LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION: CICERO,
FAVORINUS, SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, AND LUCIAN
Authors to be considered—Their standpoint—_De divinatione_; argument
of Quintus—Cicero attacks past authority—Divination distinct from
natural science—Unreasonable in method—Requires violation of natural
law—Cicero and astrology—His crude historical criticism—Favorinus
against astrologers—Sextus Empiricus—_Lucius_, or _The Ass_: is it
by Lucian?—Career of Lucian—_Alexander the pseudo-prophet_—Magical
procedure in medicine satirized—Snake-charming—A Hyperborean
magician—Some ghost stories—Pancrates, the magician—Credulity and
scepticism—_Menippus_, or _Necromancy_—Astrological interpretation
of Greek myth—History and defense of astrology—Lucian not always
sceptical—Lucian and medicine—Inevitable intermingling of scepticism
and superstition—Lucian on writing history.
[Sidenote: Authors to be considered.]
Having noted the large amount of magic that still existed both in the
leading works of natural science of the early Roman empire and in
the more general literature of that period, it is only fair that we
should note such extremes of scepticism towards the superstitions then
current as can be found during the same period. They are, however,
few and far between, and we shall have to go back to the close of
the Republican period for the best instance in the _De divinatione_
of Cicero. As Pliny’s _Natural History_ was mainly a compilation of
earlier Greek science, so Cicero’s arguments against divination were
not entirely original with him. As his other philosophical writings
are largely indebted to the Greeks, so his attack upon divination
is supposed to be under considerable obligations to Clitomachus and
Panaetius,[1256] philosophers of the New Academy and the Stoic school
who flourished respectively at Carthage and Athens and at Rhodes and
Rome in the second century before our era. We shall next briefly
note the criticisms of astrologers and astrology made by Favorinus,
a rhetorician from Gaul who resided at Rome under Hadrian and was a
friend of Plutarch but whose argument against the astrologers has been
preserved only in the _Attic Nights_ of Aulus Gellius,[1257] and by
Sextus Empiricus,[1258] a sceptical philosopher who wrote about 200.
Finally we shall consider Lucian’s satirical depiction of various
superstitions of his time.
[Sidenote: Their standpoint.]
It will be noticed that no one of these critics of magic, if we may so
designate them, is primarily a natural scientist. Cicero and Lucian and
Favorinus are primarily men of letters and rhetoricians. And all four
of our critics write to a greater or less extent from the professed
standpoint of a general sceptical attitude in all matters of philosophy
and not merely in the matter of superstition. Thus the attack of
Sextus Empiricus upon astrology occurs in a work which is directed
against learning in general, and in which he assails grammarians,
rhetoricians, geometricians, arithmeticians, students of music,
logicians, physicists, and students of ethics, as well as the casters
of horoscopes. Aulus Gellius did not know whether to take the arguments
of Favorinus against the astrologers seriously or not. He says that he
heard Favorinus make the speech the substance of which he repeats, but
that he is unable to state whether the philosopher really meant what he
said or argued merely in order to exercise and to display his genius.
There was reason for this perplexity of Aulus Gellius, since Favorinus
was inclined to such _tours de force_ as eulogies of Thersites or of
Quartan Fever.
[Sidenote: _De divinatione_: argument of Quintus.]
_De divinatione_ takes the form of a supposititious conversation, or
better, informal debate, between the author and his brother Quintus.
In the first book Quintus, in a rather rambling and leisurely fashion
and with occasional repetition of ideas, upholds divination to the
best of his ability, citing many reported instances of successful
recourse to it in antiquity. In the second book Tully proceeds with a
somewhat patronizing air to pull entirely to pieces the arguments of
his brother who assents with cheerful readiness to their demolition.
On the whole the appeal to the past is the main point in the argument
of Quintus. What race or state, he asks, has not believed in some form
of divination? “For before the revelation of philosophy, which was
discovered but recently, public opinion had no doubt of the truth of
this art; and after philosophy emerged no philosopher of authority
thought otherwise. I have mentioned Pythagoras, Democritus, Socrates.
I have left out no one of the ancients save Xenophanes. I have
added the Old Academy, the Peripatetics, the Stoics. Epicurus alone
dissented.”[1259] Quintus closes his long argument in favor of the
truth of divination by solemnly asserting that he does not approve of
sorcerers, nor of those who prophesy for the sake of gain, nor of the
practice of questioning the spirits of the dead—which nevertheless, he
says, was a custom of his brother’s friend Appius.[1260]
[Sidenote: Cicero attacks past authority.]
When Tully’s turn to speak comes, he rudely disturbs his brother’s
reliance upon tradition. “I think it not the part of a philosopher
to employ witnesses, who are only haply true and often purposely
false and deceiving. He ought to show why a thing is so by arguments
and reasons, not by events, especially those I cannot credit.”[1261]
“Antiquity,” Cicero declares later, “has erred in many respects.”[1262]
The existence of the art of divination in every age and nation has
little effect upon him. There is nothing, he asserts, so widespread as
ignorance.[1263]
[Sidenote: Divination distinct from natural science.]
Both brothers distinguish divination as a separate subject from the
natural or even the applied sciences. Quintus says that medical men,
pilots, and farmers foresee many things, yet their arts are not
divination. “Not even Pherecydes, that famous Pythagorean master, who
predicted an earthquake when he saw that the water had disappeared from
a well which usually was well filled, should be regarded as a diviner
rather than a physicist.”[1264] Tully carries the distinction a step
further and asserts that the sick seek a doctor, not a soothsayer; that
diviners cannot instruct us in astronomy; that no one consults them
concerning philosophic problems or ethical questions; that they can
give us no light on the problems of the natural universe; and that they
are of no service in logic, dialectic, or political science.[1265] An
admirable declaration of independence of natural science and medicine
and other arts and constructive forms of thought from the methods
of divination! But also one more easy to state in general terms of
theory than to enforce in details of practice, as Pliny, Galen, and
Ptolemy have already shown us. None the less it is indeed a noteworthy
restriction of the field of divination when Cicero remarks to his
brother, “For those things which can be perceived beforehand either by
art or reason or experience or conjecture you regard as not the affair
of diviners but of scientists.”[1266] But the question remains whether
too large powers of prediction may not be claimed by “science.”
[Sidenote: Unreasonable in method.]
Cicero proceeds to attack the methods and assumptions of divination as
neither reasonable nor scientific. Why, he asks, did Calchas deduce
from the devoured sparrows that the Trojan war would last ten years
rather than ten weeks or ten months?[1267] He points out that the art
is conducted in different places according to quite different rules of
procedure, even to the extent that a favorable omen in one locality
is a sinister warning elsewhere.[1268] He refuses to believe in any
extraordinary bonds of sympathy between things which, in so far as
our daily experience and our knowledge of the workings of nature can
inform us, have no causal connection. What intimate connection, he
asks, what bond of natural causality can there be between the liver
or heart or lung of a fat bull and the divine eternal cause of all
which rules the universe?[1269] “That anything certain is signified
by uncertain things, is not this the last thing a scientist should
admit?”[1270] He refuses to accept dreams as fit channels either of
natural divination or divine revelation.[1271] The Sibylline Books,
like most oracles, are vague and the evident product of labored
ingenuity.[1272]
[Sidenote: Requires violation of natural law.]
Moreover, divination asserts the existence of phenomena which science
denies. Such a figment, Cicero scornfully affirms, as that the heart
will vanish from the carcass of a victim is not believed even by
old-wives now-a-days. How can the heart vanish from the body? Surely
it must be there as long as life lasts, and how can it disappear
in an instant? “Believe me, you are abandoning the citadel of
philosophy while you defend its outposts. For in your effort to prove
soothsaying true you utterly pervert physiology.... For there will be
something which either springs from nothing or suddenly vanishes into
nothingness. What scientist ever said that? The soothsayers say so? Are
they then, do you think, to be trusted rather than scientists?”[1273]
Cicero makes other arguments against divination such as the stock
contentions that it is useless to know predetermined events beforehand
since they cannot be avoided, and that even if we can learn the future,
we shall be happier not to do it, but his outstanding argument is that
it is unscientific.
[Sidenote: Cicero and astrology.]
Cicero’s attack upon divination is mainly directed against liver
divination and analogous methods of predicting the future, but he
devotes a few chapters[1274] to the doctrines of the Chaldeans. They
postulate a certain force in the constellations called the zodiac and
hold that between man and the position of the stars and planets at
the moment of his birth there exists a relation of sympathy so that
his personality and all the events of his life are thereby determined.
Diogenes the Stoic limited this influence to the determination of one’s
aptitude and vocation, but Cicero regards even this much as going too
far. The immense spaces intervening between the different planets seem
to him a reason for rejecting the contentions of the Chaldeans. His
further criticism that they insist that all men born at the same moment
are alike in character regardless of horizons and different aspects
of the sky in different places is one that at least did not hold good
permanently against astrology and is not true of Ptolemy. He asks if
all the men who perished at Cannae were born beneath the same star and
how it came about that there was only one Homer if several men are
born every instant. He also adduces the stock argument from twins. He
attacks the practice, which we shall find continued in the middle ages,
of astrological prediction of the fate of cities. He says that if all
animals are to be subjected to the stars, then inanimate things must
be, too, than which nothing can be more absurd. This suggests that he
hardly conceives of the fundamental hypothesis of medieval science that
all inferior nature is under the influence of the celestial bodies and
their motion and light. At any rate his arguments are directed against
the casting of horoscopes or genethlialogy. And in the matter of the
influence of the planets upon man he was not entirely antagonistic, at
least in other writings than the _De divinatione_, for in the _Dream
of Scipio_ he speaks of Jupiter as a star wholesome and favorable to
the human race, of Mars as most unfavorable. He further calls seven
and eight perfect numbers and speaks of their product, fifty-six, as
signifying the fatal year in Scipio’s life. Incidentally, as another
instance that Cicero was not always sceptical, it may be recalled that
it was in Cicero that Pliny read of a man who could see one hundred and
thirty-five miles.[1275]
[Sidenote: His crude historical criticism.]
Such apparent inconsistency is perhaps a sign of somewhat
indiscriminating eclecticism on Cicero’s part. We experience something
of a shock, although perhaps we should not be surprised, to find
him in his _Republic_[1276] arguing as seriously in favor of the
ascension or apotheosis of Romulus as a historic fact as a professor
of natural science in a denominational college might argue in favor
of the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. Although in the _De
divinatione_ he impatiently brushed aside the testimony of so great a
cloud of witnesses and of most philosophers in favor of divination, he
now argues that the opinion that Romulus had become a god “could not
have prevailed so universally unless there had been some extraordinary
manifestation of power,” and that “this is the more remarkable because
other men, said to have become gods, lived in less learned times when
the mind was prone to invent and the inexperienced were easily led to
believe,” whereas Romulus lived only six centuries ago when literature
and learning had already made great progress in removing error, when
“Greece was already full of poets and musicians, and little faith was
placed in legends unless they concerned remote antiquity.” Yet a few
chapters later Cicero notes that Numa could not have been a pupil of
Pythagoras, since the latter did not come to Italy until 140 years
after his death;[1277] and in a third chapter[1278] when Laelius
remarks, “That king is indeed praised but Roman History is obscure,
for although we know the mother of this king, we are ignorant of his
father,” Scipio replies, “That is so; but in those times it was almost
enough if only the names of the kings were recorded.” We can only add,
“Consistency, thou art a jewel!”
[Sidenote: Favorinus against astrologers.]
Favorinus denied that the doctrine of nativities was the work of
the Chaldeans and regarded it as the more recent invention of
marvel-mongers, tricksters, and mountebanks. He regards the inference
from the effect of the moon on tides to that of the stars on every
incident of our daily life as unwarranted. He further objects that if
the Chaldeans did record astronomical observations these would apply
only to their own region and that observations extended over a vast
lapse of time would be necessary to establish any system of astrology,
since it requires ages before the stars return to their previous
positions. Like Cicero, Favorinus probably manifests his ignorance of
the technique of astrology in complaining that astrologers do not allow
for the different influence of different constellations in different
parts of the earth. More cogent is his suggestion that there may be
other stars equal in power to the planets which men cannot see either
for their excess of splendor or because of their position. He also
objects that the position of the stars is not the same at the time of
conception and the time of birth, and that, if the different fate of
twins may be explained by the fact that after all they are not born at
precisely the same moment, the time of birth and the position of the
stars must be measured with an exactness practically impossible. He
also contends that it is not for human beings to predict the future
and that the subjection of man not merely in matters of external
fortune but in his own acts of will to the stars is not to be borne.
These two arguments of the divine prerogative and of human free will
became Christian favorites. He complains that the astrologers predict
great events like battles but cannot predict small ones, and declares
that they may congratulate themselves that he does not propose such a
question to them as that of astral influence on minute animals. This
and his further question why, out of all the grand works of nature, the
astrologers limit their attention to petty human fortune, suggest that
like Cicero he did not realize that astrology was or would become a
theory of all nature and not mere genethlialogy.
[Sidenote: Sextus Empiricus.]
To the arguments against nativities that men die the same death who
were not born at the same time and that men who are born at the same
time are not identical in character or fortune Sextus Empiricus adds
the derisive question whether a man and an ass born in the same
instant would suffer exactly the same destiny. Ptolemy would of course
reply that while the influence of the stars is constant in both cases
it is variably received by men and donkeys; and Sextus’s query does
not show him very well versed in astrology. He mentions the obstacle
of free will to astrological theory but does not make very much of
it. The chief point which he makes is that even if the stars do rule
human destiny, their effect cannot be accurately measured. He lays
stress on the difficulty of exactly determining the date of birth or of
conception, or the precise moment when a star passes into a new sign of
the zodiac. He notes the variability and unreliability of water-clocks.
He calls attention to the fact that observers at varying altitudes as
well as in different localities would arrive at different conclusions.
Differences in eyesight would also affect results, and it is difficult
to tell just when the sun sets or any sign of the zodiac drops below
the horizon owing to reflection and refraction of rays. Sextus thus
leaves us somewhat in doubt whether his objections are to be taken
as indicative of a spirit of captious criticism towards an art, the
fundamental principles of which he tacitly recognizes as well-nigh
incontestable, or whether he is simply trying to make his case doubly
sure by showing astrology to be impracticable as well as unreasonable.
In any case we shall find his argument that the influence of the stars
cannot be measured accurately repeated by Christian writers.
[Sidenote: _Lucius_ or _The Ass_: is it by Lucian?]
The main plot of the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius appears, shorn
of the many additional stories, the religious mysticism, and the
autobiographical element which characterize his narrative, in a brief
and perhaps epitomized Greek version, entitled _Lucius_ or _The Ass_,
among the works of Lucian of Samosata, the contemporary of Apuleius and
noted satirist. The work is now commonly regarded as spurious, since
the style seems different from that of Lucian and the Attic Greek less
pure. The narrative, too, is bare, at least compared with the exuberant
fancy of Apuleius, and seems to avoid the marvelous and romantic
details in which he abounds. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in
the ninth century, who regarded the work as Lucian’s, said that he
wrote in it as one deriding the extravagance of superstition. Whether
this be true of _The Ass_ or not, it is true of other satires by Lucian
of undisputed genuineness, in which he ridicules the impostures of the
magic and pseudo-science of his day. In place of the genial humor and
fantastic imagination with which his African contemporary credulously
welcomed the magic and occult science of his time, the Syrian satirist
probes the same with the cool mockery of his keen and sceptical wit.
[Sidenote: Career of Lucian.]
Lucian was born at Samosata near Antioch about 120 or 125 A. D. and
after an unsuccessful beginning as a sculptor’s apprentice turned to
literature and philosophy. He practiced in the law courts at Antioch
for some time and also wrote speeches for others. For a considerable
period of his life he roamed about the Mediterranean world from
Paphlagonia to Gaul as a rhetorician, and like Apuleius resided both at
Athens and Rome. After forty he ceased teaching rhetoric and devoted
himself to literary production, living at Athens. Towards the close
of his life, “when he already had one foot in Charon’s boat,”[1279]
he was holding a well paid and important legal position in Egypt.
His death occurred perhaps about 200 A. D. Some ascribe it to gout,
probably because he wrote two satires on that disease. Suidas states
that Lucian was torn to pieces by dogs as a punishment for his attacks
upon Christianity, which again is probably a perversion of Lucian’s own
statement in _Peregrinus_ that he narrowly escaped being torn to pieces
by the Cynics.
[Sidenote: _Alexander the pseudo-prophet._]
It was at the request of that same adversary of Christianity against
whom Origen composed the _Reply to Celsus_ that Lucian wrote his
account of the impostor, Alexander of Abonutichus, a pseudo-prophet of
Paphlagonia. This Alexander pretended to discover the god Asclepius
in the form of a small viper which he had sealed up in a goose egg.
He then replaced the tiny viper by a huge tame serpent which he had
purchased at Pella in Macedon and which was trained to hide its head
in Alexander’s armpit, while to the crowd, who were also permitted to
touch the tail and body of the real snake, was shown a false serpent’s
head made of linen with human features and a mouth that opened and
shut and a tongue that could be made to dart in and out. Having thus
convinced the people that the viper had really been a god and had
miraculously increased in size, Alexander proceeded to sell oracular
responses as from the god. Inquirers submitted their questions in
sealed packages which were later returned to them with appropriate
answers and with the seals unbroken and apparently untouched.
Similarly Plutarch tells of a sceptical opponent of oracles who became
converted into their ardent supporter by receiving such an answer
to a sealed letter.[1280] Lucian, however, explains that Alexander
sometimes used a hot needle to melt the seal and then restore it to
practically its original shape, or employed other methods by which he
took exact impressions of the seal, then boldly broke it, read the
question, and afterwards replaced the seal by an exact replica of the
original made in the mould. Lucian adds that there are plenty of other
devices of this sort which he does not need to repeat to Celsus who
has already made a sufficient collection of them in his “excellent
treatises against the magicians.” Lucian tells later, however, how
Alexander made his god seem to speak by attaching a tube made of the
windpipes of cranes to the artificial head and having an assistant
outside speak through this concealed tube. In our later discussion of
the church father Hippolytus we shall find that he apparently made
use of this exposé of magic by Lucian as well as of the arguments of
Sextus Empiricus against astrology. Lucian’s personal experiences with
this Alexander were quite interesting but are less germane to our
investigation.
[Sidenote: Magical procedure in medicine satirized.]
We must not fail, however, to note another essay, _Philopseudes_ or
_Apiston_, in which the superstition and pseudo-science of antiquity
are sharply satirized in what purports to be a conversation of several
philosophers, including a Stoic, a Peripatetic, and a Platonist, and
a representative of ancient medicine in the person of Antigonus, a
doctor. Some of the magical procedure then employed in curing diseases
is first satirized. Cleodemus the Peripatetic advises as a remedy for
gout to take in the left hand the tooth of a field mouse which has
been killed in a prescribed manner, to wrap it in the skin of a lion
freshly-flayed, and thus to bind it about the ailing foot. He affirms
that it will give instant relief. Dinomachus the Stoic admits that
the occult virtue of the lion is very great and that its fat or right
fore-paw or the bristles of its beard, if combined with the proper
incantations, have wonderful efficacy. But he holds that for the cure
of gout the skin of a virgin hind would be superior on the ground that
the hind is speedier than the lion and so more beneficial to the feet.
Cleodemus retorts that he used to think the same, but that a Libyan has
convinced him that the lion can run faster than the hind or it would
never catch one. The sceptical reporter of this conversation states
that he vainly attempted to convince them that an internal disease
could not be cured by external attachments or by incantations, methods
which he regards as the veriest sorcery (_goetia_).
[Sidenote: Snake-charming.]
His protests, however, merely lead Ion the Platonist to recount how a
Magus, a Chaldean of Babylonia, cured his father’s gardener who had
been stung by an adder on the great toe and was already all swollen up
and nearly dead. The magician’s method was to apply a splinter of stone
from the statue of a virgin to the toe, uttering at the same time an
incantation. He then led the way to the field where the gardener had
been stung; pronounced seven sacred names from an ancient volume, and
fumigated the place thrice with torches and sulphur. All the snakes in
the field then came forth from their holes with the exception of one
very aged and decrepit serpent, whom the magician sent a young snake
back to fetch. Having thus assembled every last serpent, he blew upon
them, and they all vanished into thin air.
[Sidenote: A Hyperborean magician.]
This tale reminds the Stoic of another magician, a barbarian and
Hyperborean, who could walk through fire or upon water and even fly
through the air. He could also “make people fall in love, call up
spirits, resuscitate corpses, bring down the moon, and show you Hecate
herself as large as life.”[1281] More specific illustration of the
exercise of these powers is given in an account of a love spell which
he performed for a young man for a big fee. Digging a trench, he raised
the ghost of the youth’s father and also summoned Hecate, Cerberus,
and the Moon. The last named appeared in three successive forms of a
woman, an ox, and a puppy. The sorcerer then constructed a clay image
of the god of love and sent it to fetch the girl, who came and stayed
until cock-crow, when all the apparitions vanished with her. In vain
the sceptic argues that the girl in question would have come willingly
enough without any magic. The Platonist matches the previous story with
one of a Syrian from Palestine who cast out demons.
[Sidenote: Some ghost stories.]
The discussion then further degenerates into ghost stories and tales
of statuettes that leave their pedestals after the household has
retired for the night. One speaker says that he no longer has any
fear of ghosts since an Arab gave him a magic ring made of nails from
crosses and taught him an incantation to use against spooks. At this
juncture a Pythagorean philosopher of great repute enters and adds his
testimony in the form of an account of how he laid a ghost at Corinth
by employing an Egyptian incantation.
[Sidenote: Pancrates, the magician.]
Eucrates, the host, then tells of Pancrates, whom he had met in Egypt
and who “had spent twenty-three years underground learning magic from
Isis,” and whom crocodiles would allow to ride on their backs. They
traveled a time together without a servant, since Pancrates was able
to dress up the door-bar or a broom or pestle, turn it into human
form, and make it wait upon them. There follows the familiar story
of Eucrates’ overhearing the incantation of three syllables which
Pancrates employed and of trying it out himself when the magician was
absent. The pestle turned into human form all right enough and obeyed
his order to bring in water, but then he discovered that he could not
make it stop, and when he seized an axe and chopped it in two, the only
effect was to produce two water-carriers in place of one.
[Sidenote: Credulity and scepticism.]
The conversation is turning to the subject of oracles when the sceptic
can stand it no longer and retires in disgust. As he tells what he has
heard to a friend, he remarks upon the childish credulity of “these
admired teachers from whom our youth are to learn wisdom.” At the same
time, the stories seem to have made a considerable impression even upon
him, and he wishes that he had some lethal drug to make him forget all
these monsters, demons, and Hecates that he seems still to see before
him. His friend, too, declares that he has filled him with demons.
Their dialogue then concludes with the consoling reflection that truth
and sound reason are the best drugs for the cure of such empty lies.
[Sidenote: _Menippus_, or _Necromancy_.]
The _Menippus_ or _Necromancy_, while an obvious imitation and parody
of Odysseus’ mode of descent to the underworld to consult Teiresias,
also throws some light on the magic of Lucian’s time. In order to reach
the other world Menippus went to Babylon and consulted Mithrobarzanes,
one of the Magi and followers of Zoroaster. He is also called one of
the Chaldeans. Besides a final sacrifice similar to that of Odysseus,
the procedure by which the magician procured their passage to the other
world included on his part muttered incantations and invocations,
for the most part unintelligible to Menippus, spitting thrice in the
latter’s face, waving torches about, drawing a magic circle, and
wearing a magic robe. As for Menippus, he had to bathe in the Euphrates
at sunrise every morning for the full twenty-nine days of a moon, after
which he was purified at midnight in the Tigris and by fumigation. He
had to sleep out-of-doors and observe a special diet, not look anyone
in the eye on his way home, walk backwards, and so on. The ultimate
result of all these preparations was that the earth was burst asunder
by the final incantation and the way to the underworld laid open. When
it came time to return Menippus crawled up with difficulty, like Dante
going from the Inferno to Purgatory, through a narrow tunnel which
opened on the shrine of Trophonius.
[Sidenote: Astrological interpretation of Greek myth.]
An essay on astrology ascribed to Lucian is usually regarded as
spurious.[1282] Denial of its authenticity, however, should rest on
such grounds as its literary style and the manuscript history of the
work rather than upon its—to modern eyes—superstitious character. In
antiquity a man might be sceptical about most superstitions and yet
believe in astrology as a science. Lucian’s sceptical friend Celsus,
for example, as we shall see in our chapter on Origen’s _Reply to
Celsus_, believed that the future could be foretold from the stars.
And whether the present essay is genuine or spurious, it is certainly
noteworthy that for all his mockery of other superstition Lucian does
not attack astrology in any of his essays. Moreover, this essay on
astrology is very sceptical in one way, since it denies the literal
truth of various Greek myths and gives an astrological interpretation
of them, as in the case of Zeus and Kronos and the so-called adultery
of Mars. This is not inconsistent with Lucian’s ridicule elsewhere of
the anthropomorphic Olympian divinities. What Orpheus taught the Greeks
was astrology, and the planets were signified by the seven strings of
his lyre. Teiresias taught them further to distinguish which stars
were masculine and which feminine in character and influence. A proper
interpretation of the myth of Atreus and Thyestes also shows the Greeks
at an early date acquainted with astrological doctrine. Bellerophon
soared to the sky, not on a horse but by the scientific power of his
mind. Daedalus taught Icarus astrology and the fable of Phaëthon is to
be similarly interpreted. Aeneas was not really the son of the goddess
Venus, nor Minos of Jupiter, nor Aesculapius of Mars, nor Autolycus of
Mercury. These are to be taken simply as the planets under whose rule
they were born. The author also connects Egyptian animal worship with
the signs of the zodiac.
[Sidenote: History and defense of astrology.]
The author of the essay also delves into the history of astrology,
to which he assigns a high antiquity. The Ethiopians were the first
to cultivate it and handed it on in a still imperfect stage to the
Egyptians who developed it. The Babylonians claim to have studied it
before other peoples, but our author thinks that they did so long
after the Ethiopians and Egyptians. The Greeks were instructed in
the art neither by the Ethiopians nor the Egyptians, but, as we have
seen, by Orpheus. Our author not only states that the ancient Greeks
never built towns or walls or got married without first resorting to
divination, but even asserts that astrology was their sole method of
divination, that the Pythia at Delphi was the type of celestial purity
and that the snake under the tripod represented the dragon among the
constellations. Lycurgus taught his Lacedaemonians to observe the moon,
and only the uncultured Arcadians held themselves aloof from astrology.
Yet at the present day some oppose the art, declaring either that the
stars have naught to do with human affairs or that astrology is useless
since what is fated cannot be avoided. To the latter objection our
author makes the usual retort that forewarned is forearmed; as for the
former denial, if a horse stirs the stones in the road as it runs,
if a passing breath of wind moves straws to and fro, if a tiny flame
burns the finger, will not the courses and deflexions of the brilliant
celestial bodies have their influence upon earth and mankind?
[Sidenote: Lucian not always sceptical.]
The manner of the essay does not seem like Lucian’s usual style, and
the astrological interpretation of religious myth was characteristic of
the Stoic philosophy, whereas Lucian’s philosophical affinities, if he
can be said to have any, are perhaps rather with the Epicureans. But
Celsus was an Epicurean and yet believed in astrology. It must not be
thought, however, that Lucian in his other essays is always sceptical
in regard to what we should classify as superstition. He tells us how
his career was determined by a dream in the autobiographical essay of
that title. In the _Dialogues of the Gods_ magic is mentioned as a
matter-of-course, Zeus complaining that he has to resort to magic in
order to win women and Athene warning Paris to have Aphrodite remove
her girdle, since it is drugged or enchanted and may bewitch him.
[Sidenote: Lucian and medicine.]
The writings of Lucian contain many allusions to the doctors, diseases,
and medicines of his time.[1283] On the whole he confirms Galen’s
picture. Numerous passages show that the medical profession was held in
high esteem, and Lucian himself first went to Rome in order to consult
an oculist. At the same time Lucian satirizes the quacks and medical
superstition of the time, as we have already seen, and describes
several statues which were believed to possess healing powers. In
the burlesque tragedy on gout, _Tragodopodagra_, whose authenticity,
however, is questioned, the disease personified is triumphant, and the
moral seems to be that all the remedies which men have tried are of no
avail. On the other hand, Lucian wrote seriously of the African snake
whose bite causes one to die of thirst (_De dipsadibus_). He admits
that he has never seen anyone in this condition and has not even been
in Libya where these snakes are found, but a friend has assured him
that he has seen the tombstone epitaph of a man who had died thus, a
rather indirect mode of proof which we are surprised should satisfy the
author of _How to Write History_. Lucian also repeats the common notion
that persons bitten by a mad dog can be cured only by a hair or other
portion of the same animal.[1284]
[Sidenote: Inevitable intermingling of scepticism and superstition.]
Our chapter which set out to note cases of scepticism in regard to
superstition has ended by including a great deal of such superstition.
The sceptics themselves seem credulous on some points, and Lucian’s
satire perhaps more reveals than refutes the prevalence of superstition
among even the highly educated. The same is true of other literary
satirists of the Roman Empire whose jibes against the astrologers and
their devotees only attest the popularity of the art and who themselves
very probably meant only to ridicule its more extreme pretensions
and were perhaps at bottom themselves believers in the fundamentals
of the art. Our authors to some extent, as we have pointed out,
provided an arsenal of arguments from which later Christian writers
took weapons for their assaults upon pagan magic and astrology. But
sometimes subsequent writers confused scepticism with credulity, and
the influence of our authors upon them became just the opposite of
what they intended. Thus Ammianus Marcellinus, the soldier-historian
of the falling Roman Empire upon whom Gibbon placed so much reliance,
was so attached to divination that he even quoted its arch-opponent,
Cicero, in support of it. For he actually concludes his discussion of
the subject in these words: “Wherefore in this as in other matters
Tully says most admirably,‘Signs of future events are shown by the
gods.’”[1285]
[Sidenote: Lucian on writing history.]
But in order to conclude our chapter on scepticism with a less
obscurantist passage, let us return to Lucian. His essay, _How to
Write History_, gives serious expression to those ideals of truth and
impartiality which also lie behind his mockery of impostors and the
over-credulous. “The historian’s one task,” in his estimation, “is to
tell the thing as it happened.” He should be “fearless, incorruptible,
independent, a believer in frankness, ... an impartial judge, kind
to all but too kind to none.” “He has to make of his brain a mirror,
unclouded, bright, and true of surface.” “Facts are not to be collected
at haphazard but with careful, laborious, repeated investigation.”
“Prefer the disinterested account.”[1286] Such sentences and phrases as
these reveal a scientific and critical spirit of high order and seem a
vast improvement upon the frailty of Cicero’s historical criticism. But
how far Lucian would have been able to follow his own advice is perhaps
another matter.