Augustine in his reply states that we can see that the sun, moon, and

stars are celestial bodies, but not that they are animated. He agrees

firmly with Paul that there are Seats, Dominions, Principalities,

and Powers in the heavens, “but I do not know what they are or what

the difference is between them.” On the whole, Augustine is inclined

to regard this state of ignorance as a blissful one. He is somewhat

troubled by the verses in the Book of Job, “How shall man be just in

the sight of God, or how shall one born of woman purify himself? If

He commands the moon and it does not shine, and if the stars are not

pure before Him, how much more is man rottenness and the son of man a

worm?” From this passage the Priscillianists infer that the stars have

a rational spirit and are not free from sin, yet are placed in the

heaven because their fault is less than that of sinful mankind. Origen

too had argued, “If the stars are living and rational beings, there

will undoubtedly appear among them both an advance and a falling back.

For the language of Job, ‘the stars are not clean in His sight,’ seems

to me to convey some such idea.”[2203] Augustine evades this difficulty

by questioning whether this passage is to be received as of divine

authority, since it is uttered by one of Job’s comforters and not by

Job himself, of whom alone it is said that he had not sinned with his

lips against God.

[Sidenote: Attitude towards astronomy.]

So set is Augustine against astrology that he even holds that

Christians may well leave the subject of astronomy alone, “because it

is related to the most pernicious error of those who utter a fatuous

fatalism,” although he recognizes that there is nothing superstitious

in predicting the future positions of the stars themselves from

knowledge of their past movements. But except that to know the course

of the moon is useful in determining the date of Easter, knowledge

of the stars is of little or no help in interpreting the divine

Scriptures.[2204] In another passage Augustine is somewhat perturbed

by the assertion of astronomers that there are many stars equal to or

greater than the sun in size, but which seem smaller because they are

farther off,—an assertion which seems to conflict with the statement of

Genesis that in creating the sun and moon “God made two great lights.”

Augustine, however, does not stop to contest the point at length but

leaves it with the excuse that Christians have many better and more

serious matters to occupy their time than such subtle investigations

concerning the relative magnitude of the stars and the intervals of

space between them.[2205]

[Sidenote: Perfect numbers.]

Augustine himself, however, was not above occupying his readers’ time

with discussion of the occult significance of numbers, towards belief

in which he shows himself inclined. Six was a perfect number in his

estimation, since God had created the world in six days, although He

might have taken less or more time; and the Psalmist made no idle

remark in saying that the Deity had ordered all things according to

measure, number, and weight. Also six is the first number which can

be obtained from adding together its factors: one, two, and three.

Augustine was going on to say that seven was also a perfect number,

when he checked himself lest he digress at too great length and seem

“too eager to display his smattering of science.” Hence he merely

added that one indication of seven’s perfection was its composition

of the first complete odd number, three, and the first complete even

number, four.[2206] It is therefore not surprising to find ascribed to

Augustine a sermon on the correspondence between the ten plagues of

Egypt and the ten commandments which opens by remarking that it is not

without cause that the number of precepts in God’s law is the same as

the number of plagues with which Egypt was afflicted.[2207]

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FUSION OF PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT IN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH

CENTURIES

Need of qualifying the patristic attitude—Plan of this chapter—Julius

Firmicus Maternus—Date of the _Mathesis_—Are the attitudes in

Firmicus’ two works incompatible?—_De errore_ is not unfavorable to

astrology—Attitude of both works to the emperors—Religious attitude

of the _Mathesis_—An astrologer’s prayer—Christian objections

to astrology met—Astrology proved experimentally—Information to

be gained from the third and fourth books—Religion and magic;

exorcists—Divination—Magic as a branch of learning—Interest in

science—Diseases in antiquity—Place of Firmicus in the history

of astrology—Libanius accused of magic—Declamation against a

magician—Faith of Libanius in divination—Magic and astrology in

Pseudo-Quintilian declamations—Fusion of Christianity and paganism

in Synesius of Cyrene—His career—His interest in science—Belief in

occult sympathy between natural objects—Synesius on divination and

astrology—Synesius as an alchemist—Macrobius on number, dreams, and

stars—Martianus Capella—Absence of astrology—Orders of spirits—_The

Celestial Hierarchy_ of Dionysius the Areopagite.

[Sidenote: Need of qualifying the patristic attitude.]

In reading the writings of the Christian fathers one is impressed by

the fact that their tone is almost invariably that of the preacher.

In estimating therefore the practical effect of their utterances it

is well to remember that these are counsels of perfection which were

probably often not realized even by those who gave utterance to them.

This is not to accuse the fathers of being pharisaical, but to suggest

that as both clerics and apologists they were professionally bound to

take up an irreproachable position morally and dogmatically. Basil

has shown us that the audience who listened to his sermons were still

under the spell of Roman amusements, dice, theater, and arena. And the

average lay Christian mind was probably more easy-going in its attitude

toward magic and superstition than Augustine. Not merely laymen,

moreover, but Christian clergy and apologists of the declining Roman

Empire might still hold to divination and astrology. It was a time, as

has often been remarked, of religious syncretism, of fusion of pagan

and Christian thought, when it is not always easy to tell whether the

author of an extant writing is Christian or Neo-Platonist or both.

Mr. Gwatkin states that “the surface thought” of Constantine’s time,

“Christian as well as heathen, tended to a vague monotheism which

looked on Christ and the sun as almost equally good symbols of the

Supreme.”[2208] Others believed that astrology was the truth back of

all religions.[2209]

[Sidenote: Plan of this chapter.]

In this chapter we shall therefore consider some writers of the fourth

and fifth century who attest the existence of magic and astrology

then, the influence of paganism on Christianity and of Christianity

on paganism, and the fusion of Neo-Platonism, Christianity, and

astrological theory. This, indeed, we have already done to some extent,

as our previous chapters on Neo-Platonism and on the Christian fathers

have carried us more or less into those centuries. But now as an offset

to Augustine we take up other writers who have not yet been treated:

Firmicus, the Latin Christian apologist and the astrologer of the

mid-fourth century; Libanius, the Greek sophist of the same century;

Macrobius and Synesius, Neo-Platonists writing respectively in Latin

and Greek at the beginning of the fifth century, and of whom one was

a Christian bishop; and probably in the same century the discussion

of spirits by Martianus Capella in Latin and the Pseudo-Dionysius the

Areopagite in Greek. Except for Libanius and Synesius, these authors

were very influential in medieval Latin learning and might serve as

well for an introduction to our following book on _The Early Middle

Ages_ as for a conclusion to this.

[Sidenote: Julius Firmicus Maternus]

Julius Firmicus Maternus[2210] flourished during the reigns of

Constantine the Great and his sons. Sicily was his native land; he

was of senatorial rank and very well educated for his time, showing

interest in natural philosophy, literature, and rhetoric. Two works are

extant under his name: one, _On the Error of Profane Religions_,[2211]

is addressed to Constantius and Constans, 340-350 A. D., and urges

them to eradicate pagan cults. The other, _Mathesis_,[2212] is a work

of astrology written at the request of a similarly cultured friend,

Lollianus or Mavortius, who is spoken of in the preface as _ordinario

consuli designato_,[2213] an office which we know that he held in 355

A. D. The writing of two such works by one man has long given critics

pause, and is a splendid warning against taking anything for granted in

our study of the past. Not long ago the general opinion was that there

must have been two different authors by the name of Firmicus. This very

unlikely theory has now been universally abandoned, as unmistakable

similarities in style and wording have been noted in the two works.

But it is still maintained that “there is no question but that he was

a pagan when he wrote his astrological book.”[2214] This involves two

considerations, whether the attitude expressed in the two works is

really incompatible and whether the _Mathesis_ was written before or

after the _De errore_.

[Sidenote: Date of the _Mathesis_.]

Mommsen contended that “it is beyond doubt”[2215] that the _Mathesis_

was written between 334 and 337 A. D., relying chiefly upon several

apparent mentions of Constantine the Great as still living. The

names, Constantine and Constantius are frequently confused in the

sources, however,[2216] and even while the words, “_Constantinum

maximum principem et huius invictissimos liberos, domines et

Caesares nostros_,” seem to refer unmistakably to Constantine, it

must be remembered that they occur in a prayer to the planets and

to the supreme God that Constantine and his children may “rule over

our posterity and the posterity of our posterity through infinite

succession of ages.” As this is simply equivalent to expressing a

hope that the dynasty may never become extinct, it is scarcely proof

positive that Constantine the Great was still living when Firmicus

published his book. On the other hand, to maintain the early date

Mommsen was forced to treat the mention of Lollianus as _ordinario

consuli designato_ as mere prophetic flattery or as an appointment

held up by Constantius for eighteen years. We know that Firmicus

addressed the _De errore_ to Constantius and Constans, probably

between 345 and 350; we know that Lollianus was city prefect of Rome

in 342, _consul ordinarius_ in 355, and praetorian prefect in the

following year; whereas we know nothing certainly of either of them

before 337. Furthermore Firmicus explicitly states that the writing of

the _Mathesis_ has been long delayed,[2217] and when the promise to

compose it was first made, it is evident that neither he nor Lollianus

was a young man. Lollianus was already _consularis_ of Campania and

according to inscriptions had previously held a number of other

offices; while still in this position Lollianus had frequently to spur

his friend on to the task which Firmicus as frequently “gave up in

despair.” Then Lollianus became Count of all the Orient and continued

his importunities. Finally, after Lollianus has become proconsul and

ordinary consul elect, Firmicus completes the work and presents it

to him. Meanwhile Firmicus himself—who had formerly “resisted with

unbending confidence and firmness” factious and wicked and avaricious

men, “who from fear of law-suits seemed terrible to the unfortunate”;

and who “with liberal mind, despising forensic gains, to men in trouble

... displayed a pure and faithful defense in the courts of law,” by

which upright conduct he incurred much enmity and danger;[2218]—has

retired from the sordid sphere of law courts and forum to spend his

leisure with the divine men of old of Egypt and Babylon and to purify

his spirit by contemplation of the everlasting stars and of the God who

works through them. Yet we are asked to believe—if we accept a date

before 337 for the _Mathesis_—not merely that he writes a vehement

invective against “profane religions” a decade later, but also that

twenty years after Lollianus is still a vigorous administrator.[2219]

It is possible, but seems unlikely.

[Sidenote: Are the attitudes in Firmicus’ two works incompatible?]

Certainly the date of the _Mathesis_ should be determined without

any assumption as to what Firmicus’ religion was when he wrote it.

For, if we regard his attitudes in _Mathesis_ and _De errore_ as

incompatible, it will be as difficult to explain how he could write

the _De errore_ after having composed the _Mathesis_ as _vice versa_.

After the steadfast affirmation of astrological principles in the

_Mathesis_ it is no easier to explain the fierce spirit of intolerance

toward paganism in the _De errore_ than it is after the mention of

Christ in the _De errore_ to explain the omission of that name in the

_Mathesis_. But are the two works really incompatible? My answer is,

No. The divergences are such as may be explained by the different

character of the two works and the different circumstances under which

they were written. _De errore_ is an impassioned polemic very possibly

delivered as an oration before the emperors; _Mathesis_ is a learned

compilation on a pseudo-scientific subject composed at leisure for a

friend with the help of previous treatises on the subject. Why should

Firmicus mention Christ in the _Mathesis_? Does Boethius, after nearly

two centuries more of Christian growth and although he wrote a work

on the Trinity, mention Christ in _The Consolation of Philosophy_?

Some apparent petty inconsistencies there may be between Firmicus’ two

works, but if we accept a host of contradictions in Constantine the

Great, the first Christian emperor, why balk at some inconsistency in a

writer who urges Constantine’s children against profane cults? On the

other hand, there are some striking correspondences between the _De

errore_ and _Mathesis_.

[Sidenote: _De errore_ is not unfavorable to astrology.]

It is noteworthy in the first place that in the _De errore_ Firmicus

does not attack astrology. But if he had been converted to Christianity

since writing the _Mathesis_ and had abandoned the astrological

doctrine there expounded, would he have failed to attack the error

of that art like Augustine who testified that he had once believed

in nativities? It is therefore obvious that Firmicus does not regard

astrology as an error even at the time when he is penning the _De

errore_ as a Christian apologist. Moreover, his view of nature in the

_De errore_ is quite in accord with that of the astrologer, and he

manifests the respect for natural science or _physica ratio_ which

one would expect from the author of the _Mathesis_. Thus we find him

criticizing certain pagan cults as sharply for their incorrect physical

notions as he does others for travestying Christian mysteries. In its

opening chapters certain oriental religions are criticized for exalting

each some one of the four elements above the others, and for neglecting

that superior control of the world of terrestrial nature in which both

Christian and astrologer confided. Another argument against pagan

worships is that they include human and immoral elements which cannot

be explained as based upon natural law[2220] and the rule of that

supreme God or “God the fabricator,” “who composed all things by the

orderly method of divine workmanship,”—phrases which, as Ziegler has

shown,[2221] occur both in the _De errore_ and _Mathesis_. Furthermore,

in the _De errore_ Firmicus’ allusions to the planets, which include

a representation of the Sun making a reproachful address to certain

pagans,[2222] indicate that he regarded the stars as of immense

importance in the administration of the universe.

[Sidenote: Attitude of both works to the emperors.]

It is also worth remarking that in both works Firmicus sets the

emperors above the rest of mankind and closely associates them with the

celestial bodies and “the supreme God.” If in _Mathesis_ he prays for

the perpetuation of the line of Constantine and forbids astrologers to

make predictions concerning the emperor on the ground that his fate is

not subject to the stars but directly to the supreme God, “and inasmuch

as the whole surface of the earth is subject to the emperor, he too is

reckoned in the number of those gods whom the principal divinity has

established to perform and preserve all things”:[2223]—if he says this

in _Mathesis_, in _De errore_ he repeatedly addresses the emperors as

“most holy”[2224] and in one passage says, “You now, O Constantius and

Constans, most holy emperors, and the virtue of your venerated faith

must be implored. It is erected above men and, separated from earthly

frailty, joins in alliance with things celestial and in all its acts so

far as it can follows the will of the supreme God.... Your felicity is

joined with God’s virtue, with Christ fighting at your side you have

triumphed on behalf of human safety.”[2225]

[Sidenote: Religious attitude of the _Mathesis_.]

If the author of _De errore_ is not unfavorable to astrology the

author of the _Mathesis_ is strongly inclined towards monotheism

and decidedly religious. He indignantly repels the accusation that

astrology, which teaches that “all our acts are arranged by the divine

courses of the stars,” draws men away “from the cult of the gods and

of religions.” “We cause the gods to be feared and worshiped, we

demonstrate their might and majesty.”[2226] The passage just quoted

and some others are suggestive of polytheism, and Firmicus frequently

speaks of the planets as “gods.” Probably in this he is reproducing the

phraseology and reflecting the attitude of the astrological works which

he uses as his authorities and which belong to the period of the pagan

past. His _apotelesmata_, too, or predictions of nativities for various

horoscopes, give little or no indication of being especially adapted

to a Christian society, although in some other respects they fit his

own age.[2227] But while the work contains a considerable residue of

paganism, its prevailing conception of deity is one supreme God, the

rector of the planets, “who composed all things by the arrangement of

everlasting law,”[2228] and who made man the microcosm from the four

elements.[2229] He is prayed to thus:

[Sidenote: An astrologer’s prayer.]

“But lest my words be bereft of divine aid and the envy of some

hateful man impugn them by hostile attacks, whoever thou art, God,

who continuest day after day the course of the heavens in rapid

rotation, who perpetuatest the mobile agitation of ocean’s tides,

who strengthenest earth’s solidity in the immovable strength of

its foundations, who refreshest with night’s sleep the toil of our

earthly bodies, who when our strength is renewed returnest the grace

of sweetest light, who stirrest all the substance of thy work by the

salutary breath of the winds, who pourest forth the waves of streams

and fountains in tireless force, who revolvest the varied seasons by

sure periods of days: sole Governor and Prince of all, sole Emperor and

Lord, whom all the celestial forces serve, whose will is the substance

of perfect work, by whose faultless laws all nature is forever adorned

and regulated; thou Father alike and Mother of every thing, thou bound

to thyself, Father and Son, by one bond of relationship; to Thee we

extend suppliant hands, Thee with trembling supplication we venerate;

grant us grace to attempt the explanation of the courses of thy stars;

thine is the power that somehow impels us to that interpretation. With

a mind pure and separated from all earthly thoughts and purged from

every stain of sin we have written these books for thy Romans.”[2230]

Doubtless these words might have been written by a Neo-Platonist or a

pagan, but it also seems likely that they were penned by a Christian

astrologer.

[Sidenote: Christian objections to astrology met.]

Firmicus provides not only for divine government of the universe and

creation of the world and man, but also for prayer to God and for

human free will,[2231] since by the divinity of the soul we are able

to resist in some measure the decrees of the stars. He also holds that

human laws and moral standards are not rendered of no avail by the

force of the stars but are very useful to the soul in its struggle

by the power of the divine mind against the vices of the body.[2232]

Indeed, not only is the astrologer himself urged at considerable length

to lead a pure, upright, and unselfish life, but “to show the right way

of living to sinful men, so that, reformed by your teaching, they may

be freed from the errors of their past life.”[2233] The human soul is

also immortal, a spark of that same divine mind which through the stars

exerts its influence upon terrestrial bodies.[2234] All this may be

consistent or not both with itself and with the art of astrology, but

it meets the chief objections that Christians might make and had made

to the art.

[Sidenote: Astrology proved experimentally.]

These and other objections to the art of nativities are the theme to

which the first of the eight books of the _Mathesis_ is devoted.

Firmicus points out that some of the other objections to astrology do

not correctly state the doctrines of that art; others he admits are

ingenious arguments which sound well on paper but he insists that if

the opponents of astrology, instead of protesting that the influence

of the stars at a given instant is incalculable, would put the matter

to the test experimentally,[2235] they would soon be convinced of the

truth of astrologers’ predictions, although he grants that unskilful

astrologers sometimes give wrong responses. But he insists that persons

who have not tested astrology experimentally are unfit to pass upon its

merits.[2236] He affirms that the human spirit which has discovered

so many other sciences and to which so much of divinity and religion

has been revealed is capable also of casting horoscopes, and that

astrological prediction is a relatively easy task compared to the

mapping out of the whole heavens and courses of the stars which the

_mathematici_ have already performed so successfully.[2237] And he

does not see why anyone persists in denying the power of fate in human

affairs when all about him he can see the innocent suffering and the

guilty escaping; the best men such as Socrates, Plato, and Pythagoras

meeting an ill fate; and unprincipled persons like Alcibiades and Sulla

prospering.[2238]

[Sidenote: Information to be gained from the third and fourth books.]

The remaining seven books of the _Mathesis_ are given over to the art

of horoscope casting. The second book consists chiefly of preliminary

directions, but the others state what men will be born under various

constellations. Of these the last four books are extant only in

manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while the first

four are found in manuscripts going back to the eleventh century.

Moreover, although books five to eight cover more pages than books

three and four, they do not supply so many details or so satisfactory a

picture of human society in their predictions. These divergences, which

are mainly ones of omission, do not invalidate the results which we

gain from an analysis of the third and fourth books, but do raise the

question whether the later books, especially the fifth and sixth, are

genuine. In them the wording becomes vaguer, little knowledge is shown

of conditions at the time that Firmicus wrote, the predictions are more

sensational and rhetorical. Only the latter part of the eighth book

carries the conviction of reality that books three and four do. These

two books are both independent units and through their predictions of

the future supply a general picture of human society, presumably that

of Firmicus’ own time or not long before. One naturally assumes that

those matters to which Firmicus devotes most space and emphasis are

the prominent features of his age. Let us see what his picture is of

religion, divination, the occult science and magic, natural science and

medicine.[2239]

[Sidenote: Religion and magic; exorcists.]

To religion Firmicus gives less space than to politics. There are

no clear references to Christianity, but there are few allusions to

any particular cults. Firmicus, however, indicates the existence

of many cults, speaking five times of the heads of religions, and

characterizing men as “those who regard all religions and gods with a

certain trepidation,” “those devoted to certain religions,” “those who

cherish the greatest religions,” and so on. Temples,[2240] priests, and

divination[2241] are the three features of religion that he mentions

most. Magic and religion are closely associated in his predictions,

for instance, “temple priests ever famed in magic lore.” Sacred or

religious literatures and persons devoted to them are mentioned

thrice, while in a fourth passage we hear of men “investigating the

secrets of all religions and of heaven itself.” Other interesting

descriptions[2242] are of those who “stay in temples in an unkempt

state and always walk abroad thus, and never cut their hair, and who

would announce something to men as if said by the gods, such as are

wont to be in temples, who are accustomed to predict the future”; and

of “men terrible to the gods and who despise all kinds of perjuries.

Moreover, they will be terrible to all demons, and at their approach

the wicked spirits of demons flee; and they free men who are thus

troubled, not by force of words but by their mere appearing; and

however violent the demon may be who shakes the body and spirit of

man, whether he be aerial or terrestrial or infernal, he flees at the

bidding of this sort of man and fears his precepts with a certain

veneration. These are they who are called exorcists by the people.”

Religious games and contests are mentioned four times: the carving,

consecrating, adoring, and clothing of images of the gods, twice

each; porters at religious ceremonies, thrice; hymn singers, twice;

pipe-players once. Five passages represent persons professionally

engaged in religion as growing rich thereby.

[Sidenote: Divination.]

We are told that men “predict the future either by the divinity of

their own minds or by the admonition of the gods or from oracles or

by the venerable discipline of some art.”[2243] Augurs, _aruspices_,

interpreters of dreams, _mathematici_ (astrologers), diviners, and

prophets are mentioned. Once Firmicus alludes to false divination but

he usually implies that it is a valid art.

[Sidenote: Magic as a branch of learning.]

From religion and divination we easily pass to the occult arts and

sciences, and thence to learning and literature in general, from

which occult learning is scarcely distinguished in the _Mathesis_.

Magicians or magic arts are mentioned no less than seven times in

varied relations with religion, philosophy, medicine, and astronomy or

astrology, showing that magic was not invariably regarded as evil in

that age, and that it was confused and intermingled with the arts and

philosophy as well as with the religion of the times.[2244] There are

a number of other allusions to secret and illicit arts or writings;

these, however, appear to be more unfavorably regarded and probably

largely consist of witchcraft and poisoning.

[Sidenote: Interest in science.]

The evidence of the _Mathesis_ suggests that the civilization of

declining Rome was at least not conscious of the intellectual decadence

and lack of scientific interest so generally imputed to it. We find

three descriptions of intellectual pioneers who learn what no master

has ever taught them, and one other instance of men who pretend to

do so. We also hear of “those learning much and knowing all, also

inventors,” and of those “learning everything,” and “desiring to

learn the secrets of all arts.” This curiosity, it is true, seems to

be largely devoted to occult science, but it also seems plain that

mathematics and medicine were important factors in fourth-century

culture as well as the rhetorical studies whose rôle has perhaps been

overestimated. Let us compare the statistics. Oratory is mentioned

eighteen times, and it is to be noted that literary attainments and

learning as well as mere eloquence are regarded as essential in an

orator. Men of letters other than orators are found in six passages,

and poets in only three. A passage reading “philologists or those

skilled in laborious letters” suggests that four instances of the

phrase _difficiles litterae_ should perhaps be classed under linguistic

rather than occult studies. There are four allusions to grammarians and

two to masters of grammar, as against one description of “contentious,

contradictory dialecticians, professing that they know what no

teaching has acquainted them with, mischievous fellows, but unable to

do any effective thinking.”[2245] On the other hand, there are fourteen

allusions to astronomy and astrology (not including the _mathematici_

already listed under divination), three to geometry, and six to other

varieties of mathematics.[2246] Philosophers are mentioned five times;

practitioners of medicine, eleven times;[2247] surgeons, once; and

botanists, twice. These professions seem to be well paid and are spoken

of in complimentary terms.

[Sidenote: Diseases in antiquity.]

Death, injury, and disease loom up large in Firmicus’ prospectus for

the human race, making us realize the benefits of nineteenth-century

medicine as well as of modern peace.[2248] No less than 174 passages

deal with disease and many of them list two or more ills. Mental

disorders are mentioned in 37 places;[2249] physical deformities in

six. Other specific ailments mentioned are as follows: blindness and

eye troubles, 10; deafness and ear troubles, 5; impediments of speech,

4; baldness, 1; foul odors, 1; dyspeptics, 4; other stomach complaints,

7; dysentery, 2; liver trouble, 1; jaundice, 1; dropsy, 5; spleen

disorders, 1; gonorrhoea, 2; other diseases of the urinary bladder and

private parts, 6; consumption and lung troubles, 6; hemorrhages, 6;

apoplexy, 3; spasms, 5; ills attributed to bad or excessive humors,

12; leprosy and other skin diseases, 6; ague, 1; fever, 1; pains in

various parts of the body, 6; internal pains and hidden diseases, 9;

diseases of women, 5. There remain a large number of vague allusions to

ill-health: 21 to debility, 12 to languor, 3 to invalids, and 49 other

passages. Only eight passages allude to the cure of disease. Among the

methods suggested are cauterizing, incantations, ordinary remedies,

and seeking divine aid, which last is mentioned most often. The eleven

references to medical practitioners should, however, be recalled here.

The predictions as to length of life are inadequate to the drawing of

conclusions on that point.

[Sidenote: Place of Firmicus in the history of astrology.]

Firmicus regards his work as a new contribution so far as the

Latin-speaking world is concerned.[2250] Not that there had not

been previous writing in Latin on the subject. Fronto “had written

predictions very accurately,” but “as if he were addressing persons

already perfect and skilled in the art, and without first instructing

in the elements and practice of the art.”[2251] Firmicus supplies this

essential preliminary instruction, which hardly anyone of the Latins

had given, and corrects Fronto’s faulty presentation of _antiscia_,

in which he followed Hipparchus, by the correcter method of Navigius

(Nigidius?) and Ptolemy.[2252] Firmicus gives no systematic account of

his authorities[2253] but occasionally cites them for some particular

point and in general professes to follow not only the Greeks but the

divine men of Egypt and Babylon, chief among whom seem to be Nechepso

and Petosiris and the Hermetic works to or by Aesculapius and Hanubius.

An Abram or Abraham is also cited several times. But Firmicus also

gives the _Sphaera Barbarica_, “unknown to all the Romans and to

many Greeks,” and which escaped the notice even of Petosiris and

Nechepso.[2254] Firmicus himself is named by no ancient author[2255]

but was well known in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as we shall

see. In the _Mathesis_ he cites two previous astrological treatises of

his own[2256] and expresses his intention of composing another work

in twelve books on the subject of _Myriogenesis_.[2257] The astrologer

Hephaestion of Thebes, who wrote later in the fourth century, seems

also to have been a Christian, so that Firmicus was not a solitary case

or an anomaly.[2258]

[Sidenote: Libanius accused of magic.]

The writings of Libanius, 314-391 A. D., the sophist and rhetorician,

throw some light on the relations between magic and learning in

the fourth century, show that sorcery and divination were actually

practiced, and largely duplicate impressions already received from

Apuleius, Apollonius, and Galen, and a Christian like John Chrysostom

as well as just now from Firmicus. Libanius tells us how Bemarchius,

a rival of his at Athens, who would have poisoned him if he could,

instead circulated reports that he (Bemarchius) was the victim of

enchantments, and that Libanius had consulted against him an astrologer

who was able to control the stars, so that he could confer benefits

upon one man and work sorcery against another. This incidentally is

another good illustration of how easily astrology passed from mere

prediction of the future to operative magic, and of the essential unity

of all magic arts. The mob was aroused against Libanius and a praetor

who tried to protect him was ousted and another installed at daybreak

who was ready to put Libanius to death. Torture was prepared and

Libanius was advised to leave Athens, if he did not wish to die there,

and took the advice and left.[2259]

[Sidenote: Declamation against a magician.]

Among the declamations of Libanius is one against a magician,[2260]

supposed to have been delivered under the following circumstances. The

city was afflicted with a pestilence and finally sent an embassy to

the Delphic oracle to learn how to escape the scourge. Apollo replied

that they must sacrifice the son of one of the inhabitants who should

be determined by lot, and the lot fell to the son of a magician. The

father then offered to stay the plague by means of his magic art, if

they would agree to spare his son. Against this proposal Libanius

argues, urging the people to carry out their original decision and not

to anger the Delphic god by violating his oracle, whose reliability

is attested by “long time and much experience and common testimony.”

He declares that magic is an evil art, and that magicians make no one

happy but many wretched, ruining homes, bringing disaster to persons

who have never harmed them, and disturbing even the spirits of the

dead. He also censures the magician for not having offered to save the

city from the plague before, and expresses some scepticism as to his

magic power, asking why he did not prevent the fatal lot from falling

to his son, or why he does not save him now by causing him to vanish

from sight, or vouchsafe some other unmistakable sign of his magic

power. It appears that the magician had asked a delay, saying that he

must wait for the moon before he could operate against the plague.

Libanius points out that meanwhile the citizens are perishing and that

fulfillment of Apollo’s oracle will bring instant relief. It would

seem, however, that some of the citizens had more faith in the magician

than in the god, which supports the oft-made general assertion that the

magic arts waxed as pagan religion and its superstitious observances

waned. Libanius concludes his oration or imaginary oration with the

cutting and heartless witticism that the magician can lose his son more

easily than can anyone else, since he will of course still be able to

invoke his spirit from the dead.

[Sidenote: Faith of Libanius in divination.]

Libanius’ own faith in divination is not only suggested by the attitude

toward the Delphic oracle in the foregoing declamation but is attested

by two passages in his autobiography. His great-great-grandfather had

so excelled in _mantike_ that he foresaw that his children would die

by steel, although they would be handsome and great and good speakers.

It also was rumored that a celebrated sophist had predicted many things

concerning Libanius himself, which Libanius assures us had since come

to pass.[2261]

[Sidenote: Magic and astrology in the pseudo-Quintilian declamations.]

Of the same type as Libanius’ declamation against the magician

is the fourth pseudo-Quintilian declamation in Latin concerning

an astrologer’s prediction, which we shall later in the twelfth

century find Bernard Silvester enlarging upon in his poem entitled

_Mathematicus_. In another of the pseudo-Quintilian declamations

the word _experimentum_ is used of a magician’s feat. “O harsh and

cruel magician, O manufacturer of our tears, I would that you had not

given so great an experiment! We are angry at you, yet we must cajole

you. While you imprison the ghost, we know that you alone can evoke

it.”[2262]

[Sidenote: Fusion of Christianity and paganism in Synesius of Cyrene.]

That more than fifty years after Firmicus adherence to Christianity

might be combined with trust in divination of the future, occult

science, and magical invocation of spirits, and with various other

pagan and Neo-Platonic beliefs, is well illustrated by the case

of Synesius of Cyrene,[2263] a fellow-African and contemporary of

Augustine. Synesius, however, traced his descent from the Heracleidae,

wrote in Greek, and displayed a Hellenism unusual for his time,[2264]

and, while he did not find the Athens of his day entirely to his

taste, continued the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of the

sophists of the Roman Empire, like Libanius of whom we have just

spoken. His extant letters show that Hypatia was numbered among his

friends and had been his teacher at the Neo-Platonic and mathematical

school of Alexandria. Hypatia was murdered by the fanatical Christian

mob of that city in 415. But very different was the attitude of

the people of Ptolemais to the like-minded Synesius. A few years

before they had elected him bishop![2265] Moreover, he distinctly

stipulated[2266] that he should not renounce his wife and family nor

his philosophical opinions, which seem to have involved a sceptical

attitude towards miracles and the resurrection, and a belief in the

eternity of the world and pre-existence of the soul rather than in

creation,[2267] in addition to the views which we are about to set

forth. It has been observed also that his doctrine of the Trinity is

more Neo-Platonic than Christian.[2268]

[Sidenote: Career of Synesius.]

The dates of Synesius’ birth and death are uncertain. He seems to have

been born about 370. His last dateable letter appears to be written

in 412, but some give the date of his death as late as 430. Others

contend that he did not live to hear of Hypatia’s murder. Before he

was made bishop he had been to Constantinople on a mission to the

emperor to secure alleviation of the oppressive taxation in Cyrene. He

had lived in Athens and Alexandria as a student, and in Cyrene on his

country estate. Here, if in his fondness for books and philosophy he

constituted a survival of the past, in his fondness for the chase and

dogs and horses and his repulsion of an invasion of Libyan marauders

he was the forerunner of many a medieval feudal bishop. And after he

became bishop, he launched an excommunication against the tyrannical

prefect Andronicus.

[Sidenote: His interest in science.]

But our particular interest is less in his political and more purely

literary activities than in his taste for mathematics and science. He

knew some medicine and was well acquainted with geometry and astronomy.

He believed himself to be the inventor of an astrolabe and of a

hydroscope.

[Sidenote: Belief in occult sympathies between natural objects.]

With this interest in natural and mathematical science went an interest

in occult science and divination. His belief that the universe was a

unit and all its parts closely correlated not only led him to maintain,

like Seneca, that whatever had a cause was a sign of some future event,

or to hold with Plotinus that in any and every object the sage might

discern the future of every other, and that the birds themselves, if

endowed with sufficient intelligence, would be able to predict the

future by observing the movements of human bipeds.[2269] It led him

also to the conclusion that the various parts of the universe were

more than passive mirrors in which one might see the future of the

other parts; that they further exerted, by virtue of the magic sympathy

which united all parts of the universe, a potent active influence over

other objects and occurrences. The wise man might not only predict

the future; he might, to a great extent, control it. “For it must be,

I think, that of this whole, so joined in sympathy and in agreement,

the parts are closely connected as if members of a single body. And

does not this explain the spells of the magi? For things, besides

being signs of each other, have magic power over each other. The wise

man, then, is he who knows the relationships of the parts of the

universe. For he draws one object under his control by means of another

object, holding what is at hand as a pledge for what is far away,

and working through sounds and material substances and forms.”[2270]

Synesius explained that plants and stones are related by bonds of

occult sympathy to the gods who are within the universe and who form a

part of it, that plants and stones have magic power over these gods,

and that one may by means of such material substances attract those

deities.[2271] He evidently believed that it was quite legitimate to

control the processes of nature by invoking demons.

[Sidenote: Synesius on divination and astrology.]

The devotion of Synesius to divination has been already implied. He

regarded it as among the noblest of human pursuits.[2272] Dreams, on

which he wrote a treatise, he viewed as significant and very useful

events. They aided him, he wrote, in his every-day life, and had upon

one occasion saved him from magic devices against his life.[2273]

Warned by a dream that he would have a son, he wrote a treatise for the

child before it was born.[2274] Of course, he had faith in astrology.

The stars were well-nigh ever present in his thought. In his _Praise

of Baldness_ he characterized comets as fatal omens, as harbingers of

the worst public disasters.[2275] In _On Providence_ he explained the

supposed fact that history repeats itself by the periodical return to

their former positions of the stars which govern our life.[2276] In

_On the Gift of an Astrolabe_ he declared that “astronomy” besides

being itself a noble science, prepared men for the diviner mysteries of

theology.[2277]

[Sidenote: Synesius as an alchemist.]

Finally, he held the view common among students of magic that knowledge

should be esoteric; that its mysteries and marvels should be confined

to the few fitted to receive them and that they should be expressed in

language incomprehensible to the vulgar crowd.[2278] It is perhaps on

this account that one of the oldest extant treatises of Greek alchemy

is ascribed to him. Berthelot, however, accepted it as his, stating

that “there is nothing surprising in Synesius’ having really written on

alchemy.”[2279]

[Sidenote: Macrobius on number, dreams, and stars.]

Synesius influenced the Byzantine period but probably not the western

medieval world. But the Commentary of Macrobius on _The Dream of

Scipio_ by Cicero is one of the treatises most frequently encountered

in early medieval Latin manuscripts. In the twelfth century Abelard

made frequent reference to Macrobius and called him “no mean

philosopher”; in the thirteenth Aquinas cited him as an authority for

the doctrines of Neo-Platonism.[2280] Macrobius himself affirmed that

Vergil contained practically all necessary knowledge[2281] and that

Cicero’s _Dream of Scipio_ was a work second to none and contained

the entire substance of philosophy.[2282] Macrobius believed that

numbers possess occult power. He dilated at considerable length

upon every number from one to eight, emphasizing the perfection and

far-reaching significance of each. He held the Pythagorean doctrine

that the world-soul consists of number, that number rules the harmony

of the celestial bodies, and that from the music of the spheres we

derive the numerical values proper to musical consonance.[2283] His

opinion was that dreams and other striking occurrences will reveal an

occult meaning to the careful investigator.[2284] As for astrology,

he regarded the stars as signs but not causes of future events,

just as birds by their flight or song reveal matters of which they

themselves are ignorant.[2285] So the sun and other planets, though

in a way divine, are but material bodies, and it is not from them

but from the world-soul (pure mind), whence they too come, that the

human spirit takes its origin.[2286] In his sole other extant work,

the _Saturnalia_, Macrobius displays some belief in occult virtues in

natural objects, as when Disaurius the physician answers such questions

as why a copper knife stuck in game prevents decay.[2287]

[Sidenote: Martianus Capella.]

The medieval vogue of the fifth century work of Martianus Capella, The

_Nuptials of Philology and Mercury, and the Seven Liberal Arts_,[2288]

has been too frequently demonstrated to require further emphasis

here, although it is still a puzzle just why a monastic Christian

world should have selected for a text book in the liberal arts a work

which contained so much pagan mythology, to say nothing of a marriage

ceremony. Nor need we repeat its fulsome allegorical plot and meager

learned content. Cassiodorus tells us that the author was a native of

Madaura, the birthplace of Apuleius, in North Africa, and he appears to

be a Neo-Platonist who has much to say of the sky, stars, and old pagan

gods, often, however, by way of brief and vague poetical allusion.

[Sidenote: Absence of astrology.]

Of astrology there is very little trace in Capella’s work. In a

discussion of perfect numbers in the second book the number seven

evokes allusion to the fatal courses of the stars and their influence

upon the formation of the child in the womb; but the eighth book, which

is devoted to the theme of astronomy as one of the liberal arts, is

limited to a purely astronomical description of the heavens.

[Sidenote: Orders of spirits.]

The chief thing for us to note in the work is the account of the

various orders of spiritual beings and their respective location in

reference to the heavenly bodies.[2289] Juno leads the virgin Philology

to the aerial citadels and there instructs her in the multiplicity of

diverse powers. From highest ether to the solar circle are beings of a

fiery and flaming substance. These are the celestial gods who prepare

the secrets of occult causes. They are pure and impassive and immortal

and have little or no direct relation with mankind. Between sun and

moon come spirits who have especial charge of soothsaying, dreams,

prodigies, omens, and divination from entrails and auguries. They often

utter warning voices or admonish those who consult their oracles by

the course of the stars or the hurling of thunderbolts. To this class

belong the Genii associated with individual mortals and angels “who

announce secret thoughts to the superior power.” All these the Greeks

call demons. Their splendor is less lucid than that of the celestials,

but their bodies are not sufficiently corporeal to enable men to see

them. Lares and purer human souls after death also come under this

category. Between moon and earth the spirits subdivide into three

classes. In the upper atmosphere are demi-gods. “These have celestial

souls and holy minds and are begotten in human form to the profit of

the whole world.” Such were Hercules, Ammon, Dionysus, Osiris, Isis,

Triptolemus, and Asclepius. Others of this class become sibyls and

seers. From mid-air to the mountain-tops are found heroes and Manes.

Finally the earth itself is inhabited by a long-lived race of dwellers

in woods and groves, in fountains and lakes and streams, called Pans,

Fauns, satyrs, Silvani, nymphs, and by other names. They finally die

as men do, but possess great power of foresight and of inflicting

injury.[2290] It is evident that Capella’s spiritual world is one well

fitted for astrology, divination, and magic.

[Sidenote: _The Celestial Hierarchy_ of Dionysius the Areopagite.]

Very different are the orders of spirits described in _The Celestial

Hierarchy_, supposed to be the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, where

are set forth nine orders of spirits in three groups of three each:

Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, and Powers;

Princes, Archangels, and Angels. The threefold division reminds us of

Capella, but there the resemblance ceases. The pseudo-Dionysius takes

all his suggestions from the Old and New Testaments, rather than from

classical mythology and such previous classifications of spirits as

that of Apuleius. And while his starting from such verses of the Bible

as “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, descending

from the Father of lights,” and “Jesus Christ the true light that

lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” and his using such

phrases as “archifotic Father” and “thearchic ray,” lead us to expect

some Gnostic-like scheme of association of the spirits with the various

heavens and celestial bodies, in fact he throughout speaks of the

spirits solely as celestial and deiform and hypercosmic _minds_, and

unspeakable and sacred enigmas of whose invisibility, transcendence,

infinity, and incomprehensibility any description can be merely

symbolic and figurative. Their functions seem to consist chiefly in

contemplation of the deity or their superior orders and illumination

of man and their inferior orders. They are not specifically associated

by Dionysius with the celestial bodies, much less with any terrestrial

objects, and so his account lays no foundation for magic and astrology,

unless as its transcendent mysticism might pique some curious person

to attempt some very immaterial variety of theurgy and sublimated

theosophy. Although the Pseudo-Dionysius wrote in Greek,[2291] his work

was made available for the Latin middle ages by the translation of John

the Scot in the ninth century.[2292]

BOOK III. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Chapter 24. The Story of Nectanebus.

” 25. Post-Classical Medicine.

” 26. Pseudo-Literature in Natural Science of the Early Middle

Ages.

” 27. Other Early Medieval Learning.

” 28. Arabic Occult Science of the Ninth Century.

” 29. Latin Astrology and Divination, Especially in the Ninth,

Tenth, and Eleventh Centuries.

” 30. Gerbert and the Introduction of Arabic Astrology.

” 31. Anglo-Saxon, Salernitan, and other Latin Medicine in

Manuscripts from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century.

” 32. Constantinus Africanus.

” 33. Treatises on the Arts before the Introduction of Arabic

Alchemy.

” 34. Marbod.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE STORY OF NECTANEBUS

OR

THE ALEXANDER LEGEND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES[2293]

The _Pseudo-Callisthenes_—Its unhistoric character—Julius

Valerius—Oriental versions—Medieval epitomes of Julius

Valerius—Letters of Alexander—Leo’s _Historia de praeliis_—Medieval

metamorphosis of ancient tradition—Survival of magical and

scientific features—Who was Nectanebus?—A scientific key-note—Magic

of Nectanebus—Nectanebus as an astrologer—A magic dream—Lucian on

Olympias and the serpent—More dream-sending; magic transformation—An

omen interpreted—The birth of Alexander—The death of Nectanebus—The

Amazons and Gymnosophists—_The Letter to Aristotle_.

[Sidenote: The _Pseudo-Callisthenes_.]

The oldest version of the legend or romance of Alexander is naturally

believed to have been written in the Greek language but is thought to

have been produced in Egypt at Alexandria. But the Greek manuscripts

of the story are all of the medieval or Renaissance period; indeed,

none of them antedates the eleventh or twelfth century. Furthermore,

they differ very considerably in content and arrangement, so that

the problem of distinguishing or recovering the original text of the

_Pseudo-Callisthenes_, as the work is commonly called, and of dating

it, is one with which various scholars have grappled. It has been held

that the original Greek text which lies back of the later versions

was written not later than 200 A. D. But Basil, writing in Greek in

the fourth century and well-versed in Greek culture, is apparently

unfamiliar with the story of Nectanebus, since he says, “Without doubt

there has never been a king who has taken measures to have his son born

under the star of royalty.”[2294] Fortunately we are less interested in

the original version than in the medieval development of the tradition.

It should, however, perhaps be premised that certain features of the

Alexander legend may be detected in embryo in Plutarch’s _Life_ of him.

The true Callisthenes was a historian who accompanied Alexander upon

his Asiatic campaigns but then offended the conqueror by opposing

his adoption of oriental dress, absolutism, and deification, and

was therefore cast into prison on a charge of treason, and there

died in 328 B. C. either from ill treatment or disease.[2295] Since

Callisthenes was also a relative and pupil of Aristotle, his name was

an excellent one upon which to father the romance. However, the oldest

Latin version of it professes to employ a Greek text by one Aesopus,

possibly because Aesop’s fables accompany the story of Alexander in

some of the manuscripts. Yet other versions cite an Onesicritus,[2296]

and the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ has also been attributed to Antisthenes,

Aristotle, and Arrian.

[Sidenote: Its unhistoric character.]

Perhaps no better single illustration of the totally unhistorical and

romantic character of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ can be given than the

perversion of Alexander’s line of march in most of the Greek and all of

the Latin versions. He is represented as first proceeding to Italy and

receiving royal honors at Rome; then he goes to Carthage and reaches

the shrine of Ammon by traversing Libya; next he passes through Egypt

into Syria and destroys Tyre, after which he crosses Arabia and has his

first battle with Darius. Presently he is found back in Greece sacking

Thebes and dealing with Corinth, Athens, and Sparta. Then his Asiatic

conquests are resumed.

[Sidenote: Julius Valerius.]

The oldest Latin version of the Alexander romance is the _Res gestae

Alexandri Macedonis_ of Julius Valerius. Who he was and when he lived

are matters still veiled in obscurity; but it is customary to place

him in the early fourth century on the basis of Zacher’s contention

that the _Res gestae_ is copied in certain portions of the _Itinerarium

Alexandri_, which was written during the years 340-345 A. D. This

dating would also serve to explain why Basil, writing in Greek before

379, had never heard of a king who had taken steps to have his son born

under the star of royalty, while Augustine, writing in Latin between

413 and 426, mentions the story of a sage who selected a certain hour

for intercourse with his wife in order that he might beget a marvelous

son. This would also suggest that the Latin version was older than

the Greek, as in fact the extant manuscripts of it are. The oldest

manuscript of Valerius, however, is a badly damaged palimpsest of the

seventh century at Turin. Other manuscripts are one at Milan of the

tenth century and another at Paris dating about 1200.[2297] The text of

Valerius differs considerably from the Greek _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ and

was to undergo further alteration in later medieval Latin versions.

[Sidenote: Oriental versions.]

Before speaking of these we may mention other oriental versions of the

story. An Armenian text dates from the fifth century. A Syriac version,

which dates from the seventh or eighth century and was “much read by

the Nestorians,” was itself derived from an earlier Persian rendering.

It seems to make use of both the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes and Julius

Valerius since it includes incidents from either which are not found

in the other. And it omits a considerable section of the Greek version

besides adding episodes which are not found in it, although contained

in Julius Valerius. We hear further of Arabic and Hebrew versions

of the romance, while manuscripts of recent date supply an Ethiopic

version of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ of unknown authorship and date,

together with other Ethiopic histories and romances of Alexander. These

are based partly upon Arabic and Jewish works but take great liberties

with their sources in making alterations to suit a Christian audience,

omitting for example, as Budge points out, Alexander’s victory in the

chariot race, and transforming Philip and Alexander into Christian

martyrs, or the Greek gods into patriarchs and prophets like Enoch

and Elijah. Even the Greek version did not remain unaltered in the

Byzantine period when two recensions in prose and two more in verse

are distinguished. Indeed, none of the Greek manuscripts of the work

antedates the eleventh or twelfth century, they differ greatly, and

some of them ascribe the romance to Alexander himself.

[Sidenote: Medieval epitomes of Julius Valerius.]

Such variations in the eastern versions of the story of Alexander

illustrate how the middle ages made the classical heritage their own

and prepare us for similar alterations in the Latin account current

in western Europe. The work of Julius Valerius, though written in

the rhetorical style characteristic of the declining Roman Empire

and composed almost on the verge of the middle ages, was to undergo

further alterations to adapt it more closely to medieval taste and

use. By the ninth century, if not earlier, two epitomes of it had been

made, and, beginning with that century, manuscripts of the shorter of

these epitomes become far more numerous than those of the original

Valerius.[2298]

[Sidenote: Letters of Alexander.]

Two sections of the Alexander legend were omitted in the Epitome,

not because medieval men had lost interest in them but because they

had become so fond of them as to enlarge upon them and issue them as

distinct works. They often, however, accompany the Epitome in the

manuscripts. One of these was the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle

on the Marvels of India.[2299] It is longer than the corresponding

chapter of Valerius[2300] where a letter of Alexander to Aristotle

is quoted and also differs from any known Greek text. The fact that

reference is made to it in the longer Epitome leads to the conclusion

that the Letter is older. This would also seem to be the case with the

other work, a short series of letters interchanged between Alexander

and Dindimus, the king of the Brahmans, since the Epitome omits the

two chapters of Valerius which tell of Alexander’s interview with the

Brahmans. It is believed that Alcuin, who died in 804, in one of his

letters to Charlemagne speaks of sending these epistles exchanged

between Alexander and Dindimus along with the equally apocryphal

correspondence of the apostle Paul and the philosopher Seneca. No such

letters are found in the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, for the ten chapters

on the Brahmans found in one Greek codex are interpolated from the

treatise of Palladius, likewise in the form of a correspondence.[2301]

Julius Valerius does not even mention Dindimus, but a third epistolary

discussion of the Brahmans exists in Latin, _De moribus Brachmannorum_,

ascribed to St. Ambrose.[2302]

[Sidenote: Leo’s _Historia de praeliis_.]

Leo, an archpriest of Naples, who went to Constantinople about 941-944

on an embassy for two dukes of Campania, John and Marinus, brought back

with him a _History containing the conflicts and victories of Alexander

the Great, King of Macedon_. Later Duke John, who was fond of science,

had Leo translate this work from Greek into Latin, in which tongue

it is entitled _Historia de praeliis_. We learn these facts from its

prologue which is found only in the oldest extant manuscript, a Bamberg

codex of the eleventh century,[2303] and in a manuscript of the twelfth

or thirteenth century at Munich. The location of these two manuscripts

suggests that the work was early carried from Italy to Germany, lands

then connected in the Holy Roman Empire. Of the _De praeliis_ apart

from the prologue there came to be many copies, but most of them

date from the later middle ages, and the importance of the work as

a source for the vernacular romances of Alexander has been somewhat

overestimated, since Meyer has shown that no manuscript of it is found

in France until the thirteenth century and since the manuscripts of the

Epitome are far more numerous.[2304]

[Sidenote: Medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition.]

In the foregoing observations we may seem to have digressed too far

from our main theme of science and magic into the domain of literary

history. But the development of the Alexander legend, which happens

to have been traced more thoroughly than perhaps any other one thread

in the medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition, throws light at

least by analogy upon many matters in which we are interested: the

state of medieval manuscript material, the continuity and yet the

alteration of ancient culture during the early middle ages, the process

of translation from the Greek which went on even then, and the varying

rapidity or slowness with which books circulated and ideas permeated.

[Sidenote: Survival of magical and scientific features.]

Moreover, the story of Alexander, especially as adapted by the middle

ages, contained a large amount of magic and science, more especially

the former. The Epitome might omit a great deal else, but it kept

intact the opening portion of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ and of Julius

Valerius concerning the adventures of Nectanebus, the sage and magician

from Egypt, the astrologer and the natural father of Alexander. Indeed,

the titles in some manuscripts suggest that Nectanebus came to rival

Alexander for medieval readers as the hero of the story. Thus we find

a _History of Alexander, King of Macedon, and of Nectanebo, King of

Egypt_,[2305] or an account _Of the Life and Deeds of Neptanabus,

astronomer of Egypt_,[2306] or a Latin metrical version by “Uilikinus”

or Aretinus Quilichinus of Spoleto in 1236 entitled, _The History

of the Science of the Egyptians and of Neptanabus their king who

afterwards was the true father of Alexander_.[2307]

[Sidenote: Who was Nectanebus?]

Pliny in the _Natural History_ describes the obelisk of Necthebis,

king of Egypt, whom he places five centuries before Alexander the

Great.[2308] Plutarch, however, in his life of Agesilaus and Nepos in

his life of Chabrias mention a Nectanebus II who struggled against

Persia for the throne of Egypt about 361 B. C. and later was forced

to flee to Ethiopia. In the Alexander romance, however, it is to

Macedon that Nectanebus retreats. A Nectabis is listed as a magician

along with Ostanes, Typhon, Dardanus, Damigeron, and Berenice, by

Tertullian, writing about 200 A. D.[2309] As a matter of fact, in

the Thirtieth Dynasty were two kings named respectively Nektanebes

or _Nekht-Har-ehbēt_, who ruled 378 to 361 B. C., and Nektanebos or

_Nekhte-nebof_, who ruled 358 to 341 B. C. Both have left considerable

buildings.[2310] It is the latter who was forced by the Persians to

flee to Ethiopia nine years before Alexander conquered Egypt and who is

the hero of our story. The stele of Metternich is covered with magical

formulae ascribed to Nectanebo.[2311]

[Sidenote: A scientific key-note.]

A note suggestive of both natural science and occult science is struck

by the opening passage of the Latin epitomes and of the oldest Greek

manuscript; the first page of Julius Valerius is missing and has to

be supplied from the epitomes. The first words are “The Egyptian

sages,” and the first sentence describes their scientific ability in

measuring the earth and in tracing the revolutions of the heavens and

numbering the stars. “And of them all Nectanabus is recognized to have

been the most prudent ... for the elements of the universe obeyed

him.” In the opening sentences of the oldest Greek version and of

the Ethiopic version even more emphasis is laid than in the Epitomes

upon the learning of the Egyptians in general and of Nectanebus in

particular, and of the close connection of that learning with astrology

and magic.[2312] We read, “Now there lived in the land of Egypt a king

who was called Bektanis, and he was a famous magician and a sage, and

he was deeply learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians. And he had more

knowledge than all the wise men who knew what was in the depths of

the Nile and in the abysses, and who were skilled in the knowledge of

the stars and of their seasons and in the knowledge of the astrolabe

and in the casting of nativities.... And by his learning and by his

observations of the stars Nectanebus was able to predict what would

befall anyone who was about to be born.”[2313] In one Latin manuscript

of the fifteenth century the _History of Alexander the Great_ begins

with the

5 sentence, “Books tell us how powerful the race of the Egyptians were

in mathematics and the magic art.”[2314]

[Sidenote: Magic of Nectanebus.]

Next we are told, and the account is practically the same in all

the versions of the story, how by means of his basin filled with

water, his wax images of ships and men, his rod or wand of ebony, and

the incantations with which he addressed the gods above and below,

Nectanebus had been hitherto able to destroy all the armies and to sink

all the fleets that had come against him. But when one day he found his

magic unavailing to save him, he shaved his head and beard and fled to

Macedon, where in linen garb he plied the trade of an astrologer.

[Sidenote: Nectanebus as an astrologer.]

In this he soon became so celebrated that the fame of his predictions

reached the ears of the queen Olympias, who consulted him during an

absence of Philip. When she asked Nectanebus by means of what art

he divined the future so truthfully, he answered that there were

many varieties of divination. Julius Valerius and the Latin epitomes

mention specifically only interpreters of dreams and astrologers,

but the Greek, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions give more elaborate

lists of various kinds of diviners.[2315] Nectanebus next produced an

astrological tablet adorned with gold and ivory and with each planet

and the horoscope represented by a different stone or metal. With the

aid of this he read the queen’s horoscope and told her that she would

have a son by the God Ammon and would be forewarned soon to that effect

in a dream. Olympias replied that if such a dream came to her, she

would no longer employ Nectanebus as a _magus_ but honor him as a god.

[Sidenote: A magic dream.]

Nectanebus thereupon sought for herbs useful to command dreams, plucked

them, and pressed a syrup out of them. He placed a wax image of the

queen inscribed with her name upon a little couch, lighted lamps,

and poured his syrup over the wax figure, muttering a secret and

efficacious incantation the while. By this means he brought it about

that the queen would dream or think she dreamed whatever he said to the

wax image of her. Later Nectanebus himself played the part of the god

Ammon, announcing his coming beforehand to Olympias by making by his

“science” a dragon which glided into her presence.

[Sidenote: Lucian on Olympias and the serpent.]

Lucian of Samosata in the second century tells us that it was a

common story in his time that Olympias had lain with a serpent before

giving birth to Alexander. He suggests as the explanation of how

this tale originated the fact that at Pella in Macedonia there is a

breed of large serpents, “so tame and gentle that women make pets of

them, children take them to bed, they will let you tread on them,

have no objection to being squeezed, and will draw milk from the

breasts like infants.... It was doubtless one of these that was her

bedfellow.”[2316] As is apt to be the case in ancient efforts to give a

natural explanation of what purports to be miraculous or supernatural,

Lucian’s biology is only slightly less incredible than Nectanebus’s

magic transformations.

[Sidenote: More dream-sending: magic transformation.]

As the queen became pregnant, “Nectanebus consecrated a hawk and told

it to go to Philip,” who was still absent, “to stand by him through

the night and to instruct him in a dream as it was ordered.”[2317]

The vision in question was explained by an interpreter of dreams to

Philip as signifying that his wife would have a son by the god Ammon.

Nevertheless Philip was somewhat suspicious and hastened to bring his

wars to a close and hurry home. Nectanebus, however, rendering himself

invisible by means of the magic art, continued to deceive both king

and queen. Once he terrified the court by appearing again in the form

of a huge hissing serpent, but put his head in Olympias’s lap and then

kissed her. Thereupon he turned from a serpent into an eagle and flew

away. Philip was then really convinced that his wife’s lover was the

god Ammon.

[Sidenote: An omen interpreted.]

Before the birth of Alexander the following omen befell Philip. As he

sat absorbed in thought in a place where there were many birds flying

about, one of them laid an egg in his lap. It rolled to the ground, the

shell broke, and a snake issued forth. It circled about the egg-shell

but when it tried to re-enter the shell was prevented by death. When

Antiphon, the interpreter of omens, was consulted concerning this

portent, he said that it signified that a son should be born who would

conquer the world but die before he could regain his native land.

[Sidenote: The birth of Alexander.]

The day of Olympias’s delivery now approached and Nectanebus, in his

office of astrologer, stood by her side to tell her when the favorable

moment had arrived for the birth of her child. Once he urged her to

wait, since a child born at that moment would be a slave and a captive.

Again he bade her restrain herself, for at that moment an effeminate

would be born. At last the favorable instant came for the birth of a

world conqueror, and Alexander was born amid an earthquake, thunder,

and lightning. In this case, therefore, the moment of birth is regarded

as controlling the destiny. Many astrologers, however, considered the

moment of conception as of greater importance; we have already heard

Augustine tell of the sage who chose a certain hour for intercourse

with his wife in order to beget a marvelous son; and in the thirteenth

century Albertus Magnus, in his treatise on animals, informs us that

“Nectanebus, the natural father of Alexander, in having intercourse

with his mother Olympias, observed the time when the sun was entering

Leo and Saturn was in Taurus, since he wished his son to receive the

form and power of those planets.”[2318]

[Sidenote: The death of Nectanebus.]

The death of Nectanebus was as closely in accord with the stars as was

the birth of Alexander. At the age of twelve Alexander found Nectanebus

in consultation with Olympias and, attracted by his astrological

tablet, made him promise to show him the stars at night. Then as

Nectanebus walked along star-gazing, Alexander pushed him into a steep

pit which they chanced to pass, and Nectanebus lay there with a broken

neck. When he asked Alexander the reason for his act, the boy replied

that it was in order to convince him of the futility of his art, since

he gazed at the stars unmindful of what threatened him from the ground.

But Nectanebus rebuts this revised version of the maid servant’s taunt

to Thales by telling Alexander that he had been forewarned by the stars

that he should be killed by his own son, and by revealing to Alexander

the secret of his birth.[2319]

In concluding the story of Nectanebus it is perhaps worth while to

emphasize the fact that the epitomes and Julius Valerius often use the

word _magus_ of Nectanebus as an astrologer and that in general magic,

astrology, and divination are indissolubly connected.

[Sidenote: The Amazons and Gymnosophists.]

Some account is given both in Julius Valerius and the longer epitome

of Alexander’s exchange of letters with the Amazons and of questions

which he put to the Gymnosophists of India (i. e. the Brahmans) and

their replies. Neither of these promising themes, however, results in

the introduction of any magic or occult science. We also find in the

_Stromata_ of Clement of Alexandria[2320] a list of ten questions which

Alexander propounded to ten of the Gymnosophists of India and their

ingenious answers given under pain of death if their responses proved

unsatisfactory.

[Sidenote: The letter to Aristotle.]

Nor does Alexander’s letter to Aristotle on the marvels of India reveal

many specific instances of superstition that are at all interesting.

For the most part it recounts his marches, the sufferings of his army

from thirst, combats with wild beasts, serpents, and hippopotamuses,

and the treasures which he captured. Alexander states that “in former

letters I informed you about the eclipse of the sun and moon and the

constancy of the stars and the signs of the air.”[2321] He tells now,

however, of a place where there are two trees of the sun and moon,

speaking Indian and Greek, one masculine and the other feminine, from

which one may learn what the future has in store for good or evil. As

to this Alexander was inclined to be incredulous, but the natives swore

that it was true, and his companions urged him “not to be defrauded

of the experience of so great a thing.” Accordingly he made his way

to the spot despite the innumerable beasts and snakes which beset

his path. Chastity was essential in order to approach the trees, and

he also had to lay aside his rings, royal robes, and shoes. The sun

tree then told him at dawn that he would never see home or his mother

and sisters again. At eventide the moon tree added that he would

die at Babylon.[2322] The third and final response, vouchsafed by

the sun tree, was that his death would be from poison, but the name

of the poisoner the oracular tree refused to divulge lest Alexander

try to kill him first and thus cheat the three Fates. Alexander has

consequently had to content himself, as he informs Aristotle in the

closing sentence of his letter, with building a monument to perpetuate

his name among all mortals.[2323]

Of other spurious treatises ascribed to Alexander in the middle ages,

works of alchemy and works of astrology, we shall treat in a later

chapter on the Pseudo-Aristotle.

CHAPTER XXV

POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE

Three representatives of post-classical medicine—Bibliographical

note—Medical compendiums: Oribasius and Paul of Aegina—Aëtius of

Amida—How superstitious are Aëtius and Alexander of Tralles?—Compound

medicines—Aëtius merely reproduces the superstition of Galen—Occult

science mixed with some scepticism—Alexander of Tralles—Originality

of his work—His medieval influence—His personal experience—Extent

of his superstition—_Physica_—Occult virtue of substances applied

externally—Other things used as ligatures and amulets—Astrology and

sculpture of rings—Incantations—Conjuration of an herb—Medieval

version seems less superstitious than the original text—Marcellus:

date and identity—“Marcellus Empiricus”—Superstitious character

of his medicine—Preparation of goat’s blood—A rabbit’s foot—Magic

transfer of disease—Pliny and Marcellus compared on green lizards as

eye-cures—More lizardry—Use of stones and an herb—Right and left:

number—Incantations and characters—The art of medicine survives the

barbarian invasions.

[Sidenote: Three representatives of post-classical medicine.]

In this chapter as representatives of post-classical medicine and

its influence upon medieval Latin medicine we shall consider three

writers whose works date from the close of the fourth to the middle

of the sixth century, Marcellus of Bordeaux or Marcellus Empiricus,

Aëtius of Amida in Mesopotamia, and Alexander of Tralles in Asia

Minor.[2324] They have just been mentioned in their chronological

order, but although Marcellus antedates the other two by a full

century, we shall consider him last, since he wrote in Latin while

they wrote in Greek, and since he includes Celtic words and probably

Celtic folk-lore, and since he seems to have been a native of Gaul,

if not of Bordeaux,[2325] and thus is geographically closer to the

scene of medieval Latin learning. Aëtius and Alexander have the closer

connection not only with the eastern and Greek world but also with the

past classical medicine of Galen and so will provide a better point of

departure. Presumably from the places and periods in which they lived,

all three of our authors were Christians, but it must be said that the

chief evidence of Christianity in their works is the use of Christian

or Hebrew proper names in incantations, and there are some analogous

relics of pagan superstition.

[Sidenote: Medical compendiums: Oribasius and Paul of Aegina.]

As Tribonian and Justinian boiled down the voluminous legal literature

of Rome into one _Digest_, so there was a similar tendency to reduce

the past medical writings of the Greeks into one compendious work.

Paul of Aegina, writing in the seventh century, observes in his

preface[2326] that it is not right, when lawyers who usually have

plenty of time to reflect over their cases have handy summaries of

their subject to which they can refer, that physicians whose cases

often require immediate action should not also have some convenient

handbook, and the more so since many of them are called upon to

exercise their profession not in large cities with easy access to

libraries, but in the country, in desert places, or on shipboard.

Oribasius, friend and physician of the emperor Julian, 361-363 A.

D., had made such a compendium by that emperor’s order. In this he

embodied so much of Galen’s teachings that he became known as “the

ape of Galen,”[2327] although he also used more recent writers. But

Paul of Aegina regarded this work of Oribasius as too bulky, since

it originally comprised seventy-two books although only twenty-five

are now extant, and so essayed a briefer compilation of his own. Two

centuries ago, however, Friend and Milward protested against regarding

Paul, Aëtius, and Alexander as mere compilers and maintained that they

“were really men of great learning and experience”[2328] who “have

described distempers which were omitted before; taught a new method of

treating old ones; given an account of new medicines, both simple and

compound; and made large additions to the practice of surgery.”[2329]

Puschmann more recently states that Paul’s compendium was “composed

with great originality and independence” and is of great value

“particularly in its surgical sections.”[2330] After Paul, however,

the Byzantine medical writers, such as Palladius, Theophilus, Stephen

of Alexandria, Nonus, and Psellus, were of an inferior caliber.[2331]

With Paul’s work, however, we are not now further concerned, nor with

that of Oribasius, but with the somewhat similar compendiums of Aëtius

and Alexander which lie chronologically between these other two. It is

Aëtius and Alexander whom Payne accuses of “introducing into classical

medicine the magical elements derived from the East”[2332] and whom

we might therefore expect to possess an especial interest for our

investigation.

[Sidenote: Aëtius of Amida.]

Of the life and personality of Aëtius we know very little, but inasmuch

as he mentions St. Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, and Peter the

Archiater, a physician of Theodoric, while he himself is cited by

Alexander of Tralles, he seems to have lived at the end of the fifth

and beginning of the sixth century.[2333] And since Alexander cites him

only in his book on fevers which seems to have been composed after the

rest of his work, it seems probable that Aëtius was almost contemporary

with him and wrote in the sixth rather than the fifth century. His

_Tetrabiblos_—each of the four books subdivides into four sections and

often these are spoken of as sixteen books—occupies a middle position

not only in time but in length between the works of Oribasius and Paul,

and resembles the latter in making a great deal of use of the former.

Aëtius’ extracts from the older writers are shorter than those of

Oribasius, however, and he also differs from him in combining several

authorities in a single chapter, the method usually adopted by the

medieval Latin encyclopedists. It has been noted that the wording of

the original authorities was often preserved in the oldest medieval

manuscripts of Aëtius, until the copyists of the time of the Italian

Renaissance began to touch up the style in accordance with their

erroneous notions of what constituted classical Greek.[2334] It may

also be said that these systematically arranged handbooks of Oribasius,

Aëtius, and the rest, where one could find what one was looking after,

were far superior in systematic and orderly presentation to the

discursive works of Galen which, like many other classical writings,

often seem rambling and without any particular plan.[2335] This more

logical, if somewhat cut-and-dried method, was also to be a virtue of

medieval Latin learning. Whether Aëtius directly influenced the Latin

middle ages is doubtful, since no early Latin translation of him seems

to be known.[2336] The work of Oribasius, however, exists in Latin

translation in manuscripts of the seventh century as well as in others

of the ninth and twelfth.[2337]

[Sidenote: How superstitious are Aëtius and Alexander?]

The works of Aëtius and Alexander of Tralles do not impress me as

containing an unusually large amount of superstitious medicine. Much

less am I inclined to agree with Payne that they are responsible for

the introduction into classical medicine of magical elements derived

from the east. These elements, whether derived from the orient any more

than any other feature of classical civilization or not, at any rate

had been a prominent feature of classical medicine long before the days

of Aëtius and Alexander, as Pliny’s review of medicine before his time

abundantly proved and as is also shown by the extraordinary virtues

which Pliny himself, his contemporary Dioscorides, and even the great

Galen attributed to medicinal simples.

[Sidenote: Compound medicines.]

It is true that Aëtius and Alexander abound in recipes for elaborate

medical compounds composed of numerous ingredients. Of such concoctions

one example must suffice, a plaster which Aëtius recommends for tumors,

hard lumps, and gout. “Of the terebinth-tree, of the stone of Asia, of

bitumen three hundred and sixty drams each; of washing-soda (_spumae

nitri_), calf-fat, wax, laurel berries, ammonia, and thyme three

hundred and forty drams each; of the stone pyrites and quick-lime one

hundred and twenty drams each; of the ashes of asps which have been

burned alive one hundred and forty drams; of old oil two pounds. First

liquefy the oil and wax, then the bitumen, which should have first

been pulverized. Add to these the fat, and presently the ammonia and

terebinth; and when these are taken off the fire mix in the lime and

stone of Asia, then the laurel berries and washing-soda, and finally

after the medicament has cooled sprinkle the ashes of asps upon

it.”[2338] Such concoctions are to a large extent borrowed by Aëtius,

Alexander, and Marcellus from earlier writers. Moreover, while Pliny

had excluded such compounds from the pages of his _Natural History_, he

had also made it abundantly evident that they were already in general

use by his time, and they are to be found in great numbers in the works

of Galen who cites many from preceding writers.

[Sidenote: Aëtius merely reproduces the superstition of Galen.]

Indeed, it was from Galen himself and not from the east that Aëtius

at least derived his most strikingly superstitious passages. This

was accidentally and convincingly proven by my own experience. It so

happened that I wrote an account of the passages in the _Tetrabiblos_

of Aëtius before I had read extensively in Galen’s works. When I came

to do so, I found that almost every passage that I had selected to

illustrate the superstitious side of Aëtius was contained in Galen:

for example, the use as an amulet of a green jasper suspended from the

neck by a thread so as to touch the abdomen;[2339] the story of the

reapers who found the dead viper in their wine and cured instead of

killing the sufferer from elephantiasis to whom they gave the wine to

drink;[2340] the tale of his preceptor who roasted river crabs to an

ash in a red copper dish in August during dog-days on the eighteenth

day of the moon, and administered the powder daily for forty days to

persons bitten by mad dogs.[2341] Such passages are usually repeated

by Aëtius in such a way as to lead the reader to think them his own

experiences, a fact which warns us not to accept the assertions of

ancient and medieval authors that they have experienced this or that

at their face value, and which makes us wonder if Friend and Milward

were not too generous in regarding Aëtius at least as more than a

compiler. He also repeats some of Galen’s general observations anent

experience as that the virtues of simples are best discovered thus,

and that he will not discuss all plants but only those “of which we

have information by experience.”[2342] He further reproduces Galen’s

attitude of mingled credulity and scepticism concerning the basilisk,

combining the two passages into one;[2343] also Galen’s questioning the

efficacy of incantations and telling of having seen a scorpion killed

by the mere spittle of a fasting man without any incantation.[2344]

Like Galen again, he omits all injurious medicaments and expresses

the opinion that men who spread the knowledge of such drugs do more

harm than actual poisoners who perhaps cause but a single death.[2345]

Like Galen he announces his intention to omit all “abominable and

detestable recipes and those which are prohibited by law,” mentioning

as instances the eating of human flesh and drinking urine or _menses

muliebres_.[2346] But also like Galen, he devotes several chapters to

the virtues of human and animal excrement, especially recommending

that of dogs after they have been fed on bones for two days.[2347]

Somewhat similar to Galen’s recommendation to fill cavities in the

teeth with roasted earthworms is the recipe of Aëtius for painless

extraction of teeth “without iron.” The tooth must first be thoroughly

scraped or the gum cut loose about it, and then sprinkled with the

ashes of earthworms. “Therefore use this remedy with confidence, for

it has already often been celebrated as a mystery.”[2348] Such use of

earthworms continued a feature of medieval dentistry.

[Sidenote: Occult science mixed with some scepticism.]

Of my original selections from Aëtius very few are now left, and it is

not unlikely that they too might be found somewhere in Galen’s works if

one looked long enough. Aëtius asserts that drinking bitumen or asphalt

in water will prevent hydrophobia from developing,[2349] and recommends

for wounds inflicted by sea serpents an application of lead with a

slice of the serpent itself.[2350] He takes the following prescription

from Oribasius. To cure impotency anoint the big toe of the right foot

with oil in which the pulverized ashes of a lizard have been mixed. To

check the operation of this powerful stimulant one has merely to wash

off the ointment from the toe.[2351] On the other hand, an instance of

a sceptical tendency is the citation of the view of Posidonius that

the so-called _incubus_ is not a demon but a disease akin to epilepsy

and insanity and marked by suffocation, loss of voice, heaviness,

and immobility.[2352] It may also be noted that in discussing the

medicinal virtues of the beaver’s testicles Aëtius does not include

the story of its biting them off in order to escape its hunters.[2353]

He does, however, cite several authorities, Piso, Menelbus, Simonides,

Aristodemus, and Pherecydes for instances of the remarkable powers of

certain animals in discovering the presence of poisons and preserving

themselves and their owners from this danger: a partridge who made

a great noise and fuss whenever any medicament or poison was being

prepared in the house; a pet eagle who would attack anyone in the house

who even plotted such a thing; a peacock who would go to the place

where the dose had been prepared and raise a clamor, or upset the

receptacle containing the potion, or dig up a charm, if it had been

buried underground; and a pet ichneumon and parrot who were endowed

with very similar gifts.[2354] Aëtius shows a slight tendency in the

direction of astrological medicine, giving a list of “times ordained by

God” for the risings and settings of various stars, since these affect

the air and winds, and since “the bodies of persons in good health, and

much more so those of the sick, are altered according to the state of

the air.”[2355] But on the whole, of our three authors, Aëtius seems to

contain the smallest proportional amount of superstitious medicine and

occult science.

[Sidenote: Alexander of Tralles.]

Alexander of Tralles was the son of a physician and, according to the

Byzantine historian, Agathias,[2356] the youngest of a group of five

distinguished brothers, including Anthemius of Tralles, architect of

St. Sophia at Constantinople, and Metrodorus the grammarian, whom

Justinian summoned also to his court. Alexander had visited Italy,

Gaul, and Spain as well as all parts of Greece[2357] before settling

down in old age, when he could no longer engage in active medical

practice,[2358] to the composition of his _magnum opus_ in twelve books

beginning with the head, eyes, and ears, and ending with gout and

fever. Aside from his citation of Aëtius in the book on fevers, the

latest writer named by Alexander is Jacobus Psychrestus, physician to

Leo the Great about 474.[2359] It seems rather strange that Alexander

says nothing of the pestilence of 542.[2360]

[Sidenote: Originality of his work.]

Alexander embodied the results of his own practice to a much greater

extent than Oribasius and Aëtius. His book is more a record of his

own medical observations and experiences than a compilation from past

writings, a fact recognized in the first edition which entitled it

_Practica_, and “though he pays a due deference to the ancients,

yet he is so far from putting an implicit faith in what they have

advanced that he very often dissents from their doctrines.”[2361]

Puschmann regarded him as the first doctor for a long time who had

done any original thinking,[2362] and esteemed his pathology as

highly as his therapeutics had been esteemed by his sixteenth century

translator, Guinther of Andernach.[2363] Friend wrote of him in the

early eighteenth century, “His method is extremely rational and just

and after all our discoveries and improvements in physick scarce

anything can be added to it.”[2364] Alexander seems to have been a

practitioner of much resource and ingenuity, stopping hemorrhage of the

nose by blowing down or fuzz up the nostrils through a hollow reed,

and directing patients, a thousand years before the discovery of the

Eustachian tube, to sneeze with mouth and nose stopped up in order to

dislodge a foreign object from the ear.[2365] According to Milward,

Alexander was the first Greek medical writer to mention rhubarb and

tape-worms, and the first practitioner to open the jugular veins.[2366]

Indeed, Alexander advises blood-letting a great deal, but Milward,

whose age still approved of that practice, notes that he was “no ways

addicted to those superstitious rules of opening this or that vein in

particular cases which several of the ancients and some even among the

moderns have been so very fond of.”[2367] Finally, Alexander’s concise

and orderly method of presentation compares favorably with that of the

classical medical writers.

[Sidenote: His medieval influence.]

Alexander’s book traveled west, as its author had done, and was current

in a free and abbreviated Latin translation from an early date.[2368]

In fact, it was from the Latin version that the work was translated

into Hebrew and Syriac.[2369] Not only are Latin manuscripts of

Alexander’s work as a whole or of extracts from it[2370] found from

the ninth century on, while printed editions in Latin were numerous

through the sixteenth century, but it was much used and cited by

medieval writers such as Constantinus Africanus, Gariopontus,[2371] and

Gilbert of England.[2372] It is not, however, always safe to assume

that citations of _Alexander medicus_, encountered in thirteenth

century writers on the nature of things like Thomas of Cantimpré and

Bartholomew of England, have reference to Alexander of Tralles, since a

treatise on fevers is also ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias,[2373]

while a work on the pulse and urine in fevers is thought to be by

some medieval Alexander.[2374] And medical treatises are sometimes

ascribed even to Alexander the Great of Macedon in the medieval

manuscripts.[2375]

[Sidenote: His personal experience.]

We have already said that Alexander is no mere compiler but embodies

the results of his own observation and experience during a long period

of travel and medical practice. He frequently asserts that he has

tested this or that for himself, or that the prescription in question

has been “approved by long use and experience,”[2376] so that it

is not surprising that we find the name Alexander still associated

with medical “experiments” in manuscripts dating from the twelfth to

fifteenth centuries.[2377] One of his cures for epilepsy he learned

“from a rustic in Tuscany” (_Thuscia?_) but afterwards often employed

with success himself.[2378] “It is a marvelous and exceptional medicine

which you will communicate to no one,” concludes Alexander, a rather

surprising prohibition in view of the fact that it was a popular remedy

to begin with. Folk-lore, however, is often supposed to be kept secret.

Another general rule which holds true in Alexander’s case is that these

empirical remedies are apt to be the most superstitious, and conversely

that marvels are apt to be supported by solemn assurance of their

experimental testing.

[Sidenote: Extent of his superstition.]

Two centuries ago Milward wrote of Alexander of Tralles, “But there

is another objection to our author’s character which I cannot pretend

to say much in defence of, and that is, his being addicted to charms

and amulets. It is very surprising that one who discovers so much

judgment in other matters should show so much weakness in this.”[2379]

Alexander certainly devotes more space to superstition relatively to

the length of his book than Aëtius does and also is hospitable to a

wider range of more or less magical notions and practices. One notices,

however, in his book that the treatment of certain diseases, such as

epilepsy, colic, gout, and quartan fever, is more likely to involve

magical and astrological procedure than that of other ailments such as

earache and disorder of the spleen. This is also apt to be the case

with other ancient and medieval medical works. But it is doubtful if

the distinction can be sharply drawn that magic was resorted to more in

those diseases which seemed most mysterious and incurable.

[Sidenote: _Physica._]

The chief circumstance which renders some parts of Alexander’s work

more superstitious than others is that he sometimes, after concluding

the usual medical description of the disease and prescriptions for

it, adds a list of what he calls physical or natural medicines

(φυσικά), which are for the most part ligatures and suspensions but

involve also the employment of incantations and engraved images or

characters. Apparently he calls these remedies _physica_, because

they supposedly act by some peculiar property or occult virtue of the

substance which is bound on or suspended and constitute a sort of

natural magic. Alexander explains that “since some cannot observe a

diet nor endure medicine, they compel us in the case of gout to employ

physical remedies and ligatures; and in order that the well-trained

physician may be instructed in every side of his art and able to help

all sick persons in every way, I come to this subject.”[2380] This

rather apologetic tone and the fact that he separates the _physica_

from his other remedies show that he regards them as not quite on the

same level with normal medical procedure. He goes on to say, however,

that although there are many of these “physical” remedies which are

efficacious, he will write down only those proved true by long use.

In discussing fevers he again justifies the inclusion of _physica_ in

much the same way and says that those now mentioned were learned by him

during a long-extended practice and experience.[2381] It is to be noted

that some of these chapters on physical ligatures do not appear in the

Latin version in three books, at least as it was printed in 1504.

[Sidenote: Occult virtue of substances applied externally.]

One ligature which is “quite celebrated and approved by many” and

which instantly lessens the pain of ulcers in the feet, makes use of

muscles from a wild ass, a wild boar, and a stork, binding the right

muscles about the patient’s right foot and the left muscles about the

left foot. Some persons, however, do not intertwine the muscles of

the stork with the others but put them separately into the skin of

a sea-calf. Also they take care to bind the other muscles about the

patient’s feet when the moon is in the west or in a sterile sign and

approaching Saturn. Others bind on the tendons and claws of a vulture,

or the feet of a hare who should remain alive.[2382] Alexander seems

to regard the carcass of the ass as especially remedial in the case of

epilepsy. In Spain he learned to use the skull of an ass reduced to

ashes and he recommends employing the forehead and brain of an ass as

amulets.[2383] A suspension for quartan fever consists of a live beetle

firmly fastened on the outside of a red linen cloth and hung about

the neck. “This is true and often tested by experience,” Alexander

assures us. Also excellent for this purpose are hairs from a goat’s

cheek or a green lizard combined with clippings of the patient’s finger

nails and toe nails. It is confirmed by the testimony of all “natural”

physicians that the blood _qui primus a virgine fuerit excretus_ is

naturally hostile to quartan fever. Even if the girl is not chaste,

the blood will be efficacious, if applied to the patient’s right hand

or arm.[2384] Alexander knew a man who treated quartan fever by giving

an undergarment of the patient to a woman in childbirth to wear, after

which the patient wore it again and was cured “miraculously by some

antipathy and occult influence.”[2385]

[Sidenote: Other things used as ligatures and in amulets.]

The materials employed in Alexander’s therapeutics are sometimes those

which we associate especially with magic arts, such as the hair and

nail-parings already mentioned. Against epilepsy he employs nails from

a cross or wrecked ship, or the blood-stained shirt of a gladiator

or criminal who has been slain. The nails are bound to the patient’s

arm; the shirt is burned and the patient given the ashes in wine

seven times. The use of a nail from a cross is a method ascribed to

Asclepiades. Other materials recommended by Alexander against gout and

epilepsy include the herb night-shade, the stones magnet and aetites,

blood of a swallow and urine of a boy, chameleons in varied forms, and

the stones found in dissected swallows of which we have heard before

and shall hear yet again. For Alexander these stones are black and

white, but he states that they are not found in all young swallows

but are said to appear only in the first-born, so that one often has

to dissect a great many birds before one finds any. In these passages

on _Physica_ Alexander cites such authors of magical reputation as

Ostanes and Democritus, and tells how the latter suffered in youth from

epilepsy until an oracle from Delphi instructed him to make use of the

worms in goats’ brains. When a goat sneezes violently, some of these

worms are expelled into his nostrils, whence they should be carefully

extracted in a cloth without allowing them to touch the ground. Either

one or three of them should then be worn about the epileptic’s neck

wrapped in the thin skin of a black sheep.[2386]

[Sidenote: Astrology and sculpture of rings.]

One passage has already been cited where astrological conditions were

observed. Alexander sometimes prescribes the day of the month upon

which things shall be done; an oil, for instance, is to be prepared

on the fifth of March.[2387] In one place Alexander advises engraving

upon a copper die a lion, a half-moon, a star, and the name of the

beast. This is to be worn enclosed in a gold ring upon the fourth

finger.[2388] That the lion may not stand for a sign of the zodiac is

suggested by another instruction concerning an engraved stone to be set

in a gold ring, and which is to be carved with a figure of Hercules

suffocating a lion.[2389] For gout, however, one writes a verse of

Homer on a copper plate when the moon is in Libra or Leo.[2390] For

colic one inscribes upon an iron ring with an octangular circumference

a charm beginning, “Flee, flee, colic.”[2391]

[Sidenote: Incantations.]

The employment of such incantations is expressly justified by

Alexander, who maintains that even “the most divine” Galen, who once

thought that incantations were of no avail, came after a long time

and much experience to be convinced that they were of great efficacy.

Alexander then quotes from a treatise which is not extant but which

he asserts is a work by Galen entitled, _On medical treatment in

Homer_.[2392] “So some think that incantations are like old-wives’

tales and so I thought for a long while, but in process of time from

perfectly plain instances I have become persuaded that there is force

in them, for I have experienced their aid in the case of persons stung

by scorpions. And no less in the case of bones stuck in the throat,

which were straightway expelled by an incantation.” Alexander himself

thereupon continues, “If such is the testimony of divinest Galen and

many other ancients, what prevents us too from communicating to you

those which we have learned from experience and which we have received

from trustworthy friends?”

[Sidenote: Conjuration of an herb.]

Both incantations and observance of astrological conditions play an

important part in the instructions given by Alexander for digging and

plucking with imprecations an herb to be used in the treatment of

fluxions of hands or feet. “When the moon is in Aquarius under Pisces,

dig before sunset, not touching the root. After digging with two

fingers of the left hand, namely, the thumb and middle finger, say,

‘I address you, I address you, sacred herb. I summon you to-morrow to

the house of Philia to stay the fluxion of feet and hands of this man

or this woman. But I adjure you by the great name, Iaoth, Sabaoth, God

who established the earth and fixed the sea abounding in fluid floods,

who desiccated Lot’s wife and made her a statue of salt, receive the

spirit of thy mother earth and its powers, and dry up this fluxion of

feet or of hands of this man or woman.’ On the morrow ere sunrise,

taking the bone of some dead animal, dig up the root, and holding it

say, ‘I adjure you by the sacred names, Iaoth, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi,’

and sprinkle a pinch of salt on that root, saying, ‘As this salt is not

increased, so be not the ailment of this man or of this woman.’ Then

bind one end of the root to the patient, taking care that it is not

moist, and suspend the rest of it over the fire for 360 days.”[2393]

The mention of mother earth in this charm perhaps indicates an ultimate

pagan origin, but the allusions to one God, and to incidents in the Old

Testament, and the use of names of spirits show Jewish or Christian

influence, while the number 360 perhaps points to the Gnostics.

[Sidenote: Medieval version seems less superstitious than the original

text.]

While in conformity with the character of our investigation we have

emphasized those passages in Alexander which are suggestive of magic

and its methods, it should be said that many of the passages which

we have cited are apparently[2394] not found in the medieval Latin

versions which seem to omit many, although not all, of the chapters

devoted to physical ligatures. Here then apparently is a case where

the early medieval translator and adapter, instead of retaining and

emphasizing the superstition of the past, has largely purged his text

of it. But we have next to consider a Latin work, written apparently

about the year 400 A. D. and known to us through two manuscripts of the

ninth century, in which magic is far more rampant than in any version

of Alexander of Tralles. Judging, however, from the small number of

extant manuscripts, it was less influential through the medieval period

than was Alexander’s book.

[Sidenote: Marcellus: date and identity.]

The _De medicamentis_ opens in one of the two extant manuscripts with

a dedicatory letter from “Marcellus, an illustrious man of the main

office of Theodosius the Elder (?)” to his sons.[2395] This ascription

is generally accepted as genuine, and Grimm believed this to be the

same Marcellus as the physician who is gratefully mentioned, together

with his sons, then mere infants, in the letters of Libanius, whose

severe headaches Marcellus had alleviated, and as the _Marcellus

magister officiorum_ who is mentioned twice in the Theodosian Code

under the year 395. The date of the _De medicamentis_ may be further

fixed from its including “a singular remedy for spleen which the

patriarch Gamaliel recently revealed from proved experiments.” This

Gamaliel was Jewish patriarch at Constantinople from some time before

395 on to 415 or later. The question, however, of Marcellus’ authorship

is complicated by the fact that he is twice cited in the work itself.

One of these passages concerns an “oxyporium which Nero used for the

digestion, which Marcellus the eminent physician revealed, which we too

have tested in practice.”[2396] This sounds as if some later person had

had a hand in the work as it has reached us, since Marcellus himself

would scarcely have cited another person of the same name without

some distinguishing epithet. Furthermore Aëtius cites a Marcellus for

a passage which does not appear in the _De medicamentis_ concerning

wolfish or canine insanity, in which men imagine themselves to be

wolves or dogs and act like them during the night in the month of

February. But the _De medicamentis_ as a whole is of the character

promised by Marcellus in the introductory letter to his sons and so may

be taken as his work.

[Sidenote: “Marcellus Empiricus.”]

The empiricism which we have already noted in Alexander of Tralles

becomes most pronounced and most extreme in Marcellus, who indeed

is often called Marcellus Empiricus on this account, and many of

whose chapter and other headings[2397] terminate with these words

descriptive of their contents, “various rational and natural remedies

learned by experience” (_remedia rationabilia et physica diversa de

experimentis_). In his preface, too, he speaks of his book not as _De

medicamentis_ but as _De empiricis_. He has, it is true, utilized “the

old authorities of the medical art set down in the Latin language,” and

likewise more recent writers and “the works of studious men” who were

not especially trained in medicine; but he also includes what he has

learned from hearsay or from personal experience, and “even remedies

chanced upon by rustics and the populace and simples which they have

tested by experience.” One prescription, which he characterizes as

efficacious beyond human hope and incapable of being satisfactorily

lauded, he purchased from an old-wife of Africa who cured many at

Rome by it, while the author himself has employed it in the cure of

“several persons neither of humble rank nor unknown, whose names it is

superfluous to mention.” This remedy is a concoction of such things as

ashes of deer-horn, nine grains of white pepper, a little myrrh, and an

African snail pounded shell and all while still alive in a mortar and

then mixed with Falernian wine. Very detailed and explicit directions

are given as to its preparation and administration, including an

instruction to drink the dose facing towards the east.[2398] In

another passage Marcellus says of certain compounds, “If there is any

faith, both I myself have always found them by experience to be useful

remedies and I can state that others are of the same mind; and I will

add this, that other medicines can not compare to this liniment, which

in similar cases several of my friends, whom I trust as I do myself,

have affirmed on oath they have found by experience a remarkable

cure.”[2399] Of an eye-remedy he remarks, “And that we may believe the

author of this remedy from experience, he states that after he had been

blind for twelve years it restored his sight within twenty days.”[2400]

Marcellus also frequently couples marvelousness with experimentation,

saying, “You will experience a wonderful remedy.” In one passage he

uses the word “experiment” as a verb rather than as a noun, coining

a new expression, _experimentatum remedium_,[2401] but his commonest

expressions are _de experimento_ or _de experimentis_, _expertum_, and

_experieris_ or _experietur_.[2402] Some of his “experiences” really

are purposive experiments, as where one discovers whether a tumor is

scrofulous by applying an earthworm to it. Then put the worm on a leaf

and if the tumor was scrofulous, the worm will turn into earth.[2403]

The following experiment indicates that sufferers from spleen should

drink in vinegar the root or dried leaves of the tamarisk. Give

tamarisk to a pig to eat for nine days, then kill the animal and you

will find it without a spleen.[2404]

[Sidenote: Superstitious character of his medicine.]

As Marcellus appeals the most to experience, so he is by far the most

given to superstition and folk-lore of our three authors. Practically

his entire work is of the character of the passages devoted to

_Physica_ by Alexander of Tralles. He indulges in no medical theory, he

does not diagnose diseases, nor prescribe a regimen of health in the

form of bathing, diet, and exercise. His work is wholly composed of

medicaments and for the most part empirical ones. Besides the elaborate

compounds which were so frequent in Aëtius and Alexander, he is

extremely addicted to absurd rigmarole and all sorts of superstitious

practices in the application or administration of medicinal simples.

His pharmacy includes not only herbs and gems, to which he attributes

occult virtue and which he sometimes directs to have engraven with

characters and figures, such as SSS or a dragon surrounded with seven

rays[2405]—the emblem of the Agathodaemon, but also all kinds of

animals, reptiles, and parts of the same, after the fashion of Pliny’s

medicine. He is constantly calling into requisition such things as

the ashes of a mole, the blood of a bat, the brains of a mouse, the

gall of a hyena, the hoofs of a live ass, the liver of a wolf, woman’s

milk, sea-hares, a white spider with very long legs, and centipedes

or multipedes, especially the variety that rolls up into a ball when

touched. But it is scarcely feasible to separate Marcellus’ materials

from his procedure, so we will begin to consider them together in some

prescriptions where animals play the leading part.

[Sidenote: Preparation of goat’s blood.]

For those suffering from stone is recommended a remedy prepared in

the following fashion. In August shut up in a dry place for three

days a goat, preferably a wild one who is one year old, and feed him

on nothing but laurel and give him no water to drink; finally on the

third day, which should fall on a Thursday or Sunday, kill him. Both

the person who kills the goat and the patient should be chaste and

pure. Cut the goat’s throat and collect his blood—it is best if the

blood is collected by naked boys—and burn it to an ash in an earthen

pot. After combining it with various herbs and drugs, there are further

directions to follow as to how it may best be administered to the

patient. Marcellus, by the way, affirms that adamant can be broken only

by goat’s blood.[2406]

[Sidenote: A rabbit’s foot.]

The following prescription involves the familiar superstition that a

rabbit’s foot is lucky: “Cut off the foot of a live rabbit and take

hairs from under its belly and let it go. Of those hairs or wool make

a strong thread and with it bind the rabbit’s foot to the body of the

patient and you will find a marvelous remedy. But the remedy will be

even more efficacious, so that it is hardly credible, if by chance

you find that bone, namely, the rabbit’s ankle-bone, in the dung of

a wolf, which you should guard so that it neither touches the earth

nor is touched by woman. Nor should any woman touch that thread made

of the rabbit’s wool.” Marcellus further recommends that in releasing

the rabbit after taking its wool you should say, “Flee, flee, little

rabbit, and take the pain away with you.”[2407]

[Sidenote: Magic transfer of disease.]

Of such magical transfer of disease to other animals or objects there

are a number of examples. Toothache may be stopped by standing on the

ground under the open sky and spitting in a frog’s mouth and asking it

to take the toothache away with it and then releasing it.[2408] Even

consumptives who seem certain to die and who labor continually with

an unbearable cough, may be cured by giving them to drink for three

days the saliva or foam of a horse. “You will indeed cure the patient

without delay, but the horse will die suddenly.”[2409] Splenetic

persons are benefited by imposing any one of three kinds of fish upon

the spleen and then replacing the fish alive in the sea.[2410] Warts

may be got rid of by rubbing them with something the moment you see a

star falling in the sky; but if you rub them with your bare hand, you

will simply transfer them to it.[2411] Another superstition connected

with falling stars which Marcellus records is that one will be free

from sore eyes for as many years as he can count numbers while a star

is falling.[2412] The first time you hear or see a swallow, hasten

silently to a spring or well and anoint your eyes with the water and

pray God that you may not have sore eyes that year, and the swallows

will bear away all pain from your eyes.[2413] With slight variations

the same procedure may be employed to prevent toothache. In this case

you fill your mouth with water, rub your teeth with the middle fingers

of both hands, and say, “Swallow, I say to you, as this will not again

be in my beak, so may my teeth not ache all year long.”[2414] Marcellus

advises anyone whose nose is stuffed up to blow it on a piece of

parchment, and, folding this up like a letter, cast it into the public

way,[2415]—which would very likely spread the germs, if not take away

the cold.

[Sidenote: Pliny and Marcellus compared on green lizards as eye cures.]

In his preface Marcellus refers to Pliny as one of his authorities

and many of his quaint animal remedies will be found substantially

duplicated in the _Natural History_. Both, for example, state that one

can stop one’s nose from running by kissing a mule.[2416] Marcellus,

however, adds much from other sources or of his own. This may be

illustrated by comparing their accounts of the use of lizards to cure

eye diseases.[2417] Marcellus omits the following portion of Pliny’s

account: “Some shut up a green lizard in a new earthen pot, and they

mark the little stones called _cinaedia_, which are bound on for tumors

of the groin, with nine signs and take out one daily. On the ninth day

they let the lizard go, and keep the pebbles for pains of the eyes.”

Pliny next proceeds: “Others put earth under a green lizard that has

been blinded and shut it up in a glass vase with rings of solid iron

or gold. When through the glass the lizard is seen to have recovered

its sight, it is released and the rings are used for sore eyes.” This

recipe is in Marcellus who, however, words it differently and adds

that the lizard must be blinded with a copper needle, that the rings

may be of silver, electrum, or copper, that the vase must be carefully

sealed and opened on the fifth or seventh day following, and that one

should not only wear the rings afterwards on one’s fingers but also

frequently apply them to one’s eyes and strengthen the sight by looking

through them. He further cautions to leave the vase in a clean grassy

spot, to collect the rings only after the lizard has departed, to catch

the lizard in the first place on a Thursday in September between the

nineteenth and twenty-fifth day of the moon, and to have the operation

performed by a very pure and chaste man. Marcellus also states that an

amulet made either of the eyes of the said lizard enclosed in a lead

bull or gold coin, or of its blood caught on clean wool and wrapped in

purple cloth will effectually prevent eye diseases. Meanwhile Pliny for

his part has gone on to tell how efficacious the ashes of green lizards

are.

[Sidenote: More lizardry.]

Marcellus employs green lizards in other connections which are not

paralleled in Pliny. To stay colic one binds about the patient three

times with an incantation a string with which a copper needle has been

threaded and drawn through a lizard’s eyes, after which the reptile

is released at the same point where it was captured.[2418] In another

passage Marcellus recommends the drawing by a silver needle of threads

of nine different colors other than black or white through the eyes of

a new-born puppy before they open and _ita ut per anum eius exeant_,

after which the puppy is to be thrown into the river.[2419] But to

return to our lizards. For those suffering from liver complaint the

liver of a lizard is to be extracted with the point of a reed and bound

in purple or black cloth to the patient’s right side or suspended

from his arm, while the lizard is to be dismissed alive with these

words, “Lo, I send you away alive; see to it that no one whom I touch

henceforth has liver complaint.”[2420] To insure a wife’s fidelity one

touches her with the tip of a lizard’s tail which has been cut off by

the left hand.[2421] Here again the lizard is released but apparently

is not expected to survive for long, since one is instructed to “hold

the tail shut in the palm of the same hand until it dies.” In a fourth

example the lizard is neither mutilated nor released but hung in the

doorway of a splenetic’s bedroom where it will touch his head and left

hand as he comes and goes.[2422]

[Sidenote: Use of stones and an herb.]

One or two other prescriptions may be added where the procedure is

connected with herbs or stones rather than with animals. On entering

a city one is advised to pick up some of the pebbles lying in the

road before the city gate, stating that they are being collected for

headache. Then bind one of them on the head and throw the others behind

your back without looking around.[2423] A certain herb must be gathered

on Thursday in a waning moon. When it is administered in drink, the

recipient must take it standing and facing the east. He receives the

cup from the right hand and then, in order not to look back, returns it

to the left to him who gave it. Only these two persons should touch the

drink.[2424]

[Sidenote: Right and left number.]

Right and left, as just illustrated, are much observed in Marcellus’

medicine. When a tooth aches on the left side of the mouth, a hot

cooked dried bean is applied to the right elbow for three days, a

process which is reversed if the tooth is on the right side.[2425]

The following exercise recommended for a stiff neck would seem to

stand more chance of success than most of Marcellus’ prescriptions.

While fasting the patient should spit on his right hand and rub his

right thigh, and then do the same with his left hand and thigh. Thrice

repeated this is warranted to work an immediate cure.[2426] A ring worn

on the middle finger of the left hand is said to stop hiccough.[2427]

The power of the planets or of mere number is indicated in the advice,

given several times, to make seven knots in a string.[2428] Once

instructions are given to make as many knots as there are letters in

the patient’s name.[2429]

[Sidenote: Incantations and characters.]

Incantations and characters, as has already been incidentally

illustrated, abound in Marcellus’ pages. Some are in Greek, some in

Latin, some perhaps in Celtic; many, as we have seen, are coherent

statements, commands, or requests; many others are to all appearance

a jargon of meaningless words, like the jingle, _Argidam, margidam,

sturgidam_,[2430] which is to be repeated seven times on Tuesday and

Thursday in a waning moon to cure toothache. Marcellus well calls one

of these _carmen idioticum_.[2431] For stomach and intestinal troubles

he recommends pressing the abdomen with the left thumb and saying,

“Adam, bedam, alam, betur, alem, botum.” This is to be repeated nine

times, then one touches the earth with the same thumb and spits, then

says the charm nine more times, and again for a third series of nine,

touching the ground and spitting nine times also. _Alabanda, alabandi,

alambo_ is another incantation, variously repeated thrice with hands

clasped above and below the abdomen. Yet another consists in rubbing

the abdomen with the left thumb and two little fingers and saying,

“A tree stood in the middle of the sea and there hung an urn full of

human intestines; three virgins went around it, two make it fast, one

revolves it.” As you repeat this thrice, you touch the ground thrice

and spit, but if the charm is for veterinary purposes, for the words

“human intestines” should be substituted “the intestines of mules” or

horses or asses as the case may be.[2432] The following is a specimen

of the characters prescribed by Marcellus:[2433]

ΛΨΜΘΚΙΑ

ΛΨΜΘΚΙΑ

ΛΨΜΘΚΙΑ

[Sidenote: The art of medicine survives the barbarian invasions.]

It is perhaps worth while to point out in concluding this chapter

that apparently at no time during the period of barbarian invasions

and early medieval centuries did medical practice or literature cease

entirely in the west. We have seen that there is reason to suspect

that portions of the work ascribed to Marcellus may be contributions

of the centuries following him, and that there were early medieval

Latin translations of the works of Oribasius and Alexander of Tralles.

Furthermore, the laws of the German kingdoms, the allusions of

contemporary chroniclers and men of letters, the advice of Gregory the

Great to a sick archbishop to seek medical assistance, and many other

bits of evidence[2434] show that physicians were fairly numerous and in

good repute, and that medieval Christians at no time depended entirely

upon the healing virtues of relics of the saints or other miraculous

powers credited to the church or divine answer to prayer.

CHAPTER XXVI

PSEUDO-LITERATURE IN NATURAL SCIENCE OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

General character—_Medicine of Pliny_—_Herbarium of

Apuleius_—Specimens of its occult science—A “Precantation of all

herbs”—Other treatises accompanying the _Herbarium_—_Cosmography

of Aethicus_—Its medieval influence—Character of the work—Its

attitude to marvels—The _Geoponica_—Magic and astrology

therein—Dioscorides—Textual history of the _De materia

medica_—Alterations made in the Greek text—Dioscorides little known

to Latins before the middle ages—Partial versions in Latin—_De

herbis femininis_—The fuller Latin versions—Peter of Abano’s account

of the medieval versions—Pseudo-Dioscorides on stones—Conclusions

from the textual history of Dioscorides—Macer on herbs; its

great currency—Problem of date and author—Virtues ascribed to

herbs—_Experiments of Macer_.

[Sidenote: General character.]

A class of writings which seems to have been very characteristic

of the waning culture of the declining Roman Empire and the scanty

erudition of the early medieval period were the brief epitomes of,

or disorderly collections of fragments from, the writers of the

classical period. Such works often passed under the name of some famous

author of the previous period and sometimes are more or less based

upon his writings. Most of the works in the field of natural science

are of such derivative or pseudo-authorship: the _Medicine_ of the

Pseudo-Pliny, the _Herbarium_ of the Pseudo-Apuleius, the geographical

work ascribed to Aethicus, the _Geoponica_, the treatises on herbs

attributed to Macer and Dioscorides. Indeed, the whole textual history

of the latter’s _De materia medica_ is so full of vicissitudes and

uncertainties that I have postponed its treatment until this chapter.

The names of the actual compilers or abbreviators of these works are

usually unknown and it is also usually impossible to date them with any

approach to accuracy. Roughly speaking of them as a whole, they may

be said to have gradually taken on their present form at almost any

time between the third and tenth centuries. In the case of these works

of natural science at least, it is not quite fair to class them all as

brief epitomes or disorderly collections. In some we see an obvious

attempt to rearrange the old materials in a form more convenient for

present use. In others to the stage of abbreviation from ancient

authors has succeeded another stage of later additions from other

sources.

[Sidenote: _Medicine of Pliny._]

The _Medicina_, or _Art of Medicine_, of the Pseudo-Pliny[2435]

consists of three books in which medical passages, drawn from Pliny’s

_Natural History_, are rearranged according to diseases instead of,

as in the genuine Pliny, by simples. The first two books deal with

diseases of the human body in descending order from top to toe and

from headache to gout, a favorite arrangement throughout the course of

medieval medicine. The last book then considers afflictions which are

not necessarily connected with any particular part of the body, such

as wounds and fevers. Thus this compilation attests Pliny’s medieval

influence and the practical use made of his work, while it of course

continues much of his medical magic and superstition. The compiler’s

rearrangement is an essential one, if the medical recommendations of

the _Natural History_ were to be made available for ready reference.

In this case, therefore, the epitomizer has rather improved upon

than disordered the arrangement of the original. This compilation is

believed to have been used by Marcellus Empiricus, and a _Letter of

Plinius Secundus to his friends about medicine_, which Marcellus gives

along with other medical epistles, is thought to be the preface of the

abbreviator, who in that case depicts himself as composing his volume

so that his friends and himself when traveling may avoid the payment

of exorbitant fees asked by strange physicians. If we can regard

everything in the work of Marcellus as we have it as having been

written by 400, the _Medicine of Pliny_ must have been written during

the declining Roman Empire. The manuscripts used by Rose in his edition

were of the tenth and twelfth centuries. There is also a later version

of the _Medicine of Pliny_ in five books,[2436] of which the two last

are entirely new additions, the fifth being an extract from the old

Latin translation of Alexander of Tralles. And in the first three

books the earlier Pseudo-Pliny has been worked over with additions.

The Pseudo-Pliny is also embodied with alterations and accompanied by

some prayers and incantations in a tenth century manuscript at St.

Gall.[2437]

[Sidenote: _The Herbarium of Apuleius._]

Several works besides the six commonly regarded as genuine[2438]

were attributed to Apuleius in the middle ages, grammatical[2439]

and rhetorical[2440] treatises, the Hermetic _Asclepius_,[2441] a

treatise on physiognomy,[2442] and the very widespread _Sphere of

Life and Death_, of which we shall treat in another chapter.[2443] We

shall now consider the _Herbarium of Apuleius_,[2444] the one of his

spurious works, which has most to do with the world of nature, and,

with the exception of the brief _Sphere_, the one which occurs most

often in the manuscripts. The _Herbarium_ was first printed about

1480 by the physician of Pope Sixtus IV from a manuscript at Monte

Cassino, and then, after various other editions, was included in 1547

in the collection of ancient Latin medical writers issued by the Aldine

Press. We are told, however, that with the close of the fifteenth

century the Apuleius began to be superseded by German herbals. The

medieval manuscripts of the _Herbarium_ are often noteworthy for their

illuminations of the herbs in vivid colors. Those of the mandragora

root are especially interesting, showing it as a man standing on the

back of a dog or a human form with leaves growing on the head and

led by a dog chained to his waist.[2445] The oldest manuscripts are

of the sixth century, and there are some in Anglo-Saxon, but as one

would expect, the work underwent many additions and alterations, and

different manuscripts of it vary considerably. The author is usually

spoken of as Apuleius the Platonist and is sometimes said to have

received his work from the centaur Chiron, the master of Achilles, and

from Esculapius.[2446]

[Sidenote: Specimens of its occult science.]

In the _Herbarium_ the plants are listed and described and their

virtues, especially medicinal, stated. Usually the names for each

herb in several languages or regions are given—Latin, Greek, Punic,

Biblical (by the Prophets), Egyptian, Syrian, Gallic, Dacian, Spanish,

Phrygian, Tuscan. By no means all of these are listed in every case,

however. The virtues of the herbs often operate in an occult manner,

or procedure suggestive of magic is involved in collecting or applying

them. Often diseases are cured merely by holding an herb in the hand,

wearing it with a string about the neck, or placing it behind one ear,

or wearing it in a ring. Lunatics, for example, are treated by binding

an herb about the neck with red cloth when the moon is waxing in the

sign of the bull or the first part of the scorpion. Not only does

observance of astrology assist the medicinal application of herbs;

plants are in turn of assistance in the pursuit of astrology. To learn

under the rule of what star you are, be in a state of purity, pluck the

herb Montaster, keep it in a bit of clean linen until you find a whole

grain of wheat in a loaf of bread, then place this with the herb under

your pillow and pray to the seven planets to reveal your guardian star

to you in your sleep. Indeed prayers and incantations are frequently

employed and in one case must be repeated nine times. Sometimes the

herb itself is addressed, as in the conjuration, “Herb Erystion, I

implore you to aid me and cheerfully afford me all your virtues and

cure and make whole all those ills which Aesculapius and Chiron the

centaur, masters of medicine, healed by means of you.” Sometimes the

earth is conjured as in the prayer beginning, “Holy goddess Earth.”

Such prayers are scarcely consonant with Christianity and in some

manuscripts have been omitted and replaced by the Lord’s Prayer or

other Christian forms, or left in with their wording slightly altered

to avoid paganism.[2447] Personal purity and clean clothing are often

enjoined upon those gathering the herbs and such instructions are

added as to mark the circle about the plant with gold, silver, ivory,

the tooth of a wild boar, and the horn of a bull, or to fill the hole

with honeyed fruits. Some herbs protect their bearers from all serpents

or even from all evils. Others, like asparagus if you use a dry root

of it to sprinkle the patient with spring water, break the spell of

witchcraft. Asparagus is also beneficial for toothache and wonderfully

relieves a tumor or bladder trouble, if it is boiled in water and drunk

by the patient fasting for seven days and also used in bathing for

a number of days. But one must be careful not to go out in the cold

during this time nor to take cold drinks.[2448]

[Sidenote: A “Precantation of All Herbs.”]

In some manuscripts a “Precantation of all herbs” is placed at the

beginning of the treatise.[2449] It prescribes such procedure as

holding a mirror over the herb before plucking it before sunrise

under a waning moon. The person plucking the herb and uttering the

incantation must be barefoot, ungirded, chaste, and wear no ring. The

plant is adjured not only “by the living God” and “the holy name of

God, Sabaoth,” but also by Seia, the Roman goddess of sowing, and by

“GS,” which presumably stands for _Gaia Seia_, an expression which is

once written out in full. Some meaningless words are also repeated.

[Sidenote: Other treatises accompanying the _Herbarium_.]

The _Herbarium_ is often accompanied in the manuscripts by other

treatises on herbs ascribed to Dioscorides and Macer, of which we shall

speak presently; by a work on the medicinal properties of animals, or

more particularly of quadrupeds, by Sextus Papirius Placidus[2450]

Actor[2451]—an otherwise quite unknown personage;[2452] by a “letter

concerning a little beast” from the king of Egypt or Aesculapius to

the emperor Octavian Augustus;[2453] and by introductory letters, such

as we find prefaced to the _De medicamentis_ of Marcellus Empiricus,

of “Hippocrates to his Moecenas”[2454] and “Antonius Musus to Moecenas

Agrippa.” The epistle of the Egyptian king or Aesculapius to Augustus,

however, really forms the introduction or opening chapter to the

treatise of Sextus Papirius Placidus on the medicinal properties of

animals, and after the little beast or quadruped called _mela_ or

_taxo_[2455] follow fast the stag, serpent, fox, hare, scorpion, and

so forth. As for the _taxo_, Augustus is told that by means of it he

can protect himself from sorcerers, avoid defections in his army, and

preserve his troops from the pestilence which the barbarians bring,

and the city of Rome from both pestilences and fires. To this end a

lustration should be performed with its flesh, and it should then be

buried at the city gates. One way to appropriate its virtue is to

extract its large teeth, repeating a jargon of strange words the while.

[Sidenote: _Cosmography_ of Aethicus.]

Another characteristic product of declining antique learning and

of early medieval effort is found in the field of geography in the

_Cosmography_ of Aethicus Istricus, translated into Latin by the priest

Jerome (_Hieronymus Presbyter_). The oldest manuscript is one of the

eighth century in the British Museum,[2456] where it is also found in

several other fairly early manuscripts[2457] in the respectable company

of Vitruvius, Vegetius, Sallust, and Suetonius,[2458] as well as with

the more congenial work of Solinus. This _Cosmographia_ was not printed

until 1852, when it was edited at Paris by M. d’Avezac and again in

1854 at Leipzig by M. H. Wuttke. It is an entirely different work

from what had hitherto been repeatedly printed as the _Cosmography_

of Aethicus but is really to be identified with fragments of Julian

Honorius and Orosius. The Latin translator of our treatise had been

identified in the middle ages with St. Jerome, the church father,

and Wuttke still ascribed it to him, but Bunbury protested against

this,[2459] and Mommsen placed our treatise not earlier than the

seventh century.[2460]

[Sidenote: Its medieval influence]

Bunbury added, however, that the _Cosmography_ “appears to have been

much read in the middle ages, and is therefore not without literary

interest.” The apparent greatness of the names on the title page seems

to have given the middle ages an exaggerated notion of the work’s

importance. Aethicus himself is spoken of as from Istria and according

to the _Explicit_ of at least one manuscript[2461] was a Scythian, but

this does not mean that his attitude towards learning was that of a

Hun, for the same _Explicit_ goes on to inform us that he was of noble

lineage and, if I correctly interpret the faulty syntax of its Latin,

that from him the ethical philosophy of other sages drew its origins.

Somewhat later Roger Bacon said in discussing faults in the study of

theology in his day, “From the authorities of the philosophers whom

the saints cite I shall abstain, except that I will strengthen the

utterances of Ethicus the astronomer and Alchimus the philosopher by

the authority of the blessed Jerome, since no one could credit that

they had said so many marvelous things about Christ and the angels and

demons and men who are to be glorified or damned unless Jerome or some

other saint proved that they had said so.”[2462]

[Sidenote: Character of the work.]

As Bacon’s words indicate, Christian influence is manifest in the

_Cosmography_, although, as they also indicate, the original Aethicus

is not supposed to have been a Christian, but, as one manuscript

informs us, an Academic philosopher.[2463] Oriental influence, too,

is perhaps shown in flights of poetical language and unrestrained

imagination, in a number of allusions to Alexander the Great, and in

an extraordinary ignorance of early Roman history which leads the

author to tell how Romulus invaded Pannonia and fought against the

Lacedaemonians. “How great carnage,” he exclaims, “in Lacedaemonia,

Noricum and Pannonia, Istria and Albania, northern regions near my

home, first at the hands of the Romans and the tyrant Numitor, then

under the brothers Romulus and Remus, and later under the first

Tarquin, the Proud.” The author eulogizes Athens as well as Alexander,

and mentions a people called _Turchi_, but whether or not he has Turks

in mind would be hard to say.

[Sidenote: Its attitude to marvels.]

As we have it, the _Cosmography_ cites both the Ethicus and the

Alchimus to whom Roger Bacon referred. Indeed, our treatise does not

pretend to be the original work of Aethicus, which it repeatedly

cites, but is apparently the work of some epitomizer or abbreviator

who intersperses remarks and comments of his own, and, according to

one manuscript, makes the statements of Aethicus conform to Christian

Scripture. From the volumes of the original work he makes only a

few excerpts, professing to omit what is unheard of or unknown or

seems too formidable, and including only with hesitancy a few bits

concerning unknown races on the testimony of hearsay. The enigmas of

Aethicus and other philosophers often give our abbreviator pause, and

he regards as incredible the story of Aethicus that the Amazons nurse

young minotaurs and centaurs who fight for them in return. Aethicus

also tells of the wonderful armor of the Amazons which they treat with

bitumen and the blood of their own offspring. In Crete Aethicus found

herbs unknown in other lands which ward off famine. Very beautiful gems

are mentioned, including those extracted from the brains of immense

dragons and basilisks, but little is said of their virtues, occult

or otherwise. Indeed, the amount either of specific information or

specific misinformation in the book is very scanty. It deals largely in

uncouth rhetoric, glittering generalities, and obscure allusion anent

the wanderings of Aethicus over the face of the earth and the strange

marvels which he encountered in distant lands. He is described as well

versed in astrology and as reproving the astrologers of Scythia(?)

and Mantua(?), and one passage vaguely speaks of the stars as signs

of the present and future; but otherwise the abbreviator gives little

evidence of knowledge of the subject, although Roger Bacon[2464] cited

_Ethicus Astronomicus in Cosmographia_ as one of his authorities when

discussing the question of Jesus Christ’s nativity and its relation to

the stars, and although Pico della Mirandola ranked the _Cosmography_

as one of the most absurd of astrological works.[2465] As for magic, in

one passage _malefici_ and _magi_ are censured along with idolaters,

and the author presently speaks of vain characters and superstitious

doctrines. But elsewhere a magician (_Pirronius magus_) is named as

the inventor of ships and discoverer of purple. On the whole, in its

loose and hazy way the _Cosmography_ not only is romantic and religious

enough to appeal to medieval readers, it also is of a character to

offer encouragement, if not data, to a later and more detailed interest

in alchemy, occult virtues, astrology, and magic.

[Sidenote: The _Geoponica_.]

Upon the subject of agriculture in the early middle ages we have the

collection known as the _Geoponica_. It properly belongs to Byzantine

literature and perhaps had little direct influence upon western Europe.

Nevertheless at least a portion of it upon vineyards was translated

into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa in the twelfth century.[2466] In any

case as the “only formal treatise on Greek agriculture” extant it

is a rather important historical source; it also is a good specimen

of early medieval compilations from classical works; and in its

inclusion of superstitious and magical details it is probably roughly

representative of the period, whether in east or west. In the form

which we now possess it was published about 950 A. D. and dedicated to

the Byzantine emperor, Constantine VII or Porphyrygennetos. But this

issue was perhaps little more than an abbreviated revision of the work

of Cassianus Bassus of the sixth century, whose introductory words to

his son are still given at the beginning of the seventh book. Cassianus

is believed in his turn to have been especially indebted to two fourth

century writers, Vindanius Anatolius of Beirut, whose agricultural

teaching was of a sober and rational sort, and Didymus of Alexandria,

who was more given to superstition and magic.[2467]

[Sidenote: Magic and astrology therein.]

Nevertheless, magic and astrology find no place in the index to the

most recent edition of the work.[2468] A survey, however, of the

text itself reveals some indications of the presence of both. The

very first of its twenty books deals with astrological prediction

of the weather and cites some spurious work or works by Zoroaster a

great deal. In later books, too, Zoroaster is sometimes cited for

semi-astrological advice, such as guarding wine jars against sun or

moon-beams when opening them, or testing seed by exposing it to the

rays of the dog-star.[2469] Zoroaster is also used as an authority on

the sympathy and antipathy existing between natural objects.[2470]

Damigeron and Democritus are other names cited which are suggestive

of the occult and magical.[2471] There are not, however, many cases

of extreme superstition in the _Geoponica_. Something is said of the

marvelous properties of gems, of the effect of a hyena’s shadow falling

upon a dog by moonlight, and how dogs will not attack a person who

holds a hyena’s tongue in his hand.[2472] Incantations of a sort are

occasionally recommended.[2473] To keep wine from turning sour one is

directed to write the divine words, “Taste and see that the Lord is

good” upon the wine-jar.[2474] Another passage advises a person who

finds himself in a place full of fleas to cry, “Ouch! Ouch!” and then

they will not bite him.[2475]

[Sidenote: Dioscorides.]

Perhaps the chief ancient work on pharmacology was the _De materia

medica_ or Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς of Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarba.

Galen, as we have seen, found things to criticize in it but

nevertheless made great use of it in his own work on medicinal simples.

Dioscorides of course had his previous sources but seems to have

surpassed them in fulness and orderliness of arrangement. Of the man

himself his preface tells us all that we know, and his dedication shows

that he probably wrote during the reign of Nero. He was born in Cilicia

near Tarsus, he had traveled in many lands as a soldier, and his work

was based partly upon personal observation and experience as well as

previous books.

[Sidenote: Textual history of the _De materia medica_.]

Dioscorides’ influence continued and even increased as time went on;

but if future centuries were deeply influenced by his book, it was

also seriously affected by them, for it seems to have been subjected

to a long series of repeated abbreviations and omissions, additions

and interpolations, changes in form and in order. Thus all sorts of

versions of what was called Dioscorides came into being, but which in

some cases can hardly be regarded as more than compilations from all

the favorite pharmacies of the time, in which the genuine Dioscorides

constituted but a remnant or a core. Thus most early printed editions

of what purports to be the _De materia medica_ must be handled with

great caution, and it may perhaps be doubted if even the latest effort

of Max Wellmann to recover the original Greek text has been entirely

successful.[2476] Of the five books regarded as genuine and original

the first dealt with spices, salves, and oils; the second, with parts

of animals and animal products like milk and honey, with grains,

vegetables, and pot-herbs. Other plants and roots were considered

in the third and fourth books, while the last dealt with wines and

minerals.[2477]

[Sidenote: Alterations made in the Greek text.]

Whether we now possess Dioscorides’ original text or not, at any rate

the oldest Greek manuscripts do not contain it, but only that portion

dealing with herbs. Moreover, this has been rearranged in alphabetical

order and has been adapted to fit a set of pictures of plants which

were perhaps taken over from the work of Crateuas, one of Dioscorides’

chief sources. Such is the famous early sixth century illuminated

manuscript made for Juliana Anicia, daughter of the emperor Olybrius

(472 A. D.) and wife of the consul Areobindus (about 512 A. D.).[2478]

The alphabetical rearrangement of the Greek text of Dioscorides was

made at some time between Galen and Oribasius, who cites from it in

the fourth century. Not only were the five books of the genuine _De

materia medica_ interpolated, but additional spurious books were added

“On Harmful Drugs” and “On Poisons.”[2479] The work on medicinal

simples attributed to Dioscorides is extant in no manuscript earlier

than the fourteenth century and some versions of it are much more

interpolated than others. As Galen does not cite it while Oribasius

and Aëtius do use it, it is assumed that it was composed in the third

or early fourth century with a forged dedication to a contemporary

of Dioscorides, but that it made considerable use of the genuine

Dioscorides, to which it bore much the same relation as the _Medicina

Plinii_ did to the _Historia Naturalis_. Later, however, some Byzantine

compiler of the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth century introduced a

great deal of new material from Galen’s genuine and spurious works in

that field and from John of Damascus.[2480]

[Sidenote: Dioscorides little known to Latins before the middle ages.]

What more especially concern us are the medieval Latin versions of

Dioscorides. As a matter of fact, although the _De materia medica_ was

from the start highly regarded and widely used by Greek physicians, it

seems to have been little known to Latin writers until the verge of the

medieval period. Gargilius Martialis, a Roman writer on agriculture in

the third century of our era, was the only old Latin author to cite

Dioscorides, which he did, however, no less than eighteen times in

his _Medicinae ex oleribus et pomis_. This has led to the suggestion

that he was perhaps responsible for the first Latin translation or

version of Dioscorides; but it seems unlikely that the work had been

put into Latin as early as his time, since it is not cited again by a

Latin writer until the sixth century and is not used by such medical

authors as Serenus Sammonicus, Cassius Felix, Theodorus Priscianus, and

Marcellus Empiricus.

[Sidenote: Partial versions in Latin.]

But at least a portion of Dioscorides seems to have been translated

into Latin by the time of Cassiodorus, who, writing in the first half

of the sixth century, states that those who cannot read Greek may

consult the _Herbarium Dioscoridis_.[2481] This naturally suggests

a version limited to medicinal plants like the early Greek text in

the manuscript of Juliana Anicia. This impression is confirmed by

the preface to some early Latin version of Dioscorides, which Rose

discovered in one of the manuscripts of the _Herbarium of Apuleius_

in the British Museum.[2482] This preface implies that the translation

which it introduced was limited to the botanical books of Dioscorides

and states that it was accompanied by illustrations of herbs.

[Sidenote: _De herbis femininis._]

Based upon this partial translation rather than identical with it

is believed to have been the _De herbis femininis_,[2483] which was

ascribed to Dioscorides in the middle ages and which often accompanies

the _Herbarium_ of the Pseudo-Apuleius in the manuscripts. In this case

the herbs of the Pseudo-Apuleius are sometimes called masculine, but

as a matter of fact only a minority of those in the Pseudo-Dioscorides

seem to be distinctly feminine. Of seventy-one plants Kaestner classed

fifteen or sixteen as feminine, while in only thirty cases are they

prescribed for female complaints. Rose dated this work before Isidore

of Seville by whom he believed it was used.[2484] It seems to combine

a free Latin translation of excerpts from the genuine Dioscorides with

numerous additions from other sources.

[Sidenote: The fuller Latin versions.]

Besides such abbreviated and interpolated Latin versions or perversions

of Dioscorides, there was also in existence in the early middle ages

a literal translation of all five books of the _De materia medica_.

It is full of Latinisms and barbarisms but otherwise reproduces the

complete and genuine Dioscorides, or is supposed to do so. Rose and

Wellmann[2485] say that it was current from the sixth century on,

and the few extant manuscripts of it date from the early medieval

period.[2486] One reason for this seems to be that this literal

translation was replaced by another Latin version which in a Bamberg

manuscript[2487] is ascribed to Constantinus Africanus, the medical

translator and writer of the eleventh century. In this version the

items are arranged alphabetically, and additions are embodied from

other sources. This version apparently became much better known

than the earlier literal translation and has been called “the

most widely disseminated handbook of pharmacy of the whole later

middle ages.”[2488] It is stated by Rose to be identical with the

“Dyascorides,” upon which Peter of Abano lectured and commented about

1300 and which was printed at Colle in 1478 and again at Lyons in

1512.[2489]

[Sidenote: Peter of Abano’s account of the medieval versions.]

Peter of Abano tells us in his preface[2490] that in his time there

were current two different versions, although both had the same

preface. One of these was in five books with a great many short

chapters, so short in fact that often the treatment of a single thing

was scattered over several chapters. This version was rare in Latin.

The other version contained fewer but longer chapters with material

added from Galen, Pliny, and other writers. This version was arranged

alphabetically. It was this version which _Aggregator_[2491] had

followed and imitated, but sometimes there were chapters in either

“Dyascorides” which were missing in _Aggregator_. Peter had also seen

an alphabetical version of Dioscorides in Greek.

[Sidenote: Pseudo-Dioscorides on stones.]

There seems also to have been current, at least in the later middle

ages, a Pseudo-Dioscorides on stones, drawn in part, like the _Feminine

Herbs_, from the genuine _De materia medica_, whose discussion of the

virtues of stones is incredible enough.[2492] This _Dioscorides on

Stones_ is cited by Arnold of Saxony and Bartholomew of England in

the thirteenth century, and portions at least of the work are extant

in manuscripts at Erfurt and Montpellier.[2493] A work on physical

ligatures is ascribed to Dioscorides in a late manuscript,[2494] but is

really a collection of items from various authors since Dioscorides on

the marvelous virtues of animals, herbs, and stones, especially when

bound on the body, held in the hand, or worn around the neck.

[Sidenote: Conclusions from the textual history of Dioscorides.]

The history of the medieval versions of Dioscorides, even in the brief

and incomplete outline given here, is instructive, showing us in

general the vicissitudes to which the transmission of the text of any

ancient author may have been subjected, but more especially proving

that the middle ages, whether Latin or Byzantine, were ready to take

great liberties with ancient authorities and to adapt them to their own

taste and requirements. And indeed, why should they not rearrange and

make additions to their Dioscorides? After all it was a compilation to

begin with. But the case of Dioscorides has also taught us that we do

not have to wait until the medieval period for the appearance of new

versions of an ancient author.

[Sidenote: Macer on herbs; its great currency.]

With the possible exception of the _Herbarium_ of the Pseudo-Apuleius,

probably the best known single and distinct treatment of the virtues

of herbs produced during the middle ages was the poem _De viribus

herbarum_ which circulated under the name of Macer Floridus.[2495] It

was often cited by the medieval encyclopedists and other writers on

nature and medicine in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[2496] It

is found in an Anglo-Saxon version[2497] and was even translated into

Danish in the early thirteenth century.[2498] Manuscripts of it are

very numerous[2499] and there are many early printed editions.[2500]

Even as recently as the first half of the nineteenth century a

historian of medicine and natural science, in the preface of his

edition of Macer, stated as one argument for the modern study of

medieval medicine that much might be learned from writings of that

period concerning the virtues of herbs.[2501]

[Sidenote: Problem of date and author]

The poem was certainly not written by the classical poet, Aemilius

Macer, who was a friend of Vergil and Ovid, and whose descriptions of

plants, birds, and reptiles are cited by Pliny in his _Natural History_

and also preserved in some extracts by the grammarians. Proof of this

is that our poem cites Pliny; in fact, it cites him more frequently

than any other author. It also cites Galen six times, Dioscorides

four, and as late an author as Oribasius twice.[2502] But Oribasius is

not the latest author cited since Walafrid Strabo is also used.[2503]

Strabo was born about 806, became abbot of Reichenau in 842, and died

in 849. In his _Hortulus_, a poem dedicated to Grimoald, the abbot of

St. Gall, he described twenty-three herbs in 444 hexameters.[2504]

Indeed Stadler holds that the Pseudo-Macer uses the _De gradibus_

of Constantinus Africanus who did not die until 1087.[2505] The

true author of our poem ascribed to Macer is said on the authority

of certain manuscripts to have been an Odo of Meung on the Loire,

apparently the same town as the birthplace of Jean Clopinel or de

Meun, the learned author of the latter portion of _The Romance of the

Rose_. Choulant, however, did not regard this as sufficiently proved,

and Stadler has recently noted that some manuscripts ascribe the poem

to a physician, Odo of Verona; and others to the Cistercian, Odo of

Morimont, who died in 1161.[2506] In any case, unless the mentions

of Strabo are later interpolations, the author must be regarded as

post-Carolingian, while he cannot be later than the eleventh century

in view of a remark of Sigebertus Gemblacensis in 1112,[2507] the

Anglo-Saxon version, the many twelfth century manuscripts, and the

frequent use of his poem in the _Regimen Salernitanum_.[2508] Although

Macer seems a pseudonym to begin with, the original poem, consisting of

2269 lines in which 77 herbs are discussed, is sometimes accompanied by

additional lines regarded as spurious.[2509]

[Sidenote: Virtues ascribed to herbs.]

Our poet does not appear to have much of his own to offer on the

subject of the virtues of herbs. When he does not cite his authority

by name, he usually qualifies the statement made by a vaguer “they

say” or “it is said.” He does not connect certain herbs with certain

stars or otherwise introduce anything that can be called astrological.

He repeats Pliny’s statement of the powers ascribed to vervain by

the _magi_, such as to gain one’s desires, win the friendship of the

powerful, and dispel disease and fever. Pliny had spoken of the _magi_

as “raving about this herb”; our poet says:

“Although potent Nature can grant such virtues,

Yet they really seem to us idle old-wives’ tales.”[2510]

Nevertheless he himself about fifteen lines before had said of the

vervain:

“If, holding this herb in the hand, you ask the patient,

‘Say, brother, how are you?’ and the patient answers, ‘Well,’

He will live; but if he says ‘Ill,’ there is no hope of safety.”[2511]

Our poet not only thus associates with herbs the virtue of divination,

but is guilty of sympathetic magic when he believes that the ancients

learned by experience that _Dragontea_ or snake-weed dispels poisons,

wards off snakes, and is good for snake-bite from observing the

similarity between the spotted rind of the herb and the skin of a

snake.[2512] Odo or Macer repeats Galen’s story of curing an epileptic

boy by suspending a root of peony about his neck,[2513] and later

asserts the same virtue for the herb _pyrethrum_.[2514] Even more

magical is the ceremony for curing toothache which he takes from

Pliny and which consists in digging up the herb _Senecion_ without

use of iron, touching the aching tooth with it three times, and then

replacing the plant in the place where it came from so that it will

grow again.[2515] Pliny is also cited concerning the swallow’s

restoring the sight of its young by swallow-wort.[2516] Our poet

also repeats such beliefs as that the herb _Buglossa_ preserves the

memory,[2517] or that the smoke of _Aristochia_ dispels demons and

exhilarates infants.[2518] If the hives are anointed with the juice of

the herb _Barrocus_, the bees will not desert them; while carrying that

plant with one is a protection against the stings of bees, wasps, and

spiders.[2519] Among the virtues most frequently attributed to herbs

are expelling or killing worms, curing pestiferous bites or poisons,

and provoking urine or vomiting. On the whole, “Macer” contains only a

moderate amount of superstition, although rather more proportionally

than Walafrid Strabo.

[Sidenote: _Experiments of Macer._]

Although Odo or Macer seems to make no original contribution to botany,

cites authorities frequently, and speaks often of the ancients or men

of old, he also at least once cites “experts”[2520] and we have also

seen his belief that the ancients had tested the virtues of plants

by experience. This rather slight experimental character of the work

is further emphasized in some manuscripts of it, where the title is

“Experiments of Macer” and the matter seems to have been rearranged

under diseases instead of by herbs.[2521]

CHAPTER XXVII

OTHER EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING: BOETHIUS, ISIDORE, BEDE, GREGORY THE

GREAT

Aridity of early medieval learning—Historic importance of _The

Consolation of Philosophy_—Medieval reading—Influence of the works

of Boethius—His relation to antiquity and middle ages—Attitude to

the stars—Fate and free will—Music of the stars and universe—Isidore

of Seville—Method of the _Etymologies_—Its sources—Natural

marvels—Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than

Pliny—Portent—Words and numbers—History of magic—Definition of

magic—Future influence of Isidore’s account of magic—Attitude to

astrology—In the _De natura rerum_—Bede’s scanty science—Bede’s _De

natura rerum_—Divination by thunder—Riddles of Aldhelm—Gregory’s

_Dialogues_—Signs and wonders wrought by saints—More monkish

miracles—A monastic snake-charmer—Basilius the magician—A demon

salad—Incantations in Old Irish—The _Fili_.

[Sidenote: Aridity of early medieval learning.]

The erudite fortitude of students of the Merovingian period commands

our admiration, but sometimes inclines us to wonder whether anyone

without a somewhat dry-as-dust constitution could penetrate far or

tarry long in the desert of early medieval Latin learning without

perishing of intellectual thirst. As a rule the writings of the

time show no originality whatever, and least of all any scientific

investigation; they are of value merely as an indication of what

past books men still read and what parts of past science they still

possessed some interest in. Under the same category of condemnation may

be placed most of the Carolingian period so far as our investigation is

concerned. We shall therefore traverse rapidly this period of sparse

scientific productivity and shall be doing it ample justice, if from

its meager list of writers we select for consideration Boethius of

Italy at the opening of the sixth century and Gregory the Great at

its close, Isidore of Spain at the opening of the seventh century,

and Bede in England at the beginning of the eighth century, with some

brief allusion to the riddles of Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, and to

Old Irish literature. We should gain little or nothing by adding to

the list Alcuin at the close of the eighth century and Rabanus Maurus

in the ninth century, although it may be noted now that later medieval

writers cite Rabanus for statements which I have failed to find in his

printed works. In general it may be said that the writers whom we shall

consider are those during the period who are most cited by the later

medieval authors.

[Sidenote: Historic importance of _The Consolation of Philosophy_.]

Of the distinguished family and political career of Boethius who lived

from about 480 to 524 A. D., and his final exile, imprisonment, and

execution by Theodoric the East Goth, we need scarcely speak here. Our

concern is with his little book, _The Consolation of Philosophy_, one

of those memorable writings which, like _The City of God_ of Augustine,

stand out as historical landmarks and seem to have been written on

the right subject by the right man at the most dramatic moment. The

timely appearance of such works, produced in both these cases not under

the stimulus of triumphant victory but the sting of bitter defeat,

is nevertheless perhaps less surprising than is their subsequent

preservation and enormous influence. We often are alternately amused

and amazed by the mistakes concerning historical and chronological

detail found in medieval writers. Yet medieval readers showed

considerable appreciation of the course of history, of its fundamental

tendencies, and of its crucial moments by the works which they included

in their meager libraries.

[Sidenote: Medieval reading.]

But were medieval libraries as meager as we are wont to assume?

Bede and Alcuin both tell of the existence of sizeable libraries in

England,[2522] and Cassiodorus urged those monks whose duty it was

to tend the sick to read a number of standard medical works.[2523] I

sometimes wonder if too much attention has not been given to medieval

writing and too little to medieval reading, of which so much medieval

writing, in Latin at least, is little more than a reflection. We get

their image, faint perhaps and partial; but they had the real object.

It has been assumed by some modern scholars that medieval writers had

usually not read the works, especially of classical antiquity, which

they profess to cite and quote, but relied largely upon anthologies and

_florilegia_. In the case of various later medieval authors we shall

have occasion to discuss this question further. For the present I may

say that in going through the catalogues of collections of medieval

manuscripts I have noticed few _florilegia_ or anthologies from the

classics in medieval Latin manuscripts,—perhaps Byzantine ones from

Greek literature are more common—and few indeed compared to the number

of manuscripts of the old Latin writers themselves. We owe the very

preservation of the Latin classics to medieval scribes who copied them

in the ninth and tenth centuries; why deny that they read them? Latin

_florilegia_ of any sort do not exist in impressive numbers, but other

kinds are as often met with as are those from classic poets or prose

writers, for instance, selections from the church fathers themselves.

On the whole, the impression I have received is that those authors

included in _florilegia_, commonplace books, and other manuscripts made

up of miscellaneous extracts, were likewise the authors most read _in

toto_. I am therefore inclined to regard the _florilegia_ as a proof

that the authors included were read rather than that they were not.

But from extant Latin manuscripts one gets the impression that the

whole matter of _florilegia_ is of very slight importance, and that the

theory hitherto based upon them is a survival of the prejudice of the

classical renaissance against “the dark ages.”

[Sidenote: Influence of the works of Boethius.]

At any rate, however scanty medieval libraries may have been, they

were apt to include a copy of _The Consolation of Philosophy_, and

however little read some of their volumes may have been, its pages

were certainly well thumbed. Lists of its commentators, translators,

and imitators, and other indications of its vast medieval influence

may be found in Peiper’s edition.[2524] Other writings of Boethius

were also well known in the middle ages and increased his reputation

then. His translations and commentaries upon the Aristotelian logical

treatises[2525] are of course of great importance in the history of

medieval scholasticism. His translations and adaptations of Greek

treatises in arithmetic, geometry, and music occupy a similar place

in the history of medieval mathematical studies.[2526] Indeed, his

treatise on music is said to have “continued to be the staple requisite

for the musical degree at Oxford until far into the eighteenth

century.”[2527] The work on the Trinity and some other theological

tracts, attributed to Boethius by Cassiodorus and through the middle

ages, are now again accepted as genuine by modern scholars and place

Boethius’ Christianity beyond question.[2528]

[Sidenote: His relation to antiquity and middle ages.]

Boethius has often been regarded as a last representative of Roman

statesmanship and of classical civilization. His defense of Roman

provincials against the greed of the Goths, his stand even unto

death against Theodoric on behalf of the rights of the Roman senate

and people, his preservation through translation of the learned

treatises of expiring antiquity, and the almost classical Latin

style and numerous allusions to pagan mythology of _The Consolation

of Philosophy_:—all these combine to support this view. But the

middle ages also made Boethius their own, and several points may

be noted in which _The Consolation of Philosophy_ in particular

foreshadowed their attitude and profoundly influenced them. Both a

Christian and a classicist, both a theologian and a philosopher,

Boethius set a standard which subsequent thought was to follow for a

long time. The very form of his work, a dialogue part in prose and

part in verse, remained a medieval favorite. And the fact that this

sixth century author of a work on the Trinity consoled his last hours

with a work in which Christ and the Trinity are not mentioned, but

where Phoebus is often named and where Philosophy is the author’s

sole interlocutor:—this fact, combined with Boethius’ great medieval

popularity, gave perpetual license to those medieval writers who chose

to discuss philosophy and theology as separate subjects and from

distinct points of view. The great medieval influence of Aristotle and

Plato, and in particular of the latter’s _Timaeus_, also is already

manifest in _The Consolation of Philosophy_. Aristotle, it is true,

appears to be incorrectly credited by Boethius with the assertion that

the eye of the lynx can see through solid objects,[2529] but this

ascription of spurious statements to the Stagirite also corresponds to

the attribution of entire spurious treatises to him later in the middle

ages.

[Sidenote: Attitude to the stars.]

Of the ways in which _The Consolation of Philosophy_ influenced

medieval thought that which is most germane to our investigation is

its attitude toward the stars and the problem of fate and free will.

The heavenly bodies are apparently ever present in Boethius’ thought

in this work, and especially in the poetical interludes he keeps

mentioning Phoebus, the moon, the universe, the sky, and the starry

constellations. _Per ardua ad astra_ was a true saying for those last

days in which he solaced his disgrace and pain with philosophy. It is

by contemplation of the heavens that he raises his thought to lofty

philosophic reflection; his mind may don swift wings and fly far above

earthly things

“Until it reaches starry mansions

And joins paths with Phoebus.”[2530]

He loves to think of God as ruling the universe by perpetual reason and

certain order, as sowing stars in the sky, as binding the elements by

number, as Himself immovable, yet revolving the spheres and decreeing

natural events in a fixed series.[2531] The attitude is like that

of the _Timaeus_ and Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_, closely associating

astronomy and theology, favorable to belief in astrology, in support of

which later scholastic writers cite Boethius.

[Sidenote: Fate and free will.]

We may further note the main points in Boethius’ argument concerning

fate and free will, providence and predestination,[2532] which was

often cited by later writers. He declares that all generation and

change and movement proceed from the divine mind or Providence,[2533]

while fate is the regular arrangement inherent in movable objects

by which divine providence is realized.[2534] Fate may be exercised

through spirits, angelic or daemonic, through the soul or through the

aid of all nature or “by the celestial motion of the stars.”[2535] It

is with the last that Boethius seems most inclined to identify _fati

series mobilis_. “That series moves sky and stars, harmonizes the

elements one with another, and transforms them from one to another.”

More than that, “It constrains human fortunes in an indissoluble

chain of causes, which, since it starts from the decree of immovable

Providence, must needs itself also be immutable.”[2536] Boethius,

however, does not believe in a complete fatalism, astrological or

otherwise. He holds that nothing escapes divine providence, to which

there is no distinction between past, present, and future.[2537] As the

human reason can conceive universals, although sense and imagination

are able to deal only with particulars, so the divine mind can foresee

the future as well as the present. But there are some things which are

under divine providence but which are not subject to fate.[2538] Divine

providence imposes no fatal necessity upon the human will, which is

free to choose its course.[2539] The world of nature, however, existing

without will or reason of its own, conforms absolutely to the fatal

series provided for it. As for chance, Boethius agrees with Aristotle’s

_Physics_ that there is really no such thing, but that what is commonly

ascribed to chance really results from an unexpected coincidence of

causes, as when a man plowing a field finds a treasure which another

has buried there.[2540] Thus Boethius maintains the co-existence of the

fatal series expressed in the stars, divine providence, and human free

will, a thesis likely to reassure Christians inclined to astrology who

had been somewhat disturbed by the fulminations of the fathers against

the _genethliaci_, just as his constant rhapsodizing over the stars and

heavens would lead them to regard the science of the stars as second

only to divine worship. Indeed, his position was the usual one in the

subsequent middle ages.

[Sidenote: Music of the stars and universe.]

The stars also come into Boethius’ treatise on music, where one of the

three varieties of music is described as mundane, where the music of

the spheres is declared to exist although inaudible to us, and where

each planet is connected with a musical chord. Plato is quoted as

having said, not in vain, that the world soul is compounded of musical

harmony, and it is affirmed that the four different and contrary

elements could never be united in one system unless some harmony joined

them.[2541]

[Sidenote: Isidore of Seville.]

Isidore was born about 560 or 570, became bishop of Seville in 599

or 600, and died in the year 636. Although mention should perhaps be

made of his briefer _De natura rerum_,[2542] a treatise dedicated to

King Sisebut who reigned from 612 to 620, Isidore’s chief work from

our standpoint is the _Etymologiae_.[2543] His friend, bishop Braulio,

writing after Isidore’s death, says that he had left unfinished the

copy of this work which he made at his request, but this was apparently

a second edition, since in a letter written to Isidore probably in

630, Braulio speaks of copies as already in circulation, although he

describes their text as corrupt and abbreviated. But apparently the

work had been composed seven years before this.[2544] The _Etymologies_

was undoubtedly a work of great importance and influence in the middle

ages, but one should not be led, as some writers have been, into

exaggerated praise of Isidore’s erudition on this account.[2545] For

the work’s importance consists chiefly in showing how scanty was the

knowledge of the early middle ages. Its influence also would seem not

to have been entirely beneficial, since writers continued to cite it as

an authority as late as the thirteenth century, when it might have been

expected to have outlived its usefulness. We suspect that it proved too

handy and convenient and tended to encourage intellectual laziness and

stagnation more than any anthology of literary quotations did. Arevalus

listed ten printed editions of it before 1527, showing that it was as

popular in the time of the Renaissance as in the middle ages.

[Sidenote: Method of the _Etymologies_.]

The _Etymologies_ is little more than a dictionary, in which words

are not listed alphabetically but under subjects with an average of

from one to a half dozen lines of derivation and definition for each

term. The method is, as Brehaut well says, “to treat each subject

by ... defining the terms belonging to it.”[2546] Pursuing this

method, Isidore treats of various arts and sciences, human interests

and natural phenomena: the seven liberal arts, medicine, and law;

chronology and bibliography; the church, religion, and theology; the

state and family, physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geography,

and astronomy; architecture and agriculture; war and sport; arms and

armor; ships and costume and various utensils of domestic life. Such is

the classification which later medieval writers were to adopt or adapt

rather than the arrangement followed in Pliny’s _Natural History_.

Isidore’s association of words and definitions under topics makes an

approach, at least, to the articles of encyclopedias: sometimes there

is a brief discussion of the general topic before the particular terms

and names are considered; sometimes there are chronological tables,

family trees, or lists of signs and abbreviations. In short, Isidore

forms a connecting link between Pliny and the encyclopedists of the

thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Its sources.]

In a prefatory word to Braulio Isidore describes the _Etymologies_ as a

collection made from his recollection and notes of old authors,[2547]

of whom he cites a large number in the course of the work. It has been

suspected that some of these writers were known to Isidore only at

second or third hand; at any rate he has not made a very discriminating

selection from their works and he has been accused more than once

of not clearly understanding what he tried to abridge. On the other

hand, Isidore seems to me to display a notable power of brief

generalization, of terse expression and telling use of words. We should

not have to go back to the middle ages for textbook writers who have

written more and said less. This power of condensed expression probably

accounts for Isidore’s being so much cited. Many of the derivations

proposed for words are so patently absurd that we would fain ascribe

them to Isidore’s own perverse ingenuity, but it is doubtful if he

possessed even that much originality, and they are probably all taken

from classical grammarians such as Varro.[2548] Isidore, however, still

displays a considerable knowledge of the Greek language. And again

it may be said in excuse of Isidore and his sources that the absurd

etymologies are usually proposed in the case of words whose derivation

is still problematic.

In the passages dealing with natural phenomena and science Isidore

borrows chiefly from Pliny and Solinus, sometimes from Dioscorides,

giving us a faint adumbration of their much fuller confusion of science

and superstition. Occasionally bits of information or misinformation

are borrowed through the medium of the church fathers. A work of

Galen, for instance, is cited[2549] through the letter of Jerome to

Furia against widows remarrying. Galen, indeed, is seldom mentioned by

Isidore who draws his unusually brief fourth book on medicine chiefly

from Caelius Aurelianus.[2550]

[Sidenote: Natural marvels.]