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Lives of the Necromancers

by William Godwin · English · Gutenberg #7082 · 660,729 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Lives of the Necromancers

Author: William Godwin


        
Release date: December 1, 2004 [eBook #7082]
                Most recently updated: August 7, 2012

Language: English

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Produced by Wendy Crockett, Carlo Traverso, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team, from images
generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale
de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr.












[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been numbered sequentially and
moved to the end of the text.]




LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS:

OR

AN ACCOUNT OF THE MOST EMINENT PERSONS IN SUCCESSIVE AGES, WHO HAVE
CLAIMED FOR THEMSELVES, OR TO WHOM HAS BEEN IMPUTED BY OTHERS,

THE

EXERCISE OF MAGICAL POWER.


BY  WILLIAM  GODWIN.


LONDON

Frederick J Mason, 444, West Strand

1834





PREFACE.


The main purpose of this book is to exhibit a fair delineation of the
credulity of the human mind. Such an exhibition cannot fail to be
productive of the most salutary lessons.

One view of the subject will teach us a useful pride in the abundance
of our faculties. Without pride man is in reality of little value. It
is pride that stimulates us to all our great undertakings. Without
pride, and the secret persuasion of extraordinary talents, what man
would take up the pen with a view to produce an important work,
whether of imagination and poetry, or of profound science, or of acute
and subtle reasoning and intellectual anatomy? It is pride in this
sense that makes the great general and the consummate legislator, that
animates us to tasks the most laborious, and causes us to shrink from
no difficulty, and to be confounded and overwhelmed with no obstacle
that can be interposed in our path.

Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between man and the
inferior animals. The latter live only for the day, and see for the
most part only what is immediately before them. But man lives in the
past and the future. He reasons upon and improves by the past; he
records the acts of a long series of generations: and he looks into
future time, lays down plans which he shall be months and years in
bringing to maturity, and contrives machines and delineates systems
of education and government, which may gradually add to the
accommodations of all, and raise the species generally into a nobler
and more honourable character than our ancestors were capable of
sustaining.

Man looks through nature, and is able to reduce its parts into a great
whole. He classes the beings which are found in it, both animate and
inanimate, delineates and describes them, investigates their
properties, and records their capacities, their good and evil
qualities, their dangers and their uses.

Nor does he only see all that is; but he also images all that is not.
He takes to pieces the substances that are, and combines their parts
into new arrangements. He peoples all the elements from the world of
his imagination. It is here that he is most extraordinary and
wonderful. The record of what actually is, and has happened in the
series of human events, is perhaps the smallest part of human history.
If we would know man in all his subtleties, we must deviate into the
world of miracles and sorcery. To know the things that are not, and
cannot be, but have been imagined and believed, is the most curious
chapter in the annals of man. To observe the actual results of these
imaginary phenomena, and the crimes and cruelties they have caused us
to commit, is one of the most instructive studies in which we can
possibly be engaged. It is here that man is most astonishing, and that
we contemplate with most admiration the discursive and unbounded
nature of his faculties.

But, if a recollection of the examples of the credulity of the human
mind may in one view supply nourishment to our pride, it still more
obviously tends to teach us sobriety and humiliation. Man in his
genuine and direct sphere is the disciple of reason; it is by this
faculty that he draws inferences, exerts his prudence, and displays
the ingenuity of machinery, and the subtlety of system both in natural
and moral philosophy. Yet what so irrational as man? Not contented
with making use of the powers we possess, for the purpose of conducing
to our accommodation and well being, we with a daring spirit inquire
into the invisible causes of what we see, and people all nature with
Gods "of every shape and size" and angels, with principalities and
powers, with beneficent beings who "take charge concerning us lest at
any time we dash our foot against a stone," and with devils who are
perpetually on the watch to perplex us and do us injury. And, having
familiarised our minds with the conceptions of these beings, we
immediately aspire to hold communion with them. We represent to
ourselves God, as "walking in the garden with us in the cool of the
day," and teach ourselves "not to forget to entertain strangers, lest
by so doing we should repel angels unawares."

No sooner are we, even in a slight degree, acquainted with the laws of
nature, than we frame to ourselves the idea, by the aid of some
invisible ally, of suspending their operation, of calling out meteors
in the sky, of commanding storms and tempests, of arresting the motion
of the heavenly bodies, of producing miraculous cures upon the bodies
of our fellow-men, or afflicting them with disease and death, of
calling up the deceased from the silence of the grave, and compelling
them to disclose "the secrets of the world unknown."

But, what is most deplorable, we are not contented to endeavour to
secure the aid of God and good angels, but we also aspire to enter
into alliance with devils, and beings destined for their rebellion to
suffer eternally the pains of hell. As they are supposed to be of a
character perverted and depraved, we of course apply to them
principally for purposes of wantonness, or of malice and revenge. And,
in the instances which have occurred only a few centuries back, the
most common idea has been of a compact entered into by an unprincipled
and impious human being with the sworn enemy of God and man, in the
result of which the devil engages to serve the capricious will and
perform the behests of his blasphemous votary for a certain number of
years, while the deluded wretch in return engages to renounce his God
and Saviour, and surrender himself body and soul to the pains of hell
from the end of that term to all eternity. No sooner do we imagine
human beings invested with these wonderful powers, and conceive them
as called into action for the most malignant purposes, than we become
the passive and terrified slaves of the creatures of our own
imaginations, and fear to be assailed at every moment by beings to
whose power we can set no limit, and whose modes of hostility no human
sagacity can anticipate and provide against. But, what is still more
extraordinary, the human creatures that pretend to these powers have
often been found as completely the dupes of this supernatural
machinery, as the most timid wretch that stands in terror at its
expected operation; and no phenomenon has been more common than the
confession of these allies of hell, that they have verily and indeed
held commerce and formed plots and conspiracies with Satan.

The consequence of this state of things has been, that criminal
jurisprudence and the last severities of the law have been called
forth to an amazing extent to exterminate witches and witchcraft. More
especially in the sixteenth century hundreds and thousands were burned
alive within the compass of a small territory; and judges, the
directors of the scene, a Nicholas Remi, a De Lancre, and many others,
have published copious volumes, entering into a minute detail of the
system and fashion of the witchcraft of the professors, whom they sent
in multitudes to expiate their depravity at the gallows and the stake.

One useful lesson which we may derive from the detail of these
particulars, is the folly in most cases of imputing pure and unmingled
hypocrisy to man. The human mind is of so ductile a character that,
like what is affirmed of charity by the apostle, it "believeth all
things, and endureth all things." We are not at liberty to trifle with
the sacredness of truth. While we persuade others, we begin to deceive
ourselves. Human life is a drama of that sort, that, while we act our
part, and endeavour to do justice to the sentiments which are put down
for us, we begin to believe we are the thing we would represent.

To shew however the modes in which the delusion acts upon the person
through whom it operates, is not properly the scope of this book. Here
and there I have suggested hints to this purpose, which the curious
reader may follow to their furthest extent, and discover how with
perfect good faith the artist may bring himself to swallow the
grossest impossibilities. But the work I have written is not a
treatise of natural magic. It rather proposes to display the immense
wealth of the faculty of imagination, and to shew the extravagances of
which the man may be guilty who surrenders himself to its guidance.

It is fit however that the reader should bear in mind, that what is
put down in this book is but a small part and scantling of the acts of
sorcery and witchcraft which have existed in human society. They have
been found in all ages and countries. The torrid zone and the frozen
north have neither of them escaped from a fruitful harvest of this
sort of offspring. In ages of ignorance they have been especially at
home; and the races of men that have left no records behind them to
tell almost that they existed, have been most of all rife in deeds of
darkness, and those marvellous incidents which especially astonish the
spectator, and throw back the infant reason of man into those shades
and that obscurity from which it had so recently endeavoured to
escape.

I wind up for the present my literary labours with the production of
this book. Nor let any reader imagine that I here put into his hands a
mere work of idle recreation. It will be found pregnant with deeper
uses. The wildest extravagances of human fancy, the most deplorable
perversion of human faculties, and the most horrible distortions of
jurisprudence, may occasionally afford us a salutary lesson. I love in
the foremost place to contemplate man in all his honours and in all
the exaltation of wisdom and virtue; but it will also be occasionally
of service to us to look into his obliquities, and distinctly to
remark how great and portentous have been his absurdities and his
follies.

_May_ 29, 1834.




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

AMBITIOUS NATURE OF MAN
  HIS DESIRE TO PENETRATE INTO FUTURITY
  DIVINATION
  AUGURY
  CHIROMANCY
  PHYSIOGNOMY
  INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
  CASTING OF LOTS
  ASTROLOGY
  ORACLES
  DELPHI
  THE DESIRE TO  COMMAND AND CONTROL FUTURE EVENTS
  COMMERCE WITH THE INVISIBLE WORLD
  SORCERY AND ENCHANTMENT
  WITCHCRAFT
  COMPACTS WITH THE DEVIL
  IMPS
  TALISMANS AND AMULETS
  NECROMANCY
  ALCHEMY
  FAIRIES
  ROSICRUCIANS
  SYLPHS AND GNOMES, SALAMANDERS AND UNDINES

EXAMPLES OF NECROMANCY AND WITCHCRAFT FROM THE BIBLE
  THE MAGI, OR WISE MEN OF THE EAST
  EGYPT
  STATUE OF MEMNON
  TEMPLE OF JUPITER AMMON: ITS ORACLES
  CHALDEA AND BABYLON
  ZOROASTER

GREECE
  DEITIES OF GREECE
  DEMIGODS
  DAEDALUS
  THE ARGONAUTS
  MEDEA
  CIRCE
  ORPHEUS
  AMPHION
  TIRESIAS
  ABARIS
  PYTHAGORAS
  EPIMENIDES
  EMPEDOCLES
  ARISTEAS
  HERMOTIMUS
  THE MOTHER OF DEMARATUS, KING OF SPARTA
  ORACLES
  INVASION OF XERXES INTO GREECE
  DEMOCRITUS
  SOCRATES

ROME
  VIRGIL
  POLYDORUS
  DIDO
  ROMULUS
  NUMA
  TULLUS HOSTILIUS
  ACCIUS NAVIUS
  SERVIUS TULLIUS
  THE SORCERESS OF VIRGIL
  CANIDIA
  ERICHTHO
  SERTORIUS
  CASTING OUT DEVILS
  SIMON MAGUS
  ELYMAS, THE SORCERER
  NERO
  VESPASIAN
  APOLLONIUS OF TYANA
  APULEIUS
  ALEXANDER THE PAPHLAGONIAN

REVOLUTION PRODUCED IN THE HISTORY OF NECROMANCY AND WITCHCRAFT UPON
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY
  MAGICAL CONSULTATIONS RESPECTING THE LIFE OF THE EMPEROR

HISTORY OF NECROMANCY IN THE EAST
  GENERAL SILENCE OF THE EAST RESPECTING INDIVIDUAL NECROMANCERS
  ROCAIL
  HAKEM, OTHERWISE MACANNA
  ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS
  PERSIAN TALES
  STORY OF A GOULE
  ARABIAN NIGHTS
  RESEMBLANCE OF THE TALES OF THE EAST AND OF EUROPE
  CAUSES OF HUMAN CREDULITY

DARK AGES OF EUROPE
  MERLIN
  ST. DUNSTAN

COMMUNICATION OF EUROPE AND THE SARACENS
  GERBERT, POPE SILVESTER II
  BENEDICT THE NINTH
  GREGORY THE SEVENTH
  DUFF, KING OF SCOTLAND
  MACBETH
  VIRGIL
  ROBERT OF LINCOLN
  MICHAEL SCOT
  THE DEAN OF BADAJOZ
  MIRACLE OF THE TUB OF WATER
  INSTITUTION OF FRIARS
  ALBERTUS MAGNUS
  ROGER BACON
  THOMAS AQUINAS
  PETER OF APONO
  ENGLISH LAW OF HIGH TREASON
  ZIITO
  TRANSMUTATION OF METALS
  ARTEPHIUS
  RAYMOND LULLI
  ARNOLD OF VILLENEUVE
  ENGLISH LAWS RESPECTING TRANSMUTATION

REVIVAL OF LETTERS
  JOAN OF ARC
  ELEANOR COBHAM, DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER
  RICHARD III

SANGUINARY  PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WITCHCRAFT
  SAVONAROLA
  TRITHEMIUS
  LUTHER
  CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
  FAUSTUS
  SABELLICUS
  PARACELSUS
  CARDAN
  QUACKS, WHO IN COOL BLOOD UNDERTOOK TO OVERREACH MANKIND
  BENVENUTO CELLINI
  NOSTRADAMUS
  DOCTOR DEE
  EARL OF DERBY
  KING JAMES'S VOYAGE TO NORWAY
  JOHN FIAN
  KING JAMES'S DEMONOLOGY
  STATUTE, 1 JAMES I
  FORMAN AND OTHERS
  LATEST IDEAS OF JAMES ON THE SUBJECT
  LANCASHIRE WITCHES
  LADY DAVIES
  EDWARD FAIRFAX
  DOCTOR LAMB
  URBAIN GRANDIER
  ASTROLOGY
  WILLIAM LILLY
  MATTHEW HOPKINS
  CROMWEL
  DOROTHY MATELEY
  WITCHES HANGED BY SIR MATTHEW HALE
  WITCHCRAFT IN SWEDEN
  WITCHCRAFT IN NEW ENGLAND

CONCLUSION




LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS


The improvements that have been effected in natural philosophy have by
degrees convinced the enlightened part of mankind that the material
universe is every where subject to laws, fixed in their weight,
measure and duration, capable of the most exact calculation, and which
in no case admit of variation and exception. Whatever is not thus to
be accounted for is of mind, and springs from the volition of some
being, of which the material form is subjected to our senses, and the
action of which is in like manner regulated by the laws of matter.
Beside this, mind, as well as matter, is subject to fixed laws; and
thus every phenomenon and occurrence around us is rendered a topic for
the speculations of sagacity and foresight. Such is the creed which
science has universally prescribed to the judicious and reflecting
among us.

It was otherwise in the infancy and less mature state of human
knowledge. The chain of causes and consequences was yet unrecognized;
and events perpetually occurred, for which no sagacity that was then
in being was able to assign an original. Hence men felt themselves
habitually disposed to refer many of the appearances with which they
were conversant to the agency of invisible intelligences; sometimes
under the influence of a benignant disposition, sometimes of malice,
and sometimes perhaps from an inclination to make themselves sport of
the wonder and astonishment of ignorant mortals. Omens and portents
told these men of some piece of good or ill fortune speedily to befal
them. The flight of birds was watched by them, as foretokening
somewhat important. Thunder excited in them a feeling of supernatural
terror. Eclipses with fear of change perplexed the nations. The
phenomena of the heavens, regular and irregular, were anxiously
remarked from the same principle. During the hours of darkness men
were apt to see a supernatural being in every bush; and they could not
cross a receptacle for the dead, without expecting to encounter some
one of the departed uneasily wandering among graves, or commissioned
to reveal somewhat momentous and deeply affecting to the survivors.
Fairies danced in the moonlight glade; and something preternatural
perpetually occurred to fill the living with admiration and awe.

All this gradually reduced itself into a system. Mankind, particularly
in the dark and ignorant ages, were divided into the strong and the
weak; the strong and weak of animal frame, when corporeal strength
more decidedly bore sway than in a period of greater cultivation; and
the strong and weak in reference to intellect; those who were bold,
audacious and enterprising in acquiring an ascendancy over their
fellow-men, and those who truckled, submitted, and were acted upon,
from an innate consciousness of inferiority, and a superstitious
looking up to such as were of greater natural or acquired endowments
than themselves. The strong in intellect were eager to avail
themselves of their superiority, by means that escaped the penetration
of the multitude, and had recourse to various artifices to effect
their ends. Beside this, they became the dupes of their own practices.
They set out at first in their conception of things from the level of
the vulgar. They applied themselves diligently to the unravelling of
what was unknown; wonder mingled with their contemplation; they
abstracted their minds from things of ordinary occurrence, and, as we
may denominate it, of real life, till at length they lost their true
balance amidst the astonishment they sought to produce in their
inferiors. They felt a vocation to things extraordinary; and they
willingly gave scope and line without limit to that which engendered
in themselves the most gratifying sensations, at the same time that it
answered the purposes of their ambition.

As these principles in the two parties, the more refined and the
vulgar, are universal, and derive their origin from the nature of man,
it has necessarily happened that this faith in extraordinary events,
and superstitious fear of what is supernatural, has diffused itself
through every climate of the world, in a certain stage of human
intellect, and while refinement had not yet got the better of
barbarism. The Celts of antiquity had their Druids, a branch of whose
special profession was the exercise of magic. The Chaldeans and
Egyptians had their wise men, their magicians and their sorcerers. The
negroes have their foretellers of events, their amulets, and their
reporters and believers of miraculous occurrences. A similar race of
men was found by Columbus and the other discoverers of the New World
in America; and facts of a parallel nature are attested to us in the
islands of the South Seas. And, as phenomena of this sort were
universal in their nature, without distinction of climate, whether
torrid or frozen, and independently of the discordant manners and
customs of different countries, so have they been very slow and recent
in their disappearing. Queen Elizabeth sent to consult Dr. John Dee,
the astrologer, respecting a lucky day for her coronation; King James
the First employed much of his learned leisure upon questions of
witchcraft and demonology, in which he fully believed and sir Matthew
Hale in the year 1664 caused two old women to be hanged upon a charge
of unlawful communion with infernal agents.

The history of mankind therefore will be very imperfect, and our
knowledge of the operations and eccentricities of the mind lamentably
deficient, unless we take into our view what has occurred under this
head. The supernatural appearances with which our ancestors conceived
themselves perpetually surrounded must have had a strong tendency to
cherish and keep alive the powers of the imagination, and to penetrate
those who witnessed or expected such things with an extraordinary
sensitiveness. As the course of events appears to us at present, there
is much, though abstractedly within the compass of human sagacity to
foresee, which yet the actors on the scene do not foresee: but the
blindness and perplexity of short-sighted mortals must have been
wonderfully increased, when ghosts and extraordinary appearances were
conceived liable to cross the steps and confound the projects of men
at every turn, and a malicious wizard or a powerful enchanter might
involve his unfortunate victim in a chain of calamities, which no
prudence could disarm, and no virtue could deliver him from. They were
the slaves of an uncontrolable destiny, and must therefore have been
eminently deficient in the perseverance and moral courage, which may
justly be required of us in a more enlightened age. And the men (but
these were few compared with the great majority of mankind), who
believed themselves gifted with supernatural endowments, must have
felt exempt and privileged from common rules, somewhat in the same way
as the persons whom fiction has delighted to pourtray as endowed with
immeasurable wealth, or with the power of rendering themselves
impassive or invisible. But, whatever were their advantages or
disadvantages, at any rate it is good for us to call up in review
things, which are now passed away, but which once occupied so large a
share of the thoughts and attention of mankind, and in a great degree
tended to modify their characters and dictate their resolutions.

As has already been said, numbers of those who were endowed with the
highest powers of human intellect, such as, if they had lived in these
times, would have aspired to eminence in the exact sciences, to the
loftiest flights of imagination, or to the discovery of means by which
the institutions of men in society might be rendered more beneficial
and faultless, at that time wasted the midnight oil in endeavouring to
trace the occult qualities and virtues of things, to render invisible
spirits subject to their command, and to effect those wonders, of
which they deemed themselves to have a dim conception, but which more
rational views of nature have taught us to regard as beyond our power
to effect. These sublime wanderings of the mind are well entitled to
our labour to trace and investigate. The errors of man are worthy to
be recorded, not only as beacons to warn us from the shelves where our
ancestors have made shipwreck, but even as something honourable to our
nature, to show how high a generous ambition could sour, though in
forbidden paths, and in things too wonderful for us.

Nor only is this subject inexpressibly interesting, as setting before
us how the loftiest and most enterprising minds of ancient days
formerly busied themselves. It is also of the highest importance to an
ingenuous curiosity, inasmuch as it vitally affected the fortunes of
so considerable a portion of the mass of mankind. The legislatures of
remote ages bent all their severity at different periods against what
they deemed the unhallowed arts of the sons and daughters of
reprobation. Multitudes of human creatures have been sacrificed in
different ages and countries, upon the accusation of having exercised
arts of the most immoral and sacrilegious character. They were
supposed to have formed a contract with a mighty and invisible spirit,
the great enemy of man, and to have sold themselves, body and soul, to
everlasting perdition, for the sake of gratifying, for a short term of
years, their malignant passions against those who had been so
unfortunate as to give them cause of offence. If there were any
persons who imagined they had entered into such a contract, however
erroneous was their belief, they must of necessity have been greatly
depraved. And it was but natural that such as believed in this crime,
must have considered it as atrocious beyond all others, and have
regarded those who were supposed guilty of it with inexpressible
abhorrence. There are many instances on record, where the persons
accused of it, either from the depth of their delusion, or, which is
more probable, harassed by persecution, by the hatred of their
fellow-creatures directed against them, or by torture, actually
confessed themselves guilty. These instances are too numerous, not to
constitute an important chapter in the legislation of past ages. And,
now that the illusion has in a manner passed away from the face of the
earth, we are on that account the better qualified to investigate this
error in its causes and consequences, and to look back on the tempest
and hurricane from which we have escaped, with chastened feelings, and
a sounder estimate of its nature, its reign, and its effects.




AMBITIOUS NATURE OF MAN


Man is a creature of boundless ambition.

It is probably our natural wants that first awaken us from that
lethargy and indifference in which man may be supposed to be plunged
previously to the impulse of any motive, or the accession of any
uneasiness. One of our earliest wants may be conceived to be hunger,
or the desire of food.

From this simple beginning the history of man in all its complex
varieties may be regarded as proceeding.

Man in a state of society, more especially where there is an
inequality of condition and rank, is very often the creature of
leisure. He finds in himself, either from internal or external
impulse, a certain activity. He finds himself at one time engaged in
the accomplishment of his obvious and immediate desires, and at
another in a state in which these desires have for the present been
fulfilled, and he has no present occasion to repeat those exertions
which led to their fulfilment. This is the period of contemplation.
This is the state which most eminently distinguishes us from the
brutes. Here it is that the history of man, in its exclusive sense,
may be considered as taking its beginning.

Here it is that he specially recognises in himself the sense of power.
Power in its simplest acceptation, may be exerted in either of two
ways, either in his procuring for himself an ample field for more
refined accommodations, or in the exercise of compulsion and authority
over other living creatures. In the pursuit of either of these, and
especially the first, he is led to the attainment of skill and
superior adroitness in the use of his faculties.

No sooner has man reached to this degree of improvement, than now, if
not indeed earlier, he is induced to remark the extreme limitedness of
his faculties in respect to the future; and he is led, first earnestly
to desire a clearer insight into the future, and next a power of
commanding those external causes upon which the events of the future
depend. The first of these desires is the parent of divination, augury,
chiromancy, astrology, and the consultation of oracles; and the second
has been the prolific source of enchantment, witchcraft, sorcery,
magic, necromancy, and alchemy, in its two branches, the unlimited
prolongation of human life, and the art of converting less precious
metals into gold.


HIS DESIRE TO PENETRATE INTO FUTURITY.

Nothing can suggest to us a more striking and stupendous idea of the
faculties of the human mind, than the consideration of the various
arts by which men have endeavoured to penetrate into the future, and
to command the events of the future, in ways that in sobriety and
truth are entirely out of our competence. We spurn impatiently against
the narrow limits which the constitution of things has fixed to our
aspirings, and endeavour by a multiplicity of ways to accomplish that
which it is totally beyond the power of man to effect.


DIVINATION.

Divination has been principally employed in inspecting the entrails of
beasts offered for sacrifice, and from their appearance drawing omens
of the good or ill success of the enterprises in which we are about to
engage.

What the divination by the cup was which Joseph practised, or
pretended to practise, we do not perhaps exactly understand. We all of
us know somewhat of the predictions, to this day resorted to by
maid-servants and others, from the appearance of the sediment to be
found at the bottom of a tea-cup. Predictions of a similar sort are
formed from the unpremeditated way in which we get out of bed in a
morning, or put on our garments, from the persons or things we shall
encounter when we first leave our chamber or go forth in the air, or
any of the indifferent accidents of life.


AUGURY.

Augury has its foundation in observing the flight of birds, the sounds
they utter, their motions whether sluggish or animated, and the
avidity or otherwise with which they appear to take their food. The
college of augurs was one of the most solemn institutions of ancient
Rome.


CHIROMANCY.

Chiromancy, or the art of predicting the various fortunes of the
individual, from an inspection of the minuter variations of the lines
to be found in the palm of the human hand, has been used perhaps at
one time or other in all the nations of the world.


PHYSIOGNOMY.

Physiognomy is not so properly a prediction of future events, as an
attempt to explain the present and inherent qualities of a man. By
unfolding his propensities however, it virtually gave the world to
understand the sort of proceedings in which he was most likely to
engage. The story of Socrates and the physiognomist is sufficiently
known. The physiognomist having inspected the countenance of the
philosopher, pronounced that he was given to intemperance, sensuality,
and violent bursts of passion, all of which was so contrary to his
character as universally known, that his disciples derided the
physiognomist as a vain-glorious pretender. Socrates however presently
put them to silence, by declaring that he had had an original
propensity to all the vices imputed to him, and had only conquered the
propensity by dint of a severe and unremitted self-discipline.


INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS.

Oneirocriticism, or the art of interpreting dreams, seems of all the
modes of prediction the most inseparable from the nature of man. A
considerable portion of every twenty-four hours of our lives is spent
in sleep; and in sleep nothing is at least more usual, than for the
mind to be occupied in a thousand imaginary scenes, which for the time
are as realities, and often excite the passions of the mind of the
sleeper in no ordinary degree. Many of them are wild and rambling; but
many also have a portentous sobriety. Many seem to have a strict
connection with the incidents of our actual lives; and some appear as
if they came for the very purpose to warn us of danger, or prepare us
for coming events. It is therefore no wonder that these occasionally
fill our waking thoughts with a deep interest, and impress upon us an
anxiety of which we feel it difficult to rid ourselves. Accordingly,
in ages when men were more prone to superstition, than at present,
they sometimes constituted a subject of earnest anxiety and
inquisitiveness; and we find among the earliest exercises of the art
of prediction, the interpretation of dreams to have occupied a
principal place, and to have been as it were reduced into a science.


CASTING OF LOTS.

The casting of lots seems scarcely to come within the enumeration here
given. It was intended as an appeal to heaven upon a question involved
in uncertainty, with the idea that the supreme Ruler of the skies,
thus appealed to, would from his omniscience supply the defect of
human knowledge. Two examples, among others sufficiently remarkable,
occur in the Bible. One of Achan, who secreted part of the spoil taken
in Jericho, which was consecrated to the service of God, and who,
being taken by lot, confessed, and was stoned to death. [1] The other
of Jonah, upon whom the lot fell in a mighty tempest, the crew of the
ship enquiring by this means what was the cause of the calamity that
had overtaken them, and Jonah being in consequence cast into the sea.


ASTROLOGY.

Astrology was one of the modes most anciently and universally resorted
to for discovering the fortunes of men and nations. Astronomy and
astrology went hand in hand, particularly among the people of the
East. The idea of fate was most especially bound up in this branch of
prophecy. If the fortune of a man was intimately connected with the
position of the heavenly bodies, it became evident that little was
left to the province of his free will. The stars overruled him in all
his determinations; and it was in vain for him to resist them. There
was something flattering to the human imagination in conceiving that
the planets and the orbs on high were concerned in the conduct we
should pursue, and the events that should befal us. Man resigned
himself to his fate with a solemn, yet a lofty feeling, that the
remotest portions of the universe were concerned in the catastrophe
that awaited him. Beside which, there was something peculiarly
seducing in the apparently profound investigation of the professors of
astrology. They busied themselves with the actual position of the
heavenly bodies, their conjunctions and oppositions; and of
consequence there was a great apparatus of diagrams and calculation to
which they were prompted to apply themselves, and which addressed
itself to the eyes and imaginations of those who consulted them.


ORACLES.

But that which seems to have had the greatest vogue in times of
antiquity, relative to the prediction of future events, is what is
recorded of oracles. Finding the insatiable curiosity of mankind as to
what was to happen hereafter, and the general desire they felt to be
guided in their conduct by an anticipation of things to come, the
priests pretty generally took advantage of this passion, to increase
their emoluments and offerings, and the more effectually to inspire
the rest of their species with veneration and a willing submission to
their authority. The oracle was delivered in a temple, or some sacred
place; and in this particular we plainly discover that mixture of
nature and art, of genuine enthusiasm and contriving craft, which is
so frequently exemplified in the character of man.


DELPHI.

The oracle of Apollo at Delphi is the most remarkable; and respecting
it we are furnished with the greatest body of particulars. The
locality of this oracle is said to have been occasioned by the
following circumstance. A goat-herd fed his flocks on the acclivity of
mount Parnassus. As the animals wandered here and there in pursuit of
food, they happened to approach a deep and long chasm which appeared
in the rock. From this chasm a vapour issued; and the goats had no
sooner inhaled a portion of the vapour, than they began to play and
frisk about with singular agility. The goat-herd, observing this, and
curious to discover the cause, held his head over the chasm; when, in
a short time, the fumes having ascended to his brain, he threw himself
into a variety of strange attitudes, and uttered words, which probably
he did not understand himself, but which were supposed to convey a
prophetic meaning.

This phenomenon was taken advantage of, and a temple to Apollo was
erected on the spot. The credulous many believed that here was
obviously a centre and focus of divine inspiration. On this mountain
Apollo was said to have slain the serpent Python. The apartment of the
oracle was immediately over the chasm from which the vapour issued. A
priestess delivered the responses, who was called Pythia, probably in
commemoration of the exploit which had been performed by Apollo. She
sat upon a tripod, or three-legged stool, perforated with holes, over
the seat of the vapours. After a time, her figure enlarged itself, her
hair stood on end, her complexion and features became altered, her
heart panted and her bosom swelled, and her voice grew more than
human. In this condition she uttered a number of wild and incoherent
phrases, which were supposed to be dictated by the God. The questions
which were offered by those who came to consult the oracle were then
proposed to her, and her answers taken down by the priest, whose
office was to arrange and methodize them, and put them into hexameter
verse, after which they were delivered to the votaries. The priestess
could only be consulted on one day in every month.

Great ingenuity and contrivance were no doubt required to uphold the
credit of the oracle; and no less boldness and self-collectedness on
the part of those by whom the machinery was conducted. Like the
conjurors of modern times, they took care to be extensively informed
as to all such matters respecting which the oracle was likely to be
consulted. They listened probably to the Pythia with a superstitious
reverence for the incoherent sentences she uttered. She, like them,
spent her life in being trained for the office to which she was
devoted. All that was rambling and inapplicable in her wild
declamation they consigned to oblivion. Whatever seemed to bear on the
question proposed they preserved. The persons by whom the responses
were digested into hexameter verse, had of course a commission
attended with great discretionary power. They, as Horace remarks on
another occasion, [2] divided what it was judicious to say, from what
it was prudent to omit, dwelt upon one thing, and slurred over and
accommodated another, just as would best suit the purpose they had in
hand. Beside this, for the most part they clothed the apparent meaning
of the oracle in obscurity, and often devised sentences of ambiguous
interpretation, that might suit with opposite issues, whichever might
happen to fall out. This was perfectly consistent with a high degree
of enthusiasm on the part of the priest. However confident he might be
in some things, he could not but of necessity feel that his
prognostics were surrounded with uncertainty. Whatever decisions of
the oracle were frustrated by the event, and we know that there were
many of this sort, were speedily forgotten; while those which
succeeded, were conveyed from shore to shore, and repeated by every
echo. Nor is it surprising that the transmitters of the sentences of
the God should in time arrive at an extraordinary degree of sagacity
and skill. The oracles accordingly reached to so high a degree of
reputation, that, as Cicero observes, no expedition for a long time
was undertaken, no colony sent out, and often no affair of any
distinguished family or individual entered on, without the previously
obtaining their judgment and sanction. Their authority in a word was
so high, that the first fathers of the Christian church could no
otherwise account for a reputation thus universally received, than by
supposing that the devils were permitted by God Almighty to inform the
oracles with a more than human prescience, that all the world might be
concluded in idolatry and unbelief, [3] and the necessity of a Saviour
be made more apparent. The gullibility of man is one of the most
prominent features of our nature. Various periods and times, when
whole nations have as it were with one consent run into the most
incredible and the grossest absurdities, perpetually offer themselves
in the page of history; and in the records of remote antiquity it
plainly appears that such delusions continued through successive
centuries.


THE DESIRE TO COMMAND AND CONTROL FUTURE EVENTS.

Next to the consideration of those measures by which men have sought
to dive into the secrets of future time, the question presents itself
of those more daring undertakings, the object of which has been by
some supernatural power to control the future, and place it in
subjection to the will of the unlicensed adventurer. Men have always,
especially in ages of ignorance, and when they most felt their
individual weakness, figured to themselves an invisible strength
greater than their own; and, in proportion to their impatience, and
the fervour of their desires, have sought to enter into a league with
those beings whose mightier force might supply that in which their
weakness failed.


COMMERCE WITH THE INVISIBLE WORLD.

It is an essential feature of different ages and countries to vary
exceedingly in the good or ill construction, the fame or dishonour,
which shall attend upon the same conduct or mode of behaviour. In
Egypt and throughout the East, especially in the early periods of
history, the supposed commerce with invisible powers was openly
professed, which, under other circumstances, and during the reign of
different prejudices, was afterwards carefully concealed, and
barbarously hunted out of the pale of allowed and authorised practice.
The Magi of old, who claimed a power of producing miraculous
appearances, and boasted a familiar intercourse with the world of
spirits, were regarded by  their countrymen with peculiar reverence,
and considered as the first and chiefest men in the state. For this
mitigated view of such dark and mysterious proceedings the ancients
were in a great degree indebted to their polytheism. The Romans are
computed to have acknowledged thirty thousand divinities, to all of
whom was rendered a legitimate homage; and other countries in a
similar proportion.


SORCERY AND ENCHANTMENT.

In Asia, however, the Gods were divided into two parties, under
Oromasdes, the principle of good, and Arimanius, the principle of
evil. These powers were in perpetual contention with each other,
sometimes the one, and sometimes the other gaining the superiority.
Arimanius and his legions were therefore scarcely considered as
entitled to the homage of mankind. Those who were actuated by
benevolence, and who desired to draw down blessings upon their
fellow-creatures, addressed themselves to the principle of good; while
such unhappy beings, with whom spite and ill-will had the
predominance, may be supposed often to have invoked in preference the
principle of evil. Hence seems to have originated the idea of sorcery,
or an appeal by incantations and wicked arts to the demons who
delighted in mischief.

These beings rejoiced in the opportunity of inflicting calamity and
misery on mankind. But by what we read of them we might be induced to
suppose that they were in some way restrained from gratifying their
malignant intentions, and waited in eager hope, till some mortal
reprobate should call out their dormant activity, and demand their
aid.

Various enchantments were therefore employed by those unhappy mortals
whose special desire was to bring down calamity and plagues upon the
individuals or tribes of men against whom their animosity was
directed. Unlawful and detested words and mysteries were called into
action to conjure up demons who should yield their powerful and
tremendous assistance. Songs of a wild and maniacal character were
chaunted. Noisome scents and the burning of all unhallowed and odious
things were resorted to. In later times books and formulas of a
terrific character were commonly employed, upon the reading or recital
of which the prodigies resorted to began to display themselves. The
heavens were darkened; the thunder rolled; and fierce and blinding
lightnings flashed from one corner of the heavens to the other. The
earth quaked and rocked from side to side. All monstrous and deformed
things shewed themselves, "Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire,"
enough to cause the stoutest heart to quail. Lastly, devils, whose
name was legion, and to whose forms and distorted and menacing
countenances superstition had annexed the most frightful ideas,
crowded in countless multitudes upon the spectator, whose breath was
flame, whose dances were full of terror, and whose strength infinitely
exceeded every thing human. Such were the appalling conceptions which
ages of bigotry and ignorance annexed to the notion of sorcery, and
with these they scared the unhappy beings over whom this notion had
usurped an ascendancy into lunacy, and prepared them for the
perpetrating flagitious and unheard-of deeds.

The result of these horrible incantations was not less tremendous,
than the preparations might have led us to expect. The demons
possessed all the powers of the air, and produced tempests and
shipwrecks at their pleasure. "Castles toppled on their warder's
heads, and palaces and pyramids sloped their summits to their
foundations;" forests and mountains were torn from their roots, and
cast into the sea. They inflamed the passions of men, and caused them
to commit the most unheard-of excesses. They laid their ban on those
who enjoyed the most prosperous health, condemned them to peak and
pine, wasted them into a melancholy atrophy, and finally consigned
them to a premature grave. They breathed a new and unblest life into
beings in whom existence had long been extinct, and by their hateful
and resistless power caused the sepulchres to give up their dead.


WITCHCRAFT.

Next to sorcery we may recollect the case of witchcraft, which occurs
oftener, particularly in modern times, than any other alleged mode of
changing by supernatural means the future course of events. The
sorcerer, as we shall see hereafter, was frequently a man of learning
and intellectual abilities, sometimes of comparative opulence and
respectable situation in society. But the witch or wizard was almost
uniformly old, decrepid, and nearly or altogether in a state of
penury. The functions however of the witch and the sorcerer were in a
great degree the same. The earliest account of a witch, attended with
any degree of detail, is that of the witch of Endor in the Bible, who
among other things, professed the power of calling up the dead upon
occasion from the peace of the sepulchre. Witches also claimed the
faculty of raising storms, and in various ways disturbing the course
of nature. They appear in most cases to have been brought into action
by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater
or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of
a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent
abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of
those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused
them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were
notorious two or three centuries ago for the power of the "evil eye."
The vulgar, both great and small, dreaded their displeasure, and
sought, by small gifts, and fair speeches, but insincere, and the
offspring of terror only, to avert the pernicious consequences of
their malice. They were famed for fabricating small images of wax, to
represent the object of their persecution; and, as these by gradual
and often studiously protracted degrees wasted before the fire, so the
unfortunate butts of their resentment perished with a lingering, but
inevitable death.


COMPACTS WITH THE DEVIL.

The power of these witches, as we find in their earliest records,
originated in their intercourse with "familiar spirits," invisible
beings who must be supposed to be enlisted in the armies of the prince
of darkness. We do not read in these ancient memorials of any league
of mutual benefit entered into between the merely human party, and his
or her supernatural assistant. But modern times have amply supplied
this defect. The witch or sorcerer could not secure the assistance of
the demon but by a sure and faithful compact, by which the human party
obtained the industrious and vigilant service of his familiar for a
certain term of years, only on condition that, when the term was
expired, the demon of undoubted right was to obtain possession of the
indentured party, and to convey him irremissibly and for ever to the
regions of the damned. The contract was drawn out in authentic form,
signed by the sorcerer, and attested with his blood, and was then
carried away by the demon, to be produced again at the appointed time.


IMPS.

These familiar spirits often assumed the form of animals, and a black
dog or cat was considered as a figure in which the attendant devil was
secretly hidden. These subordinate devils were called Imps. Impure and
carnal ideas were mingled with these theories. The witches were said
to have preternatural teats from which their familiars sucked their
blood. The devil also engaged in sexual intercourse with the witch or
wizard, being denominated _incubus_, if his favourite were a
woman, and _succubus_, if a man. In short, every frightful and
loathsome idea was carefully heaped up together, to render the
unfortunate beings to whom the crime of witchcraft was imputed the
horror and execration of their species.


TALISMANS AND AMULETS.

As according to the doctrine of witchcraft, there were certain
compounds, and matters prepared by rules of art, that proved baleful
and deadly to the persons against whom their activity was directed, so
there were also preservatives, talismans, amulets and charms, for the
most [Errata: _read_ for the most part] to be worn about the
person, which rendered him superior to injury, not only from the
operations of witchcraft, but in some cases from the sword or any
other mortal weapon. As the poet says, he that had this,

  Might trace huge forests and unhallowed heaths,--
  Yea there, where very desolation dwells,
  By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades,

nay, in the midst of every tremendous assailant, "might pass on with
unblenched majesty," uninjured and invulnerable.


NECROMANCY.

Last of all we may speak of necromancy, which has something in it that
so strongly takes hold of the imagination, that, though it is one only
of the various modes which have been enumerated for the exorcise of
magical power, we have selected it to give a title to the present
volume.

There is something sacred to common apprehension in the repose of the
dead. They seem placed beyond our power to disturb. "There is no work,
nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave."

  After life's fitful fever they sleep well:
  Nor steel, nor poison,
  Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
  Can touch them further.

Their remains moulder in the earth. Neither form nor feature is long
continued to them. We shrink from their touch, and their sight. To
violate the sepulchre therefore for the purpose of unholy spells and
operations, as we read of in the annals of witchcraft, cannot fail to
be exceedingly shocking. To call up the spirits of the departed, after
they have fulfilled the task of life, and are consigned to their final
sleep, is sacrilegious. Well may they exclaim, like the ghost of
Samuel in the sacred story, "Why hast thou disquieted me?"

There is a further circumstance in the case, which causes us
additionally to revolt from the very idea of necromancy, strictly so
called. Man is a mortal, or an immortal being. His frame either wholly
"returns to the earth as it was, or his spirit," the thinking
principle within him, "to God who gave it." The latter is the
prevailing sentiment of mankind in modern times. Man is placed upon
earth in a state of probation, to be dealt with hereafter according to
the deeds done in the flesh. "Some shall go away into everlasting
punishment; and others into life eternal." In this case there is
something blasphemous in the idea of intermedding with the state of
the dead. We must leave them in the hands of God. Even on the idea of
an interval, the "sleep of the soul" from death to the general
resurrection, which is the creed of no contemptible sect of
Christians, it is surely a terrific notion that we should disturb the
pause, which upon that hypothesis, the laws of nature have assigned to
the departed soul, and come to awake, or to "torment him before the
time."


ALCHEMY.

To make our catalogue of supernatural doings, and the lawless
imaginations of man, the more complete, it may be further necessary to
refer to the craft, so eagerly cultivated in successive ages of the
world of converting the inferior metals into gold, to which was
usually joined the _elixir vitae_, or universal medicine, having
the quality of renewing the youth of man, and causing him to live for
ever. The first authentic record on this subject is an edict of
Dioclesian about three hundred years after Christ, ordering a diligent
search to be made in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of
the art of making gold and silver, that they might without distinction
be consigned to the flames. This edict however necessarily presumes a
certain antiquity to the pursuit; and fabulous history has recorded
Solomon, Pythagoras and Hermes among its distinguished votaries. From
this period the study seems to have slept, till it was revived among
the Arabians after a lapse of five or six hundred years.

It is well known however how eagerly it was cultivated in various
countries of the world for many centuries after it was divulged by
Geber. Men of the most wonderful talents devoted their lives to the
investigation; and in multiplied instances the discovery was said to
have been completed. Vast sums of money were consumed in the fruitless
endeavour; and in a later period it seems to have furnished an
excellent handle to vain and specious projectors, to extort money from
those more amply provided with the goods of fortune than themselves.

The art no doubt is in itself sufficiently mystical, having been
pursued by multitudes, who seemed to themselves ever on the eve of
consummation, but as constantly baffled when to their own apprehension
most on the verge of success. The discovery indeed appears upon the
face of it to be of the most delicate nature, as the benefit must
wholly depend upon its being reserved to one or a very few, the object
being unbounded wealth, which is nothing unless confined. If the power
of creating gold is diffused, wealth by such diffusion becomes
poverty, and every thing after a short time would but return to what
it had been. Add to which, that the nature of discovery has ordinarily
been, that, when once the clue has been found, it reveals itself to
several about the same period of time.

The art, as we have said, is in its own nature sufficiently mystical,
depending on nice combinations and proportions of ingredients, and
upon the addition of each ingredient being made exactly in the
critical moment, and in the precise degree of heat, indicated by the
colour of the vapour arising from the crucible or retort. This was
watched by the operator with inexhaustible patience; and it was often
found or supposed, that the minutest error in this respect caused the
most promising appearances to fail of the expected success. This
circumstance no doubt occasionally gave an opportunity to an artful
impostor to account for his miscarriage, and thus to prevail upon his
credulous dupe to enable him to begin his tedious experiment again.

But, beside this, it appears that those whose object was the
transmutation of metals, very frequently joined to this pursuit the
study of astrology, and even the practice of sorcery. So much delicacy
and nicety were supposed to be required in the process for the
transmutation of metals, that it could not hope to succeed but under a
favourable conjunction of the planets; and the most flourishing
pretenders to the art boasted that they had also a familiar
intercourse with certain spirits of supernatural power, which assisted
them in their undertakings, and enabled them to penetrate into things
undiscoverable to mere human sagacity, and to predict future events.


FAIRIES.

Another mode in which the wild and erratic imagination of our
ancestors manifested itself, was in the creation of a world of
visionary beings of a less terrific character, but which did not fail
to annoy their thoughts, and perplex their determinations, known by
the name of Fairies.

There are few things more worthy of contemplation, and that at the
same time tend to place the dispositions of our ancestors in a more
amiable point of view, than the creation of this airy and fantastic
race. They were so diminutive as almost to elude the organs of human
sight. They were at large, even though confined to the smallest
dimensions. They "could be bounded in a nutshell, and count themselves
kings of infinite space."

  Their midnight revels, by a forest-side
  Or fountain, the belated peasant saw,
  Or dreamed he saw, while overhead the moon
  Sat arbitress, and nearer to the earth
  Wheeled her pale course--they, on their mirth and dance
  Intent, with jocund music charmed his ear;
  At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.

Small circles marked the grass in solitary places, the trace of their
little feet, which, though narrow, were ample enough to afford every
accommodation to their pastime.

The fairy tribes appear to have been every where distinguished for
their patronage of truth, simplicity and industry, and their
abhorrence of sensuality and prevarication. They left little rewards
in secret, as tokens of their approbation of the virtues they loved,
and by their supernatural power afforded a supplement to pure and
excellent intentions, when the corporeal powers of the virtuous sank
under the pressure of human infirmity. Where they conceived
displeasure, the punishments they inflicted were for the most part
such as served moderately to vex and harass the offending party,
rather than to inflict upon him permanent and irremediable evils.

  Their airy tongues would syllable men's names
  On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.

They were supposed to guide the wandering lights, that in the
obscurity of the night beguiled the weary traveller "through bog,
through bush, through brake, through briar." But their power of evil
only extended, or was only employed, to vex those who by a certain
obliquity of conduct gave occasion for their reproofs. They besides
pinched and otherwise tormented the objects of their displeasure; and,
though the mischiefs they executed were not of the most vital kind,
yet, coming from a supernatural enemy, and being inflicted by
invisible hands, they could not fail greatly to disturb and disorder
those who suffered from them.

There is at first sight a great inconsistency in the representations
of these imaginary people. For the most part they are described to us
as of a stature and appearance, almost too slight to be marked by our
grosser human organs. At other times however, and especially in the
extremely popular tales digested by M. Perrault, they shew themselves
in indiscriminate assemblies, brought together for some solemn
festivity or otherwise, and join the human frequenters of the scene,
without occasioning enquiry or surprise. They are particularly
concerned in the business of summarily and without appeal bestowing
miraculous gifts, sometimes as a mark of special friendship and
favour, and sometimes with a malicious and hostile intention.--But we
are to consider that spirits

  Can every form assume; so soft
  And uncompounded is their essence pure;
  Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,
  Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
  Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
  Can execute their airy purposes,
  And works of love or enmity fulfil.

And then again, as their bounties were shadowy, so were they specially
apt to disappear in a moment, the most splendid palaces and
magnificent exhibitions vanishing away, and leaving their disconcerted
dupe with his robes converted into the poorest rags, and, instead of
glittering state, finding himself suddenly in the midst of desolation,
and removed no man knew whither.

One of the mischiefs that were most frequently imputed to them, was
the changing the beautiful child of some doating parents, for a babe
marked with ugliness and deformity. But this idea seems fraught with
inconsistency. The natural stature of the fairy is of the smallest
dimensions; and, though they could occasionally dilate their figure so
as to imitate humanity, yet it is to be presumed that this was only
for a special purpose, and, that purpose obtained, that they shrank
again habitually into their characteristic littleness. The change
therefore can only be supposed to have been of one human child for
another.


ROSICRUCIANS.

Nothing very distinct has been ascertained respecting a sect, calling
itself Rosicrucians. It is said to have originated in the East from
one of the crusaders in the fourteenth century; but it attracted at
least no public notice till the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Its adherents appear to have imbibed their notions from the Arabians,
and claimed the possession of the philosopher's stone, the art of
transmuting metals, and the _elixir vitae_.


SYLPHS AND GNOMES, SALAMANDERS AND UNDINES.

But that for which they principally excited public attention, was
their creed respecting certain elementary beings, which to grosser
eyes are invisible, but were familiarly known to the initiated. To be
admitted to their acquaintance it was previously necessary that the
organs of human sight should be purged by the universal medicine, and
that certain glass globes should be chemically prepared with one or
other of the four elements, and for one month exposed to the beams of
the sun. These preliminary steps being taken, the initiated
immediately had a sight of innumerable beings of a luminous substance,
but of thin and evanescent structure, that people the elements on all
sides of us. Those who inhabited the air were called Sylphs; and those
who dwelt in the earth bore the name of Gnomes; such as peopled the
fire were Salamanders; and those who made their home in the waters
were Undines. Each class appears to have had an extensive power in the
elements to which they belonged. They could raise tempests in the air,
and storms at sea, shake the earth, and alarm the inhabitants of the
globe with the sight of devouring flames. These appear however to have
been more formidable in appearance than in reality. And the whole race
was subordinate to man, and particularly subject to the initiated. The
gnomes, inhabitants of the earth and the mines, liberally supplied to
the human beings with whom they conversed, the hidden treasures over
which they presided. The four classes were some of them male, and some
female; but the female sex seems to have preponderated in all.

These elementary beings, we are told, were by their constitution more
long-lived than man, but with this essential disadvantage, that at
death they wholly ceased to exist. In the mean time they were inspired
with an earnest desire for immortality; and there was one way left for
them, by which this desire might be gratified. If they were so happy
as to awaken in any of the initiated a passion the end of which was
marriage, then the sylph who became the bride of a virtuous man,
followed his nature, and became immortal; while on the other hand, if
she united herself to an immoral being and a profligate, the husband
followed the law of the wife, and was rendered entirely mortal. The
initiated however were required, as a condition to their being
admitted into the secrets of the order, to engage themselves in a vow
of perpetual chastity as to women. And they were abundantly rewarded
by the probability of being united to a sylph, a gnome, a salamander,
or an undine, any one of whom was inexpressibly more enchanting than
the most beautiful woman, in addition to which her charms were in a
manner perpetual, while a wife of our own nature is in a short time
destined to wrinkles, and all the other disadvantages of old age. The
initiated of course enjoyed a beatitude infinitely greater than that
which falls to the lot of ordinary mortals, being conscious of a
perpetual commerce with these wonderful beings from whose society the
vulgar are debarred, and having such associates unintermittedly
anxious to perform their behests, and anticipate their desires. [4]

We should have taken but an imperfect survey of the lawless
extravagancies of human imagination, if we had not included a survey
of this sect. There is something particularly soothing to the fancy of
an erratic mind, in the conception of being conversant with a race of
beings the very existence of which is unperceived by ordinary mortals,
and thus entering into an infinitely numerous and variegated society,
even when we are apparently swallowed up in entire solitude.

The Rosicrucians are further entitled to our special notice, as their
tenets have had the good fortune to furnish Pope with the beautiful
machinery with which he has adorned the Rape of the Lock. There is
also, of much later date, a wild and poetical fiction for which we are
indebted to the same source, called Undine, from the pen of Lamotte
Fouquet.




EXAMPLES OF NECROMANCY AND WITCHCRAFT FROM THE BIBLE.


The oldest and most authentic record from which we can derive our
ideas on the subject of necromancy and witchcraft, unquestionably is
the Bible. The Egyptians and Chaldeans were early distinguished for
their supposed proficiency in magic, in the production of supernatural
phenomena, and in penetrating into the secrets of future time. The
first appearance of men thus extraordinarily gifted, or advancing
pretensions of this sort, recorded in Scripture, is on occasion of
Pharoah's dream of the seven years of plenty, and seven years of
famine. At that period the king "sent and called for all the magicians
of Egypt and all the wise men; but they could not interpret the
dream," [5] which Joseph afterwards expounded.

Their second appearance was upon a most memorable occasion, when Moses
and Aaron, armed with miraculous powers, came to a subsequent king of
Egypt, to demand from him that their countrymen might be permitted to
depart to another tract of the world. They produced a miracle as the
evidence of their divine mission: and the king, who was also named
Pharoah, "called before him the wise men and the sorcerers of Egypt,
who with their enchantments did in like manner" as Moses had done;
till, after some experiments in which they were apparently successful,
they at length were compelled to allow themselves overcome, and fairly
to confess to their master, "This is the finger of God!" [6]

The spirit of the Jewish history loudly affirms, that the Creator of
heaven and earth had adopted this nation for his chosen people, and
therefore demanded their exclusive homage, and that they should
acknowledge no other God. It is on this principle that it is made one
of his early commands to them, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live." [7] And elsewhere the meaning of this prohibition is more fully
explained: "There shall not be found among you any one that useth
divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a
charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a
necromancer: [8] these shall surely be put to death; they shall stone
them with stones." [9]

The character of an enchanter is elsewhere more fully illustrated in
the case of Balaam, the soothsayer, who was sent for by Balak, the
king of Moab, that he might "curse the people of Israel. The
messengers of the king came to Balaam with the rewards of divination
in their hand;" [10] but the soothsayer was restrained from his
purpose by the God of the Jews, and, where he came to curse, was
compelled to bless. He therefore "did not go, as at other times, to
seek for enchantments," [11] but took up his discourse, and began,
saying, "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is
there any divination against Israel!" [12]

Another example of necromantic power or pretension is to be found in
the story of Saul and the witch of Endor. Saul, the first king of the
Jews, being rejected by God, and obtaining "no answer to his
enquiries, either by dreams, or by prophets, said to his servants,
seek me a woman that has a familiar spirit. And his servants, said,
Lo, there is a woman that has a familiar spirit at Endor." Saul
accordingly had recourse to her. But, previously to this time, in
conformity to the law of God, he "had cut off those that had familiar
spirits, and the wizards out of the land;" and the woman therefore was
terrified at his present application. Saul re-assured her; and in
consequence the woman consented to call up the person he should name.
Saul demanded of her to bring up the ghost of Samuel. The ghost,
whether by her enchantments or through divine interposition we are not
told, appeared, and prophesied to Saul, that he and his son should
fall in battle on the succeeding day, [13] which accordingly came to
pass.

Manasseh, a subsequent king in Jerusalem, "observed times, and used
enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards, and so
provoked God to anger." [14]

It appears plainly from the same authority, that there were good
spirits and evil spirits, "The Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab,
that he may go up, and fall before Ramoth Gilead? And there came a
spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him: I
will go forth, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.
And the Lord said, Thou shall persuade him." [15]

In like manner, we are told, "Satan stood up against Israel, and
provoked David to number the people; and God was displeased with the
thing, and smote Israel, so that there fell of the people seventy
thousand men." [16]

Satan also, in the Book of Job, presented himself before the Lord
among the Sons of God, and asked and obtained leave to try the
faithfulness of Job by "putting forth his hand," and despoiling the
patriarch of "all that he had."

Taking these things into consideration, there can be no reasonable
doubt, though the devil and Satan are not mentioned in the story, that
the serpent who in so crafty a way beguiled Eve, was in reality no
other than the malevolent enemy of mankind under that disguise.

We are in the same manner informed of the oracles of the false Gods;
and an example occurs of a king of Samaria, who fell sick, and who
"sent messengers, and said to them, Go, and enquire of Baalzebub, the
God of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this disease." At which
proceeding the God of the Jews was displeased, and sent Elijah to the
messengers to say, "Is it because there is not a God in Israel, that
you go to enquire of Baalzebub, the God of Ekron? Because the king has
done this, he shall not recover; he shall surely die." [17]

The appearance of the Wise Men of the East again occurs in considerable
detail in the Prophecy of Daniel, though they are only brought forward
there, as discoverers of hidden things, and interpreters of dreams.
Twice, on occasion of dreams that troubled him, Nebuchadnezzar, king
of Babylon, "commanded to be called to him the magicians, and the
astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans" of his kingdom, and
each time with similar success. They confessed their incapacity; and
Daniel, the prophet of the Jews, expounded to the king that in which
they had failed. Nebuchadnezzar in consequence promoted Daniel to be
master of the magicians. A similar scene occurred in the court of
Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, in the case of the hand-writing
on the wall.

It is probable that the Jews considered the Gods of the nations around
them as so many of the fallen angels, or spirits of hell, since, among
other arguments, the coincidence of the name of Beelzebub, the prince
of devils, [18] with Baalzebub, the God of Ekron, could scarcely have
fallen out by chance.

It seemed necessary to enter into these particulars, as they occur in
the oldest and most authentic records from which we can derive our
ideas on the subject of necromancy, witchcraft, and the claims that
were set up in ancient times to the exercise of magcial power. Among
these examples there is only one, that of the contention for
superiority between Moses and the Wise Men of Egypt in which we are
presented with their pretensions to a visible exhibition of
supernatural effects.


THE MAGI, OR WISE MEN OF THE EAST.

The Magi, or Wise Men of the East, extended their ramifications over
Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, and probably, though with a different
name, over China, and indeed the whole known world. Their profession
was of a mysterious nature. They laid claim to a familiar intercourse
with the Gods. They placed themselves as mediators between heaven and
earth, assumed the prerogative of revealing the will of beings of a
nature superior to man, and pretended to show wonders and prodigies
that surpassed any power which was merely human.

To understand this, we must bear in mind the state of knowledge in
ancient times, where for the most part the cultivation of the mind,
and an acquaintance with either science or art, were confined to a
very small part of the population. In each of the nations we have
mentioned, there was a particular caste or tribe of men, who, by the
prerogative of their birth, were entitled to the advantages of science
and a superior education, while the rest of their countrymen were
destined to subsist by manual labour. This of necessity gave birth in
the privileged few to an overweening sense of their own importance.
They scarcely regarded the rest of their countrymen as beings of the
same species with themselves; and, finding a strong line of distinction
cutting them off from the herd, they had recourse to every practicable
method for making that distinction still stronger. Wonder is one of
the most obvious means of generating deference; and, by keeping to
themselves the grounds and process of their skill, and presenting the
results only, they were sure to excite the admiration and reverence of
their contemporaries. This mode of proceeding further produced a
re-action upon themselves. That which supplied and promised to supply
to them so large a harvest of honour and fame, unavoidably became
precious in their eyes. They pursued their discoveries with avidity,
because few had access to their opportunities in that respect, and
because, the profounder were their researches, the more sure they were
of being looked up to by the public as having that in them which was
sacred and inviolable. They spent their days and nights in these
investigations. They shrank from no privation and labour. At the same
time that in these labours they had at all times an eye to their
darling object, an ascendancy over the minds of their countrymen at
large, and the extorting from them a blind and implicit deference to
their oracular decrees. They however loved their pursuits for the
pursuits themselves. They felt their abstraction and their unlimited
nature, and on that account contemplated them with admiration. They
valued them (for such is the indestructible character of the human
mind) for the pains they had bestowed on them. The sweat of their brow
grew into a part as it were of the intrinsic merit of the articles;
and that which had with so much pains been attained by them, they
could not but regard as of inestimable worth.


EGYPT.

The Egyptians took the lead in early antiquity, with respect to
civilisation and the stupendous productions of human labour and art,
of all other known nations of the world. The pyramids stand by
themselves as a monument of the industry of mankind. Thebes, with her
hundred gates, at each of which we are told she could send out at once
two hundred chariots and ten thousand warriors completely accoutred,
was one of the noblest cities on record. The whole country of Lower
Egypt was intersected with canals giving a beneficent direction to the
periodical inundations of the Nile; and the artificial lake Moeris was
dug of a vast extent, that it might draw off the occasional excesses
of the overflowings of the river. The Egyptians had an extraordinary
custom of preserving their dead, so that the country was peopled
almost as numerously with mummies prepared by extreme assiduity and
skill, as with the living.

And, in proportion to their edifices and labours of this durable sort,
was their unwearied application to all the learning that was then
known. Geometry is said to have owed its existence to the necessity
under which they were placed of every man recognising his own property
in land, as soon as the overflowings of the Nile had ceased. They were
not less assiduous in their application to astronomy. The hieroglyphics
of Egypt are of universal notoriety. Their mythology was of the most
complicated nature. Their Gods were infinitely varied in their kind;
and the modes of their worship not less endlessly diversified. All
these particulars still contributed to the abstraction of their
studies, and the loftiness of their pretensions to knowledge. They
perpetually conversed with the invisible world, and laid claim to the
faculty of revealing things hidden, of foretelling future events, and
displaying wonders that exceeded human power to produce.

A striking illustration of the state of Egypt in that respect in early
times, occurs incidentally in the history of Joseph in the Bible. Jacob
had twelve sons, among whom his partiality for Joseph was so notorious,
that his brethren out of envy sold him as a slave to the wandering
Midianites. Thus it was his fortune to be placed in Egypt, where in
the process of events he became the second man in the country, and
chief minister of the king. A severe famine having visited these
climates, Jacob sent his sons into Egypt to buy corn, where only it
was to be found. As soon as Joseph saw them, he knew them, though they
knew not him in his exalted situation; and he set himself to devise
expedients to settle them permanently in the country in which he
ruled. Among the rest he caused a precious cup from his stores to be
privily conveyed into the corn-sack of Benjamin, his only brother by
the same mother. The brothers were no sooner departed, than Joseph
sent in pursuit of them; and the messengers accosted them with the
words, "Is not this the cup in which my lord drinketh, and whereby
also he divineth? Ye have done evil in taking it away." [19] They
brought the strangers again into the presence of Joseph, who addressed
them with severity, saying, "What is this deed that ye have done? Wot
ye not that such a man as I could certainly divine?" [20]

From this story it plainly appears, that the art of divination was
extensively exercised in Egypt, that the practice was held in honour,
and that such was the state of the country, that it was to be presumed
as a thing of course, that a man of the high rank and distinction of
Joseph should professedly be an adept in it.

In the great contention for supernatural power between Moses and the
magicians of Egypt, it is plain that they came forward with confidence,
and did not shrink from the debate. Moses's rod was turned into a
serpent; so were their rods: Moses changed the waters of Egypt into
blood; and the magicians did the like with their enchantments: Moses
caused frogs to come up, and cover the land of Egypt; and the magicians
also brought frogs upon the country. Without its being in any way
necessary to enquire how they effected these wonders, it is evident
from the whole train of the narrative, that they must have been much
in the practice of astonishing their countrymen with their feats in
such a kind, and, whether it were delusion, or to whatever else we may
attribute their success, that they were universally looked up to for
the extraordinariness of their performances.

While we are on this subject of illustrations from the Bible, it may
be worth while to revert more particularly to the story of Balaam.
Balak the king of Moab, sent for Balaam that he might come and curse
the invaders of his country; and in the sequel we are told, when the
prophet changed his curses into a blessing, that he did not "go forth,
as at other times, to seek for enchantments." It is plain therefore
that Balak did not rely singly upon the eloquence and fervour of
Balaam to pour out vituperations upon the people of Israel, but that
it was expected that the prophet should use incantations and certain
mystical rites, upon which the efficacy of his foretelling disaster
to the enemy principally depended.


STATUE OF MEMNON.

The Magi of Egypt looked round in every quarter for phenomena that
might produce astonishment among their countrymen, and induce them to
believe that they dwelt in a land which overflowed with the testimonies
and presence of a divine power. Among others the statue of Memnon,
erected over his tomb near Thebes, is recorded by many authors. Memnon
is said to have been the son of Aurora, the Goddess of the morning;
and his statue is related to have had the peculiar faculty of uttering
a melodious sound every morning when touched by the first beams of
day, as if to salute his mother; and every night at sunset to have
imparted another sound, low and mournful, as lamenting the departure
of the day. This prodigy is spoken of by Tacitus, Strabo, Juvenal and
Philostratus. The statue uttered these sounds, while perfect; and,
when it was mutilated by human violence, or by a convulsion of nature,
it still retained the property with which it had been originally
endowed. Modern travellers, for the same phenomenon has still been
observed, have asserted that it does not owe its existence to any
prodigy, but to a property of the granite, of which the statue or its
pedestal is formed, which, being hollow, is found in various parts of
the world to exhibit this quality. It has therefore been suggested,
that the priests, having ascertained its peculiarity, expressly formed
the statue of that material, for the purpose of impressing on it a
supernatural character, and thus being enabled to extend their
influence with a credulous people. [21]


TEMPLE OF JUPITER AMMON: ITS ORACLES.

Another of what may be considered as the wonders of Egypt, is the
temple of Jupiter Ammon in the midst of the Great Desert. This temple
was situated at a distance of no less than twelve days' journey from
Memphis, the capital of the Lower Egypt. The principal part of this
space consisted of one immense tract of moving sand, so hot as to be
intolerable to the sole of the foot, while the air was pregnant with
fire, so that it was almost impossible to breathe in it. Not a drop of
water, not a tree, not a blade of grass, was to be found through this
vast surface. It was here that Cambyses, engaged in an impious
expedition to demolish the temple, is said to have lost an army of
fifty thousand men, buried in the sands. When you arrived however,
you were presented with a wood of great circumference, the foliage of
which was so thick that the beams of the sun could not pierce it. The
atmosphere of the place was of a delicious temperature; the scene was
every where interspersed with fountains; and all the fruits of the
earth were found in the highest perfection. In the midst was the
temple and oracle of the God, who was worshipped in the likeness of a
ram. The Egyptian priests chose this site as furnishing a test of the
zeal of their votaries; the journey being like the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem or Mecca, if not from so great a distance, yet attended in
many respects with perils more formidable. It was not safe to attempt
the passage but with moderate numbers, and those expressly equipped
for expedition.

Bacchus is said to have visited this spot in his great expedition to
the East, when Jupiter appeared to him in the form of a ram, having
struck his foot upon the soil, and for the first time occasioned that
supply of water, with which the place was ever after plentifully
supplied. Alexander the Great in a subsequent age undertook the same
journey with his army, that he might cause himself to be acknowledged
for the son of the God, under which character he was in all due form
recognised. The priests no doubt had heard of the successful battles
of the Granicus and of Issus, of the capture of Tyre after a seven
months' siege, and of the march of the great conqueror in Egypt, where
he carried every thing before him.

Here we are presented with a striking specimen of the mode and spirit
in which the oracles of old were accustomed to be conducted. It may be
said that the priests were corrupted by the rich presents which
Alexander bestowed on them with a liberal hand. But this was not the
prime impulse in the business. They were astonished at the daring with
which Alexander with a comparative handful of men set out from Greece,
having meditated the overthrow of the great Persian empire. They were
astonished with his perpetual success, and his victorious progress
from the Hellespont to mount Taurus, from mount Taurus to Pelusium,
and from Pelusium quite across the ancient kingdom of Egypt to the
Palus Mareotis. Accustomed to the practice of adulation, and to the
belief that mortal power and true intellectual greatness were the
same, they with a genuine enthusiastic fervour regarded Alexander as
the son of their God, and acknowledged him as such.--Nothing can be
more memorable than the way in which belief and unbelief hold a
divided empire over the human mind, our passions hurrying us into
belief, at the same time that our intervals of sobriety suggest to
us that it is all pure imposition.


CHALDEA AND BABYLON.

The history of the Babylonish monarchy not having been handed down to
us, except incidentally as it is touched upon by the historians of
other countries, we know little of those anecdotes respecting it which
are best calculated to illustrate the habits and manners of a people.
We know that they in probability preceded all other nations in the
accuracy of their observations on the phenomena of the heavenly
bodies. We know that the Magi were highly respected among them as an
order in the state; and that, when questions occurred exciting great
alarm in the rulers, "the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers,
and the Chaldeans," were called together, to see whether by their arts
they could throw light upon questions so mysterious and perplexing,
and we find sufficient reason, both from analogy, and from the very
circumstance that sorcerers are specifically named among the classes
of which their Wise Men consisted, to believe that the Babylonian Magi
advanced no dubious pretensions to the exercise of magical power.


ZOROASTER.

Among the Chaldeans the most famous name is that of Zoroaster, who is
held to have been the author of their religion, their civil policy,
their sciences, and their magic. He taught the doctrine of two great
principles, the one the author of good, the other of evil. He
prohibited the use of images in the ceremonies of religion, and
pronounced that nothing deserved homage but fire, and the sun, the
centre and the source of fire, and these perhaps to be venerated not
for themselves, but as emblematical of the principle of all good
things. He taught astronomy and astrology. We may with sufficient
probability infer his doctrines from those of the Magi, who were his
followers. He practised enchantments, by means of which he would send
a panic among the forces that were brought to make war against him,
rendering the conflict by force of arms unnecessary. He prescribed the
use of certain herbs as all-powerful for the production of supernatural
effects. He pretended to the faculty of working miracles, and of
superseding and altering the ordinary course of nature.--There was,
beside the Chaldean Zoroaster, a Persian known by the same name, who
is said to have been a contemporary of Darius Hystaspes.




GREECE.


Thus obscure and general is our information respecting the
Babylonians. But it was far otherwise with the Greeks. Long before
the period, when, by their successful resistance to the Persian
invasion, they had rendered themselves of paramount importance in the
history of the civilised world, they had their poets and annalists,
who preserved to future time the memory of their tastes, their manners
and superstitions, their strength, and their weakness. Homer in
particular had already composed his two great poems, rendering the
peculiarities of his countrymen familiar to the latest posterity. The
consequence of this is, that the wonderful things of early Greece are
even more frequent than the record of its sober facts. As men advance
in observation and experience, they are compelled more and more to
perceive that all the phenomena of nature are one vast chain of
uninterrupted causes and consequences: but to the eye of uninstructed
ignorance every thing is astonishing, every thing is unexpected. The
remote generations of mankind are in all cases full of prodigies: but
it is the fortune of Greece to have preserved its early adventures, so
as to render the beginning pages of its history one mass of impossible
falsehoods.


DEITIES OF GREECE.

The Gods of the Greeks appear all of them once to have been men. Their
real or supposed adventures therefore make a part of what is recorded
respecting them. Jupiter was born in Crete, and being secreted by his
mother in a cave, was suckled by a goat. Being come to man's estate,
he warred with the giants, one of whom had an hundred hands, and two
others brethren, grew nine inches every month, and, when nine years
old, were fully qualified to engage in all exploits of corporeal
strength. The war was finished, by the giants being overwhelmed with
the thunderbolts of heaven, and buried under mountains.

Minerva was born from the head of her father, without a mother; and
Bacchus, coming into the world after the death of his female parent,
was inclosed in the thigh of Jupiter, and was thus produced at the
proper time in full vigour and strength. Minerva had a shield, in
which was preserved the real head of Medusa, that had the property of
turning every one that looked on it into stone. Bacchus, when a child,
was seized on by pirates with the intention to sell him for a slave:
but he waved a spear, and the oars of the sailors were turned into
vines, which climbed the masts, and spread their clusters over the
sails; and tigers, lynxes and panthers, appeared to swim round the
ship, so terrifying the crew that they leaped overboard, and were
changed into dolphins. Bacchus, in his maturity, is described as
having been the conqueror of India. He did not set out on this
expedition like other conquerors, at the head of an army. He rode in
an open chariot, which was drawn by tame lions. His attendants were
men and women in great multitudes, eminently accomplished in the arts
of rural industry. Wherever he came, he taught men the science of
husbandry, and the cultivation of the vine. Wherever he came, he was
received, not with hostility, but with festivity and welcome. On his
return however, Lycurgus, king of Thrace, and Pentheus, king of
Thebes, set themselves in opposition to the improvements which the
East had received with the most lively gratitude; and Bacchus, to
punish them, caused Lycurgus to be torn to pieces by wild horses, and
spread a delusion among the family of Pentheus, so that they mistook
him for a wild boar which had broken into their vineyards, and of
consequence fell upon him, and he expired amidst a thousand wounds.

Apollo was the author of plagues and contagious diseases; at the same
time that, when he pleased, he could restore salubrity to a climate,
and health and vigour to the sons of men. He was the father of poetry,
and possessed in an eminent degree the gift of foretelling future
events. Hecate, which was one of the names of Diana, was distinguished
as the Goddess of magic and enchantments. Venus was the Goddess of
love, the most  irresistible and omnipotent impulse of which the heart
of man is susceptible. The wand of Mercury was endowed with such
virtues, that whoever it touched, if asleep, would start up into life
and alacrity, and, if awake, would immediately fall into a profound
sleep. When it touched the dying, their souls gently parted from their
mortal frame; and, when it was applied to the dead, the dead returned
to life. Neptune had the attribute of raising and appeasing tempests:
and Vulcan, the artificer of heaven and earth, not only produced the
most exquisite specimens of skill, but also constructed furniture that
was endowed with a self-moving principle, and would present itself for
use or recede at the will of its proprietor. Pluto, in perpetrating
the rape of Proserpine, started up in his chariot through a cleft of
the earth in the vale of Enna in Sicily, and, having seized his prize,
disappeared again by the way that he came.

Ceres, the mother of Proserpine, in her search after her lost daughter,
was received with peculiar hospitality by Celeus, king of Eleusis. She
became desirous of remunerating his liberality by some special favour.
She saw his only child laid in a cradle, and labouring under a fatal
distemper. She took him under her protection. She fed him with milk
from her own breast, and at night covered him with coals of fire.
Under this treatment he not only recovered his strength, but shot up
miraculously into manhood, so that what in other men is the effect of
years, was accomplished in Triptolemus in as many hours. She gave him
for a gift the art of agriculture, so that he is said to have been the
first to teach mankind to sow and to reap corn, and to make bread of
the produce.

Prometheus, one of the race of the giants, was peculiarly distinguished
for his proficiency in the arts. Among other extraordinary productions
he formed a man of clay, of such exquisite workmanship, as to have
wanted nothing but a living soul to cause him to be acknowledged as
the paragon of the world. Minerva beheld the performance of Prometheus
with approbation, and offered him her assistance. She conducted him to
heaven, where he watched his opportunity to carry off on the tip of
his wand a portion of celestial fire from the chariot of the sun. With
this he animated his image; and the man of Prometheus moved, and
thought, and spoke, and became every thing that the fondest wishes of
his creator could ask. Jupiter ordered Vulcan to make a woman, that
should surpass this man. All the Gods gave her each one a several
gift: Venus gave her the power to charm; the Graces bestowed on her
symmetry of limb, and elegance of motion; Apollo the accomplishments
of vocal and instrumental music; Mercury the art of persuasive speech;
Juno a multitude of rich and gorgeous ornaments; and Minerva the
management of the loom and the needle. Last of all, Jupiter presented
her with a sealed box, of which the lid was no sooner unclosed, than a
multitude of calamities and evils of all imaginable sorts flew out,
only Hope remaining at the bottom.

Deucalion was the son of Prometheus and Pyrrha, his niece. They
married. In their time a flood occurred, which as they imagined
destroyed the whole human race; they were the only survivors. By the
direction of an oracle they cast stones over their shoulders; when, by
the divine interposition, the stones cast by Deucalion became men, and
those cast by Pyrrha women. Thus the earth was re-peopled.

I have put down a few of these particulars, as containing in several
instances the qualities of what is called magic, and thus furnishing
examples of some of the earliest occasions upon which supernatural
powers have been alleged to mix with human affairs.


DEMIGODS.

The early history of mortals in Greece is scarcely separated from that
of the Gods. The first adventurer that it is perhaps proper to notice,
as his exploits have I know not what of magic in them, is Perseus, the
founder of the metropolis and kingdom of Mycenae. By way of rendering
his birth illustrious, he is said to have been the son of Jupiter, by
Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. The king, being
forewarned by an oracle that his daughter should bear a son, by whose
hand her father should be deprived of life, thought proper to shut her
up in a tower of brass. Jupiter, having metamorphosed himself into a
shower of gold, found his way into her place of confinement, and
became the father of Perseus. On the discovery of this circumstance,
Acrisius caused both mother and child to be inclosed in a chest, and
committed to the waves. The chest however drifted upon the lands of a
person of royal descent in the island of Seriphos, who extended his
care and hospitality to both. When Perseus grew to man's estate, he
was commissioned by the king of Seriphos to bring him the head of
Medusa, one of the Gorgons. Medusa had the wonderful faculty, that
whoever met her eyes was immediately turned into stone; and the king,
who had conceived a passion for Danae, sent her son on this enterprise,
with the hope that he would never come back alive. He was however
favoured by the Gods; Mercury gave him wings to fly, Pluto an invisible
helmet, and Minerva a mirror-shield, by looking in which he could
discover how his enemy was disposed, without the danger of meeting her
eyes. Thus equipped, he accomplished his undertaking, cut off the head
of the Gorgon, and pursed it in a bag. From this exploit he proceeded
to visit Atlas, king of Mauritania, who refused him hospitality, and
in revenge Perseus turned him into stone. He next rescued Andromeda,
daughter of the king of Ethiopia, from a monster sent by Neptune to
devour her. And, lastly, returning to his mother, and finding the king
of Seriphos still incredulous and obstinate, he turned him likewise
into a stone.

The labours of Hercules, the most celebrated of the Greeks of the
heroic age, appear to have had little of magic in them, but to have
been indebted for their success to a corporal strength, superior to
that of all other mortals, united with an invincible energy of mind,
which disdained to yield to any obstacle that could be opposed to him.
His achievements are characteristic of the rude and barbarous age in
which he lived: he strangled serpents, and killed the Erymanthian
boar, the Nemaean lion, and the Hydra.


DAEDALUS.

Nearly contemporary with the labours of Hercules is the history of
Pasiphae and the Minotaur; and this brings us again within the sphere
of magic. Pasiphae was the wife of Minos, king of Crete, who conceived
an unnatural passion for a beautiful white bull, which Neptune had
presented to the king. Having found the means of gratifying her
passion, she became the mother of a monster, half-man and half-bull,
called the Minotaur. Minos was desirous of hiding this monster from
the observation of mankind, and for this purpose applied to Daedalus,
an Athenian, the most skilful artist of his time, who is said to have
invented the axe, the wedge, and the plummet, and to have found out
the use of glue. He first contrived masts and sails for ships, and
carved statues so admirably, that they not only looked as if they were
alive, but had actually the power of self-motion, and would have
escaped from the custody of their possessor, if they had not been
chained to the wall.

Daedalus contrived for Minos a labyrinth, a wonderful structure, that
covered many acres of ground. The passages in this edifice met and
crossed each other with such intricacy, that a stranger who had once
entered the building, would have been starved to death before he could
find his way out. In this labyrinth Minos shut up the Minotaur. Having
conceived a deep resentment against the people of Athens, where his
only son had been killed in a riot, he imposed upon them an annual
tribute of seven noble youths, and as many virgins to be devoured by
the Minotaur. Theseus, son of the king of Athens, put an end to this
disgrace. He was taught by Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, how to
destroy the monster, and furnished with a clue by which afterwards to
find his way out of the labyrinth.

Daedalus for some reason having incurred the displeasure of Minos, was
made a prisoner by him in his own labyrinth. But the artist being
never at an end of his inventions, contrived with feathers and wax to
make a pair of wings for himself, and escaped. Icarus, his son, who
was prisoner along with him, was provided by his father with a similar
equipment. But the son, who was inexperienced and heedless, approached
too near to the sun in his flight; and, the wax of his wings being
melted with the heat, he fell into the sea and was drowned.


THE ARGONAUTS.

Contemporary with the reign of Minos occurred the expedition of the
Argonauts. Jason, the son of the king of Iolchos in Thessaly, was at
the head of this expedition. Its object was to fetch the golden
fleece, which was hung up in a grove sacred to Mars, in the kingdom
of Colchis, at the eastern extremity of the Euxine sea. He enlisted in
this enterprise all the most gallant spirits existing in the country,
and among the rest Hercules, Theseus, Orpheus and Amphion. After having
passed through a multitude of perils, one of which was occasioned by
the Cyanean rocks at the entrance of the Euxine, that had the quality
of closing upon every vessel which attempted to make its way between
them and crushing it to pieces, a danger that could only be avoided by
sending a dove before as their harbinger, they at length arrived.


MEDEA.

The golden fleece was defended by bulls, whose hoofs were brass, and
whose breath was fire, and by a never-sleeping dragon that planted
itself at the foot of the tree upon which the fleece was suspended.
Jason was prepared for his undertaking by Medea, the daughter of the
king of the country, herself an accomplished magician, and furnished
with philtres, drugs and enchantments. Thus equipped, he tamed the
bulls, put a yoke on their necks, and caused them to plough two acres
of the stiffest land. He killed the dragon, and, to complete the
adventure, drew the monster's teeth, sowed them in the ground, and saw
an army of soldiers spring from the seed. The army hastened forward to
attack him; but he threw a large stone into the midst of their ranks,
when they immediately turned from him, and, falling on each other,
were all killed with their mutual weapons.

The adventure being accomplished, Medea set out with Jason on his
return to Thessaly. On their arrival, they found Aeson, the father of
Jason, and Pelias, his uncle, who had usurped the throne, both old and
decrepid. Jason applied to Medea, and asked her whether among her
charms she had none to make an old man young again. She replied she
had: she drew the impoverished and watery blood from the body of Aeson;
she infused the juice of certain potent herbs into his veins; and he
rose from the operation as fresh and vigorous a man as his son.

The daughters of Pelias professed a perfect willingness to abdicate
the throne of Iolchos; but, before they retired, they requested Medea
to do the same kindness for their father which she had already done
for Aeson. She said she would. She told them the method was to cut the
old man in pieces, and boil him in a kettle with an infusion of
certain herbs, and he would come out as smooth and active as a child.

The daughters of Pelias a little scrupled the operation. Medea, seeing
this, begged they would not think she was deceiving them. If however
they doubted, she desired they would bring her the oldest ram from
their flocks, and they should see the experiment. Medea cut up the
ram, cast in certain herbs, and the old bell-wether came out as
beautiful and innocent a he-lamb as was ever beheld. The daughters of
Pelias were satisfied. They divided their father in pieces; but he was
never restored either to health or life.

From Iolchos, upon some insurrection of the people, Medea and Jason
fled to Corinth. Here they lived ten years in much harmony. At the end
of that time Jason grew tired of his wife, and fell in love with
Glauce, daughter of the king of Corinth. Medea was greatly exasperated
with his infidelity, and, among other enormities, slew with her own
hand the two children she had borne him before his face, Jason
hastened to punish her barbarity; but Medea mounted a chariot drawn by
fiery dragons, fled through the air to Athens, and escaped.

At Athens she married Aegeus, king of that city. Aegeus by a former wife
had a son, named Theseus, who for some reason had been brought up
obscure, unknown and in exile. At a suitable time he returned home to
his father with the intention to avow his parentage. But Medea was
beforehand with him. She put a poisoned goblet into the hands of Aegeus
at an entertainment he gave to Theseus, with the intent that he should
deliver it to his son. At the critical moment Aegeus cast his eyes on
the sword of Theseus, which he recognised as that which he had
delivered with his son, when a child, and had directed that it should
be brought by him, when a man, as a token of the mystery of his birth.
The goblet was cast away; the father and son rushed into each other's
arms; and Medea fled from Athens in her chariot drawn by dragons
through the air, as she had years before fled from Corinth.


CIRCE.

Circe was the sister of Aeetes and Pasiphae, and was, like Medea, her
niece, skilful in sorcery. She had besides the gift of immortality.
She was exquisitely beautiful; but she employed the charms of her
person, and the seducing grace of her manners to a bad purpose. She
presented to every stranger who landed in her territory an enchanted
cup, of which she intreated him to drink. He no sooner tasted it, than
he was turned into a hog, and was driven by the magician to her sty.
The unfortunate stranger retained under this loathsome appearance the
consciousness of what he had been, and mourned for ever the criminal
compliance by which  he was brought to so melancholy a pass.


ORPHEUS.

Cicero [22] quotes Aristotle as affirming that there was no such man
as Orpheus. But Aristotle is at least single in that opinion. And
there are too many circumstances known respecting Orpheus, and which
have obtained the consenting voice of all antiquity, to allow us to
call in question his existence. He was a native of Thrace, and from
that country migrated into Greece. He travelled into Egypt for the
purpose of collecting there the information necessary to the
accomplishment of his ends. He died a violent death; and, as is almost
universally affirmed, fell a sacrifice to the resentment and fury of
the women of his native soil. [23]

Orpheus was doubtless a poet; though it is not probable that any of
his genuine productions have been handed down to us. He was, as all
the poets of so remote a period were, extremely accomplished in all
the arts of vocal and instrumental music. He civilised the rude
inhabitants of Greece, and subjected them to order and law. He formed
them into communities. He is said by Aristophanes [24] and Horace [25]
to have reclaimed the savage man, from slaughter, and an indulgence in
food that was loathsome and foul. And this has with sufficient
probability been interpreted to mean, that he found the race of men
among whom he lived cannibals, and that, to cure them the more
completely of this horrible practice, he taught them to be contented
to subsist upon the fruits of the earth. [26] Music and poetry are
understood to have been made specially instrumental by him to the
effecting this purpose. He is said to have made the hungry lion and
the famished tiger obedient to his bidding, and to put off their wild
and furious natures.

This is interpreted by Horace [27] and other recent expositors to mean
no more than that he reduced the race of savages as he found them, to
order and civilisation. But it was at first perhaps understood more
literally. We shall not do justice to the traditions of these remote
times, if we do not in imagination transport ourselves among them, and
teach ourselves to feel their feelings, and conceive their conceptions.
Orpheus lived in a time when all was enchantment and prodigy. Gifted
and extraordinary persons in those ages believed that they were endowed
with marvellous prerogatives, and acted upon that belief. We may
occasionally observe, even in these days of the dull and the literal,
how great is the ascendancy of the man over the beast, when he feels a
full and entire confidence in that ascendancy. The eye and the gesture
of man cannot fail to produce effects, incredible till they are seen.
Magic was the order of the day; and the enthusiasm of its heroes was
raised to the highest pitch, and attended with no secret misgivings.
We are also to consider that, in all operations of a magical nature,
there is a wonderful mixture of frankness and _bonhommie_ with a
strong vein of cunning and craft. Man in every age is full of
incongruous and incompatible principles; and, when we shall cease to
be inconsistent, we shall cease to be men.

It is difficult fully to explain what is meant by the story of Orpheus
and Eurydice; but in its circumstances it bears a striking resemblance
to what has been a thousand times recorded respecting the calling up
of the ghosts of the dead by means of sorcery. The disconsolate
husband has in the first place recourse to the resistless aid of
music. [28] After many preparatives he appears to have effected his
purpose, and prevailed upon the powers of darkness to allow him the
presence of his beloved. She appears in the sequel however to have
been a thin and a fleeting shadow. He is forbidden to cast his eyes on
her; and, if he had obeyed this injunction, it is uncertain how the
experiment would have ended. He proceeds however, as he is commanded,
towards the light of day. He is led to believe that his consort is
following his steps. He is beset with a multitude of unearthly
phenomena. He advances for some time with confidence. At length he is
assailed with doubts. He has recourse to the auricular sense, to know
if she is following him. He can hear nothing. Finally he can endure
this uncertainty no longer; and, in defiance of the prohibition he has
received, cannot refrain from turning his head to ascertain whether he
is baffled, and has spent all his labour in vain. He sees her; but no
sooner he sees her, than she becomes evanescent and impalpable;
farther and farther she retreats before him; she utters a shrill cry,
and endeavours to articulate; but she grows more and more
imperceptible; and in the conclusion he is left with the scene around
him in all respects the same as it had been before his incantations.
The result of the whole that is known of Orpheus, is, that he was an
eminently great and virtuous man, but was the victim of singular
calamity.

We have not yet done with the history of Orpheus. As has been said, he
fell a sacrifice to the resentment and fury of the women of his native
soil. They are affirmed to have torn him limb from limb. His head,
divided from his body, floated down the waters of the Hebrus, and
miraculously, as it passed along to the sea, it was still heard to
exclaim in mournful accents, Eurydice, Eurydice! [29] At length it was
carried ashore on the island of Lesbos. [30] Here, by some
extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, it found a resting-place
in a fissure of a rock over-arched by a cave, and, thus domiciliated,
is said to have retained the power of speech, and to have uttered
oracles. Not only the people of Lesbos resorted to it for guidance in
difficult questions, but also the Asiatic Greeks from Ionia and Aetolia;
and its fame and character for predicting future events even extended
to Babylon. [31]


AMPHION.

The story of Amphion is more perplexing than that of the living
Orpheus. Both of them turn in a great degree upon the miraculous
effects of music. Amphion was of the royal family of Thebes, and
ultimately became ruler of the territory. He is said, by the potency
of his lyre, or his skill in the magic art, to have caused the stones
to follow him, to arrange themselves in the way he proposed, and
without the intervention of a human hand to have raised a wall about
his metropolis. [32] It is certainly less difficult to conceive the
savage man to be rendered placable, and to conform to the dictates of
civilisation, or even wild beasts to be made tame, than to imagine
stones to obey the voice and the will of a human being. The example
however is not singular; and hereafter we shall find related that
Merlin, the British enchanter, by the power of magic caused the rocks
of Stonehenge, though of such vast dimensions, to be carried through
the air from Ireland to the place where we at present find them.--Homer
mentions that Amphion, and his brother Zethus built the walls of
Thebes, but does not describe it as having been done by miracle. [33]


TIRESIAS.

Tiresias was one of the most celebrated soothsayers of the early ages
of Greece. He lived in the times of Oedipus, and the war of the seven
chiefs against Thebes. He was afflicted by the Gods with blindness, in
consequence of some displeasure they conceived against him; but in
compensation they endowed him beyond all other mortals with the gift
of prophecy. He is said to have understood the language of birds. He
possessed the art of divining future events from the various
indications that manifest themselves in fire, in smoke, and in other
ways, [34] but to have set the highest value upon the communications
of the dead, whom by spells and incantations he constrained to appear
and answer his enquiries; [35] and he is represented as pouring out
tremendous menaces against them, when they shewed themselves tardy to
attend upon his commands. [36]


ABARIS.

Abaris, the Scythian, known to us for his visit to Greece, was by all
accounts a great magician. Herodotus says [37] that he is reported to
have travelled over the world with an arrow, eating nothing during his
journey. Other authors relate that this arrow was given to him by
Apollo, and that he rode upon it through the air, over lands, and
seas, and all inaccessible places. [38] The time in which he flourished
is very uncertain, some having represented him as having constructed
the Palladium, which, as long as it was preserved, kept Troy from
being taken by an enemy, [39] and others affirming that he was
familiar with Pythagoras, who lived six hundred years later, and that
he was admitted into his special confidence. [40] He is said to have
possessed the faculty of foretelling earthquakes, allaying storms, and
driving away pestilence; he gave out predictions wherever he went; and
is described as an enchanter, professing to cure diseases by virtue of
certain words which he pronounced over those who were afflicted with
them. [41]


PYTHAGORAS.

The name of Pythagoras is one of the most memorable in the records of
the human species; and his character is well worthy of the minutest
investigation. By this name we are brought at once within the limits
of history properly so called. He lived in the time of Cyrus and
Darius Hystaspes, of Croesus, of Pisistratus, of Polycrates, tyrant of
Samos, and Amasis, king of Egypt. Many hypotheses have been laid down
respecting the precise period of his birth and death; but, as it is
not to our purpose to enter into any lengthened discussions of that
sort, we will adopt at once the statement that appears to be the most
probable, which is that of Lloyd, [42] who fixes his birth about the
year before Christ 586, and his death about the year 506.

Pythagoras was a man of the most various accomplishments, and appears
to have penetrated in different directions into the depths of human
knowledge. He sought wisdom in its retreats of fairest promise, in
Egypt and other distant countries. [43] In this investigation he
employed the earlier period of his life, probably till he was forty,
and devoted the remainder to such modes of proceeding, as appeared to
him the most likely to secure the advantage of what he had acquired to
a late posterity. [44]

He founded a school, and delivered his acquisitions by oral
communication to a numerous body of followers. He divided his pupils
into two classes, the one neophytes, to whom was explained only the
most obvious and general truths, the other who were admitted into the
entire confidence of the master. These last he caused to throw their
property into a common stock, and to live together in the same place
of resort. [45] He appears to have spent the latter half of his life
in that part of Italy, called Magna Graecia, so denominated in some
degree from the numerous colonies of Grecians by whom it was planted,
and partly perhaps from the memory of the illustrious things which
Pythagoras achieved there. [46] He is said to have spread the seeds of
political liberty in Crotona, Sybaris, Metapontum, and Rhegium, and
from thence in Sicily to Tauromenium, Catana, Agrigentum and Himera.
[47] Charondas and Zaleucus, themselves famous legislators, derived
the rudiments of their political wisdom from the instructions of
Pythagoras. [48]

But this marvellous man in some way, whether from the knowlege he
received, or from his own proper discoveries, has secured to his
species benefits of a more permanent nature, and which shall outlive
the revolutions of ages, and the instability of political institutions.
He was a profound geometrician. The two theorems, that the internal
angles of every right-line triangle are equal to two right angles, [49]
and that the square of the hypothenuse of every right angled triangle
is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, [50] are
ascribed to him. In memory of the latter of these discoveries he is
said to have offered a public sacrifice to the Gods; and the theorem
is still known by the name of the Pythagorean theorem. He ascertained
from the length of the Olympic course, which was understood to have
measured six hundred of Hercules's feet, the precise stature of that
hero. [51] Lastly, Pythagoras is the first person, who is known to
have taught the spherical figure of the earth, and that we have
antipodes; [52] and he propagated the doctrine that the earth is a
planet, and that the sun is the centre round which the earth and the
other planets move, now known by the name of the Copernican
system. [53]

To inculcate a pure and a simple mode of subsistence was also an
express object of pursuit to Pythagoras. He taught a total abstinence
from every thing having had the property of animal life. It has been
affirmed, as we have seen, [54] that Orpheus before him taught the
same thing. But the claim of Orpheus to this distinction is ambiguous;
while the theories and dogmas of the Samian sage, as he has frequently
been styled, were more methodically digested, and produced more
lasting and unequivocal effects. He taught temperance in all its
branches, and a resolute subjection of the appetites of the body to
contemplation and the exercises of the mind; and, by the unremitted
discipline and authority he exerted over his followers, he caused his
lessons to be constantly observed. There was therefore an edifying and
an exemplary simplicity that prevailed as far as the influence of
Pythagoras extended, that won golden opinions to his adherents at all
times that they appeared, and in all places. [55]

One revolution that Pythagoras worked, was that, whereas, immediately
before, those who were most conspicuous among the Greeks as instructors
of mankind in understanding and virtue, styled themselves sophists,
professors of wisdom, this illustrious man desired to be known only by
the appellation of a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. [56] The sophists
had previously brought their denomination into discredit and reproach,
by the arrogance of their pretensions, and the imperious way in which
they attempted to lay down the law to the world.

The modesty of this appellation however did not altogether suit with
the deep designs of Pythagoras, the ascendancy he resolved to acquire,
and the oracular subjection in which he deemed it necessary to hold
those who placed themselves under his instruction. This wonderful man
set out with making himself a model of the passive and unscrupulous
docility which he afterwards required from others. He did not begin to
teach till he was forty years of age, and from eighteen to that period
he studied in foreign countries, with the resolution to submit to all
his teachers enjoined, and to make himself master of their least
communicated and most secret wisdom. In Egypt in particular, we are
told that, though he brought a letter of recommendation from
Polycrates, his native sovereign, to Amasis, king of that country, who
fully concurred with the views of the writer, the priests, jealous of
admitting a foreigner into their secrets, baffled him as long as they
could, referring him from one college to another, and prescribing to
him the most rigorous preparatives, not excluding the rite of
circumcision. [57] But Pythagoras endured and underwent every thing,
till at length their unwillingness was conquered, and his perseverance
received its suitable reward.

When in the end Pythagoras thought himself fully qualified for the
task he had all along had in view, he was no less strict in prescribing
ample preliminaries to his own scholars. At the time that a pupil was
proposed to him, the master, we are told, examined him with multiplied
questions as to his principles, his habits and intentions, observed
minutely his voice and manner of speaking, his walk and his gestures,
the lines of his countenance, and the expression and management of his
eye, and, when he was satisfied with these, then and not till then
admitted him as a probationer. [58] It is to be supposed that all this
must have been personal. As soon however as this was over, the master
was withdrawn from the sight of the pupil; and a noviciate of three
and five, in all eight years, [59] was prescribed to the scholar,
during which time he was only to hear his instructor from behind a
curtain, and the strictest silence was enjoined him through the whole
period. As the instructions Pythagoras received in Egypt and the East
admitted of no dispute, so in his turn he required an unreserved
submission from those who heard him: autos iphae "the master has said
it," was deemed a sufficient solution to all doubt and uncertainty. [60]

To give the greater authority and effect to his communications
Pythagoras hid himself during the day at least from the great body of
his pupils, and was only seen by them at night. Indeed there is no
reason to suppose that any one was admitted into his entire
familiarity. When he came forth, he appeared in a long garment of the
purest white, with a flowing beard, and a garland upon his head. He is
said to have been of the finest symmetrical form, with a majestic
carriage, and a grave and awful countenance. [61] He suffered his
followers to believe that he was one of the Gods, the Hyperborean
Apollo, [62] and is said to have told Abaris that he assumed the human
form, that he might the better invite men to an easiness of approach
and to confidence in him. [63] What however seems to be agreed in by
all his biographers, is that he professed to have already in different
ages appeared in the likeness of man: first as Aethalides, the son of
Mercury; and, when his father expressed himself ready to invest him
with any gift short of immortality, he prayed that, as the human soul
is destined successively to dwell in various forms, he might have the
privilege in each to remember his former state of being, which was
granted him. From, Aethalides he became Euphorbus, who slew Patroclus
at the siege of Troy. He then appeared as Hermotimus, then Pyrrhus, a
fisherman of Delos, and finally Pythagoras. He said that a period of
time was interposed between each transmigration, during which he
visited the seat of departed souls; and he professed to relate a part
of the wonders he had seen. [64] He is said to have eaten sparingly
and in secret, and in all respects to have given himself out for a
being not subject to the ordinary laws of nature. [65]

Pythagoras therefore pretended to miraculous endowments. Happening to
be on the sea-shore when certain fishermen drew to land an enormous
multitude of fishes, he desired them to allow him to dispose of the
capture, which they consented to, provided he would name the precise
number they had caught. He did so, and required that they should throw
their prize into the sea again, at the same time paying them the value
of the fish. [66] He tamed a Daunian bear by whispering in his ear,
and prevailed on him henceforth to refrain from the flesh of animals,
and to feed on vegetables. By the same means he induced an ox not to
eat beans, which was a diet specially prohibited by Pythagoras; and he
called down an eagle from his flight, causing him to sit on his hand,
and submit to be stroked down by the philosopher. [67] In Greece, when
he passed the river Nessus in Macedon, the stream was heard to salute
him with the words "Hail, Pythagoras!" [68] When Abaris addressed him
as one of the heavenly host, he took the stranger aside, and convinced
him that he was under no mistake, by exhibiting to him his thigh of
gold: or, according to another account, he used the same sort of
evidence at a certain time, to satisfy his pupils of his celestial
descent. [69] He is said to have been seen on the same day at
Metapontum in Italy, and at Taurominium in Sicily, though these places
are divided by the sea, so that it was conceived that it would cost
several days to pass from one to the other. [70] In one instance he
absented himself from his associates in Italy for a whole year; and
when he appeared again, related that he had passed that time in the
infernal regions, describing likewise the marvellous things he had
seen. [71] Diogenes Laertius, speaking of this circumstance affirms
however that he remained during this period in a cave, where his
mother conveyed to him intelligence and necessaries, and that, when
he came once more into light and air, he appeared so emaciated and
colourless, that he might well be believed to have come out of Hades.

The close of the life of Pythagoras was, according to every statement,
in the midst of misfortune and violence. Some particulars are related
by Iamblichus, [72] which, though he is not an authority beyond all
exception, are so characteristic as seem to entitle them to the being
transcribed. This author is more circumstantial than any other in
stating the elaborate steps by which the pupils of Pythagoras came to
be finally admitted into the full confidence of the master. He says,
that they passed three years in the first place in a state of
probation, carefully watched by their seniors, and exposed to their
occasional taunts and ironies, by way of experiment to ascertain
whether they were of a temper sufficiently philosophical and firm. At
the expiration of that period they were admitted to a noviciate, in
which they were bound to uninterrupted silence, and heard the lectures
of the master, while he was himself concealed from their view by a
curtain. They were then received to initiation, and required to
deliver over their property to the common stock. They were admitted to
intercourse with the master. They were invited to a participation of
the most obscure theories, and the abstrusest problems. If however in
this stage of their progress they were discovered to be too weak of
intellectual penetration, or any other fundamental objection were
established against them, they were expelled the community; the double
of the property they had contributed to the common stock was paid down
to them; a head-stone and a monument inscribed with their names were
set up in the place of meeting of the community; they were considered
as dead; and, if afterwards they met by chance any of those who were
of the privileged few, they were treated by them as entirely strangers.

Cylon, the richest man, or, as he is in one place styled, the prince,
of Crotona, had manifested the greatest partiality to Pythagoras. He
was at the same time a man of rude, impatient and boisterous character.
He, together with Perialus of Thurium, submitted to all the severities
of the Pythagorean school. They passed the three years of probation,
and the five years of silence. They were received into the familiarity
of the master. They were then initiated, and delivered all their
wealth into the common stock. They were however ultimately pronounced
deficient in intellectual power, or for some other reason were not
judged worthy to continue among the confidential pupils of Pythagoras.
They were expelled. The double of the property they had contributed
was paid back to them. A monument was set up in memory of what they
had been; and they were pronounced dead to the school.

It will easily be conceived in what temper Cylon sustained this
degradation. Of Perialus we hear nothing further. But Cylon, from
feelings of the deepest reverence and awe for Pythagoras, which he had
cherished for years, was filled even to bursting with inextinguishable
hatred and revenge. The unparalleled merits, the venerable age of the
master whom he had so long followed, had no power to control his
violence. His paramount influence in the city insured him the command
of a great body of followers. He excited them to a frame of turbulence
and riot. He represented to them how intolerable was the despotism of
this pretended philosopher. They surrounded the school in which the
pupils were accustomed to assemble, and set it on fire. Forty persons
perished in the flames. [73] According to some accounts Pythagoras was
absent at the time. According to others he and two of his pupils
escaped. He retired from Crotona to Metapontum. But the hostility
which had broken out in the former city, followed him there. He took
refuge in the Temple of the Muses. But he was held so closely besieged
that no provisions could be conveyed to him; and he finally perished
with hunger, after, according to Laertius, forty days' abstinence. [74]

It is difficult to imagine any thing more instructive, and more
pregnant with matter for salutary reflection, than the contrast
presented to us by the character and system of action of Pythagoras
on the one hand, and those of the great enquirers of the last two
centuries, for example, Bacon, Newton and Locke, on the other.
Pythagoras probably does not yield to any one of these in the
evidences of true intellectual greatness. In his school, in the
followers he trained resembling himself, and in the salutary effects
he produced on the institutions of the various republics of Magna
Graecia and Sicily, he must be allowed greatly to have excelled them.
His discoveries of various propositions in geometry, of the earth as
a planet, and of the solar system as now universally recognised,
clearly stamp him a genius of the highest order.

Yet this man, thus enlightened and philanthropical, established his
system of proceeding upon narrow and exclusive principles, and
conducted it by methods of artifice, quackery and delusion. One of his
leading maxims was, that the great and fundamental truths to the
establishment of which he devoted himself, were studiously to be
concealed from the vulgar, and only to be imparted to a select few,
and after years of the severest noviciate and trial. He learned his
earliest lessons of wisdom in Egypt after this method, and he
conformed through life to the example which had thus been delivered to
him. The severe examination that he made of the candidates previously
to their being admitted into his school, and the years of silence that
were then prescribed to them, testify this. He instructed them by
symbols, obscure and enigmatical propositions, which they were first
to exercise their ingenuity to expound. The authority and dogmatical
assertions of the master were to remain unquestioned; and the pupils
were to fashion themselves to obsequious and implicit submission, and
were the furthest in the world from being encouraged to the independent
exercise of their own understandings. There was nothing that Pythagoras
was more fixed to discountenance, than the communication of the truths
upon which he placed the highest value, to the uninitiated. It is not
probable therefore that he wrote any thing: all was communicated
orally, by such gradations, and with such discretion, as he might
think fit to adopt and to exercise.

Delusion and falsehood were main features of his instruction. With
what respect therefore can we consider, and what manliness worthy of
his high character and endowments can we impute to, his discourses
delivered from behind a curtain, his hiding himself during the day,
and only appearing by night in a garb assumed for the purpose of
exciting awe and veneration? What shall we say to the story of his
various transmigrations? At first sight it appears in the light of the
most audacious and unblushing imposition. And, if we were to yield so
far as to admit that by a high-wrought enthusiasm, by a long train of
maceration and visionary reveries, he succeeded in imposing on himself,
this, though in a different way, would scarcely less detract from the
high stage of eminence upon which the nobler parts of his character
would induce us to place him.

Such were some of the main causes that have made his efforts
perishable, and the lustre which should have attended his genius in a
great degree transitory and fugitive. He was probably much under the
influence of a contemptible jealousy, and must be considered as
desirous that none of his contemporaries or followers should eclipse
their master. All was oracular and dogmatic in the school of
Pythagoras. He prized and justly prized the greatness of his
attainments and discoveries, and had no conception that any thing
could go beyond them. He did not encourage, nay, he resolutely opposed,
all true independence of mind, and that undaunted spirit of enterprise
which is the atmosphere in which the sublimest thoughts are most
naturally generated. He therefore did not throw open the gates of
science and wisdom, and invite every comer; but on the contrary
narrowed the entrance, and carefully reduced the number of aspirants.
He thought not of the most likely methods to give strength and
permanence and an extensive sphere to the progress of the human mind.
For these reasons he wrote nothing; but consigned all to the frail and
uncertain custody of tradition. And distant posterity has amply
avenged itself upon the narrowness of his policy; and the name of
Pythagoras, which would otherwise have been ranked with the first
luminaries of mankind, and consigned to everlasting gratitude, has in
consequence of a few radical and fatal mistakes, been often loaded
with obloquy, and the hero who bore it been indiscriminately classed
among the votaries of imposture and artifice.


EPIMENIDES.

Epimenides has been mentioned among the disciples of Pythagoras; but
he probably lived at an earlier period. He was a native of Crete. The
first extraordinary circumstance that is recorded of him is, that,
being very young, he was sent by his father in search of a stray
sheep, when, being overcome by the heat of the weather, he retired
into a cave, and slept fifty-seven years. Supposing that he had slept
only a few hours, he repaired first to his father's country-house,
which he found in possession of a new tenant, and then to the city,
where he encountered his younger brother, now grown an old man, who
with difficulty was brought to acknowledge him. [75] It was probably
this circumstance that originally brought Epimenides into repute as a
prophet, and a favourite of the Gods.

Epimenides appears to have been one of those persons, who make it
their whole study to delude their fellow-men, and to obtain for
themselves the reputation of possessing supernatural gifts. Such
persons, almost universally, and particularly in ages of ignorance and
wonder, become themselves the dupes of their own pretensions. He gave
out that he was secretly subsisted by food brought to him by the
nymphs; and he is said to have taken nourishment in so small
quantities, as to be exempted from the ordinary necessities of nature.
[76] He boasted that he could send his soul out of his body, and recal
it, when he pleased; and alternately appeared an inanimate corpse, and
then again his life would return to him, and he appear capable of
every human function as before. [77] He is said to have practised the
ceremony of exorcising houses and fields, and thus rendering them
fruitful and blessed. [78] He frequently uttered prophecies of events
with such forms of ceremony and such sagacious judgment, that they
seemed to come to pass as he predicted.

One of the most memorable acts of his life happened in this manner.
Cylon, the head of one of the principal families in Athens, set on
foot a rebellion against the government, and surprised the citadel.
His power however was of short duration. Siege was laid to the place,
and Cylon found his safety in flight. His partisans forsook their
arms, and took refuge at the altars. Seduced from this security by
fallacious promises, they were brought to judgment and all of them put
to death. The Gods were said to be offended with this violation of the
sanctions of religion, and sent a plague upon the city. All things
were in confusion, and sadness possessed the whole community.
Prodigies were perpetually seen; the spectres of the dead walked the
streets; and terror universally prevailed. The sacrifices offered to
the gods exhibited the most unfavourable symptoms. [79] In this
emergency the Athenian senate resolved to send for Epimenides to come
to their relief. His reputation was great. He was held for a holy and
devout man, and wise in celestial things by inspiration from above. A
vessel was fitted out under the command of one of the first citizens
of the state to fetch Epimenides from Crete. He performed various
rites and purifications. He took a certain number of sheep, black and
white, and led them to the Areopagus, where he caused them to be let
loose to go wherever they would. He directed certain persons to follow
them, and mark the place where they lay down. He enquired to what
particular deity the spot was consecrated, and sacrificed the sheep to
that deity; and in the result of these ceremonies the plague was
stayed. According to others he put an end to the plague by the
sacrifice of two human victims. The Athenian senate, full of gratitude
to their benefactor, tendered him the gift of a talent. But Epimenides
refused all compensation, and only required, as an acknowledgment of
what he had done, that there should be perpetual peace between the
Athenians and the people of Gnossus, his native city. [80] He is said
to have died shortly after his return to his country, being of the age
of one hundred and fifty-seven years. [81]


EMPEDOCLES.

Empedocles has also been mentioned as a disciple of Pythagoras. But he
probably lived too late for that to have been the case. His principles
were in a great degree similar to those of that illustrious personage;
and he might have studied under one of the immediate successors of
Pythagoras. He was a citizen of Agrigentum in Sicily; and, having
inherited considerable wealth, exercised great authority in his native
place. [82] He was a distinguished orator and poet. He was greatly
conversant in the study of nature, and was eminent for his skill in
medicine. [83] In addition to these accomplishments, he appears to
have been a devoted adherent to the principles of liberty. He effected
the dissolution of the ruling council of Agrigentum, and substituted
in their room a triennial magistracy, by means of which the public
authority became not solely in the hands of the rich as before, but
was shared by them with expert and intelligent men of an inferior
class. [84] He opposed all arbitrary exercises of rule. He gave
dowries from his own stores to many young maidens of impoverished
families, and settled them in eligible marriages. [85] He performed
many cures upon his fellow-citizens; and is especially celebrated for
having restored a woman to life, who had been apparently dead,
according to one account for seven days, but according to others for
thirty. [86]

But the most memorable things known of Empedocles, are contained in
the fragments of his verses that have been preserved to us. In one of
them he says of himself, "I well remember the time before I was
Empedocles, that I once was a boy, then a girl, a plant, a glittering
fish, a bird that cut the air." [87] Addressing those who resorted to
him for improvement and wisdom, he says, "By my instructions you shall
learn medicines that are powerful to cure disease, and re-animate old
age; you shall be able to calm the savage winds which lay waste the
labours of the husbandman, and, when you will, shall send forth the
tempest again; you shall cause the skies to be fair and serene, or
once more shall draw down refreshing showers, re-animating the fruits
of the earth; nay, you shall recal the strength of the dead man, when
he has already become the victim of Pluto." [88] Further, speaking of
himself, Empedocles exclaims: "Friends, who inhabit the great city
laved by the yellow Acragas, all hail! I mix with you a God, no longer
a mortal, and am every where honoured by you, as is just; crowned with
fillets, and fragrant garlands, adorned with which when I visit
populous cities, I am revered by both men and women, who follow me by
ten thousands, enquiring the road to boundless wealth, seeking the
gift of prophecy, and who would learn the marvellous skill to cure all
kinds of diseases." [89]

The best known account of the death of Empedocles may reasonably be
considered as fabulous. From what has been said it sufficiently
appears, that he was a man of extraordinary intellectual endowments,
and the most philanthropical dispositions; at the same time that he
was immoderately vain, aspiring by every means in his power to acquire
to himself a deathless remembrance. Working on these hints, a story
has been invented that he aspired to a miraculous way of disappearing
from among men; and for this purpose repaired, when alone, to the top
of Mount Aetna, then in a state of eruption, and threw himself down the
burning crater: but it is added, that in the result of this perverse
ambition he was baffled, the volcano having thrown up one of his
brazen sandals, by means of which the mode of his death became known.
[90]


ARISTEAS.

Herodotus tells a marvellous story of one Aristeas, a poet of
Proconnesus, an island of the Propontis. This man, coming by chance
into a fuller's workshop in his native place, suddenly fell down dead.
As the man was of considerable rank, the fuller immediately, quitting
and locking up his shop, proceeded to inform his family of what had
happened. The relations went accordingly, having procured what was
requisite to give the deceased the rites of sepulture, to the shop;
but, when it was opened, they could discover no vestige of Aristeas,
either dead or alive. A traveller however from the neighbouring town
of Cyzicus on the continent, protested that he had just left that
place, and, as he set foot in the wherry which had brought him over,
had met Aristeas, and held a particular conversation with him. Seven
years after, Aristeas reappeared at Proconnesus, resided there a
considerable time, and during this abode wrote his poem of the wars of
the one-eyed Arimaspians and the Gryphons. He then again disappeared
in an unaccountable manner. But, what is more than all extraordinary,
three hundred and forty years after this disappearance, he shewed
himself again at Metapontum, in Magna Graecia, and commanded the
citizens to erect a statue in his honour near the temple of Apollo in
the forum; which being done, he raised himself in the air; and flew
away in the form of a crow. [91]


HERMOTIMUS.

Hermotimus, or, as Plutarch names him, Hermodorus of Clazomene, is
said to have possessed, like Epimenides, the marvellous power of
quitting his body, and returning to it again, as often, and for as
long a time as he pleased. In these absences his unembodied spirit
would visit what places he thought proper, observe every thing that
was going on, and, when he returned to his fleshy tabernacle, make a
minute relation of what he had seen. Hermotimus had enemies, who, one
time when his body had lain unanimated unusually long, beguiled his
wife, made her believe that he was certainly dead, and that it was
disrespectful and indecent to keep him so long in that state. The
woman therefore placed her husband on the funeral pyre, and consumed
him to ashes; so that, continues the philosopher, when the soul of
Hermotimus came back again, it no longer found its customary
receptacle to retire into. [92] Certainly this kind of treatment
appeared to furnish an infallible criterion, whether the seeming
absences of the soul of this miraculous man were pretended or real.


THE MOTHER OF DEMARATUS, KING OF SPARTA.

Herodotus [93] tells a story of the mother of Demaratus, king of
Sparta, which bears a striking resemblance to the fairy tales of
modern times. This lady, afterward queen of Sparta, was sprung from
opulent parents, but, when she was born, was so extravagantly ugly,
that her parents hid her from all human observation. According to the
mode of the times however, they sent the babe daily in its nurse's
arms to the shrine of Helen, now metamorphosed into a Goddess, to pray
that the child might be delivered from its present preternatural
deformity. On these occasions the child was shrouded in many coverings,
that it might escape being seen. One day as the nurse came out of the
temple, a strange woman met her, and asked her what she carried so
carefully concealed. The nurse said it was a female child, but of
opulent parents, and she was strictly enjoined that it should be seen
by no one. The stranger was importunate, and by dint of perseverance
overcame the nurse's reluctance. The woman took the babe in her arms,
stroked down its hair, kissed it, and then returning it to the nurse,
said that it should grow up the most perfect beauty in Sparta. So
accordingly it proved: and the king of the country, having seen her,
became so enamoured of her, that, though he already had a wife, and
she a husband, he overcame all obstacles, and made her his queen.


ORACLES.

One of the most extraordinary things to be met with in the history of
ancient times is the oracles. They maintained their reputation for
many successive centuries. The most famous perhaps were that of Delphi
in Greece, and that of Jupiter Ammon in the deserts of Lybia. But they
were scattered through many cities, many plains, and many islands.
They were consulted by the foolish and the wise; and scarcely anything
considerable was undertaken, especially about the time of the Persian
invasion into Greece, without the parties having first had recourse to
these; and they in most cases modified the conduct of princes and
armies accordingly. To render the delusion more successful, every kind
of artifice was put in practice. The oracle could only be consulted on
fixed days; and the persons who resorted to it, prefaced their
application with costly offerings to the presiding God. Their
questions passed through the hands of certain priests, residing in
and about the temple. These priests received the embassy with all due
solemnity, and retired. A priestess, or Pythia, who was seldom or
never seen by any of the profane vulgar, was the immediate vehicle of
communication with the God. She was cut off from all intercourse with
the world, and was carefully trained by the attendant priests.
Spending almost the whole of her time in solitude, and taught to
consider her office as ineffably sacred, she saw visions, and was for
the most part in a state of great excitement. The Pythia, at least of
the Delphian God, was led on with much ceremony to the performance of
her office, and placed upon the sacred tripod. The tripod, we are
told, stood over a chasm in the rock, from which issued fumes of an
inebriating quality. The Pythia became gradually penetrated through
every limb with these fumes, till her bosom swelled, her features
enlarged, her mouth foamed, her voice seemed supernatural, and she
uttered words that could sometimes scarcely be called articulate.
She could with difficulty contain herself, and seemed to be possessed,
and wholly overpowered, with the God. After a prelude of many
unintelligible sounds, uttered with fervour and a sort of frenzy, she
became by degrees more distinct. She uttered incoherent sentences,
with breaks and pauses, that were filled up with preternatural efforts
and distorted gestures; while the priests stood by, carefully recording
her words, and then reducing them into a sort of obscure signification.
They finally digested them for the most part into a species of
hexameter verse. We may suppose the supplicants during this ceremony
placed at a proper distance, so as to observe these things imperfectly,
while the less they understood, they were ordinarily the more impressed
with religious awe, and prepared implicitly to receive what was
communicated to them. Sometimes the priestess found herself in a frame,
not entirely equal to her function, and refused for the present to
proceed with the ceremony.

The priests of the oracle doubtless conducted them in a certain degree
like the gipsies and fortune-tellers of modern times, cunningly
procuring to themselves intelligence in whatever way they could, and
ingeniously worming out the secrets of their suitors, at the same time
contriving that their drift should least of all be suspected. But
their main resource probably was in the obscurity, almost amounting to
unintelligibleness, of their responses. Their prophecies in most cases
required the comment of the event to make them understood; and it not
seldom happened, that the meaning in the sequel was found to be the
diametrically opposite of that which the pious votaries had originally
conceived.

In the mean time the obscurity of the oracles was of inexpressible
service to the cause of superstition. If the event turned out to be
such as could in no way be twisted to come within the scope of the
response, the pious suitor only concluded that the failure was owing
to the grossness and carnality of his own apprehension, and not to any
deficiency in the institution. Thus the oracle by no means lost credit,
even when its meaning remained for ever in its original obscurity. But,
when, by any fortunate chance, its predictions seemed to be verified,
then the unerringness of the oracle was lauded from nation to nation;
and the omniscience of the God was admitted with astonishment and
adoration.

It would be a vulgar and absurd mistake however, to suppose that all
this was merely the affair of craft, the multitude only being the
dupes, while the priests in cold blood carried on the deception, and
secretly laughed at the juggle they were palming on the world. They
felt their own importance; and they cherished it. They felt that they
were regarded by their countrymen as something more than human; and
the opinion entertained of them by the world around them, did not fail
to excite a responsive sentiment in their own bosoms. If their
contemporaries willingly ascribed to them an exclusive sacredness, by
how much stronger an impulse were they led fully to receive so
flattering a suggestion! Their minds were in a perpetual state of
exaltation; and they believed themselves specially favoured by the God
whose temple constituted their residence. A small matter is found
sufficient to place a creed which flatters all the passions of its
votaries, on the most indubitable basis. Modern philosophers think
that by their doctrine of gases they can explain all the appearances
of the Pythia; but the ancients, to whom this doctrine was unknown,
admitted these appearances as the undoubted evidence of an
interposition from heaven.

It is certainly a matter of the extremest difficulty, for us in
imagination to place ourselves in the situation of those who believed
in the ancient polytheistical creed. And yet these believers nearly
constituted the whole of the population of the kingdoms of antiquity.
Even those who professed to have shaken off the prejudices of their
education, and to rise above the absurdities of paganism, had still
some of the old leaven adhering to them. One of the last acts of the
life of Socrates, was to order the sacrifice of a cock to be made to
Aesculapius.

Now the creed of paganism is said to have made up to the number of
thirty thousand deities. Every kingdom, every city, every street, nay,
in a manner every house, had its protecting God. These Gods were
rivals to each other; and were each jealous of his own particular
province, and watchful against the intrusion of any neighbour deity
upon ground where he had a superior right. The province of each of
these deities was of small extent; and therefore their watchfulness
and jealousy of their appropriate honours do not enter into the
slightest comparison with the Providence of the God who directs the
concerns of the universe. They had ample leisure to employ in
vindicating their prerogatives. Prophecy was of all means the plainest
and most obvious for each deity to assert his existence, and to
inforce the reverence and submission of his votaries. Prophecy was
that species of interference which was least liable to the being
confuted and exposed. The oracles, as we have said, were delivered in
terms and phrases that were nearly unintelligible. If therefore they
met with no intelligible fulfilment, this lost them nothing; and, if
it gained them no additional credit, neither did it expose them to any
disgrace. Whereas every example, where the obscure prediction seemed
to tally with, and be illustrated by any subsequent event, was hailed
with wonder and applause, confirmed the faith of the true believers,
and was held forth as a victorious confutation of the doubts of the
infidel.


INVASION OF XERXES INTO GREECE.

It is particularly suitable in this place to notice the events which
took place at Delphi upon occasion of the memorable invasion of Xerxes
into Greece. This was indeed a critical moment for the heathen
mythology. The Persians were pointed and express in their hostility
against the altars and the temples of the Greeks. It was no sooner
known that the straits of Thermopylae had been forced, than the priests
consulted the God, as to whether they should bury the treasures of the
temple, so to secure them against the sacrilege of the invader. The
answer of the oracle was: "Let nothing be moved; the God is sufficient
for the protection of his rights." The inhabitants therefore of the
neighbourhood withdrew: only sixty men and the priest remained. The
Persians in the mean time approached. Previously to this however, the
sacred arms which were placed in the temple, were seen to be moved by
invisible hands, and deposited on the declivity which was on the
outside of the building. The invaders no sooner shewed themselves,
than a miraculous storm of thunder and lightning rebounded and flashed
among the multiplied hills which surrounded the sacred area, and
struck terror into all hearts. Two vast fragments were detached from
the top of mount Parnassus, and crushed hundreds in their fall. A
voice of warlike acclamation issued from within the walls. Dismay
seized the Persian troops. The Delphians then, rushing from their
caverns, and descending from the summits, attacked them with great
slaughter. Two persons, exceeding all human stature, and that were
said to be the demigods whose fanes were erected near the temple of
Apollo, joined in the pursuit, and extended the slaughter. [94] It has
been said that the situation of the place was particularly adapted to
this mode of defence. Surrounded and almost overhung with lofty
mountain-summits, the area of the city was inclosed within crags and
precipices. No way led to it but through defiles, narrow and steep,
shadowed with wood, and commanded at every step by fastnesses from
above. In such a position artificial fires and explosion might imitate
a thunder storm. Great pains had been taken, to represent the place as
altogether abandoned; and therefore the detachment of rocks from the
top of mount Parnassus, though effected by human hands, might appear
altogether supernatural.

Nothing can more forcibly illustrate the strength of the religious
feeling among the Greeks, than the language of the Athenian government
at the time of the second descent of the Persian armament upon their
territory, when they were again compelled to abandon their houses and
land to the invader. Mardonius said to them: "I am thus commissioned
by the king of Persia, he will release and give back to you your
country; he invites you to choose a further territory, whatever you
may think desirable, which he will guarantee to you to govern as you
shall judge fit. He will rebuild for you, without its costing you
either money or labour, the temples which in his former incursion he
destroyed with fire. It is in vain for you to oppose him by force, for
his armies are innumerable." To which the Athenians replied, "As long
as the sun pursues his course in the heavens, so long will we resist
the Persian invader." Then turning to the Spartan ambassadors who were
sent to encourage and animate them to persist, they added, "It is but
natural that your employers should apprehend that we might give way
and be discouraged. But there is no sum of money so vast, and no
region so inviting and fertile, that could buy us to concur in the
enslaving of Greece. Many and resistless are the causes which induce
us to this resolve. First and chiefest, the temples and images of the
Gods, which Xerxes has burned and laid in ruins, and which we are
called upon to avenge to the utmost, instead of forming a league with
him who made this devastation. Secondly, the consideration of the
Grecian race, the same with us in blood and in speech, the same in
religion and manners, and whose cause we will never betray. Know
therefore now, if you knew not before, that, as long as a single
Athenian survives, we will never swerve from the hostility to Persia
to which we have devoted ourselves."

Contemplating this magnanimous resolution, it is in vain for us to
reflect on the absurdity, incongruity and frivolousness, as we
apprehend it, of the pagan worship, inasmuch as we find, whatever we
may think of its demerits, that the most heroic people that ever
existed on earth, in the hour of their direst calamity, regarded a
zealous and fervent adherence to that religion as the most sacred of
all duties. [95]


DEMOCRITUS.

The fame of Democritus has sustained a singular fortune. He is
represented by Pliny as one of the most superstitious of mortals. This
character is founded on certain books which appeared in his name. In
these books he is made to say, that, if the blood of certain birds be
mingled together, the combination will produce a serpent, of which
whoever eats will become endowed with the gift of understanding the
language of birds. [96] He attributes a multitude of virtues to the
limbs of a dead camelion: among others that, if the left foot of this
animal be grilled, and there be added certain herbs, and a particular
unctuous preparation, it will have the quality to render the person
who carries it about him invisible. [97] But all this is wholly
irreconcileable with the known character of Democritus, who
distinguished himself by the hypothesis that the world was framed from
the fortuitous concourse of atoms, and that the soul died with the
body. And accordingly Lucian, [98] a more judicious author than Pliny,
expressly cites Democritus as the strenuous opposer of all the
pretenders to miracles. "Such juggling tricks," he says, "call for a
Democritus, an Epicurus, a Metrodorus, or some one of that temper, who
should endeavour to detect the illusion, and would hold it for certain,
even if he could not fully lay open the deceit, that the whole was a
lying pretence, and had not a spark of reality in it."

Democritus was in reality one of the most disinterested characters on
record in the pursuit of truth. He has been styled the father of
experimental philosophy. When his father died, and the estate came to
be divided between him and two brothers, he chose the part which was
in money, though the smallest, that he might indulge him [Errata:
_read_ himself] in travelling in pursuit of knowledge. He visited
Egypt and Persia, and turned aside into Ethiopia and India. He is
reported to have said, that he had rather be the possessor of one of
the cardinal secrets of nature, than of the diadem of Persia.


SOCRATES.

Socrates is the most eminent of the ancient philosophers. He lived in
the most enlightened age of Greece, and in Athens, the most illustrious
of her cities. He was born in the middle ranks of life, the son of a
sculptor. He was of a mean countenance, with a snub nose, projecting
eyes, and otherwise of an appearance so unpromising, that a
physiognomist, his contemporary, pronounced him to be given to the
grossest vices. But he was of a penetrating understanding, the simplest
manners, and a mind wholly bent on the study of moral excellence. He
at once abjured all the lofty pretensions, and the dark and recondite
pursuits of the most applauded teachers of his time, and led those to
whom he addressed his instructions from obvious and irresistible data
to the most unexpected and useful conclusions. There was something in
his manner of teaching that drew to him the noblest youth of Athens.
Plato and Xenophon, two of the most admirable of the Greek writers,
were among his pupils. He reconciled in his own person in a surprising
degree poverty with the loftiest principles of independence. He taught
an unreserved submission to the laws of our country. He several times
unequivocally displayed his valour in the field of battle, while at
the same time he kept aloof from public offices and trusts. The
serenity of his mind never forsook him. He was at all times ready to
teach, and never found it difficult to detach himself from his own
concerns, to attend to the wants and wishes of others. He was
uniformly courteous and unpretending; and, if at any time he indulged
in a vein of playful ridicule, it was only against the presumptuously
ignorant, and those who were without foundation wise in their own
conceit.

Yet, with all these advantages and perfections, the name of Socrates
would not have been handed down with such lustre to posterity but for
the manner of his death. He made himself many enemies. The plainness
of his manner and the simplicity of his instructions were inexpressibly
wounding to those (and they were many), who, setting up for professors,
had hitherto endeavoured to dazzle their hearers by the loftiness of
their claims, and to command from them implicit submission by the
arrogance with which they dictated. It must be surprising to us, that
a man like Socrates should be arraigned in a country like Athens upon
a capital accusation. He was charged with instilling into the youth a
disobedience to their duties, and propagating impiety to the Gods,
faults of which he was notoriously innocent. But the plot against him
was deeply laid, and is said to have been twenty years in the
concoction. And he greatly assisted the machinations of his
adversaries, by the wonderful firmness of his conduct upon his trial,
and his spirited resolution not to submit to any thing indirect and
pusillanimous. He defended himself with a serene countenance and the
most cogent arguments, but would not stoop to deprecation and intreaty.
When sentence was pronounced against him, this did not induce the
least alteration of his conduct. He did not think that a life which he
had passed for seventy years with a clear conscience, was worth
preserving by the sacrifice of honour. He refused to escape from
prison, when one of his rich friends had already purchased of the
jailor the means of his freedom. And, during the last days of his life,
and when he was waiting the signal of death, which was to be the return
of a ship that had been sent with sacrifices to Delos, he uttered those
admirable discourses, which have been recorded by Xenophon and Plato
to the latest posterity.

But the question which introduces his name into this volume, is that
of what is called the demon of Socrates. He said that he repeatedly
received a divine premonition of dangers impending over himself and
others; and considerable pains have been taken to ascertain the cause
and author of these premonitions. Several persons, among whom we may
include Plato, have conceived that Socrates regarded himself as
attended by a supernatural guardian who at all times watched over his
welfare and concerns.

But the solution is probably of a simpler nature. Socrates, with all
his incomparable excellencies and perfections, was not exempt from the
superstitions of his age and country. He had been bred up among the
absurdities of polytheism. In them were included, as we have seen, a
profound deference for the responses of oracles, and a vigilant
attention to portents and omens. Socrates appears to have been
exceedingly regardful of omens. Plato tells us that this intimation,
which he spoke of as his demon, never prompted him to any act, but
occasionally interfered to prevent him or his friends from proceeding
in any thing that would have been attended with injurious consequences.
[99] Sometimes he described it as a voice, which no one however heard
but himself; and sometimes it shewed itself in the act of sneezing. If
the sneezing came, when he was in doubt to do a thing or not to do it,
it confirmed him; but if, being already engaged in any act, he sneezed,
this he considered as a warning to desist. If any of his friends
sneezed on his right hand, he interpreted this as a favourable omen;
but, if on his left, he immediately relinquished his purpose. [100]
Socrates vindicated his mode of expressing himself on the subject, by
saying that others, when they spoke of omens, for example, by the
voice of a bird, said the bird told me this, but that he, knowing that
the omen was purely instrumental to a higher power, deemed it more
religious and respectful to have regard only to the higher power, and
to say that God had graciously warned him. [101] One of the examples
of this presage was, that, going along a narrow street with several
companions in earnest discourse, he suddenly stopped, and turned
another way, warning his friends to do the same. Some yielded to him,
and others went on, who were encountered by the rushing forward of a
multitude of hogs, and did not escape without considerable
inconvenience and injury. [102] In another instance one of a company
among whom was Socrates, had confederated to commit an act of
assassination. Accordingly he rose to quit the place, saying to
Socrates, "I will be back presently." Socrates, unaware of his purpose,
but having received the intimation of his demon, said to him earnestly,
"Go not." The conspirator sat down. Again however he rose, and again
Socrates stopped him. At length he escaped, without the observation of
the philosopher, and committed the act, for which he was afterwards
brought to trial. When led to execution, he exclaimed, "This would
never have happened to me, if I had yielded to the intimation of
Socrates." [103] In the same manner, and by a similar suggestion, the
philosopher predicted the miscarriage of the Athenian expedition to
Sicily under Nicias, which terminated with such signal disaster. [104]
This feature in the character of Socrates is remarkable, and may shew
the prevalence of superstitious observances, even in persons whom we
might think the most likely to be exempt from this weakness.




ROME.


VIRGIL.

From the Greeks let us turn to the Romans. The earliest examples to
our purpose occur in the Aeneid. And, though Virgil is a poet, yet is
he so correct a writer, that we may well take for granted, that he
either records facts which had been handed down by tradition, or that,
when he feigns, he feigns things strikingly in accord with the manners
and belief of the age of which he speaks.


POLYDORUS.

One of the first passages that occur, is of the ghost of the deceased
Polydorus on the coast of Thrace. Polydorus, the son of Priam, was
murdered by the king of that country, his host, for the sake of the
treasures he had brought with him from Troy. He was struck through
with darts made of the wood of the myrtle. The body was cast into a
pit, and earth thrown upon it. The stems of myrtle grew and flourished.
Aeneas, after the burning of Troy, first attempted a settlement in this
place. Near the spot where he landed he found a hillock thickly set
with myrtle. He attempted to gather some, thinking it might form a
suitable screen to an altar which he had just raised. To his
astonishment and horror he found the branches he had plucked, dropping
with blood. He tried the experiment again and again. At length a voice
from the mound was heard, exclaiming, "Spare me! I am Polydorus;" and
warning him to fly the blood-stained and treacherous shore.


DIDO.

We have a more detailed tale of necromancy, when Dido, deserted by
Aeneas, resolves on self-destruction. To delude her sister as to her
secret purpose, she sends for a priestess from the gardens of the
Hesperides, pretending that her object is by magical incantations
again to relumine the passion of love in the breast of Aeneas. This
priestess is endowed with the power, by potent verse to free the
oppressed soul from care, and by similar means to agitate the bosom
with passion which is free from its empire. She can arrest the
headlong stream, and cause the stars to return back in their orbits.
She can call up the ghosts of the dead. She is able to compel the
solid earth to rock, and the trees of the forest to descend from their
mountains. To give effect to the infernal spell, Dido commands that a
funeral pyre shall be set up in the interior court of her palace, and
that the arms of Aeneas, what remained of his attire, and the marriage
bed in which Dido had received him, shall be heaped upon it. The pyre
is hung round with garlands, and adorned with branches of cypress. The
sword of Aeneas and his picture are added. Altars are placed round the
pyre; and the priestess, with dishevelled hair, calls with terrific
charms upon her three hundred Gods, upon Erebus, chaos, and the
three-faced Hecate. She sprinkles around the waters of Avernus, and
adds certain herbs that had been cropped by moonlight with a sickle of
brass. She brings with her the excrescence which is found upon the
forehead of a new-cast foal, of the size of a dried fig, and which
unless first eaten by the mare, the mother never admits her young to
the nourishment of her milk. After these preparations, Dido, with
garments tucked up, and with one foot bare, approached the altars,
breaking over them a consecrated cake, and embracing them successively
in her arms. The pyre was then to be set on fire; and, as the
different objects placed upon it were gradually consumed, the charm
became complete, and the ends proposed to the ceremony were expected
to follow. Dido assures her sister, that she well knew the unlawfulness
of her proceeding, and protests that nothing but irresistible necessity
should have compelled her to have recourse to these unhallowed arts.
She finally stabs herself, and expires.


ROMULUS.

The early history of Rome is, as might be expected, interspersed with
prodigies. Romulus himself, the founder, after a prosperous reign of
many years, disappeared at last by a miracle. The king assembled his
army to a general review, when suddenly, in the midst of the ceremony,
a tempest arose, with vivid lightnings and tremendous crashes of
thunder. Romulus became enveloped in a cloud, and, when, shortly after,
a clear sky and serene heavens succeeded, the king was no more seen,
and the throne upon which he had sat appeared vacant. The people were
somewhat dissatisfied with the event, and appear to have suspected
foul play. But the next day Julius Proculus, a senator of the highest
character, shewed himself in the general assembly, and assured them,
that, with the first dawn of the morning, Romulus had stood before him,
and certified to him that the Gods had taken him up to their celestial
abodes, authorising him withal to declare to his citizens, that their
arms should be for ever successful against all their enemies. [105]


NUMA.

Numa was the second king of Rome: and, the object of Romulus having
been to render his people soldiers and invincible in war, Numa, an old
man and a philosopher, made it his purpose to civilise them, and
deeply to imbue them with sentiments of religion. He appears to have
imagined the thing best calculated to accomplish this purpose, was to
lead them by prodigies and the persuasion of an intercourse with the
invisible world. A shield fell from heaven in his time, which he
caused to be carefully kept and consecrated to the Gods; and he
conceived no means so likely to be effectual to this end, as to make
eleven other shields exactly like the one which had descended by
miracle, so that, if an accident happened to any one, the Romans might
believe that the one given to them by the divinity was still in their
possession.[106]

Numa gave to his people civil statutes, and a code of observances in
matters of religion; and these also were inforced with a divine
sanction. Numa met the goddess Egeria from time to time in a cave; and
by her was instructed in the institutions he should give to the Romans:
and this barbarous people, awed by the venerable appearance of their
king, by the sanctity of his manners, and still more by the divine
favour which was so signally imparted to him, received his mandates
with exemplary reverence, and ever after implicitly conformed
themselves to all that he had suggested. [107]


TULLUS HOSTILIUS.

Tullus Hostilius, the third king of Rome, restored again the policy of
Romulus. In his time, Alba, the parent state, was subdued and united
to its more flourishing colony. In the mean time Tullus, who during
the greater part of his reign had been distinguished by martial
achievements, in the latter part became the victim of superstitions.
A shower of stones fell from heaven, in the manner, as Livy tells us,
of a hail-storm. A plague speedily succeeded to this prodigy. [108]
Tullus, awed by these events, gave his whole attention to the rites of
religion. Among other things he found in the sacred books of Numa an
account of a certain ceremony, by which, if rightly performed, the
appearance of a God, named Jupiter Elicius, would be conjured up. But
Tullus, who had spent his best days in the ensanguined field, proved
inadequate to this new undertaking. Some defects having occurred in
his performance of the magical ceremony, not only no God appeared at
his bidding, but, the anger of heaven being awakened, a thunderbolt
fell on the palace, and the king, and the place of his abode were
consumed together. [109]


ACCIUS NAVIUS.

In the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, another
famous prodigy is recorded. The king had resolved to increase the
number of the Roman cavalry. Romulus had raised the first body with
the customary ceremony of augury. Tarquinius proposed to proceed in
the present case, omitting this ceremony. Accius Navius, the chief
augur, protested against the innovation. Tarquin, in contempt of his
interference, addressed Accius, saying, "Come, augur, consult your
birds, and tell me, whether the thing I have now in my mind can be
done, or cannot be done." Accius proceeded according to the rules of
his art, and told the king it could be done. "What I was thinking of,"
replied Tarquinius, "was whether you could cut this whetstone in two
with this razor." Accius immediately took the one instrument and the
other, and performed the prodigy in the face of the assembled people.
[110]


SERVIUS TULLIUS.

Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome, was the model of a
disinterested and liberal politician, and gave to his subjects those
institutions to which, more than to any other cause, they were indebted
for their subsequent greatness. Tarquinius subjected nearly the whole
people of Latium to his rule, capturing one town of this district
after another. In Corniculum, one of these places, Servius Tullius,
being in extreme youth, was made a prisoner of war, and subsequently
dwelt as a slave in the king's palace. One day as he lay asleep in the
sight of many, his head was observed to be on fire. The bystanders,
terrified at the spectacle, hastened to bring water that they might
extinguish the flames. The queen forbade their assiduity, regarding
the event as a token from the Gods. By and by the boy awoke of his own
accord, and the flames at the same instant disappeared. The queen,
impressed with the prodigy, became persuaded that the youth was
reserved for high fortunes, and directed that he should be instructed
accordingly in all liberal knowledge. In due time he was married to
the daughter of Tarquinius, and was destined in all men's minds to
succeed in the throne, which took place in the sequel. [111]

In the year of Rome two hundred and ninety one, forty-seven years
after the expulsion of Tarquin, a dreadful plague broke out in the
city, and carried off both the consuls, the augurs, and a vast
multitude of the people. The following year was distinguished by
numerous prodigies; fires were seen in the heavens, and the earth
shook, spectres appeared, and supernatural voices were heard, an ox
spoke, and a shower of raw flesh fell in the fields. Most of these
prodigies were not preternatural; the speaking ox was probably
received on the report of a single hearer; and the whole was invested
with exaggerated terror by means of the desolation of the preceding
year. [112]


THE SORCERESS OF VIRGIL.

Prodigies are plentifully distributed through the earlier parts of the
Roman history; but it is not our purpose to enter into a chronological
detail on the subject. And in reality those already given, except in
the instance of Tullus Hostilius, do not entirely fall within the
scope of the present volume. The Roman poets, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and
Lucan, give a fuller insight than the Latin prose-writers, into the
conceptions of their countrymen upon the subject of incantations and
magic.

The eighth eclogue of Virgil, entitled Pharmaceutria, is particularly
to our purpose in this point. There is an Idyll of Theocritus under
the same name; but it is of an obscurer character; and the enchantress
is not, like that of Virgil, triumphant in the success of her arts.

The sorceress is introduced by Virgil, giving direction to her female
attendant as to the due administration of her charms. Her object is to
recal Daphnis, whom she styles her husband, to his former love for her.
At the same time, she says, she will endeavour by magic to turn him
away from his wholesome sense. She directs her attendant to burn
vervain and frankincense; and she ascribes the highest efficacy to the
solemn chant, which, she says, can call down the moon from its sphere,
can make the cold-blooded snake burst in the field, and was the means
by which Circe turned the companions of Ulysses into beasts. She
orders his image to be thrice bound round with fillets of three
colours, and then that it be paraded about a prepared altar, while in
binding the knots the attendant shall still say, "Thus do I bind the
fillets of Venus." One image of clay and one of wax are placed before
the same fire; and as the image of clay hardens, so does the heart of
Daphnis harden towards his new mistress; and as the image of wax
softens, so is the heart of Daphnis made tender towards the sorceress.
She commands a consecrated cake to be broken over the image, and
crackling laurels to be burned before it, that as Daphnis had
tormented her by his infidelity, so he in his turn may be agitated
with a returning constancy. She prays that as the wanton heifer
pursues the steer through woods and glens, till at length, worn out
with fatigue, she lies down on the oozy reeds by the banks of the
stream, and the night-dew is unable to induce her to withdraw, so
Daphnis may be led on after her for ever with inextinguishable love.
She buries the relics of what had belonged to Daphnis beneath her
threshold. She bruises poisonous herbs of resistless virtue which had
been gathered in the kingdom of Pontus, herbs, which enabled him who
gave them to turn himself into a hungry wolf prowling amidst the
forests, to call up ghosts from the grave, and to translate the
ripened harvest from the field where it grew to the lands of another.
She orders her attendant to bring out to the face of heaven the ashes
of these herbs, and [Errata: _dele_ and] to cast them over her
head into the running stream, and at the same time taking care not to
look behind her. After all her efforts the sorceress begins to despair.
She says, "Daphnis heeds not my incantations, heeds not the Gods." She
looks again; she perceives the ashes on the altar emit sparkles of
fire; she hears her faithful house-dog bark before the door; she says,
"Can these things be; or do lovers dream what they desire? It is not
so! The real Daphnis comes; I hear his steps; he has left the deluding
town; he hastens to my longing arms!"


CANIDIA.

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]


ERICHTHO.

Lucan, in his Pharsalia, [115] takes occasion, immediately before the
battle which was to decide the fate of the Roman world, to introduce
Sextus, the younger son of Pompey, as impatient to enquire, even by
the most sacrilegious means, into the important events which are
immediately impending. He is encouraged in the attempt by the
reflection, that the soil upon which they are now standing, Thessaly,
had been notorious for ages as the noxious and unwholesome seat of
sorcery and witchcraft. The poet therefore embraces this occasion to
expatiate on the various modes in which this detested art was
considered as displaying itself. And, however he may have been
ambitious to seize this opportunity to display the wealth of his
imagination, the whole does not fail to be curious, as an exhibition
of the system of magical power so far as the matter in hand is
concerned.

The soil of Thessaly, says the poet, is in the utmost degree fertile
in poisonous herbs, and her rocks confess the power of the sepulchral
song of the magician. There a vegetation springs up of virtue to
compel the Gods; and Colchis itself imports from Thessaly treasures of
this sort which she cannot boast as her own. The chaunt of the
Thessalian witch penetrates the furthest seat of the Gods, and
contains words so powerful, that not the care of the skies, or of the
revolving spheres, can avail as an excuse to the deities to decline
its force. Babylon and Memphis yield to the superior might; and the
Gods of foreign climes fly to fulfil the dread behests of the magician.

Prompted by Thessalian song, love glides into the hardest hearts; and
even the severity of age is taught to burn with youthful fires. The
ingredients of the poisoned cup, nor the excrescence found on the
forehead of the new-cast foal, can rival in efficacy the witching
incantation. The soul is melted by its single force. The heart which
not all the attractions of the genial bed could fire, nor the
influence of the most beautiful form, the wheel of the sorceress shall
force from its bent.

But the effects are perhaps still more marvellous that are produced on
inanimate and unintellectual nature. The eternal succession of the
world is suspended; day delays to rise on the earth; the skies no
longer obey their ruler. Nature becomes still at the incantation: and
Jove, accustomed to guide the machine, is astonished to find the poles
disobedient to his impulse. Now the sorceress deluges the plains with
rain, hides the face of heaven with murky clouds, and the thunders
roll, unbidden by the thunderer. Anon she shakes her hair, and the
darkness is dispersed, and the whole horizon is cleared. At one time
the sea rages, urged by no storm; and at another is smooth as glass,
in defiance of the tempestuous North. The breath of the enchanter
carries along the bark in the teeth of the wind; the headlong torrent
is suspended, and rivers run back to their source. The Nile overflows
not in the summer; the crooked Meander shapes to itself a direct
course; the sluggish Arar gives new swiftness to the rapid Rhone; and
the mountains bow their heads to their foundations. Clouds shroud the
peaks of the cloudless Olympus; and the Scythian snows dissolve,
unurged by the sun. The sea, though impelled by the tempestuous
constellations, is counteracted by witchcraft, and no longer beats
along the shore. Earthquakes shake the solid globe; and the affrighted
inhabitants behold both hemispheres at once. The animals most dreaded
for their fury, and whose rage is mortal, become tame; the hungry
tiger and the lordly lion fawn at the sorceress's feet; the snake
untwines all her folds amidst the snow; the viper, divided by wounds,
unites again its severed parts; and the envenomed serpent pines and
dies under the power of a breath more fatal than his own.

What, exclaims the poet, is the nature of the compulsion thus
exercised on the Gods, this obedience to song and to potent herbs,
this fear to disobey and scorn the enchanter? Do they yield from
necessity, or is it a voluntary subjection? Is it the piety of these
hags that obtains the reward, or by menaces do they secure their
purpose? Are all the Gods subject to this control, or, is there one
God upon whom it has power, who, himself compelled, compels the
elements? The stars fall from heaven at their command. The silver moon
yields to their execrations, and burns with a smouldering flame, even
as when the earth comes between her and the sun, and by its shadow
intercepts its rays; thus is the moon brought lower and more low, till
she covers with her froth the herbs destined to receive her malignant
influence.

But Erichtho, the witch of the poet, flouts all these arts, as too
poor and timid for her purposes. She never allows a roof to cover her
horrid head, or confesses the influence of the Houshold Gods. She
inhabits the deserted tomb, and dwells in a grave from which the ghost
of the dead has been previously expelled. She knows the Stygian abodes,
and the counsels of the infernals. Her countenance is lean; and her
complexion overspread with deadly paleness. Her hair is neglected and
matted. But when clouds and tempests obscure the stars, then she comes
forth, and defies the midnight lightning. Wherever she treads, the
fruits of the earth become withered, and the wholesome air is poisoned
with her breath. She offers no prayers, and pours forth no
supplications; she has recourse to no divination. She delights to
profane the sacred altar with a funereal flame, and pollutes the
incense with a torch from the pyre. The Gods yield at once to her
voice, nor dare to provoke her to a second mandate. She incloses the
living man within the confines of the grave; she subjects to sudden
death those who were destined to a protracted age; and she brings back
to life the corses of the dead. She snatches the smoaking cinders,
and the bones whitened with flame, from the midst of the pile, and
wrests the torch from the hand of the mourning parent. She seizes the
fragments of the burning shroud, and the embers yet moistened with
blood. But, where the sad remains are already hearsed in marble, it is
there that she most delights to exercise her sacrilegious power. She
tears the limbs of the dead, and digs out their eyes. She gnaws their
fingers. She separates with her teeth the rope on the gibbet, and
tears away the murderer from the cross on which he hung suspended. She
applies to her purposes the entrails withered with the wind, and the
marrow that had been dried by the sun. She bears away the nails which
had pierced the hands and feet of the criminal, the clotted blood
which had distilled from his wounds, and the sinews that had held him
suspended. She pounces upon the body of the dead in the battle-field,
anticipating the vulture and the beast of prey; but she does not
divide the limbs with a knife, nor tear them asunder with her hands:
she watches the approach of the wolf, that she may wrench the morsels
from his hungry jaws. Nor does the thought of murder deter her, if her
rites require the living blood, first spurting from the lacerated
throat. She drags forth the foetus from its pregnant mother, by a
passage which violence has opened. Wherever there is occasion for a
bolder and more remorseless ghost, with her own hand she dismisses him
from life; man at every period of existence furnishes her with
materials. She drags away the first down from the cheek of the
stripling, and with her left hand cuts the favourite lock from the
head of the young man. Often she watches with seemingly pious care the
dying hours of a relative, and seizes the occasion to bite his lips,
to compress his windpipe, and whisper in his expiring organ some
message to the infernal shades.

Sextus, guided by the general fame of this woman, sought her in her
haunts. He chose his time, in the depth of the night, when the sun is
at its lowermost distance from the upper sky. He took his way through
the desert fields. He took for companions the associates, the
accustomed ministers of his crimes. Wandering among broken graves and
crumbling sepulchres, they discovered her, sitting sublime on a ragged
rock, where mount Haemus stretches its roots to the Pharsalic field.
She was mumbling charms of the Magi and the magical Gods. For she
feared that the war might yet be transferred to other than the
Emathian fields. The sorceress was busy therefore enchanting the soil
of Philippi, and scattering on its surface the juice of potent herbs,
that it might be heaped with carcasses of the dead, and saturated with
their blood, that Macedon, and not Italy, might receive the bodies of
departed kings and the bones of the noble, and might be amply peopled
with the shades of men. Her choicest labour was as to the earth where
should be deposited the prostrate Pompey, or the limbs of the mighty
Caesar.

Sextus approached, and bespoke her thus: "Oh, glory of Haemonia, that
hast the power to divulge the fates of men, or canst turn aside fate
itself from its prescribed course, I pray thee to exercise thy gift in
disclosing events to come. Not the meanest of the Roman race am I, the
offspring of an illustrious chieftain, lord of the world in the one
case, or in the other the destined heir to my father's calamity. I
stand on a tremendous and giddy height: snatch me from this posture of
doubt; let me not blindly rush on, and blindly fall; extort this
secret from the Gods, or force the dead to confess what they know."

To whom the Thessalian crone replied: "If you asked to change the fate
of an individual, though it were to restore an old man, decrepid with
age, to vigorous youth, I could comply; but to break the eternal chain
of causes and consequences exceeds even our power. You seek however
only a foreknowledge of events to come, and you shall be gratified.
Meanwhile it were best, where slaughter has afforded so ample a field,
to select the body of one newly deceased, and whose flexible organs
shall be yet capable of speech, not with lineaments already hardened
in the sun."

Saying thus, Erichtho proceeded (having first with her art made the
night itself more dark, and involved her head in a pitchy cloud), to
explore the field, and examine one by one the bodies of the unburied
dead. As she approached, the wolves fled before her, and the birds of
prey, unwillingly sheathing their talons, abandoned their repast,
while the Thessalian witch, searching into the vital parts of the
frames before her, at length fixed on one whose lungs were uninjured,
and whose organs of speech had sustained no wound. The fate of many
hung in doubt, till she had made her selection. Had the revival of
whole armies been her will, armies would have stood up obedient to her
bidding. She passed a hook beneath the jaw of the selected one, and,
fastening it to a cord, dragged him along over rocks and stones, till
she reached a cave, overhung by a projecting ridge. A gloomy fissure
in the ground was there, of a depth almost reaching to the Infernal
Gods, where the yew-tree spread thick its horizontal branches, at all
times excluding the light of the sun. Fearful and withering shade was
there, and noisome slime cherished by the livelong night. The air was
heavy and flagging as that of the Taenarian promontory; and hither the
God of hell permits his ghosts to extend their wanderings. It is
doubtful whether the sorceress called up the dead to attend her here,
or herself descended to the abodes of Pluto. She put on a fearful and
variegated robe; she covered her face with her dishevelled hair, and
bound her brow with a wreath of vipers.

Meanwhile she observed Sextus afraid, with his eyes fixed on the
ground, and his companions trembling; and thus she reproached them.
"Lay aside," she said, "your vainly-conceived terrors! You shall
behold only a living and a human figure, whose accents you may listen
to with perfect security. If this alarms you, what would you say, if
you should have seen the Stygian lakes, and the shores burning with
sulphur unconsumed, if the furies stood before you, and Cerberus with
his mane of vipers, and the giants chained in eternal adamant? Yet all
these you might have witnessed unharmed; for all these would quail at
the terror of my brow."

She spoke, and next plied the dead body with her arts. She supples his
wounds, and infuses fresh blood into his veins: she frees his scars
from the clotted gore, and penetrates them with froth from the moon.
She mixes whatever nature has engendered in its most fearful caprices,
foam from the jaws of a mad dog, the entrails of the lynx, the backbone
of the hyena, and the marrow of a stag that had dieted on serpents,
the sinews of the remora, and the eyes of a dragon, the eggs of the
eagle, the flying serpent of Arabia, the viper that guards the pearl
in the Red Sea, the slough of the hooded snake, and the ashes that
remain when the phoenix has been consumed. To these she adds all venom
that has a name, the foliage of herbs over which she has sung her
charms, and on which she had voided her rheum as they grew.

At length she chaunts her incantation to the Stygian Gods, in a voice
compounded of all discords, and altogether alien to human organs. It
resembles at once the barking of a dog, and the howl of a wolf; it
consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous
wild beas

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