural History_ has been criticized as poorly arranged and
lacking in scientific classification, but this is a criticism which can
be made of many works of the classical period. Their presentation is
apt to be rambling and discursive rather than logical and systematic.
Even Aristotle’s _History of Animals_ is described by Lewes[140] as
unclassified in its arrangement and careless in its selection of
material. I have often thought that the scholastic centuries did
mankind at least one service, that of teaching lecturers and writers
how to arrange their material. Pliny seems rather in advance of his
times in supplying full tables of contents for the busy emperor’s
convenience. Valerius Soranus seems to have been the only previous
Roman writer to do this. One indication of haste in composition and
failure to sift and compare his material is the fact that Pliny
sometimes makes or includes contradictory statements, probably taken
from different authorities. On the other hand, he not infrequently
alludes to previous passages in his own work, thus showing that he has
his material fairly well in hand.
[Sidenote: His scepticism and credulity.]
Pliny once said that there was no book so bad but what some good
might be got from it,[141] and to the modern reader he seems almost
incredibly credulous and indiscriminate in his selection of material,
and to lack any standard of judgment between the true and the false.
Yet he often assumes an air of scepticism and censures others sharply
for their credulity or exaggeration. “’Tis strange,” he remarks _à
propos_ of some tales of men transformed into wolves for nine or ten
years, “how far Greek credulity has gone. No lie is so impudent that it
lacks a voucher.”[142] Once he expresses his determination to include
only those points on which his authorities are in agreement.[143]
[Sidenote: A guide to ancient science.]
On the whole, while to us to-day the _Natural History_ seems a
disorderly and indiscriminate conglomeration of fact and fiction,
its defects are probably to a great extent those of its age and of
the writers from whom it has borrowed. If it does not reflect the
highest achievements and clearest thinking of the best scientists of
antiquity—and be it said that there are a number of the Hellenistic
age of whom we should know less than we do but for Pliny—it probably
is a fairly faithful epitome of science and error concerning nature in
his own time and the centuries preceding. At any rate it is the best
portrayal that has reached us. From it we can get our background of the
confusion of magic and science in the Hellenistic age, and then reveal
against this setting the development of them both in the course of
the Roman Empire and middle ages. Pliny gives so many items upon each
point, and is so much fuller than the average ancient or medieval book
of science, that he serves as a reference book, being the likeliest
place to look to find duplicated some statement concerning nature by
a later writer. This of course shows that such a statement did not
originate with the later writer, but is not a sure sign that he copied
from Pliny; they may both have used the same authorities, as seems the
case with Greek authors later in the empire who probably did not know
of Pliny’s work.
[Sidenote: His medieval influence.]
In the middle ages, however, Pliny had an undoubted direct
influence.[144] Manuscripts of the _Natural History_ are numerous,
although in a scarcely legible condition owing to corrections and
emendations which enhance the obscurity of the text and perhaps do
Pliny grave injustice in other respects.[145] Also many manuscripts
contain only a few books or fragments of the text, so that it is
possible that many medieval scholars knew their Pliny only in
part.[146] This, however, can scarcely be argued from their failure
to include more from him in their own works; for that might be due to
their knowing the _Natural History_ so well that they took its contents
for granted and tried to include other material in their own works. In
a later chapter we shall treat of _The Medicine of Pliny_, a treatise
derived from the _Natural History_. Pliny’s phrase _rerum natura_
figures as the title of several medieval encyclopedias of somewhat
similar scope. And his own name was too well known in the middle
ages to escape having a work on the philosopher’s stone ascribed to
him.[147]
[Sidenote: Early printed edition.]
That the _Natural History_ was well known as a whole at least by
the close of the middle ages is shown by the numerous editions,
some of them magnificently printed, which were turned off from the
Italian presses immediately after the invention of printing. In the
Magliabechian Library of Florence alone are editions printed at
Venice in 1469 and 1472, at Rome in 1473 and Parma in 1481, again at
Venice in 1487, 1491, and 1499, not to mention Italian translations
which appeared at Venice in 1476 and 1489.[148] These editions were
accompanied by some published criticism of Pliny’s statements, since in
1492 appeared at Ferrara a treatise _On the Errors of Pliny and Others
in Medicine_ by Nicholas Leonicenus of Vicenza with a dedication to
Politian.[149] But two years later Pliny found a defender in Pandulph
Collenucius.[150]
But Pliny’s future influence will come out repeatedly in later
chapters. We shall now inquire, first, what signs of experimental
science he shows, either derived from the past or added by himself.
Second, what he defines as magic and what he has to say about it.
Third, how much of what he supposes to be natural science must we
regard as essentially magic?
II. Its Experimental Tendency
[Sidenote: Importance of observation and experience.]
It is probably only a coincidence that two medieval manuscripts close
the _Natural History_ in the midst of the seventy-sixth chapter of the
last book with the words, “_Experimenta pluribus modis constant....
Primum pondere._”[151] But although from the very nature of his work
Pliny makes extensive use of authorities, he not infrequently manifests
a realization, as one dealing with the facts of nature should, of the
importance of observation and experience as means of reaching the
truth. The claims of many Romans of high rank to have carried their
arms as far as Mount Atlas, which Pliny declares has been repeatedly
shown by experience to be most fallacious, leads him to the further
reflection that nowhere is a lapse of one’s credulity easier than where
a dignified author supports a false statement.[152] In other passages
he calls experience the best teacher in all things,[153] and contrasts
unfavorably garrulity of words and sitting in schools with going to
solitudes and seeking herbs at their appropriate seasons. That upon our
globe the land is entirely surrounded by water does not require, he
says, investigation by arguments, but is now known by experience.[154]
And if the salamander really extinguished fire, it would have been
tried at Rome long ago.[155] On the other hand, we find some assertions
in the _Natural History_ which Pliny might easily have tested himself
and found false, such as his statement that an egg-shell cannot be
broken by force or any weight unless it is tipped a little to one
side.[156] Sometimes he gives his personal experience,[157] but also
mentions experience in many other connections.
[Sidenote: Use of the word _experimentum_.]
The word employed most of the time by Pliny to denote experience is
_experimentum_.[158] In many passages the word does not indicate
anything like a purposive, prearranged, scientific experiment in
our sense of that word, but simply the ordinary experience of daily
life.[159] We are also told what _experti_,[160] or men of experience,
advise. In a number of passages, however, _experimentum_ is used in
a sense somewhat more closely approaching our “experiment.” These
are cases where something is being tested. For instance, a method of
determining whether an egg is fresh or rotten by putting it in water
and watching if it floats or sinks is called an _experimentum_.[161]
That horses would whinny at no other painting of a horse than that by
Apelles is spoken of as _illius experimentum artis_, a test of, or
testimony to, his art.[162] The expression _religionis experimento_
is applied to a religious test or ordeal by which the virginity of
Claudia was vindicated.[163] The word is also used of ways of telling
if unguents are good[164] and if wine is beginning to turn;[165]
and of various tests of the genuineness of drugs, gems, earths, and
metals.[166] It is also twice used of letting down a lighted lamp
into a huge wine cask or into wells to discover if there is danger at
the bottom from noxious vapors.[167] If the lamp was extinguished, it
was a sign of peril to human life. Pliny further suggests purposive
experimentation in speaking of _experimenta_ to discover water under
ground[168] and in grafting trees.[169]
[Sidenote: Experiments due to scientific curiosity.]
Most of the tests and experiences thus far mentioned have been
practical operations connected with husbandry and industry. But
Pliny recounts one or two others which seem to have been dictated
solely by scientific curiosity. He classifies the following as
_experimenta_:[170] the sinking of a well to prove by its complete
illumination that the sun casts no shadow at noon of the summer
solstice; the marking of a dolphin’s tail in order to throw some light
upon its length of life, should it ever be captured again, as it was
three hundred years later—perhaps the experiment of longest duration on
record;[171] and the casting of a man into a pit of serpents at Rome
to determine if he was really immune from their stings.[172]
[Sidenote: Medical experimentation.]
_Experimentum_ is employed by Pliny in a medical sense which becomes
very common in the middle ages. He calls some remedies for toothache
and inflamed eyes _certa experimenta_—sure experiences.[173] Later
_experimentum_ came to be applied to almost any recipe or remedy.
Pliny, indeed, speaks of the doctors as learning at our risk and
getting experience through our deaths.[174] In another passage he
states more favorably that “there is no end to experimenting with
everything so that even poisons are forced to cure us.”[175] He also
briefly mentions the medical sect of Empirics, of whom we shall
hear more from Galen. He says that they so name themselves from
experiences[176] and originated at Agrigentum in Sicily under Acron and
Empedocles.
[Sidenote: Chance experience and divine revelation.]
Pliny is puzzled how some things which he finds stated in “authors
famous for wisdom” were ever learned by experience, for example,
that the star-fish has such fiery fervor that it burns everything in
the sea which it touches, and digests its food instantly.[177] That
adamant can be broken only by goat’s blood he thinks must have been
divinely revealed, for it would hardly have been discovered by chance,
and he cannot imagine that anyone would ever have thought of testing
a substance of immense value in a fluid of one of the foulest of
animals.[178] In several other passages he suggests chance, accident,
dreams,[179] or divine revelation as the ways in which the medicinal
virtues of certain simples were discovered. Recently, for example,
it was discovered that the root of the wild rose is a remedy for
hydrophobia by the mother of a soldier in the praetorian guard, who was
warned in a dream to send her son this root, which cured him and many
others who have tried it since.[180] And a soldier in Pompey’s time
accidentally discovered a cure for elephantiasis when he hid his face
for shame in some wild mint leaves.[181] Another herb was accidentally
found to be a cure for disorders of the spleen when the entrails of a
sacrificial victim happened to be thrown on it and it entirely consumed
the milt.[182] The healing properties of vinegar for the sting of
the asp were discovered by chance in this wise. A man who was stung
by an asp while carrying a leather bottle of vinegar noticed that he
felt the sting only when he set the bottle down.[183] He therefore
decided to try the effects of a drink of the liquid and was thereby
fully cured.[184] Other remedies are learned through the experience of
rustics and illiterate persons, and yet others may be discovered by
observing animals who cure their ills by them.[185] Pliny’s opinion is
that the animals have hit upon them by chance.
[Sidenote: Marvels proved by experience.]
Pliny represents a number of marvelous and to us incredible things
as proved by experience. Divination from thunder, for instance, is
supported by innumerable experiences, public and private. In two
passages out of the three mentioning _experti_ which I cited above,
those experienced persons recommended a decidedly magical sort of
procedure.[186] In another passage “the experience of many” supports
“a strange observance” in plucking a bud.[187] A fourth bit of magical
procedure is called “marvelous but easily tested.”[188] Thus the
transition is an easy one from signs of experimental science in the
_Natural History_ to our next topic, Pliny’s account of magic.
III. _Pliny’s Account of Magic._
[Sidenote: Oriental origin of magic.]
Pliny supplies some account of the origin and spread of magic[189]
but a rather confused and possibly unreliable one, as he mentions two
Zoroasters separated by an interval of five or six thousand years,
and two Osthaneses, one of whom accompanied Xerxes, and the other
Alexander, in their respective expeditions. He says, indeed, that it is
not clear whether one or two Zoroasters existed. In any case magic has
flourished greatly the world over for many centuries, and was founded
in Persia by Zoroaster. Some other magicians of Media, Babylonia,
and Assyria are mere names to Pliny; later he mentions others like
Apollobeches and Dardanus. Although he thus derives magic from the
orient, he appears to make no distinction, as we shall find other
writers doing, between the _Magi_ of Persia and ordinary magicians,
nor does he employ the word magic in two senses. He makes it evident,
however, that there have been other men who have regarded magic more
favorably than he does.
[Sidenote: Its spread to the Greeks.]
Pliny next traces the spread of magic among the Greeks. He marvels at
the lack of it in the Iliad and the abundance of it in the Odyssey.
He is uncertain whether to class Orpheus as a magician, and mentions
Thessaly as famous for its witches at least as early as the time of
Menander who named one of his comedies after them. But he regards the
Osthanes who accompanied Xerxes as the prime introducer of magic to the
Greek-speaking world, which straightway went mad over it. In order to
learn more of it, the philosophers Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus,
and Plato went into distant exile and on their return disseminated
their lore. Pliny regards the works of Democritus as the greatest
single factor in that dissemination of the doctrines of magic which
occurred at about the same time that medicine was being developed by
the works of Hippocrates. Some regarded the books on magic ascribed to
Democritus as spurious, but Pliny insists that they are genuine.[190]
[Sidenote: Its spread outside the Graeco-Roman world.]
Outside of the Greek-speaking world, whence of course magic spread to
Rome, Pliny mentions Jewish magic, represented by such names as Moses,
Jannes, and Lotapes. But he holds that magic did not originate among
the Hebrews until long after Zoroaster. He also speaks of the magic of
Cyprus; of the Druids, who were the magicians, diviners, and medicine
men of Gaul until the emperor Tiberius suppressed them; and of distant
Britain.[191] Thus discordant nations and even those ignorant of one
another’s existence agree the world over in their devotion to magic.
From what Pliny tells us elsewhere of the Scythians we can see that the
nomads of the Russian steppes and Turkestan were devoted to magic too.
[Sidenote: Failure to understand its true origin.]
It has been shown that Pliny regarded magic as a mass of doctrines
formulated by a single founder and not as a gradual social evolution,
just as the Greeks and Romans ascribed their laws and customs to some
single legislator. He admits in a way, however, the great antiquity
claimed by magic for itself, although he questions how the bulky dicta
of Zoroaster and Dardanus could have been handed down by memory during
so long a period. This remark again shows how little he thinks of magic
as a set of social customs and attitudes perpetuated through constant
and universal practice from generation to generation. Yet what he says
of its widespread prevalence among unconnected peoples goes to prove
this.
[Sidenote: Magic and divination.]
Pliny has a clearer comprehension of the extensive scope of magic and
of its essential characteristics, at least as it was in his day. “No
one should wonder,” he says, “that its authority has been very great,
since alone of the arts it has embraced and united with itself the
three other subjects which make the greatest appeal to the human mind,”
namely, medicine, religion, and the arts of divination, especially
astrology. That his phrase _artes mathematicas_ has reference to
astrology is shown by his immediately continuing, “since there is no
one who is not eager to learn the future about himself and who does not
think that this is most truly revealed by the sky.” But magic further
“promises to reveal the future by water and spheres and air and stars
and lamps and basins and the blades of axes and by many other methods,
besides conferences with shades from the infernal regions.” There can
therefore be no doubt that Pliny regards the various arts of divination
as parts of magic.
[Sidenote: Magic and religion.]
While we have heard Pliny assert in general the close connection
between magic and religion, the character of the _Natural History_,
which deals with natural rather than religious matters, does not lead
him to enter into much further detail upon this point. His occasional
mention of religious usages in his own day, however, supports our
information from other sources that the original Roman religion was
very largely composed of magic forces, rules, and ceremonial.
[Sidenote: Magic and medicine.]
Nearly half the books of the _Natural History_ deal in whole or in
part with remedies for diseases, and it is therefore of the relations
between magic and natural science, and more particularly between magic
and medicine, that Pliny gives us the most detailed information.
Indeed, he asserts that “no one doubts” that magic “originally sprang
from medicine and crept in under the show of promoting health as a
loftier and more sacred medicine.” Magic and medicine have developed
together, and the latter is now in imminent danger of being overwhelmed
by the follies of magic, which have made men doubt whether plants
possess any medicinal properties.
[Sidenote: Magic and philosophy.]
In the opinion of many, however, magic is sound and beneficial
learning. In antiquity, and for that matter at almost all times,
the height of literary fame and glory has been sought from that
science.[192] Eudoxus would have it the most noted and useful of all
schools of philosophy. Empedocles and Plato studied it; Pythagoras and
Democritus perpetuated it in their writings.
[Sidenote: Falseness of magic.]
But Pliny himself feels that the assertions of the books of magic are
fantastic, exaggerated, and untrue. He repeatedly brands the _magi_
or magicians as fools or impostors, and their statements as absurd
and impudent tissues of lies.[193] _Vanitas_, or “nonsense,” is his
stock-word for their beliefs.[194] Some of their writings must, in his
opinion, have been dictated by a feeling of contempt and derision for
humanity.[195] Nero proved the falseness of the art, for although he
studied magic eagerly and with his unlimited wealth and power had every
opportunity to become a skilful practitioner, he was unable to work any
marvels and abandoned the attempt.[196] Pliny therefore comes to the
conclusion that magic is “invalid and empty, yet has some shadows of
truth, which however are due more to poisons than to magic.”[197]
[Sidenote: Crimes of magic.]
The last remark brings us to charges of evil practices made against the
magicians. Besides poisons, they specialize in love-potions and drugs
to produce abortions;[198] and some of their operations are inhuman or
obscene and abominable. They attempt baleful sorcery or the transfer of
disease from one person to another.[199] Osthanes and even Democritus
propound such remedies as drinking human blood or utilizing in magic
compounds and ceremonies parts of the corpses of men who have been
violently slain.[200] Pliny thinks that humanity owes a great debt to
the Roman government for abolishing those monstrous rites of human
sacrifice, “in which to slay a man was thought most pious; nay more, to
eat men was thought most wholesome.”[201]
[Sidenote: Pliny’s censure of magic is mainly intellectual.]
Pliny nevertheless lays less stress upon the moral argument against
magic as criminal or indecent than he does upon the intellectual
objection to it as untrue and unscientific. Indeed, so far as decency
is concerned, his own medicine will be seen to be far from prudish,
while he elsewhere gives instances of magicians guarding against
defilement.[202] Moreover, among the methods employed and the results
sought by magic which he frequently mentions there are comparatively
few that are morally objectionable, although they seem without
exception false. But many of their recipes aim at the cure of disease
and other worthy, or at least admissible, objects. Possibly Pliny has
somewhat censored their lore and tried to exclude all criminal secrets,
but his censure seems more intellectual than moral. For instance, he
fills a long chapter with extracts from a treatise on the virtues of
the chameleon and its parts by Democritus, whom he regards as a leading
purveyor of magic lore.[203] In opening the chapter Pliny hails “with
great pleasure” the opportunity to expose “the lies of Greek vanity,”
but at its close he expresses a wish that Democritus himself had been
touched with the branch of a palm which he said prevents immoderate
loquacity. Pliny then adds more charitably, “It is evident that this
man, who in other respects was a wise and most useful member of
society, has erred from too great zeal in serving humanity.”
[Sidenote: Vagueness of Pliny’s scepticism.]
Pliny himself fails to maintain a consistently sceptical attitude
towards magic. His exact attitude is often hard to determine. Often it
is difficult to say whether he is speaking in sober earnest or in a
tone of light and easy pleasantry and sarcasm, as in the passage just
cited concerning Democritus. Another puzzling point is his frequent
excuse that he will list certain assertions of the magicians in order
to expose or confute them. But really he usually simply sets them
forth, apparently expecting that their inherent and patent absurdity
will prove a sufficient refutation of them. On the rare occasions
when he undertakes to indicate in what the absurdity consists his
reasoning is scarcely scientific or convincing. Thus he affirms that
“it is a peculiar proof of the vanity of the magicians that of all
animals they most admire moles who are condemned by nature in so
many ways, to perpetual blindness and to dig in the darkness as if
they were buried.”[204] And he assails the belief of the _magi_[205]
that an owl’s egg is good for diseases of the scalp by asking, “Who,
I beg, could ever have seen an owl’s egg, since it is a prodigy to
see the bird itself?” Moreover, he sometimes cites assertions of the
magicians without any censure, apology, or expression of disbelief;
and there are many other passages where it is practically impossible
to tell whether he is citing the magicians or not. Sometimes he will
apparently continue to refer to them by a pronoun in chapters where
they have not been mentioned by name at all.[206] In other places he
will imperceptibly cease to quote the _magi_ and after an interval
perhaps as imperceptibly resume citation of their doctrines.[207] It
is also difficult to determine just when writers like Democritus and
Pythagoras are to be regarded as representatives of magic and when
their statements are accepted by Pliny as those of sound philosophers.
[Sidenote: Magic and science indistinguishable.]
Perhaps, despite Pliny’s occasional brave efforts to withstand and even
ridicule the assertions of the magicians, he could not free himself
from a secret liking for them and more than half believed them. At
any rate he believed very similar things. Even more likely is it that
previous works on nature were so full of such material and the readers
of his own day so interested in it, that he could not but include
much of it. Once he explains[208] that certain statements are scarcely
to be taken seriously, yet should not be omitted, because they have
been transmitted from the past. Again he begs the reader’s indulgence
for similar “vanities of the Greeks,” “because this too has its value
that we should know whatever marvels they have transmitted.”[209] The
truth of the matter probably is that Pliny rejected some assertions of
the magicians but found others acceptable; that he gets his occasional
attitude of scepticism and ridicule of their doctrines from one set
of authorities, and his moments of unquestioning acceptance of their
statements from other authors on whom he relies. Very likely in the
books which he used it often was no clearer than it is in the _Natural
History_ whether a statement was to be ascribed to the _magi_ or not.
Very possibly Pliny was as confused in his own mind concerning the
entire business as he seems to be to us. He could no more keep magic
out of his _Natural History_ than poor Mr. Dick could keep Charles the
First’s head out of his book. One fact at any rate stands out clearly,
the prominence of magic in his encyclopedia and in the learning of his
age.
IV. _The Science of the Magi_
[Sidenote: Magicians as investigators of nature.]
Let us now further examine Pliny’s picture of magic, not as he
expressly defines or censures it, but as he reflects its own assertions
and purposes in his fairly numerous citations from its literature and
perhaps its practice. Here I shall rather strictly limit my survey
to those statements which Pliny definitely ascribes by name to the
_magi_ or magic art. The most striking fact is that the magicians are
cited again and again concerning the supposed properties, virtues, and
effects of things in nature—herbs, animals, and stones. These virtues
are, it is true, often employed in an effort to produce wonderful
results, and often too they are combined with some fantastic rite or
superstitious ceremonial performed by a human agent. But in many cases
either no rite at all is suggested or merely some simple medicinal
application; and in a few cases there is no mention of any particular
operation or result, the magicians are cited simply as authorities
concerning the great but unspecified virtues of natural objects.
Indeed, they stand out in Pliny’s pages not as mere sorcerers or
enchanters or wonder-workers, but as those who have gone the farthest
and in most detail—too far and too curiously in Pliny’s opinion—into
the study of medicine and of nature. Sometimes their statements,
cited without censure, supplement others concerning the species under
discussion;[210] sometimes they are his sole source of information on
the subject in hand.[211]
[Sidenote: The _magi_ on herbs.]
Pliny connects the origin of botany rather closely with magic,
mentioning Medea and Circe as early investigators of plants and Orpheus
among the first writers on the subject.[212] Moreover, Pythagoras and
Democritus borrowed from the _magi_ of the orient in their works on the
properties of plants.[213] There would be little profit in repeating
the names of the herbs concerning which Pliny gives opinions of the
magicians, inasmuch as few of them can be associated with any plants
known to-day.[214] Suffice it to say that Pliny makes no objection to
the herbs which they employed. Nor does he criticize their methods of
employing them, although some seem superstitious enough to the modern
reader. A chaplet is worn of one herb,[215] others are plucked with the
left hand and with a statement of what they are to be used for, and in
one case without looking backward.[216] The anemone is to be plucked
when it first appears that year with a statement of its intended use,
and then is to be wrapped in a red cloth and kept in the shade, and,
whenever anyone falls sick of tertian or quartan fever, is to be bound
on the patient’s body.[217] The heliotrope is not to be plucked at all
but tied in three or four knots with a prayer that the patient may
recover to untie the knots.[218]
[Sidenote: Marvelous virtues of herbs.]
Pliny does not even object to the marvelous results which the
_magi_ think can be gained by use of herbs until towards the close
of his twenty-fourth book, although already in his twentieth and
twenty-first books such powers have been claimed for herbs as to
make one well-favored and enable one to attain one’s desires,[219]
or to give one grace and glory.[220] At the end of his twenty-fourth
book[221] he states that Pythagoras and Democritus, following the
_magi_, ascribe to herbs unusually marvelous virtues such as to freeze
water, invoke spirits, force the guilty to confess by frightening them
with apparitions, and impart the gift of divination. Early in his
twenty-fifth book[222] Pliny suggests that some incredible effects have
been attributed to herbs by the _magi_ and their disciples, and in a
later chapter[223] he describes the _magi_ as so mad about vervain
that they think that if they are anointed with it, they can gain their
wishes, drive away fevers and other diseases, and make friendships. The
herb should be plucked about the rising of the dog-star when there is
neither sun nor moon. Honey and honeycomb should be offered to appease
the earth; then the plant should be dug around with iron with the left
hand and raised aloft. By the time he reaches his twenty-sixth book
Pliny’s courage has risen, so to speak, enough to cause him at last to
enter upon quite a tirade against “magical vanities which have been
carried so far that they might destroy faith in herbs entirely.”[224]
As examples he mentions herbs supposed to dry up rivers and swamps,
open barred doors at their touch, turn hostile armies to flight, and
supply all the needs of the ambassadors of the Persian kings. He
wonders why such herbs have never been employed in Roman warfare or
Italian drainage. Pliny’s only objection to magic herbs therefore
seems to be the excessive powers which are claimed for some of them.
He adds that it would be strange that the credulity which arose from
such wholesome beginnings had reached such a pitch, if human ingenuity
observed moderation in anything and if the much more recent system of
medicine which Asclepiades founded could not be shown to have been
carried even beyond the magicians. Here again we see Pliny failing
to recognize magic as a primitive social product and regarding it
as a degeneration from ancient science rather than science as a
comparatively modern development from it. But he may well be right in
thinking that many particular far-fetched recipes and rites were the
late, artificial product of over-scholarly magicians. Thus he brands as
false and magical the assertion of a recent grammarian, Apion, that the
herb cynocephalia is divine and a safeguard against poison, but kills
the man who uproots it entirely.[225]
[Sidenote: Animals and parts of animals.]
In a few cases Pliny objects to the animals or parts of animals
employed by the _magi_, as in the passage already cited where he
complains that they admire moles more than any other animals.[226] But
his assertion is inconsistent, since he has already affirmed that they
hold the hyena in most admiration of all animals on the ground that it
works magic upon men.[227] Their promise of readier favor with peoples
and kings to those who anoint themselves with lion’s fat, especially
that between the eyebrows, he criticizes by declaring that no fat
can be found there.[228] He also twits the _magi_ for magnifying the
importance of so nasty a creature as the tick.[229] They are attracted
to it by the fact that it has no outlet to its body and can live
only seven days even if it fasts. Whether there is any astrological
significance in the number seven here Pliny does not say. He does
inform us, however, that the cricket is employed in magic because it
moves backward.[230] A very bizarre object employed by the Druids
and other magicians is a sort of egg produced by the hissing or foam
of snakes.[231] The blood of the basilisk may also be classed as a
rarity. Apparently animals in some way unusual are preferred in magic,
like a black sheep,[232] but the logic in the reasons given by Pliny
for their selection is not clear in every instance. In some other cases
not criticized by Pliny[233] we have plainly enough sympathetic magic
or the principle of like cures like, as when the milt of a calf or
sheep is used to cure diseases of the human spleen.
[Sidenote: Further instances.]
The magicians, however, do not scorn to use familiar and easily
obtainable animals like the goat and dog and cat. The liver and dung
of a cat, a puppy’s brains, the blood and genitals of a dog, and the
gall of a black male dog are among the animal substances employed.[234]
Such substances as those just named are equally in demand from other
animals.[235] Minute parts of animals are frequently employed by the
magicians, such as the toe of an owl, the liver of a mouse given in
a fig, the tooth of a live mole, the stones from young swallows’
gizzards, the eyes of river crabs.[236] Sometimes the part employed
is reduced to ashes, perhaps a relic of sacrificial custom. Thus for
toothache the _magi_ inject into the ear nearer the tooth the ashes
of the head of a mad dog and oil of Cyprus, while they prescribe for
affections of the sinews the ashes of an owl’s head in honied wine
with lily root.[237] Other living creatures which Pliny mentions as
used by the _magi_ are the salamander, earthworm, bat, scarab with
reflex horns, lizard, tortoise, bed-bug, frog, and sea-urchin.[238] The
dragon’s tail wrapped in a gazelle’s skin and bound on with deer-sinews
cures epilepsy,[239] and a mixture of the dragon’s tongue, eyes, gall,
and intestines, boiled in oil, cooled in the night air, and rubbed on
morning and evening, frees one from nocturnal apparitions.[240]
[Sidenote: Magic rites with animals and parts of animals.]
Sometimes the parts of animals are bound on outside the patient’s
body, sometimes the injured portion of his body is merely touched
with them. Once the whole house is to be fumigated with the substance
in question;[241] once the walls are to be sprinkled with it; once it
is to be buried under the threshold. Some instances follow of more
elaborate magic ritual connected with the use of animals or parts of
animals. The hyena is more easily captured by a hunter who ties seven
knots in his girdle and horsewhip, and it should be captured when
the moon is in the sign of Gemini and without the loss of a single
hair.[242] Another bit of astrology dispensed by the _magi_ is that the
cat, whose salted liver is taken with wine for quartan fever, should
have been killed under a waning moon.[243] To cure incontinence of
urine one not only drinks ashes of a boar’s genitals in sweet wine, but
afterwards urinates in a dog kennel and repeats the formula, “That I
may not urinate like a dog in its kennel.”[244] The magicians insist
that the sex of the patient be observed in administering burnt cow-dung
or bull-dung in honied wine for cases of dropsy.[245] For infantile
ailments the brains of a she-goat should be passed through a gold ring
and dropped in the baby’s mouth before it is given its milk.[246] After
the fresh milt of a sheep has been applied to the patient with the
words, “This I do for the cure of the spleen,” it should be plastered
into the bedroom wall and sealed with a ring, while the charm should
be repeated twenty-seven times.[247] In treating sciatica[248] an
earthworm should be placed in a broken wooden dish mended with an
iron band, the dish should be filled with water, the worm should
be buried again where it was dug up, and the water should be drunk
by the patient. The eyes of river crabs are to be attached to the
patient’s person before sunrise and the blinded crabs put back into the
water.[249] After it has been carried around the house thrice a bat may
be nailed head down outside a window as an amulet.[250] For epilepsy
goat’s flesh should be given which has been roasted on a funeral pyre,
and the animal’s gall should not be allowed to touch the ground.[251]
[Sidenote: Marvels wrought with parts of animals.]
Pliny occasionally speaks in a vague general way of his citations
from the _magi_ concerning the virtues of parts of animals as lies
or nonsense or “portentous,” but he does not specifically criticize
their procedure any more than he did their methods of employing herbs,
and he does not criticize their promised results as much as he did
before. Indeed, as we have already indicated, the object in a majority
of cases is purely medicinal. The purpose of others is pastoral or
agricultural, such as preventing goats from straying or causing swine
to follow you.[252] The blood of the basilisk, however, is said to
procure answers to petitions made to the powerful and prayers addressed
to the gods, and to act as a safeguard against poison or sorcery
(_veneficiorum amuleta_).[253] Invincibility is promised the wearer of
the head and tail of a dragon, hairs from a lion’s forehead, a lion’s
marrow, the foam of a winning horse, a dog’s claw bound in deer-skin,
and the muscles alternately of a deer and a gazelle.[254] A woman will
tell secrets in her sleep if the heart of an owl is applied to her
right breast, and power of divination is gained by eating the still
palpitating heart of a mole.[255]
[Sidenote: The _magi_ on stones.]
In the case of stones the names are again, as in the case of herbs, of
little significance for us.[256] The accompanying ritual is slight.
There are one or two suspensions from the neck or elsewhere by such
means as a lion’s mane—the hair of the hyena will not do at all—nor
the hair of the cynocephalus and swallows’ feathers.[257] There is
some use of incantations with the stones, a setting of iron for one
stone, burial of another beneath a tree that it may not dull the axe,
and placing another on the tongue after rinsing the mouth with honey
at certain days and hours of the moon in order to acquire the gift
of divination.[258] Indeed, the results promised are all marvelous.
The stones benefit public speakers, admit to the presence of royalty,
counteract fascination and sorcery, avert hail, thunderbolts, storms,
locusts, and scorpions; chill boiling water, produce family discord,
render athletes invincible, quench anger and violence, make one
invisible, evoke images of the gods and shades from the infernal
regions.
[Sidenote: Other magical recipes.]
We have yet to mention a group of magical recipes and remedies which
Pliny for some reason collects in one chapter[259] but which hardly
fall under any one head. A whetstone on which iron tools are sharpened,
if placed without his knowledge under the pillow of a man who has been
poisoned, will cause him to reveal all the circumstances of the crime.
If you turn a man who has been struck by lightning over on his injured
side, he will speak at once. To cure tumors in the groin, tie seven
or nine knots in the remnant of a weaver’s web, naming some widow as
each knot is tied. The pain is assuaged by binding to the body the nail
that has been trod on. To get rid of warts, on the twentieth day of the
moon lie flat in a path gazing at the moon, stretch the hands above the
head and rub the warts with anything that comes to hand. A corn may
be extracted successfully at the moment a star shoots. Headache may
be relieved by a liniment made by pouring vinegar on door hinges or
by binding a hangman’s noose about the patient’s temples. To dislodge
a fish-bone stuck in the throat, plunge the feet into cold water; to
dislodge some other sort of bone, place bones on the head; to dislodge
a morsel of bread, stuff bits of bread into both ears. We may add from
a neighboring chapter a very magical remedy for fevers, although Pliny
calls it “the most modest of their promises.”[260] Toe and finger
nail parings mixed with wax are to be attached ere sunrise to another
person’s door in order to transfer the disease from the patient to him.
Or they may be placed near an ant-hill, in which case the first ant who
tries to drag one inside the hill should be captured and suspended
from the patient’s neck.
[Sidenote: Summary of the statements of the _magi_.]
Such is the picture we derive from numerous passages in the _Natural
History_ of the magic art, its materials and rites, the effects it
seeks to produce, and its general attitude towards nature. Besides
the natural materials employed and the marvelous results sought, we
have noted the frequent use of ligatures, suspensions, and amulets,
the observance of astrological conditions, of certain times and
numbers, rules for plucking herbs and tying knots, stress on the use
of the right or left hand—in other words, on position or direction,
some employment of incantations, some sacrifice and fumigation, some
specimens of sympathetic magic, of the theory that “like cures like,”
and of other types of magic logic.
V. _Pliny’s Magical Science_
[Sidenote: From the _magi_ to Pliny’s magic.]
We may now turn to the still more numerous passages of the _Natural
History_ where the _magi_ are not cited and compare the virtues there
ascribed to the things of nature and the methods employed in medicine
and agriculture with those of the magicians. We shall find many
striking resemblances and shall soon come to a realization that there
is more magic in the _Natural History_ which is not attributed to
the _magi_ than there is that is. Pliny did not need to warn us that
medicine had been corrupted by magic; his own medicine proves it. It
is this fact, that virtually his entire work is crammed with marvelous
properties and fantastic ceremonial, which makes it so difficult in
some places to tell when he begins to draw material from the _magi_ and
when he leaves off. By a detailed analysis of this remaining material
we shall now attempt to classify the substances of which Pliny makes
use and the virtues which he ascribes to them, the rites and methods
of procedure by which they are employed, and certain superstitious
doctrines and notions which are involved. We shall thus find that
almost precisely the same factors are present in his science as in the
lore of the magicians.
[Sidenote: Habits of animals.]
Of substances we may begin with animals,[261] and, before we note the
human use of their virtues with its strong suggestion of magic, may
remark another unscientific and superstitious feature which was very
common both in ancient and medieval times. This is the tendency to
humanize animals, ascribing to them conscious motives, habits, and
ruses, or even moral standards and religious veneration. We shall have
occasion to note the same thing in other authors and so will give but
a few specimens from the many in the _Natural History_. Such qualities
are attributed by Pliny especially to elephants, whom he ranks next to
man in intelligence, and whom he represents as worshiping the stars,
learning difficult tricks, and as having a sense of justice, feeling
of mercy, and so on.[262] Similarly the lion has noble courage and a
sense of gratitude, while the lioness is wily in the devices by which
she conceals her amours with the pard.[263] A number of the devices
of fishes to escape hooks and nets are repeated by Pliny from Ovid’s
_Halieuticon_, extant only in fragments.[264] The crocodile opens
its jaws to have its teeth picked by a friendly bird; but sometimes
while this operation is being performed the ichneumon “darts down its
throat like a javelin and eats away its intestines.”[265] Pliny also
marvels at the cleverness displayed by the dragon and the elephant in
their combats with one another,[266] which, however, almost invariably
terminate fatally to both combatants, the elephant falling exhausted in
the dragon’s coils and crushing the serpent by its weight. Others say
that in the hot summer the dragons thirst for the blood of the elephant
which is very cold; in their combat the elephant falls drained of its
blood and crushes the dragon who is intoxicated by the same.
[Sidenote: Remedies discovered by animals.]
The dragon’s apparent knowledge that the elephant is cold-blooded
leads us to a kindred topic, the remedies used by animals and often
discovered by men only by seeing animals use them. This notion
continued in the middle ages, as we shall see, and of course it did not
originate with Pliny. As he says himself, “The ancients have recorded
the remedies of wild beasts and shown how they are healed even when
poisoned.”[267] Against aconite the scorpion eats white hellebore as
an antidote, while the panther employs human excrement.[268] Animals
prepare themselves for combats with poisonous snakes by eating certain
herbs; the weasel eats rue, the tortoise and deer use two other plants,
while field mice who have been stung by snakes eat _condrion_.[269]
The hawk tears open the hawkweed and sprinkles its eyes with the
juice.[270] The serpent tastes fennel when it sheds its old skin.[271]
Sick bears cure themselves by a diet of ants.[272] Swallows restore
the sight of their young with chelidonia or swallow-wort,[273] and the
historian Xanthus says that the dragon restores its dead offspring
to life with an herb called _balis_.[274] The hippopotamus was the
original discoverer of bleeding,[275] opening a vein in his leg by
wounding himself on sharp reeds along the shore, and afterwards
checking the flow of blood by plastering the place with mud.[276]
Pliny, however, states in one passage that animals hit upon all these
remedies by chance and even have to rediscover them by accident in
each new case, “since,” he continues in conformity with recent animal
psychologists, “reason and practice cannot be transmitted between wild
beasts.”[277]
[Sidenote: Jealousy of animals.]
Yet in another passage Pliny deplores the spitefulness of the dog
which, while men are looking, will not pluck the herb by which it
cures itself of snake-bite.[278] Probably Pliny is using different
authorities in the two passages. Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle,
had written a work on _Jealous Animals_. More excusable than the
spitefulness of the dog is the attitude of the dragon, from whose
brain the gem _draconitis_ must be taken while the dragon is alive and
preferably asleep. For if the dragon feels that it is mortally wounded,
it takes revenge by spoiling the gem.[279] Elephants know that men hunt
them only for their tusks, and so bury these when they fall off.[280]
[Sidenote: Occult virtues of animals.]
Animals have marvelous virtues of their own other than the medicinal
uses to which men have put them. For instance, the mere glance of
the basilisk is fatal, and its breath burns up vegetation and breaks
rocks.[281] But the medicinal effects which Pliny ascribes to animals
and parts of animals are well nigh infinite. Many animal substances
will have to be introduced in other connections so that we need
mention now but a very few: the heads and blood of flies, honey in
which bees have died, _cinere genitalis asini_, chicks in the egg,
and thrice seven centipedes diluted with Attic honey,[282]—this last
a prescription for asthma and to be taken through a reed because it
blackens every dish by its contact. Another passage advises eating
a rat or shrew-mouse in order to bear a baby with black eyes.[283]
These items are enough to convince us that the animals and parts of
animals employed by the magicians were not one whit more bizarre and
nauseating than the others found in the _Natural History_, nor were the
cures which they were expected to work any more improbable. In order
to illustrate, however, the delicate distinctions which were imagined
to exist not only between the virtues of different parts of the same
animal, but also between slightly varied uses of the same part, we may
note that scales scraped from the topmost part of a tortoise’s shell
and administered in drink check sexual desire, considering which, it
is, as Pliny remarks, the more marvelous that a powder made of the
entire shell is reported to arouse lust.[284] But love turns readily to
hatred in magic as well as in romance, and it is nothing very unusual,
as we shall find in other authors, for the same thing on slight
provocation to work in exactly opposite ways.
[Sidenote: The virtues of herbs.]
Pig grease, Pliny somewhere informs us, possesses especially strong
virtue, “because that animal feeds on the roots of herbs.”[285] From
the virtues of animals, therefore, let us turn to those of herbs.[286]
Pliny met on every hand assertion of their wonderful powers. The
empire-builders of Rome employed the sacred herbs _sagmina_ and
_verbenae_ in their embassies and legations. The Gauls, too, use the
verbena in lot-casting and prophetic responses.[287] Pliny also states
more sceptically that there is another root which diviners take in
drink in order to feign inspiration.[288] The Scythians know of a plant
which prevents hunger and thirst if held in the mouth, and of another
which has the same effect upon their horses, so that they can go for
twelve days without meat or drink,[289]—an exaggerated estimate of
the hardihood of the mounted Asiatic nomads and their steeds. Musaeus
and Hesiod say that one anointed with _polion_ will attain fame and
dignities.[290]
Pliny perhaps did not intend to subscribe fully to such statements,
although he cannot be said to call many of them into question. He did
complain that some writers had asserted incredible powers of herbs,
such as to restore dragons or men to life or withdraw wedges from
trees,[291] yet he seems on the whole in sympathy with the opinion of
the majority that there is practically nothing which the force of herbs
cannot accomplish. Herophilus, illustrious in medicine, had said that
certain herbs were beneficial if merely trod upon, and Pliny himself
says the same of more than one plant. He tells us further that binding
the wild fig tree about their necks makes the fiercest bulls stand
immobile;[292] that another plant subjects fractious beasts of burden
to the yoke;[293] while cows who eat _buprestis_ burst asunder.[294]
Another herb _contacto genitali_ kills any female animal.[295] Betony
is considered an amulet for houses,[296] and fishermen in Pliny’s
neighborhood mix a plant with chalk and scatter it on the waves.[297]
“The fish dart towards it with marvelous desire and straightway float
lifeless on the surface.” Dogs will not bark at persons carrying
_peristereos_.[298] The “impious plant” prevents any human being who
tastes it from having quinsy, while swine are sure to have that disease
if they do not eat it. Some place it in birds’ nests to prevent the
voracious nestlings from strangling. Bitter almonds provide another
amusing combination of effects. Eating five of them permits one to
drink without experiencing intoxication, but if foxes eat them they
will die unless they find water near by to drink.[299] There are some
herbs which have a medicinal effect, if one merely looks at them.[300]
In two cases the masculine or feminine variety of a herb is used to
secure the birth of a child of the desired sex.[301]
[Sidenote: Plucking herbs.]
That the plucking of herbs and digging up of roots was a process very
apt to be attended by magical procedure we find abundant evidence
in the _Natural History_. Often plants should be plucked before
sunrise.[302] Twice Pliny tells us that the peony should be uprooted
by night lest the woodpecker of Mars try to pick the digger’s eyes
out.[303] The state of the moon is another point to be observed,[304]
and once an herb is to be gathered before thunder is heard.[305] A
common instruction is to pick the plant with the left hand,[306] and
once with the thumb and fourth finger of the left hand.[307] Once
the right hand should be stretched covertly after the fashion of a
pickpocket through the left sleeve in order to pluck the plant.[308]
Sometimes one faces east in plucking herbs; sometimes, west; again one
is careful not to face the wind.[309] Sometimes the gatherer must not
glance behind him. Sometimes he must fast before he takes the plant
from the ground;[310] again he must observe a state of chastity.[311]
Sometimes he should be barefoot and clothed in white; again he should
remove every stitch of clothing and even his rings.[312] Sometimes the
use of iron implements is forbidden; again gold or some other material
is prescribed;[313] once the herb is to be dug with a nail.[314]
Sometimes circles are traced about the plant with the point of a
sword.[315] Often the plant must not touch the ground again after it is
picked,[316] presumably from a fear that its virtue would run off like
an electric current. Pliny alludes at least three times[317] to the
practice of herbalists of retaining portions of the herbs they sell,
and then, if they are not paid in full, replanting the herb in the same
spot with the idea that thereby the disease will return to plague the
delinquent patient. Frequently one is directed to state why one plucks
the herb or for whom it is intended.[318] In one case the digger says,
“This is the herb Argemon which Minerva discovered was a remedy for
swine who taste it.”[319] In another case one should salute the plant
and extract its juice before saying a word; thus its virtue will be
much greater.[320] In other cases, as an offering to appease the earth,
the soil about the plant is soaked with hydromel three months before
plucking it, or the hole left by pulling it up is filled with different
kinds of grain.[321] Sometimes one sacrifices beforehand with bread
and wine or prays to the gods for permission to gather the herb.[322]
The customs of the Druids in gathering herbs are mentioned more than
once.[323] In gathering the sacred mistletoe on the sixth day of the
moon they hold sacrifices and a banquet beneath the tree.[324] Two
white bulls are the victims; a priest clad in white cuts the mistletoe
with a golden sickle and receives it in a white cloak.[325]
[Sidenote: Agricultural magic.]
To Pliny’s discussion of herbs we may append some specimens of the
employment of magic procedure in agriculture and of the superstitions
of the peasantry in which his pages abound. To guard against diseases
of grain the seeds before planting should be steeped in wine, the
juice of a certain herb, the gall of a cow, or human urine, or should
be touched with the shoulders of a mole[326]—the animal whose use
by the _magi_ we heard Pliny ridicule. One should sow at the moon’s
conjunction. Before the field is hoed, a frog should be carried around
it and then buried in the center in an earthen vessel. But it should be
disinterred before harvest lest the millet be bitter. Birds may be kept
away from the grain by planting in the four corners of the field an
herb whose name is unfortunately unknown to Pliny.[327] Mice are kept
out by the ashes of a weasel, mildew by laurel branches, caterpillars
by placing the skull of a female beast of burden upon a stick in the
garden.[328] To ward off fogs and storms from orchards and vineyards
a frog may be buried as directed above, or live crabs may be burnt
in the trees, or a painted grape may be consecrated.[329] Suspending
a frog in the granary preserves the corn stored there.[330] To keep
wolves away catch one, break its legs, attach it to the ploughshare,
and thus scatter its blood about the boundaries of the field; then bury
the carcass at the starting-point.[331] Or consecrate at the altar of
the Lar the ploughshare with which the first furrow was traced. Foxes
will not touch poultry who have eaten the dried liver of a fox or who
wear a bit of its skin about their necks. Fern will not spring up again
if it is mowed with the edge of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare
upon which a reed has been placed.[332] Of the use of incantations in
agriculture we shall treat later.
[Sidenote: Virtues of stones.]
Pliny appears to have much less faith in the possession of marvelous
virtues by gems than by herbs and parts of animals. He not only
characterizes the powers attributed to gems by the _magi_ and
Democritus and Pythagoras as “terrible lies” and “unspeakable
nonsense”;[333] but refrains from mentioning many such himself or
inserts a cautious “if we believe it” or “if they tell the truth.”[334]
Of the gem supposed to be produced from the urine of the lynx he
says, “I think that this is quite false and no gem of that name has
been seen in our time. What is stated concerning its medicinal virtue
is also false.”[335] To other stones, however, he ascribes various
medicinal virtues, either when taken pulverized in drink or when worn
as amulets.[336] A few other occult properties are stated without
reservation, as that _amiantus_ resists all sorceries,[337] that
adamant expels idle fears from the mind, that _sideritis_ produces
discord and litigation, and that _eumeces_, placed beneath one’s pillow
at night, causes oracular visions.[338] Magnets are said to differ
in sex, and the belief of Theophrastus and Mucianus is repeated that
certain stones bear offspring.[339]
[Sidenote: Other minerals and metals.]
Of the metals iron sometimes figures in Pliny’s magical procedure, as
when he either prescribes or taboos the use of it in cutting herbs or
killing animals. In Arcadia the yew-tree is a fatal poison to persons
sleeping beneath it, but driving a copper nail into the tree makes
it harmless.[340] Pliny says that gold is medicinal in many ways
and in particular is applied to wounded persons and to infants as a
safeguard against witchcraft.[341] Earth itself is often used to work
marvels, but usually some particular portion, such as that between
cart ruts or that thrown up by ants, beetles, and moles, or in the
right footprint where one first heard a cuckoo sing.[342] However,
the rule that an object should not touch the ground is enforced in
many other connections[343] than the plucking of herbs, and Pliny
twice states that the earth will not permit a serpent who has stung
a human being to re-enter its hole.[344] In his discussion of metals
Pliny does not allude to transmutation or alchemy, unless it be in his
accounts of various fraudulent practices of workers in metal and how
Caligula extracted gold from orpiment. But the following directions
for preparing antimony show how closely akin to magic the procedure
in ancient metallurgy might be. The antimony should be coated with
cow-flap and burnt in furnaces, then quenched in woman’s milk and
pounded in mortars with an admixture of rain-water.[345]
[Sidenote: Virtues of human parts.]
Various parts and products of the human body are credited with
remarkable virtues as the mention just made of woman’s milk suggests.
Other passages recommend more especially the milk of a woman just
delivered of a male child, but most of all that of the mother
of twins.[346] _Sed nihil facile reperiatur mulierum profluvio
magis monstrificum_, as Pliny proceeds to illustrate by numerous
examples.[347] Great virtues are also attributed to the urine,
particularly of a chaste boy.[348] A few other instances of remedies
drawn from the human body are ear-wax or a powdered tooth against
stings of scorpions and bites of snakes,[349] a man’s hair for the bite
of a dog, the first hairs from a boy’s head for gout.[350] Diseases
of women are prevented by wearing constantly in a bracelet the first
tooth a boy loses, provided it has not touched the ground. Simply tying
two fingers or toes together is recommended for tumors in the groin,
catarrh, and sore eyes.[351] Or the eyes may be touched thrice with
water in which the feet have been washed. Scrofula and throat diseases
may be cured by the touch of the hand of one who has died an early
death, although some authorities do not insist upon the circumstance
of early death but direct that the corpse be of the same sex as the
patient and that the diseased spot be touched with the back of the left
dead hand.
[Sidenote: Virtues of human saliva.]
Of all fluids and excretions of the human body the saliva is
perhaps used most often in ancient and medieval medicine, as the
custom of spitting once or thrice in administering other remedies
or performing ceremonies goes to prove. The spittle of a fasting
person is the more efficacious. In a chapter devoted particularly to
the properties of human saliva Pliny lists many diseases and woes
which it alleviates.[352] In this connection he makes the following
absurd assertion which he nevertheless declares is easily tested by
experiment. “If a person repents of a blow given from a distance or
hand-to-hand, let him spit into the palm of the hand with which he
struck, and the person who has been struck will feel no resentment.
This is often proved by beasts of burden who are induced to mend their
pace by this method after the use of the whip has failed.” Pliny
adds, however, that some persons try to increase the force of their
blows by thus spitting on the hands beforehand. He also mentions as
counter-charms against sorcery the practices of spitting into one’s
urine or right shoe, or when crossing a dangerous spot.
[Sidenote: The human operator.]
The importance of the human operator as a factor in the performance
of marvels, be they medical or magical, is attested by the frequent
injunctions of chastity, virginity, nudity, or a state of fasting
upon persons concerned in Pliny’s procedure. Sometimes they are not
to glance behind them, sometimes they are to speak to no one during
the operation. Pliny also mentions men who have a special capacity for
wonder-working, such as Pyrrhus, the touch of whose toe had healing
power,[353] those whose eyes exert strong fascination, whole tribes
of serpent-charmers and venom-curers, and others whose mere presence
addles the eggs beneath a setting hen.[354] The power of words spoken
by men will be considered separately under the head of incantations.
[Sidenote: Absence of medical compounds.]
While Pliny attributes the most extreme medicinal virtues to simples,
he excludes from his _Natural History_ the strange and elaborate
compounds which were nevertheless so popular in the pharmacy of his
age. Of one simple, _laser_, he says that it would be an immense
task to attempt to list all the uses that it is supposed to have
in compounds.[355] His position is that the simple remedies alone
are the direct work of nature, while the mixtures, tablets, pills,
plasters, washes are artificial inventions of the apothecaries. Once
when he describes a compound called “Hermesias” which aids in the
generation of good and beautiful children, it seems to be borrowed
by Democritus from the _magi_.[356] Furthermore, Pliny thinks that
health can be sufficiently preserved or restored by nature’s simple
remedies. Compounds are the invention of human conjecture, avarice,
and impudence. Such conjecture is often false, not sufficiently taking
into account the natural sympathies and antipathies of the numerous
ingredients. Often compounds are inexplicable. Pliny also deplores
resort to imported drugs from India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, when
there are homely remedies at hand for the poorest man.[357]
[Sidenote: Sympathetic magic.]
We have just heard Pliny refer to the sympathies and antipathies
of natural simples, and he often explains the marvelous effects of
natural objects upon one another by this relation of love and hatred,
friendship or repugnance, discord or concord which exists between them,
which the Greeks call sympathy or antipathy, and which Heracleitus was
perhaps the first philosopher to insist upon.[358] Some modern students
of magic have tried to account for all magic on this theory, and Pliny
states that medicine and medicines originated from it.[359]
[Sidenote: Antipathies between animals.]
This relationship exists between animals,—deer and snakes, for
example. So great a force is it that stags track snakes to their
holes and extract them thence despite all resistance by the power
of their breath. This antipathy continues after death, for the
sovereign remedy for snake-bite is the rennet of a fawn killed in its
mother’s womb, while serpents flee from a man who wears the tooth of
a deer. But antipathy may change to sympathy, for Pliny adds that
in some cases certain parts of deer treated in certain ways attract
serpents.[360] This force of antipathy is indeed capable of taking
the strangest turn. Bed-bugs, foul and disgusting as they are, heal
the bite of snakes, especially asps, and sows can eat the poisonous
salamander.[361] The antipathy between goats and snakes would seem
almost as potent as that between deer and snakes,[362] since we are
told that snake-bitten persons recover more quickly, if they frequent
the stalls where goats are kept or wear as an amulet the paunch of a
she-goat.
[Sidenote: Love and hatred between inanimate objects.]
There is also “the hatred and friendship of deaf and insensible
things.”[363] Instances are the magnet’s attraction for iron and the
fact that adamant can be broken only by the blood of a he-goat, two
stock examples of occult influence and natural marvels which continued
classic in the medieval period.[364] Pliny indeed regards this last
as the clearest illustration possible of the potency of sympathy and
antipathy, since a substance which defies iron and fire, nature’s two
most violent agents, yields to the blood of a foul animal.[365]
[Sidenote: Sympathy between animate and inanimate objects.]
There is furthermore sympathy and antipathy between animate and
inanimate objects. So marvelous is the antipathy of the tamarisk tree
for the spleen alone of internal organs, that pigs who drink from
troughs of this wood are found when slaughtered to be without spleen,
and hence splenetic patients are fed from vessels of tamarisk.[366]
The spleenless pig, it may be interpolated, is another commonplace of
ancient and medieval science. Smearing the hives with cow dung kills
other insects but stimulates the bees who have an affinity for it
(_cognatum hoc iis_),[367] probably, although Pliny does not say so,
on the theory that they are spontaneously generated from it. That
the wild cabbage is hostile to dogs is evidenced by the statement of
Epicharmus that it cures the bite of a mad dog but kills a dog if he
eats it when given to him with meat.[368] Snakes hate the ash-tree
so, that if they are hemmed in by its foliage on one side and fire on
the other, they flee by preference into the flames.[369] Betony, too,
is so antipathetic to snakes that they lash themselves to death when
a circle of it is drawn about them.[370] Scorpions cannot survive in
the air of Sicily.[371] Perhaps antipathy is also the explanation of
Pliny’s absurd statement that loads of apples and pears, even if there
are only a few of them, are very heavy for beasts of burden.[372] Here,
however, the condition may be remedied and perhaps a relationship of
sympathy established by showing the beasts how few fruit there really
are or by giving them some to eat. That sympathy may even attach to
places or religious circumstances Pliny infers from the belief that the
priestess of the earth at Aegira, when about to descend into the cave
and predict, drinks without injury bull’s blood which is supposed to be
a fatal poison.[373]
[Sidenote: Like cures like.]
That like cures like, or more precisely and paradoxically that the
cause of the disease will cure its own result, is another notion which
Pliny’s medicine shares with magic. This is seen in the use of parts
of the mad dog to cure its bite,[374] or in rubbing thighs chafed by
horse-back riding with the foam from a horse’s mouth.[375] The bite of
the shrew-mouse, too, is best healed by imposition of the very animal
which bit you, but another shrew-mouse will do and they are kept ready
in oil and mud for this purpose.[376] The sting of the _phalangium_ may
be cured by merely looking at another insect of that species, whether
it be dead or alive.
From cases in which the cure for the disease is identical with its
cause it is but a short step to remedies similar to or in some way
associated with the ailment. It seems obvious to Pliny that stone in
the bladder can be broken by the herb on which grow what look exactly
like pearls. “In the case of no other herb is it so evident for what
medicine it is intended; its species is such that it can be recognized
at once by sight without book knowledge.”[377] Similarly _ophites_,
a marble with serpentine streaks, is used as an amulet against
snake-bite.[378] Mithridates discovered that the blood of Pontic
ducks should be mixed in antidotes because they live on poison.[379]
Heliotrope seed looks like a scorpion’s tail; if scorpions are touched
with a sprig of heliotrope they die, and they will not enter ground
which has been circumscribed by it.[380] To accelerate a woman’s
delivery her lover should take off his belt and gird her with it, then
untie it, saying that he has bound her and will unloose her, and then
he should go away.[381] An epileptic may be cured by driving an iron
nail into the spot where his head rested when he fell in the fit.[382]
[Sidenote: The principle of association.]
Other instances of association are when the remedy employed is
some part of an animal who is free from the disease in question or
marked by an opposite state of health. Goats and gazelles never have
ophthalmia, hence various portions of their bodies are prescribed for
eye diseases.[383] Eagles can gaze at the sun, therefore their gall is
efficacious in eye-salves.[384] The bird called ossifrage has a single
intestine which digests anything; the end of this intestine serves as
an amulet against colic, and indigestion may be cured by merely holding
the crop of the bird in one hand.[385] But do not hold it too long or
your flesh will waste away. The virus of mares is an ingredient in a
candle which makes heads of horses seem to appear when it burns;[386]
while ink of the _sepia_ is used in a candle which causes Ethiopians
to be seen when it is lighted.[387] These magic candles are borrowed
by Pliny from the works of Anaxilaus, and we shall find them a feature
of medieval collections of experiments. Earth from a cart-wheel rut
is thought a remedy against the bite of the shrew-mouse because that
creature is too torpid to cross such a rut;[388] and Pliny believes
that none of the virtues attributed to moles by the magicians is
more probable than that they are an antidote to the bite of the
shrew-mouse, which shuns even ruts, whereas moles burrow freely through
the soil.[389] Pliny finds incredible the assertion made by some that
a ship will move more slowly if it has the right foot of a tortoise
aboard,[390] but the logic of the magic seems evident enough.
[Sidenote: Magic transfer of disease.]
In Pliny’s medicine there are a number of examples of what may be
called magic transfer, in which the aim of the procedure is not to
cure the disease outright but to rid the patient of it by transferring
it from him to some other animal or object. Intestinal disease may be
transferred to puppies who have not yet opened their eyes by pressing
them to the body and giving them milk from the patient’s mouth. They
will die of the disease, when its cause and exact nature may be
determined by dissecting them. But finally they must be buried.[391]
Griping pains in the bowels will also pass to a duck that is held
against the abdomen. One may be rid of a cough by spitting in a frog’s
mouth or cure catarrh by kissing a mule,[392] although in these cases
we are left uninformed whether the disease passes to the animal. But if
a person who has been stung by a scorpion whispers the news in the ear
of an ass, the ill will be transferred to the ass.[393] A boil may be
removed by rubbing nine grains of barley around it, each grain thrice
with the left hand, and then throwing them all into the fire.[394]
Warts are banished by touching each with a grain of the chickpea and
then tying the grains up in a linen cloth and throwing them behind
one.[395] If a root of asphodel is applied to sores and then hung
up in smoke, the sores will dry up along with the root.[396] To cure
scrofulous sores some bind on as many earthworms as there are sores
and let them dry up together.[397] A tooth will cease aching if the
herb _erigeron_ is dug up with iron and the patient thrice alternately
touches the tooth with the root and spits, and if he then replaces
the herb in the same spot and it lives.[398] If this last is a case
of magic transfer, perhaps we may trace the same notion in some of
the numerous instances in which Pliny directs that an animal shall be
released alive after some part of it has been removed or some other
medicinal use made of it.
[Sidenote: Amulets.]
A common characteristic of magic force and occult virtue is that it
will often act at a distance or without any physical contact or direct
application. This is manifested in the practice of carrying or wearing
amulets, or, what is the same thing, of ligatures and suspensions, in
which objects are hung from the neck or bound to some part of the body
in order to ward off danger from without or cure internal disease.
Instances of such practices in the _Natural History_ are well nigh
innumerable. Roots are suspended from the neck by a thread;[399] the
tongue of a fox is worn in a bracelet;[400] for quinsy the throat
is wound thrice with a thong of dog-skin and catarrh is relieved by
winding the same about the fingers.[401] A tooth stops aching when
worms are taken from a certain prickly plant, put with some bread
in a pill-box, and bound to the arm on the same side of the body as
the aching tooth.[402] Two bed-bugs bound to the left arm in wool
stolen from shepherds are a charm against nocturnal fevers; against
diurnal fevers, if wrapped in russet cloth instead.[403] The heart
of a vulture is an amulet against snakes, wild beasts, robbers, and
royal wrath.[404] The traveler who carries the herb _artemisia_ feels
no fatigue.[405] Injurious drugs cannot cross one’s threshold and
do injury in one’s household, if a sea-star is smeared with the
blood of a fox and attached to the lintel or door-post with a copper
nail.[406] Not only is a wreath of herbs worn for headache,[407]
but a sprig of poplar held in the hand prevents chafing between the
thighs.[408] Often objects are placed under one’s pillow, especially
for insomnia,[409] but any psychological effect is precluded in the
case where this is to be done without the patient’s knowledge.[410] All
sorts of specifications are given as to the color and kind of string,
cloth, skin, box, nail, ring, bracelet, and the like in which should be
placed, or with which should be bound on, the various gems, herbs, and
parts of animals which serve as amulets. But when we are told that a
remedy for headache which always helps many consists of a little bone
from a snail found between two cart ruts, passed through gold, silver,
and ivory, and attached to the body with dog-skin; or that one may bind
on the head with a linen cloth the head of a snail decapitated with a
reed when feeding in the morning especially at full moon;[411] we feel
that we have passed beyond mere amulets, ligatures, and suspensions to
more elaborate minutiae of magic procedure.
[Sidenote: Position or direction.]
Position or direction is often an important matter in Pliny’s, as
in magic, ceremonial. It perhaps comes out most frequently in his
specification of right or left. An aching tooth should be scarified
with the left eye-tooth of a dog; a spider which is placed with oil
in the ear should be caught with the left hand;[412] epilepsy may be
cured if a virgin touches the sufferer with her right thumb;[413] for
ophthalmia of the right eye suspend the right eye of a frog from the
patient’s neck, and the left eye for the left eye;[414] for lumbago
tear off an eagle’s feet away from the joint, and use the right foot
for the right side and the left for pain in the left side.[415] But
we have met other examples already, and also cases of the use of the
upper or lower part of this or that according to the corresponding
location of an aching tooth in the upper or lower jaw.[416] Tracing
circles with and about objects, facing towards this or that point
of the compass, the prohibition against glancing behind one, and
the stress laid upon finding things or killing animals between the
ruts of cart wheels, are other examples of taking into consideration
position and direction which we have already met with incidentally
to the treatment of other topics. The prescription of a plant which
has grown on the head of a statue and of another which has taken root
in a sieve thrown into a hedge[417] also seem to take mere position
largely into account, more so than the accompanying recommendation of
an herb growing on the banks of a stream and of another growing upon a
dunghill.[418]
[Sidenote: The time element.]
The element of time is also important. Operations should be performed
before sunrise, early in the morning, at night, and so on. The moon is
especially regarded in such directions.[419] When we are informed that
sufferers from quartan fever should be rubbed all over with the fat of
a tortoise, we are also told that the tortoise will be fattest on the
fifteenth day of the moon and that the patient should be anointed on
the sixteenth.[420] But this waxing and waning of the tortoise with the
moon is primarily a matter of astrology and planetary influence, under
which heading we shall also later speak of Pliny’s observance of the
rising of the dog-star.
[Sidenote: Observance of number.]
Observance of number is another feature in Pliny’s ceremonial, of
which we have already met instances. He also alludes to the writings
of Pythagoras on the subject and ascribes to Democritus a work on the
number four. Pliny’s recipes frequently recommend that the operation be
thrice repeated. In the case of curing scrofula by the ashes of vipers
he prescribes three fingers thereof taken in drink for thrice seven
days.[421] In another application of a Gallic herb with old axle-grease
which has not touched iron, not only must the patient spit thrice to
the right, but the remedy is more efficacious if three men representing
three different nations anoint the right side with it.[422] The virtue
of the number one is not, however, entirely slighted. Importance is
attached to the death of a stag from a single wound.[423] Sometimes
three and one are joined in the same operation, as when child-birth is
aided by hurling through the house a stone or weapon by which three
animals, a man, a boar, and a bear, have been killed with single
blows. One of the discoveries of Pythagoras which seldom fails is that
an odd number of vowels in a child’s given name portends lameness,
blindness, and like incapacitation on the right side of its body, and
an even number, injuries on the left side.[424] In a crown of smilax
for headache there should be an odd number of leaves,[425] and in a
diet of snails prescribed for stomach trouble an odd number are to
be eaten.[426] For a head-wash ten green lizards are boiled in ten
_sextarii_ of oil,[427] and for an application to prevent eyelashes
from growing again when they have been pulled out fifteen frogs are
impaled on fifteen bulrushes.[428] The person who has tied on a certain
amulet is thereafter excluded from the patient’s sight for five
days.[429] And so on.
[Sidenote: Relation between operator and patient.]
This last item suggests a further intangible factor in Pliny’s
procedure, the doing of things to or for the patient without his
knowledge. But this and any other incorporeal relationships existing
between operator and patient should perhaps be classed under the head
of sympathy and antipathy.
[Sidenote: Incantations.]
Closely akin to the power of numbers is that of words. Pliny once
says of an incantation employed to avert hail-storms that he would
not dare in seriousness to insert its words, although Cato in his
work on agriculture prescribed a similar formula of meaningless words
for the cure of fractured limbs.[430] But Pliny does not object to
the repetition of incantations or prayers if the words spoken have
some meaning. He informs us that _ocimum_ is sown with curses and
maledictions and that when cummin seed is rammed down into the soil,
the sowers pray it not to come up.[431] In another case the sower is
to be naked and to pray for himself and his neighbors.[432] In a third
case in which a poultice is to be applied to an inflammatory tumor,
Pliny says that persons of experience regard it as very important
that the poultice be put on by a naked virgin and that both she and
the patient be fasting. Touching the sufferer with the back of her
hand she is to say, “Apollo forbids a disease to increase which a
naked virgin restrains.” Then, withdrawing her hand, she is to repeat
the same words thrice and to join with the patient in spitting on
the ground each time.[433] Indeed, in another passage Pliny states
that it is the universal custom in medicine to spit three times
with incantations.[434] Perhaps the power of the words is thought
to be increased or renewed by clearing the throat. Words were also
occasionally spoken in plucking herbs. Ring-worm or tetter is treated
by spitting upon and rubbing together two stones covered with a
dry white moss, and by repeating a Greek incantation which may be
translated, “Flee, Cantharides, a wild wolf seeks your blood.”[435]
Abscesses and inflammations are treated with the herb _reseda_ and a
Latin translation which seems irrelevant, if not quite senseless, and
which may be translated, “Reseda, make disease recede. Don’t you know,
don’t you know what chick has dug up these roots? May they have neither
head nor feet.”[436] In the book following this passage Pliny raises
the general question of the power of words to heal diseases.[437]
He gives many instances of belief in incantations from contemporary
popular superstition, from Roman religion, and from the annals of
history. He does not doubt that Romans in the past have believed in the
power of words, and thinks that if we accept set forms of prayer and
religious formulae, we must also admit the force of incantations. But
he adds that the wisest individuals believe in neither.
[Sidenote: Attitude to love-charms and birth-control.]
Pliny’s recipes and operations are mainly connected with either
medicine or agriculture, but he also introduces as we have seen
magical procedure employed in child-birth, safeguards against poisons
and reptiles, and counter-charms against sorcery. He more than once
avers that love-charms (_amatoria_) lie outside his province,[438]
in one passage alleging as a reason that the illustrious general
Lucullus was killed by one,[439] but he includes a great many of them
nevertheless.[440] Some herbs are so employed because of a resemblance
in shape to the sexual organs,[441] another instance of association
by similarity. Pliny declared against abortive drugs as well as
love-charms,[442] but cited from the _Commentaries_ of Caecilius
one recipe for birth-control for the benefit of over-fecund women,
consisting of a ligature of two little worms found in the body of a
certain species of spider and bound on in deer-skin before sunrise.
After a year the virtue of this charm expires.[443]
[Sidenote: Pliny and astrology.]
Pliny devotes but a small fraction of his work to the stars and heavens
as against terrestrial phenomena, and therefore has less occasion to
speak of astrology than of magic. However, had he been a great believer
in astrology he doubtless would have devoted more space to the stars
and their influence on terrestrial phenomena. He recognizes none
the less, as we have seen, that magic and astrology are intimately
related and that “there is no one who is not eager to learn his own
future and who does not think that this is shown most truly by the
heavens.”[444] Parenthetically it may be remarked that the general
literature of the time only confirms this assertion of the widespread
prevalence of astrology; allusions of poets imply a technical knowledge
of the art on their readers’ part; the very emperors who occasionally
banished astrologers from Rome themselves consulted other adepts. In
another passage Pliny speaks of men who “assign events each to its star
according to the rules of nativities and believe that God decreed the
future once for all and has never interfered with the course of events
since.”[445] This way of thinking has caught learned and vulgar alike
in its current and has led to such further methods of divination as
those by lightning, oracles, haruspices, and even such petty auguries
as from sneezes and shifting of the feet. Furthermore in Pliny’s list
of men prominent in the various arts and sciences we find Berosus of
whom a statue was erected by the Athenians in honor of his skill in
astrological prognostication.[446] In another place where he speaks for
a moment of “the science of the stars” Pliny disputes the theories of
Berosus, Nechepso, and Petosiris that length of human life is ordered
by the stars, and also makes the trite objection to the doctrine of
nativities that masters and slaves, kings and beggars are born at the
same moment.[447] He also is rather inclined to ridicule the enormous
figures of 720,000 or 490,000 years set by Epigenes and Berosus and
Critodemus for the duration of astronomical observations recorded
by the Babylonians.[448] From such passages we get the impression
that astrology is widely accepted as a science but that the art of
nativities at least is not regarded by Pliny with favor. But it
would not be safe to say that he denies the control of the stars over
human destiny. Indeed, in one chapter he declares that the astronomer
Hipparchus can never be praised enough because more than any other man
he proved the relationship of man with the stars and that our souls
are part of the sky.[449] When Pliny disputes the vulgar notion that
each man has a star varying in brightness according to his fortune,
rising when he is born, and fading or falling when he dies, he is not
attacking even the doctrine of nativities; he is denying that the stars
are controlled by man’s fate rather than that man’s life is ordered by
the stars.[450]
[Sidenote: Celestial portents.]
If Pliny thus leaves us uncertain as to the relation of man to the
stars, we also receive conflicting impressions from his discussion
of various celestial phenomena regarded as portentous. In one
passage he speaks of the debt of gratitude owed by mankind to those
great astronomical geniuses who have freed men from their former
superstitious fear of eclipses.[451] But he explains thunderbolts as
celestial fire vomited forth from the planet Venus and “bearing omens
of the future.”[452] He also gives instances from Roman history of
comets which signaled disaster, and he expounds the theory of their
signifying the future.[453] What they portend may be determined from
the direction in which they move and the heavenly body whose power they
receive, and more particularly from the shapes they assume and their
position in relation to the signs of the zodiac. Indeed, Pliny even
gives examples of ominous eclipses of the sun, although it is true that
they were also of unusual length.[454] He also tells us that many of
the common people still believed that women could produce eclipses “by
sorceries and herbs.”[455]
[Sidenote: The stars and the world of nature.]
Aside from the question of the control of human destiny by the
constellations at birth, Pliny’s general theories of the universe and
of the influence of the stars upon terrestrial nature are roughly
similar to those of astrology. For him the universe itself is God,
“holy, eternal, vast, all in all, nay, in truth itself all;”[456]
and the sun is the mind and soul of the whole world and the chief
governor of nature.[457] The planets affect one another. A cold
star renders another approaching it pale; a hot star causes its
neighbor to redden; a windy planet gives those near it a lowering
appearance.[458] At certain points in their orbits the planets are
deflected from their regular course by the rays of the sun,—an
unwitting concession to heliocentric theory.[459] Pliny ascribes the
usual astrological qualities to the planets.[460] Saturn is cold
and rigid; Mars, a flaming fire; Jupiter, located between them, is
temperate and salubrious. Besides their effects upon one another, the
planets especially influence the earth.[461] Venus, for instance,
rules the process of generation in all terrestrial beings.[462]
Following the _Georgics_ of Vergil somewhat, Pliny asserts that the
stars give indubitable signs of the weather and expounds the utility
of the constellations to farmers.[463] He tells how Democritus by
his knowledge of astronomy was able to corner the olive crop and put
to shame business men who had been decrying philosophy;[464] and
how on another occasion he gave his brother timely warning of an
impending storm.[465] But Pliny does not accept all the theories of
the astrologers as to control of the stars over terrestrial nature. He
repeats, but without definitely accepting it, the ascription by the
Babylonians of earthquakes to three of the planets in particular,[466]
and the notion that the gem _sandastros_ or _garamantica_, employed
by Chaldeans in their ceremonies, is intimately connected with the
stars.[467] He is openly incredulous about the gem _glossopetra_,
shaped like a human tongue and supposed to fall from the sky during an
eclipse of the moon and to be invaluable in selenomancy.[468]
[Sidenote: Astrological medicine.]
Pliny tells how the physician Crinas of Marseilles made a fortune by
regulating diet and observing hours according to the motion of the
stars.[469] But he does not show much faith in astrological medicine
himself, rejecting entirely the elaborate classification of diseases
and remedies which the astrologers had by his time already worked out
for the revolutions of the sun and moon in the twelve signs of the
zodiac.[470] In his own recipes, however, astrological considerations
are sometimes observed, as we have already seen, especially the rising
of the dog-star and the phases of the moon. Pliny, indeed, states
that the dog-star exerts an extensive influence upon the earth.[471]
As for the moon, the blood in the human body augments and decreases
with its waxing and waning as shell-fish and other things in nature
do.[472] Indeed, painstaking men of research had discovered that even
the entrails of the field-mouse corresponded in number to the days of
the moon, that the ant stopped working during the interlunar days, and
that diseases of the eyes of certain beasts of burden also increased
and decreased with the moon.[473] But on the whole Pliny’s medicine and
science do not seem nearly so immersed in and saturated with astrology
as with other forms of magic. This gap was for the middle ages amply
filled by the authority of Ptolemy, of whose belief in astrology we
shall treat in the next chapter.
[Sidenote: Conclusion: magic unity of Pliny’s superstitions.]
We have tried to analyze the contents of the _Natural History_,
bringing out certain main divisions and underlying principles of
magic in Pliny’s agriculture, medicine, and natural science. This
is, however, an artificial and difficult task, since it is not easy
to sever materials from ceremonial or the virtues of objects from
the relations of sympathy or antipathy between them. Often the same
passage might serve to illustrate several points. Take for example
the following sentence: “Thrasyllus is authority that nothing is so
hostile to serpents as crabs; swine who are stung cure themselves by
this food, and when the sun is in Cancer, serpents are in pain.”[474]
Here we have at once antipathy, the remedies used by animals, the
reasoning, characteristic of magic, from association and similarity,
and the belief in astrology. And this confusion, to illustrate which a
hundred other examples might be collected from the _Natural History_,
demonstrates how indissolubly interwoven are all the varied threads
that we have been tracing. They all go naturally together, they belong
to the same long period of thought, they represent the same stage in
mental development, they all are parts of magic.