THE LAST CENTURY OF THE EMPIRE
We come now to consider some indications of the intermixture of magic
with learning in the last century of the Roman Empire, the border-time
of the Middle Ages. It was a time when interest in science was slight
and when the ability to use florid rhetoric was apparently the chief aim
of those who assumed to be the highest intellectual class. What science
there was was largely permeated with magic, as a glance at a few men of
intellectual prominence then will illustrate.
Marcellus of Bordeaux, court physician of Theodosius I, and a writer
upon medicine, throws some light upon the state of medicine in his day.
He affirmed that pimples might be removed by wiping them the instant you
saw a falling-star. He said that a tumor could be cured if one half of a
root of vervain were tied about the sufferer’s neck and the other half
suspended over a fire. His theory was that as the vervain dried up in
the smoke of the fire, the tumor would by force of magic sympathy
likewise dry up and disappear. Marcellus added for the benefit of unpaid
physicians that so persistent would be the sympathetic bond established
that if the root of the vervain were later thrown into water, its
absorption of moisture would produce a return of the tumor.[218]
Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote at the close of the fourth century, and
who has been regarded by his critics from Gibbon down as a historian of
distinguished merit, gives us an idea of mental conditions in his time,
and was himself not free from belief in magic. It is true that in
declaiming against the degeneracy of the Roman aristocracy he ridicules
their trust in astrology, saying that many of them deny the existence of
higher powers in heaven, yet think it imprudent to appear in public or
dine or take a bath without first having consulted an almanac as to
Mercury’s whereabouts or the exact position of the moon in Cancer.[219]
Yet he believed in omens, portents and auspices, as the following
citations will indicate and as one might show by other passages.
The first passage is one in which Ammianus speaks of Alexandria as
formerly having been a great place of learning and as even in his
degenerate days a considerable intellectual centre. According to him, it
is a sufficient recommendation for any medical man if he say that he was
educated at Alexandria.[220]
There whatever lies hidden is laid bare by geometry; music is not
utterly forgotten nor harmony neglected; among some men, though their
number may not be great, the motion of the world and stars is still a
matter of consideration; there are not a few of those skilled in
numbers.
This is not all. “Besides these things they cherish the science which
reveals the decrees of fate.”[221]
The Emperor Julian was continually inspecting entrails of victims and
interpreting dreams and omens, and even proposed to reopen a prophetic
fountain which Hadrian was said to have blocked up for fear that others,
like himself, might win the imperial throne through obedience to its
predictions.[222] The mention of such practices of Julian leads Ammianus
in another passage to attempt a justification of divination as a science
worthy of the study and respect of the most erudite and intelligent. He
says:
Inasmuch as to this ruler, who was a man of culture and an inquirer
into all branches of learning, malicious persons have attributed the
use of evil arts to learn the future, we shall briefly indicate how a
wise man is able to acquire this by no means trivial variety of
knowledge. The spirit behind all the elements, seeing that it is
incessantly and everywhere active in the prophetic movement of
everlasting bodies, bestows upon us the gift of divination by those
methods which we acquire through divers studies; and the forces of
nature, propitiated by various rites, as from exhaustless springs
provide mankind with prophetic utterances.[223]
That is, we can foreknow, if not control, the results of the processes
of universal nature. Since it is through the forces of nature that we do
this, augury, oracular utterances, oneiromancy and astrology all become
for Ammianus but subdivisions of physical science. He admits that there
are persons who disagree with him, who object that predictions are often
erroneous; but against such persons he employs the old refutation that
occasional mistakes are to be attributed to man’s imperfect knowledge
and faulty observation, and that by such mistakes the validity of
divination is no more disproved than is grammar forever discredited
because a grammarian speaks incorrectly, or music because a musician
sings out of tune.[224] Opposition to the arts of divination he calls
“vanities plebeia,” and upon such loud-mouthed ignorance of the vulgar
he looks down with much the same superior smile that the lover of
speculative philosophy to-day bestows upon the man in the street who
irritably disputes the utility of that subject.
Indeed, the strength of Ammianus’s attachment to divination is so great
that he quotes its arch-opponent, Cicero, in its support. For he
concludes his discussion of the subject in these words: “Wherefore in
this as in other matters Tully says most admirably, ‘Signs of future
events are shown by the gods.’”[225] Unless perchance Ammianus was
acquainted with the first book only of _De Divinatione_, this
remark—which ought to have proved more potent than any necromantic spell
in invoking Cicero’s slandered Manes—must be taken as a startling
revelation of the mental calibre of both its maker and his age.
Synesius (370–430 A. D.), Bishop of Ptolemais, furnishes a good example
of what was probably the position of the average Neo-Platonist who did
not go to extremes in the last period of the Roman Empire. In the
present survey we are not concerned with Christian belief in the Empire,
and so it is only as a Neo-Platonist that Synesius will at present
interest us. He is the more interesting for us in that he was a man with
some taste for science. He knew some medicine and was well acquainted
with geometry and astronomy, subjects which he probably studied under
his friend Hypatia. He believed himself to be the inventor of an
astrolabe and of a hydroscope. He played his part in secular politics
and as bishop defended his people from oppression. He was fond of the
chase and of his dogs and horses, and said so. He was a great lover of
books also, but thought that their true use was to call one’s own mental
powers into action. Philosophy, mathematics and literature all claimed
his attention. Yet broad and independent-minded as he was for his age,
and interested as he was in science, he believed in magic. Indeed, there
was apparently no form of magic in which he would not have believed.
Synesius regarded the universe as a unit and all its parts as closely
correlated. This belief 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 thing, and that the birds themselves, if endowed with
sufficient intelligence, would be able to predict the future by
observing the movements of human bipeds.[226] 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.[227]
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.[228]
He evidently believed that it was quite legitimate to control the
processes of nature by invoking demons. His devotion to divination has
been already implied. He regarded it as among the noblest of human
pursuits.[229] Dreams 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.[230] 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.[231] 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.[232] 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.[233] 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.[234]
Macrobius, who wrote at the beginning of the fifth century and displayed
considerable interest in physical questions for a person of those days,
reinforces the evidence of Ammianus and of Synesius, although he held no
very extreme views. Unless, however, we except his Philonian notion that
all knowledge may be derived from a few past writings. For Macrobius
affirmed that Virgil contains practically all man needs to know, and
that Cicero’s brief story of the dream of Scipio was a work second to
none and contained the entire substance of philosophy.[235] Macrobius
also believed that numbers possess occult power. He dilated at
considerable length upon each of those from one to eight, emphasizing
their perfection and far-reaching significance. He held the good old
Pythagorean and Platonic notions that the world-soul is constructed of
number, that the harmony of celestial bodies is ruled by number, and
that we derive the numerical values proper to musical consonance from
the music of the spheres.[236] He was of the opinion that to the careful
investigator dreams and other striking occurrences will reveal an occult
meaning.[237] As for astrology, he believed that the stars are signs but
not causes of future events, just as birds by their flight or song
reveal matters of which they themselves are ignorant.[238] The sun and
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.[239] Macrobius also displayed
some belief in the possession of occult properties by objects about us.
In the _Saturnalia_, Disaurius the physician is asked and answers such
questions as why a brass knife stuck in game prevents decay.[240]
Macrobius by the way, had considerable influence in the Middle Ages.
Abelard makes frequent reference to him, and called him “no mean
philosopher.”[241] Aquinas cited him as an authority for the doctrines
of Neo-Platonism.