SPECTRES WHICH APPEAR, AND PREDICT THINGS UNKNOWN AND TO COME.
Both in ancient and modern writers, we find an infinite number of
stories of spectres. We have not the least doubt that their
apparitions are the work of the demon, if they are real. Now, it
cannot be denied that there is a great deal of illusion and falsehood
in all that is related by them. We shall distinguish two sorts of
spectres: those which appear to mankind to hurt or deceive them, or to
announce things to come, fortunate or unfortunate as circumstances may
occur; the other spectres infest certain houses, of which they have
made themselves masters, and where they are seen and heard. We shall
treat of the latter in another chapter; and show that the greater
number of these spectres and apparitions may be suspected of
falsehood.
Pliny the younger, writing to his friend Sura on the subject of
apparitions, testifies that he is much inclined to believe them true;
and the reason he gives, is what happened to Quintus Curtius Rufus,
who, having gone into Africa in the train of the quaestor or treasurer
for the Romans, walking one day towards evening under a portico, saw a
woman of uncommon height and beauty, who told him that she was Africa,
and assured him that he would one day return into that same country as
proconsul. This promise inspired him with high hopes; and by his
intrigues, and help of friends, whom he had bribed, he obtained the
quaestorship, and afterwards was praetor, through the favor of the
Emperor Tiberius.
This dignity having veiled the obscurity and baseness of his birth, he
was sent proconsul to Africa, where he died, after having obtained the
honors of the triumph. It is said that, on his return to Africa, the
same person who had predicted his future grandeur appeared to him
again at the moment of his landing at Carthage.
These predictions, so precise, and so exactly followed up, made Pliny
the younger believe that predictions of this kind are never made in
vain. The story of Curtius Rufus was written by Tacitus, long enough
before Pliny's time, and he might have taken it from Tacitus.
After the fatal death of Caligula, who was massacred in his palace, he
was buried half burnt in his own gardens. The princesses, his sisters,
on their return from exile, had his remains burnt with ceremony, and
honorably inhumed; but it was averred that before this was done, those
who had to watch over the gardens and the palace had every night been
disturbed by phantoms and frightful noises.
The following instance is so extraordinary that I should not repeat it
if the account were not attested by more than one writer, and also
preserved in the public monuments of a considerable town of Upper
Saxony: this town is Hamelin, in the principality of Kalenberg, at the
confluence of the rivers Hamel and Weser.
In the year 1384, this town was infested by such a prodigious
multitude of rats that they ravaged all the corn which was laid up in
the granaries; everything was employed that art and experience could
invent to chase them away, and whatever is usually employed against
this kind of animals. At that time there came to the town an unknown
person, of taller stature than ordinary, dressed in a robe of divers
colors, who engaged to deliver them from that scourge for a certain
recompense, which was agreed upon.
Then he drew from his sleeve a flute, at the sound of which all the
rats came out of their holes and followed him; he led them straight to
the river, into which they ran and were drowned. On his return he
asked for the promised reward, which was refused him, apparently on
account of the facility with which he had exterminated the rats. The
next day, which was a fete day, he chose the moment when the elder
inhabitants of the burgh were at church, and by means of another flute
which he began to play, all the boys in the town above the age of
fourteen, to the number of a hundred and thirty, assembled around him:
he led them to the neighboring mountain, named Kopfelberg, under which
is a sewer for the town, and where criminals are executed; these boys
disappeared and were never seen afterwards.
A young girl, who had followed at a distance, was witness of the
matter, and brought the news of it to the town.
They still show a hollow in this mountain, where they say that he made
the boys go in. At the corner of this opening is an inscription, which
is so old that it cannot now be deciphered; but the story is
represented on the panes of the church windows; and it is said, that
in the public deeds of this town it is still the custom to put the
dates in this manner--_Done in the year ----, after the disappearance
of our children._[299]
If this recital is not wholly fabulous, as it seems to be, we can only
regard this man as a spectre and an evil genius, who, by God's
permission, punished the bad faith of the burghers in the persons of
their children, although innocent of their parents' fault. It might
be, that a man could have some natural secret to draw the rats
together and precipitate them into the river; but only diabolical
malice would cause so many innocent children to perish, out of revenge
on their fathers.
Julius Caesar[300] having entered Italy, and wishing to pass the
Rubicon, perceived a man of more than ordinary stature, who began to
whistle. Several soldiers having run to listen to him, this spectre
seized the trumpet of one of them, and began to sound the alarm, and
to pass the river. Caesar at that moment, without further deliberation,
said, "Let us go where the presages of the gods and the injustice of
our enemies call upon us to advance."
The Emperor Trajan[301] was extricated from the town of Antioch by a
phantom, which made him go out at a widow, in the midst of that
terrible earthquake which overthrew almost all the town. The
philosopher Simonides[302] was warned by a spectre that his house was
about to fall; he went out of it directly, and soon after it fell
down.
The Emperor Julian, the apostate, told his friends that at the time
when his troops were pressing him to accept the empire, being at
Paris, he saw during the night a spectre in the form of a woman, as
the genius of an empire is depicted, who presented herself to remain
with him; but she gave him notice that it would be only for a short
time. The same emperor related, moreover, that writing in his tent a
little before his death, his familiar genius appeared to him, leaving
the tent with a sad and afflicted air. Shortly before the death of the
Emperor Constans, the same Julian had a vision in the night, of a
luminous phantom, who pronounced and repeated to him, more than once,
four Greek verses, importing that when Jupiter should be in the sign
of the water-pot, or Aquarius, and Saturn in the 25th degree of the
Virgin, Constans would end his life in Asia in a shocking manner.
The same Emperor Julian takes Jupiter[303] to witness that he has
often seen Esculapius, who cured him of his sicknesses.
Footnotes:
[299] See Vagenseil _Opera liborum Juvenil._ tom. ii. p. 295, the
Geography of Hubner, and the Geographical Dictionary of la Martiniere,
under the name Hamelen.
[300] Sueton. in Jul. Caesar.
[301] Dio. Cassius. lib. lxviii.
[302] Diogen. Laert. in Simon. Valer. Maxim. lib. xxiii.
[303] Julian, apud Cyrill. Alex.