Jesus Christ 477; others 500 years before the Trojan war; others 5000 years before that famous war; others 6000 years before that great event. Some believe that Zoroaster is the same as Ham, the son of Noah. Lastly, others maintain that there were several Zoroasters. What appears indubitably true is, that the worship of a plurality of gods, as also magic, superstition, and oracles, came from the Egyptians and Chaldeans, or Persians, to the Greeks, and from the Greeks to the Latins.
From the time of Homer,153 magic was quite common among the Greeks. That poet speaks of the cure of wounds, and of blood staunched by the secrets of magic, and by enchantment. St. Paul, when at Ephesus, caused to be burned there books of magic and curious secrets, the value of which amounted to the sum of 50,000 pieces of silver.154 We have before said a few words concerning Simon the magician, and the magician Elymas, known in the Acts of the Apostles.155 Pindar says156 that the centaur Chiron cured several enchantments. When they say that Orpheus rescued from hell his wife Eurydice, who had died from the bite of a serpent, they simply mean that he cured her by the power of charms.157 The poets have employed magic verses to make themselves beloved, and they have taught them to others for the same purpose; they may be seen in Theocritus, Catullus, and Virgil. Theophrastus affirms that there are magical verses which cure sciatica. Cato mentions (or repeats) some against luxations.158 Varro admits that there are some powerful against the gout.
The sacred books testify that enchanters have the secret of putting serpents to sleep, and of charming them, so that they can never either bite again or cause any more harm.159 The crocodile, that terrible animal, fears even the smell and voice of the Tentyriens.160 Job, speaking of the leviathan, which we believe to be the crocodile, says, "Shall the enchanter destroy it?"161 And in Ecclesiasticus, "Who will pity the enchanter that has been bitten by the serpent?"162
Everybody knows what is related of the Marsi, people of Italy, and of the Psyllæ, who possessed the secret of charming serpents. One would say, says St. Augustine,163 that these animals understand the languages of the Marsi, so obedient are they to their orders; we see them come out of their caverns as soon as the Marsian has spoken. All this can only be done, says the same father, by the power of the malignant spirit, whom God permits to exercise this empire over venomous reptiles, above all, the serpent, as if to punish him for what he did to the first woman. In fact, it may be remarked that no animal is more exposed to charms, and the effects of magic art, than the serpent.
The laws of the Twelve Tables forbid the charming of a neighbor's crops, qui fruges excantâsset. Valerius Flaccus quotes authors who affirm that when the Romans were about to besiege a town, they employed their priests to evoke the divinity who presided over it, promising him a temple in Rome, either like the one dedicated to him in the besieged place, or on a rather larger scale, and that the proper worship should be paid to him. Pliny says that the memory of these evocations is preserved among the priests.
If that which we have just related, and what we read in ancient and modern writers, is at all real, and produces the effects attributed to it, it cannot be doubted that there is something supernatural in it, and that the devil has a great share in the matter.
The Abbot Trithemius speaks of a sorceress who, by means of certain beverages, changed a young Burgundian into a beast.
Everybody knows the fable of Circé, who changed the soldiers or companions of Ulysses into swine. We know also the fable of the Golden Ass, by Apuleius, which contains the account of a man metamorphosed into an ass. I bring forward these things merely as what they are, that is to say, simply poetic fictions.
But it is very credible that these fictions are not destitute of some foundation, like many other fables, which contain not only a hidden and moral sense, but which have also some relation to an event really historical: for instance, what is said of the Golden Fleece carried away by Jason; of the Wooden Horse, made use of to surprise the city of Troy; the Twelve Labors of Hercules; the metamorphoses related by Ovid. All fabulous as those things appear in the poets, they have, nevertheless, their historical truth. And thus the pagan poets and historians have travestied and disguised the stories of the Old Testament, and have attributed to Bacchus, Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo, and Hercules, what is related of Noah, Moses, Aaron, Samson, and Jonah, &c.
Origen, writing against Celsus, supposes the reality of magic, and says that the Magi who came to adore Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, wishing to perform their accustomed operations, not being able to succeed, a superior power preventing the effect and imposing silence on the demon, they sought out the cause, and beheld at the same time a divine sign in the heavens, whence they concluded that it was the Being spoken of by Balaam, and that the new King whose birth he had predicted, was born in Judea, and immediately they resolved to go and seek him. Origen believes that magicians, according to the rules of their art, often foretell the future, and that their predictions are followed by the event, unless the power of God, or that of the angels, prevents the effect of their conjurations, and puts them to silence.164
CHAPTER XIII.
EXAMPLES WHICH PROVE THE REALITY OF MAGIC
St. Augustine165 remarks that not only the poets, but the historians even, relate that Diomede, of whom the Greeks have made a divinity, had not the happiness to return to his country with the other princes who had been at the siege of Troy; that his companions were changed into birds, and that these birds have their dwelling in the environs of the Temple of Diomede, which is situated near Mount Garganos; that these birds caress the Greeks who come to visit this temple, but fly at and peck the strangers who arrive there.
Varro, the most learned of Romans, to render this more credible, relates what everybody knows about Circé, who changed the companions of Ulysses into beasts; and what is said of the Arcadians, who, after having drawn lots, swam over a certain lake, after which they were metamorphosed into wolves, and ran about in the forests like other wolves. If during the time of their transmutation they did not eat human flesh, at the end of nine years they repassed the same lake, and resumed their former shape.
The same Varro relates of a certain Demenotas that, having tasted the flesh of a child which the Arcadians had immolated to their god Lycæa, he had also been changed into a wolf, and ten years after he had resumed his natural form, had appeared at the Olympic games, and won the prize for pugilism.
St. Augustine testifies that in his time many believed that these transformations still took place, and some persons even affirmed that they had experienced them in their own persons. He adds that, when in Italy, he was told that certain women gave cheese to strangers who lodged at their houses, when these strangers were immediately changed into beasts of burden, without losing their reason, and carried the loads which were placed upon them; after which they returned to their former state. He says, moreover, that a certain man, named Præstantius, related that his father, having eaten of this magic cheese, remained lying in bed, without any one being able to awaken him for several days, when he awoke, and said that he had been changed into a horse, and had carried victuals to the army; and the thing was found to be true, although it appeared to him to be only a dream.
St. Augustine, reasoning on all this, says that either these things are false, or else so extraordinary that we cannot give faith to them. It is not to be doubted that God, by his almighty power, can do anything that he thinks proper, but that the devil, who is of a spiritual nature, can do nothing without
Homer, Iliad, IV.
Acts xix. 19.
Acts viii. 9; xiii. 8.
Pind. Od. iv.
Plin. I. 28.
Cato de Rerustic. c. 160.
Psalm lvii. Jer. vii. 17. Eccles. x. 11.
Plin. lib. viii. c. 50.
Job xl. 25.
Ecclus. xii. 13.
Plin. lib. xxviii.
The fables of Jason and many others of the same class are said by Fortuitus Comes to have a reference to alchemy.
Aug. de Civit. Dei, lib. xviii. c. 16-18.
