SOME ANTECEDENTS OF THE BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Writers who have discussed the intellectual life under the Roman Empire
generally agree that it was not marked by originality and creative
power, and owed a perhaps unusually large debt to the past. The
cosmopolitan character of the Empire, the mingling at that time of the
science, theology, philosophy and superstition of different nations,
religions and races, deserve equal emphasis. The lore of the magi of
Persia, the occult science of Egypt, perhaps even the doctrines of the
gymnosophists of India, may be regarded, together with that belief in
divination which played such a rôle in classical religion and government
and with other superstitious notions of Greeks and Italians, as
contributory to the prominence of magic in the Empire.
To discuss with any attempt at completeness the influence of the past
upon the belief in magic in the Empire lies, however, outside the
province of this essay. Pliny has shown us something of the union of
magic with science in the literature before his day. Philo of
Alexandria, Apuleius and the fame of Hermes Trismegistus may give us
some notion of the influence of the East. In other writers of the period
of which we treat one may discern further traces of the thought and
learning of the past. In general such evidence must suffice. We shall,
however, presently take occasion to support our contention that Pliny
gives one a fairly good idea of science before his day, by a few
citations from two writers of repute, one a Greek and one a Roman, of
the period before the Empire. Moreover, the great historical importance
of Greek philosophy and the fact that, besides playing a prominent part
in Roman culture, it exercised a powerful direct influence on Christian
Europe long after the fall of Rome, seem to justify some treatment of
its doctrines. Especially may we mention Plato and Aristotle, who
exerted great influence not only during classical times, but also the
one in the Middle Ages, the other in the period following the decline of
Scholasticism.
We naturally incline to regard this earlier period of more or less
distinctively Greek thought and learning as a golden age, comparatively
speaking, characterized by sane thinking if not also by careful
investigation of nature, and free from superstition, credulity and
mysticism. The general opinion seems to be that magic entered science
and learning and was accepted by men of intellectual prominence only
when mental decay had set in and when Oriental influence had become a
powerful force.
Yet something might be said for the opposite view that this earlier age
combined magic with its science and philosophy as much, if not more,
than the later time. We know that Greek philosophy had its beginnings in
mythology; and if the representatives of its maturity accepted the Greek
religion with its auspices drawn from sacrifices, its oracles and the
like, we may with reason ask, is it probable that they would hesitate to
give similar doctrines a place in their scientific and philosophical
systems? Pliny, for his part, evidently regarded himself as less
credulous and as less inclined to magic than the ancient Greeks,
although it is true that he attributed their belief to Oriental
influence. He declared that Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Plato
had learned the magic art abroad and had taught it on their return.[114]
Beside the name of Hippocrates in the field of medicine he set that of
Democritus in the domain of magic.[115] Elsewhere he said that
Pythagoras and Democritus, having embraced the doctrine of the magi,
first expounded the properties of magic plants in the Western
world.[116] In Cicero’s _De Divinatione_, Epicurus is alone of the Greek
philosophers declared free from trust in divination, and Panætius is
said to have been the only Stoic to reject astrology.[117]
Fortunately we are not here concerned to measure either relatively or
absolutely with any attempt at exactness the amount of magic in the
learning of the closing centuries of Greek national life, but only to
investigate whether in the philosophy of the Greeks there were not
theories at least liable to encourage a later age to belief in magic.
There was, for instance, the view of the Stoics that the universe is a
single living whole—a theory well fitted to form the starting-point for
a belief in sympathetic magic. Also their doctrine that events are all
arranged in a fatal causal series was favorable to divination. Quintus
Cicero, represented as upholding the truth of that art, cites the Stoics
as authority, and we may safely assume that Seneca drew his view of
divination largely from the same source.
The doctrine of Pythagoras also deserves mention, for it has played a
great rôle in history. He is said to have held that the whole world is,
and that the life of man ought to be, harmoniously ordered in accordance
with mathematical principles; nay more, that such principles are living
things and that numbers are the essence of the universe. The logical
conclusion is that by skilful use of mere numbers man can move heaven
and earth. As the poet, eulogizing Michael Scot, put it; the
“mathematici” by their art affect numbers, by numbers affect the
procession of the stars, and by the stars move the universe. The
employment of characters constructed of numbers or of geometrical
figures, the use of numerical formulæ as remedies or of compounds of
three portions of three kinds of drugs applied during three successive
days, is raised from the plane of superstition to the level of science.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that the heavenly bodies with their
apparently unchanging regularity of movement are the governors of our
existence. Plato, who adopted the Pythagorean doctrines at least to a
considerable extent, declared that the loftiest function of the sense of
sight was to survey the heavens, an occupation by which we gain
philosophy.[118] Like the Pythagoreans also, he associated the four
elements with regular solids. The cube represented earth; the octohedron
was water; the tetrahedron, fire; and the icosahedron, air.[119] The
remaining regular solid, the dodecahedron, was held to represent the
universe as a whole.
Towards magic, as he understood it, Plato’s attitude seems to have been
sceptical, though perhaps not confidently so. He maintained that persons
acquainted with medicine and prophets or diviners were the only ones who
could know the nature of poisons which worked naturally, and of such
things as incantations, magic knots and waxen images; and that since
other men had no certain knowledge of such things, they ought not to
fear but to despise them. He admitted, however, that there was no use in
trying to convince most men of this and that legislation against sorcery
was necessary.[120] He himself occasionally mentioned charms or
soothsaying in a matter-of-fact way.
Whatever Plato’s opinion of vulgar magic, his view of nature was much
like that of primitive man. He humanized material objects and
materialized spiritual characteristics. For instance, he asserted that
the gods placed the lungs about the heart “as a soft spring that, when
passion was rife within, the heart, beating against a yielding body,
might be cooled and suffer less, and might thus become more ready to
join with passion in the service of reason.”[121] He affirmed that the
liver was designed for divination, and was a sort of mirror on which the
thoughts of the intellect fell and in which the images of the soul were
reflected, but that its predictions ceased to be clear after death.[122]
Plato spoke of the existence of harmonious love between the elements as
the source of health and plenty for vegetation, beasts and men. Their
“wanton love” he made the cause of pestilence and disease. To understand
both varieties of love “in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly
bodies and the seasons of the year is,” he tells us, “termed
astronomy.”[123] This suggests that he believed in astrology—in the
potent influence of the stars over all changes in earthly matter. He
called the stars “divine and eternal animals, ever abiding.”[124] The
“lower gods,” of whom many at least are identical with the heavenly
bodies, form men who, if they live well, return after death each to a
happy existence in his proper star.[125] The implication is, though
Plato does not say so distinctly, that the stars influence human life.
Aristotle’s doctrine was similar. Windelband has well expressed his
view:
The stars themselves were ... for Aristotle beings of superhuman
intelligence, incorporate deities. They appeared to him as the purer
forms, those more like the deity, and from them a purposive rational
influence upon the lower life of the earth seemed to proceed—a thought
which became the root of mediæval astrology.[126]
Moreover, “his theory of the subordinate gods of the spheres of the
planets ... provided for a later demonology.”[127] And a belief in
demons fosters a belief in magic. For such subordinate gods—on the one
hand movers of nature’s forces, and on the other hand subject to
passions like man and open to influence through symbols and
conjurations—are evidently most suitable agents for the worker of magic
to employ. We must also mention Aristotle’s attribution of “souls” to
plants and animals, a theory which would readily lend itself to an
assumption of magic properties in herbs and beasts.
Aristotle himself in his works upon natural science accepts such
properties to a considerable extent. A few citations from his
_History of Animals_[128] will show that we have not been misled in
inferring from Pliny that Greek science at its best was not
untainted by magic. The _History of Animals_ seems to attribute
undue influence to the full moon and the dog-star,[129] and to hold
that honey is distilled from the air by the stars and that the wax
alone is made by the bees.[130] Aristotle repeats the story that the
salamander is a fire-extinguisher.[131] He mentions as a cure for
the sting of a certain snake the drinking of a small stone “taken
from the tomb of one of the ancient kings.” Like Pliny, he makes
human saliva a defense against serpents.[132] He says of certain
things that they are ominous of certain events.[133] He affirms that
the hen-partridge is affected by the mere breath of the cock or by a
breeze from his direction.[134] He thinks that insects are
spontaneously generated from mud, dung, wood, or flesh.[135] He says
it is plain that the Narce causes stupefaction in both fish and
men.[136] He has not only an idea that those with lice in their hair
are less subject to headaches, but also a notion that those who have
lice and take baths become more liable to the pest when they change
the water in which they wash themselves.[137] Another amusing
illusion which he records is that calves will suffer less in their
feet if their horns are waxed.[138] Thus the pages of Aristotle give
ground for belief that the fantasticalness of mediæval science was
due to “the clear light of Hellas” as well as to the gloom of the
“Dark Ages.”
The book by a Roman which we are to consider as illustrative of the
condition of science before the age of the Empire is Cato’s treatise on
agriculture. Several passages emphasize the importance of such
conditions as that the moon should be new or waning or not shining
during the performance of such acts as the transplanting of trees or the
manuring of meadows.[139] It is also directed that in administering
medicine to oxen the man giving the dose shall have fasted previously
and that both he and the ox stand upright during the operation.[140] One
medicine prescribed for cattle is a mixture of 3 grains of salt, 3
leaves of laurel, 3 fibres of leek, 3 tufts of ulpican leek, 3 sprigs of
the savin, 3 leaves of rue, 3 stalks of the white vine, 3 white beans, 3
live coals, 3 sextarii of wine. Each ox is to be given a portion for
three days and the whole is to be divided so that it will suffice for
exactly three doses.[141] To heal a sprain or fracture the singing of
the following nonsensical incantation or formula is recommended: “In
alios S. F. motas vaeta daries dardaries astataries dissunapiter.”[142]
This was written by a man generally supposed to have had much common
sense and who was enlightened enough to wonder how two augurs could let
their eyes meet without laughing.