In the works of Horace occurs a frightful and repulsive, but a curious
detail of a scene of incantation. [113] Four sorceresses are
represented as assembled, Canidia, the principal, to perform, the other
three to assist in, the concoction of a charm, by means of which a
certain youth, named Varus, for whom Canidia had conceived a passion,
but who regards the hag with the utmost contempt, may be made
obsequious to her desires. Canidia appears first, the locks of her
dishevelled hair twined round with venomous and deadly serpents,
ordering the wild fig-tree and the funereal cypress to be rooted up
from the sepulchres on which they grew, and these, together with the
egg of a toad smeared with blood, the plumage of the screech-owl,
various herbs brought from Thessaly and Georgia, and bones torn from
the jaws of a famished dog, to be burned in flames fed with perfumes
from Colchis. Of the assistant witches, one traces with hurried steps
the edifice, sprinkling it, as she goes, with drops from the Avernus,
her hair on her head stiff and erect, like the quills of the
sea-hedge-hog, or the bristles of a hunted boar; and another, who is
believed by all the neighbourhood to have the faculty of conjuring the
stars and the moon down from heaven, contributes her aid.
But, which is most horrible, the last of the assistant witches is seen,
armed with a spade, and, with earnest and incessant labour, throwing
up earth, that she may dig a trench, in which is to be plunged up to
his chin a beardless youth, stripped of his purple robe, the emblem of
his noble descent, and naked, that, from his marrow already dry and
his liver (when at length his eye-balls, long fixed on the still
renovated food which is withheld from his famished jaws, have no more
the power to discern), may be concocted the love-potion, from which
these hags promise themselves the most marvellous results.
Horace presents before us the helpless victim of their malice, already
inclosed in the fatal trench, first viewing their orgies with affright,
asking, by the Gods who rule the earth and all the race of mortals,
what means the tumult around him? He then intreats Canidia, by her
children if ever she had offspring, by the visible evidences of his
high rank, and by the never-failing vengeance of Jupiter upon such
misdeeds, to say why she casts on him glances, befitting the fury of a
stepmother, or suited to a beast already made desperate by the wounds
of the hunter.
At length, no longer exhausting himself in fruitless intreaties, the
victim has recourse in his agonies to curses on his executioners. He
says, his ghost shall haunt them for ever, for no vengeance can
expiate such cruelty. He will tear their cheeks with his fangs, for
that power is given to the shades below. He will sit, a night-mare, on
their bosoms, driving away sleep from their eyes; while the enraged
populace shall pursue them with stones, and the wolves shall gnaw and
howl over their unburied members. The unhappy youth winds up all with
the remark, that his parents who will survive him, shall themselves
witness this requital of the sorceresses' infernal deeds.
Canidia, unmoved by these menaces and execrations, complains of the
slow progress of her charms. She gnaws her fingers with rage. She
invokes the night and the moon, beneath whose rays these preparations
are carried on, now, while the wild beasts lie asleep in the forests,
and while the dogs alone bay the superanuated letcher, who relies
singly on the rich scents with which he is perfumed for success, to
speed her incantations, and signalise their power beneath the roof of
him whose love she seeks. She impatiently demands why her drugs should
be of less avail than those of Medea, with which she poisoned a
garment, that, once put on, caused Creusa, daughter of the king of
Corinth, to expire in intolerable torments? She discovers that Varus
had hitherto baffled her power by means of some magical antidote; and
she resolves to prepare a mightier charm, that nothing from earth or
hell shall resist. "Sooner," she says, "shall the sky be swallowed up
in the sea, and the earth be stretched a covering over both, than thou,
my enemy, shalt not be wrapped in the flames of love, as subtle and
tenacious as those of burning pitch."
It is not a little curious to remark the operation of the antagonist
principles of superstition and scepticism among the Romans in this
enlightened period, as it comes illustrated to us in the compositions
of Horace on this subject. In the piece, the contents of which have
just been given, things are painted in all the solemnity and terror
which is characteristic of the darkest ages. But, a few pages further
on, we find the poet in a mock Palinodia deprecating the vengeance of
the sorceress, who, he says, has already sufficiently punished him by
turning through her charms his flaxen hair to hoary white, and
overwhelming him by day and night with ceaseless anxieties. He feels
himself through her powerful magic tortured, like Hercules in the
envenomed shirt of Nessus, or as if he were cast down into the flames
of Aetna; nor does he hope that she will cease compounding a thousand
deadly ingredients against him, till his very ashes shall have been
scattered by the resistless winds. He offers therefore to expiate his
offence at her pleasure either by a sacrifice of an hundred oxen, or
by a lying ode, in which her chastity and spotless manners shall be
applauded to the skies.
What Ovid gives is only a new version of the charms and philtres of
Medea. [114]