PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY
We should have to search long before finding a better starting-point for
the consideration of the union of magic with the science of the Roman
Empire and of the way in which that union influenced the Middle Ages
than Pliny’s _Natural History_. Its encyclopedic character affords a
bird’s-eye view of our entire subject. Its varied contents suggest
practically all the themes of our discussion in succeeding chapters.
Chronologically considered, it is satisfactory as an introduction, since
it appeared in the early part of the Empire (77 A. D.).
I. _The character of the work._—Pliny’s treatise is far more than what
we understand by a “Natural History.” It is an attempt to cover the
whole field of science; _rerum natura_ is its subject.[53] This, as
Pliny says, is a task which no single Greek or Roman has before
attempted. He tells us that he treats of some 20,000 topics gleaned from
the perusal of about 2,000 volumes, with the addition of many facts not
contained in previous works and only recently brought to light.[54] At
first thought, then, the _Natural History_, vast in its scope and
constituting a summary of the views of previous authorities, would seem
the best single example of the science of the classical world. The fact
that it touches upon many of the varieties and illustrates most of the
characteristics of magic makes it the more fitting a starting-point for
us. Indeed, Pliny makes frequent mention of the Magi, and in the opening
chapters of his thirtieth book gives the most important extant
discussion of magic by an ancient writer.
It is true, however, that Pliny does not seem to have been a man of much
scientific training and experience. He said himself that his days were
taken up with the performance of public duties, and that consequently
his scientific labors were largely carried on in the evening hours.[55]
Probably we should regard his book as little more than a compilation,
and perhaps no very judicious compilation at that, in view of his maxim
that there is no book so bad but that some good may be got from it.[56]
Perhaps we may not unjustly picture him to ourselves as collecting his
material in a rather haphazard fashion; as not always aware of the
latest theories or discoveries; as occasionally citing a fantastic
writer instead of a more sober one; or as quoting incorrectly statements
which his limited scientific knowledge prevented him from comprehending.
Perhaps, too, he derived some of his data directly from popular report
and superstition. Certainly to us to-day his work seems a disorderly and
indiscriminate conglomeration of fact and legend on all sorts of
subjects—disorderly, in that its author does not seem to have made any
effort to sift his material, to compare and arrange his facts, even in
his own mind; indiscriminate, in that Pliny seems to lack any standard
of judgment between the true and the false, and to deem almost nothing
too improbable, silly or indelicate to be mentioned. Ought we to
consider such a work as truly representative of the beliefs of preceding
centuries, or as an example of the best educated thought and science of
its author’s own age? This is a question which we must consider.
Yet as we read Pliny’s pages we feel that he possessed elements of
greatness. If he was equipped with little scientific training or
experience, we should remember that little training or experience was
necessary to deal with the science of those days. At least he sacrificed
his life in an effort to investigate natural phenomena. Moreover, his
faults were probably to a great extent common to his age. The tendency
to regard anything written as of at least some value did not begin with
him. Material had often before been collected in a haphazard manner.
Lewes, in his book on the science of Aristotle, has described with truth
even the famous _History of Animals_ as unclassified in arrangement and
careless in the selection of material.[57] Many of Pliny’s marvelous
assertions and absurd remedies purport to be from the works of men of
note, although possibly he was sometimes deceived by spurious writings.
He frequently gives us to understand that he himself intends to maintain
a cautious and critical frame of mind, and he makes great pretensions to
immunity from that credulousness of human nature over which he will
occasionally smile or philosophize.[58] When we take up Aristotle’s
_History of Animals_ and Seneca’s _Natural Questions_, it will become
evident that Pliny’s “science” was not very different in quality from
that of the Greeks or from that of his own age. If he seldom gives us a
clear-cut or complete exposition of a subject, it is probably because
there was seldom one to be found. If he seems in a chronic state of
mental confusion and incoherency, it is because his task staggered him.
His work was by its nature so far impersonal that we can attribute its
defects only in part to his personality.
On the whole, then, we probably shall not be greatly misled if we regard
the _Historia Naturalis_ as a sort of epitome of what men had believed
about nature in the past or did believe in Pliny’s own day. The author
may not have portrayed past and present thought at their best but he
portrayed them, and that in detail. “The greatest gull of antiquity”[59]
was the Boswell of ancient science.
Pliny makes almost as good a representative of mediæval science as of
that of the Roman world, and thus well illustrates the influence which
the one had upon the other. Indeed not only is the _Natural History_
just the sort of work that delighted the Middle Ages, but Pliny seems to
have exerted a considerable direct influence on writers down through the
sixteenth century. Isidore of Seville practically copied his unfavorable
comments on the magi and his discussion of the powers of stones.[60]
Bede seems to have owed a good deal to him. Alcuin openly praised that
“most devoted investigator of nature.”[61] Roger Bacon quoted him; the
_Natural History_ was a mine whence Agrippa dug much of the material for
his _Occult Philosophy_ and to which Porta seems equally indebted in his
_Natural Magic_.
II. _Pliny’s discussion of magic._—Before illustrating Pliny’s
combination of magical lore with true and sane statements about nature,
we should consider his discussion of what he was pleased to call magic;
for just as he prided himself upon his freedom from excessive credulity
in the abstract, so in regard to magic in particular he seems to have
flattered himself that his position was quite different from what it
actually was.
Pliny did have, however, a fairly clear idea of the extensive scope of
magic as well as of its great age and currency. Not only did he declare
that of all known arts it had exerted the greatest influence in every
land and in almost every age, but “no one,” he said, “should wonder that
its authority has been very great, since it alone has embraced and
combined into one the three other subjects which appeal most powerfully
to man’s mind.”[62] For magic had invaded the domain of religion and had
also made astrology a part of itself,[63] while “no one doubts that it
originally sprang from medicine and crept in under the show of promoting
health as a loftier and more holy medicine.”[64] Indeed, he thinks that
the development of magic and of medicine have been parallel[65] and that
the latter is now in imminent danger of being overwhelmed by the follies
of magic which have made men doubt whether plants possess any medicinal
properties at all.[66] Pliny, moreover, sees the connection of magic
with the lore of the magi of Persia. Indeed, “magus” is his only word
for a magician. But this does not lead him to admit what some
persons—the philosopher Eudoxus, for instance—have asserted, that magic
is the most splendid and useful branch of philosophy.[67] For Pliny,
magic is always something reprehensible.
The magi are either fools or imposters. They are a _genus
vanissimum_.[68] They believe such absurdities as that herbs can dry up
swamps and rivers, open all barriers, turn hostile battle-lines in
flight, and insure their possessor, wherever he may be, abundant
provision for every need.[69] They make statements which Pliny thinks
must have been dictated by a feeling of contempt and derision for the
human race. They affirm that gems carved with the names of sun and moon
and attached to the neck by hairs of the cynocephalus and feathers of
the swallow will neutralize the effect of potions, win audience with
kings, and, with the aid of some additional ceremony, ward off hail and
locusts.[70] They have the impudence to assert that the stone
“heliotropium,” combined with the plant of the same name and with due
incantations, renders its bearer invisible.[71] “Vanitas” is Pliny’s
stock-word for their statements. Nero proved how hollow are their
pretenses by the fact that, although he was most eagerly devoted to the
pursuit of magic arts and had every opportunity to acquire skill in
them, he was unable to effect any marvels through their agency and
abandoned the study of them.[72]
Moreover, magi or magicians deal with the inhuman, the obscene and the
abominable. Osthanes, and even the philosopher Democritus, are led by
their devotion to magic into propounding such remedies as drinking human
blood or utilizing in magic compounds or ceremonies portions of the
corpses of men violently slain.[73] Magic is a malicious and criminal
art. Its devotees attempt the transfer of disease from one person to
another or the exercise of baleful sorcery.[74] “It cannot be
sufficiently estimated how great a debt is due the Romans who did away
with those monstrous rites in which to slay a man was most pious; nay
more, to eat men most wholesome.”[75] In fine, we may rest persuaded
that magic is “execrable, ineffectual and inane.” Yet it possesses some
shadow of truth, but is of avail through “veneficas artes ... non
magicas,”[76] whatever that distinction may be.
III. _Illustrations of Pliny’s fundamental belief in magic._—Pliny, we
have seen, made a bold pretense of utter disbelief in magic, and also
censured the art on grounds of decency, morality and humanity. Yet
despite this wholesale condemnation, in some places in his work it is
difficult to tell where his quotations from magicians cease and where
statements which he accepts recommence. Sometimes he explicitly quoted
theories or facts from the writings of the “magi” without censure and
without any expression of disbelief. If it is contended that he none the
less regarded them as false and worthless, we may fairly ask, why then
did he give them such a prominent place in his encyclopedia? Surely we
must conclude either that he really had a liking for them himself and
more than half believed them, or that previous works on nature were so
full of such material and his own age so interested in such data that he
could not but include much of this lore. Probably both alternatives are
true. Finally, many things which Pliny states without any reference to
the magi seem as false and absurd as the far-fetched assertions which he
attributes to them and for which he shows so much scorn. Indeed, it
hardly seems paradoxical to say that he hated the magi but liked their
doctrines.
What clearer example of magic could one ask than the conclusion that the
odor of the burning horn of a stag has the power of dispelling serpents,
because enmity exists between stags and snakes, and the former track the
latter to their holes and extract the snakes thence, despite all
resistance, by the power of their breath? Or that on this same account
the sovereign remedy for snake-bite comes “ex coagulo hinnulei matris in
utero occisi?” Or that, since the stag is not subject to fever, the
eating of its flesh will prevent that disease, especially if the animal
has died of a single wound? What more magical than to fancy that the
longest tooth of a fish could have any efficacy in the cure of fever? Or
that excluding the person who had tied it on from the sight of the
patient for five days would complete a perfect charm? Or that wearing as
an amulet the carcass of a frog, minus the claws and wrapped in a piece
of russet-colored cloth, would be of any aid against disease?[77] Yet
the _Natural History_ is full of such things.
To plants, for example, Pliny assigns powers no less marvelous than
those which he has attributed to animals. There is one plant which, held
in the hand, has a beneficial effect upon the groin;[78] another
overcomes the asp with torpor, and hence, beaten up with oil, is a
remedy for the sting of that snake.[79] Fern, he says, if mowed down
with the edge of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare on which a reed has
been placed, will not spring up again.[80] Moreover, in his
twenty-fourth book, immediately after having announced that he has
sufficiently discussed for the present the marvelous properties
attributed to herbs by the magi,[81] he proceeds to mention the
following remedies. One is a quick cure for headache, and consists in
gathering a plant growing on the head of a statue and attaching it to
your neck with a red string. Another is a cure for tertian fever, and
consists in plucking a certain herb before sunrise on the banks of a
stream and in fastening it to the patient’s left arm without his
knowledge. A third recipe instructs us that plants which have taken root
in a sieve that has been thrown into a hedge-row “decerptae
adalligataeque gravidis partus adcelerant.” A fourth would have herbs
growing on dunghills a cure for quinzy, and a fifth assures us that
sprains may be speedily cured by the application of a plant “iuxta quam
canes urinam fundunt,” torn up by the roots and not allowed to touch
iron.[82]
Coming to minerals we find Pliny rather more reticent in regard to
strange qualities. His account of gems is written mainly from the
jeweler’s point of view. When marvelous powers are mentioned, the magi
are usually made responsible, and such powers are frequently rejected as
absurd. Pliny, however, grants some magic properties in certain stones.
Molochitis, by some medicinal power which it possesses, guards infants
against dangers;[83] and eumecas, placed beneath the head at night,
causes oracular visions.[84] To water Pliny allows powers which we must
regard as magical, for according to him certain rivers pass under the
sea because of their hatred of it.[85]
In man, moreover, as well as in other creatures upon earth, there is
magic power. Pliny mentions men whose eyes are able to exert strong
fascination,[86] others who fill serpents with terror and can cure
snake-bite by merely touching the wound, and others who by their
presence addle eggs in the vicinity.[87] Pliny takes up the power of
words and incantations in connection with man. Whether they have potency
beyond what we expect ordinary speech to possess is a great and
unanswered question. Our ancestors, Pliny says, always believed so, and
in every-day life we often unconsciously accept such a view ourselves.
If, for instance, we believe that the Vestal virgins can, by an
imprecation, stop runaway slaves who are still within the city limits,
we must accept the whole theory of the power of words. But, taken as
individuals, the wisest men lack faith in the doctrine.[88]
Pliny, then, believed in the possession of magic properties by well-nigh
all varieties of terrestrial substances, nay even by colors and numbers,
and in strange relations of occult sympathy, love and hatred between
different things in the realm of nature. His acceptance of ceremony as
efficacious has also been brought out to some extent. We have seen him
attributing importance to death from a single wound, to suspension by a
single hair, to fastening an amulet without the patient’s knowledge, or
to the absence for a time from the patient’s sight of the person who
attached it. We will consider one or two more such instances among the
many which exist in his pages.
He who gathers the iris should be in a state of chastity. Three months
beforehand let him soak the ground around the plant with hydromel—as a
sort of atonement to appease the earth. When he comes to pluck it, he
should first trace three circles about it with the point of a sword,
and, the moment he plucks it, raise it aloft towards the heavens.[89] In
another passage, in connection with the application of a mixture to an
inflammatory tumor, Pliny says that persons of experience regard it as
very important that the poultice be applied by a naked virgin and that
both she and the patient be fasting. Touching the sufferer with the back
of her hand, she is to say, “Apollo forbids a disease to increase which
a naked virgin restrains.” Then, withdrawing her hand, she is to repeat
the same words thrice and to join with the patient in spitting on the
ground each time.[90]
Pliny occasionally prefaces his marvelous remedies by some such
expression as “it is said.” This circumstance is scarcely to be taken as
a sign of mental reservation, however, as the following absurd
statement, which he makes upon his own authority and declares is easily
tested by experiment, will indicate. “If a person repents of a blow
given to another, either by hand or with a missile, let him spit at once
into the palm of the hand which inflicted the blow, and all resentment
in the person struck will instantly vanish.” This is often proved,
according to Pliny, in the case of beasts of burden, which can be
induced to increase their speed by this method after the use of the whip
has failed.[91]
One can, perhaps, make some distinction between the strange influences
which Pliny credited and the statements of the magi which he rejected. I
believe that he did not go to the length of affirming that plants or
parts of animals could cause panics, procure provisions, win you royal
favor, gain for you vengeance on your enemies, or make you invisible.
But he was inconsistent enough. After asserting that a single fish but a
few inches long could immediately arrest the progress of the largest
vessel by attaching itself to the keel of the ship,[92] was it for him
to declare false the notion that a stone can calm winds or ward off hail
and swarms of locusts? He characterized as “idle talk” the assertion of
the magi that the stone “gorgonia” counteracted fascination,[93] but he
had already written: “Id quoque convenit, quo nihil equidem libentius
crediderim, tactis omnino menstruo postibus inritas fieri magorum artes,
generis vanissimi, ut aestimare licet.”[94] Apparently, then, the only
charge which he could bring against magicians without reflecting upon
himself was that of malicious and criminal practices. His beliefs were
much like theirs.
Indeed, the varieties of magic in the _Natural History_ have not yet
been exhausted. For one thing, we must consider Pliny’s position in
regard to magic properties of the stars as well as of terrestrial
matter. He believed in astrology, at least to some extent, although one
might not think it if one read only the passage in which he speaks of
the debt of gratitude mankind owe to the great geniuses who have freed
them from superstitious fear of eclipses.[95] He could, nevertheless, in
naming some prominent personage in each of the primary arts and
sciences, mention Berosus, to whom a public statue has been erected by
the Athenians in honor of his skill in prognostication, in connection
with astrology.[96]
Pliny himself holds that the universe is a divinity, “holy eternal,
vast, all in all—nay, in truth is itself all,” a proposition rather
favorable to astrological theory.[97] The sun is the mind and soul of
the whole world and the chief governor of nature.[98] The planets affect
each other. A cold star renders another approaching it pale; a hot star
causes its neighbor to redden; a windy planet gives those near it a
lowering aspect.[99] Saturn is cold and rigid; Mars a flaming fire;
Jupiter, located between them, is temperate and salubrious.[100] When
the planets reach a certain point in their orbits, they are deflected
from their regular course by the rays of the sun.[101]
Besides effects upon each other the planets exert especial influence
upon the earth. “Potentia autem ad terram magnopere eorum
pertinens.”[102] They govern, each according to its nature, the weather
on our globe.[103] The planets also have great influence upon diseases
and on animal and plant life in general, although Pliny does not dwell
upon this point at any length.[104] The moon, a feminine and nocturnal
star, stirs up humors on earth and is powerful in producing putrefaction
and corruption in matter.[105] By the nature of Venus every thing on
earth is generated.[106]
To what extent the planets rule man’s life Pliny does not specify—an
instance of prudent reticence on his part, if he really consciously
avoided the question. He disclaims any belief in the vulgar notion that
a star, varying in brightness according to our wealth, is assigned to
each of us, and that the eternal stars rise and fade at the birth or
death of insignificant mortals. “Non tanta caelo societas nobiscum est
ut nostro fato mortalis sit ibi quoque siderum fulgor.”[107] But thus to
deny that the stars are ruled by man’s destiny or doings is far from
refusing to believe that men’s lives are ordered by the stars. Pliny, as
we have seen, holds that Venus has a considerable influence over the
process of birth in all animals. Also he certainly accepts the
portentous character of various particular celestial phenomena. “From
the stars celestial fire is vomited forth bearing omens of the
future.”[108] He gives instances from Roman history of comets which
signalled disaster, expounds the theory that their significance is to be
determined from the direction in which they move and the heavenly body
whose powers they receive, and states that the particular phase of life
to which they apply may be deduced from the shape which they assume or
from their position in relation to the signs of the zodiac.[109]
Pliny’s belief in portents seems to have been general and not limited to
celestial phenomena. In a passage on earthquakes he declares, “Never has
the city of Rome shaken but that this was a forewarning of some future
event.”[110]
Pliny is less certain in regard to the superstitious observances so
common then, to secure good luck or ward off evil fortune. In chapter
five of his twenty-eighth book he gives quite a list of practices, such
as selecting persons with lucky names to lead the victims at public
lustrations, saluting those who sneeze, placing saliva behind the ear to
escape mental anxiety, removing rings while eating, averting the
ill-omen of mentioning fire at meal-time by pouring water beneath the
table, and other superstitious table etiquette. He cites beliefs of the
same nature, as that odd numbers are for every purpose the more
efficacious, that medicines do no good if placed on a table before being
administered, that baldness and headaches may be prevented by cutting
the hair on the seventeenth and twenty-ninth days of the moon, and that
women who walk along country roads twirling distaffs, or even having
these uncovered, bring very bad luck, especially to the crops. He seems
to have inclined to the belief that there was a modicum of truth, at any
rate, in these notions and customs—and certainly we have already seen
him affirming the validity of analogous practices—but he finally decides
that amid the great variety of opinion existing in the matter he will
not be dogmatic and that each person may think as he deems best. His
attitude is much the same in regard to divination from thunder and
lightning.[111]
With all the foolish notions which he imbibed from antiquity or into
which his mind, over-hospitable to the fantastic and marvelous, led him,
Pliny had one good scientific trait. He might believe in magic but he
had no liking for the esoteric. His mind might be confused but it was
not mystical. He had no desire to hide the “secrets” of science and
philosophy from the public gaze, to wrap them up in obscure and
allegorical verbiage lest the unworthy comprehend them. On the contrary,
he sharply remarked apropos the lack of information about the medicinal
properties of plants, that there was a most shameful reason for this
scarcity, namely, that even those who knew were unwilling to give forth
their knowledge, “as if that would be lost to themselves which they
passed on to others.”[112]
Such, then, is the _Natural History_. Pliny gives evidence that many of
the most intelligent men were coming to doubt a large part of the
superstitious beliefs and observances once universally prevalent, and he
himself makes a brave effort to assume a critical and judicious
attitude. Yet his work contains a great deal of magic and reveals, what
this essay in its entirety will make further evident, the error of such
a statement as the following from Dr. White’s _Warfare of Science and
Theology_:
Under the old Empire a real science was coming in and thought
progressing. Both the theory and practice of magic were more and more
held up to ridicule. Even as early a writer as Ennius ridiculed the
idea that magicians, who were generally poor and hungry themselves,
could bestow wealth on others; Pliny, in his _Natural Philosophy_,
showed at great length their absurdities and cheatery; others followed
in the same line of thought, and the whole theory, except among the
very lowest classes, seemed dying out.[113]