TABLE-MOVING AND ALPHABET-RAPPING IN THE FOURTH CENTURY.
The following remarkable narration is the confession of a conspirator named Hilarius, who was accused of resorting to unlawful arts for the purpose of discovering who should be the successor to the Roman Emperor Valens, who died A.D. 378. We are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary historian, that, while under torture, he thus addressed his judges:—
With direful rites, O august judges, we prepared this unfortunate little table, which you see, of laurel branches, in imitation of the Delphic cortina, (or tripod,) and when it had been duly consecrated by imprecation of secret charms and many long and choric ceremonies, we at length moved it. The method of moving it, when it was consulted on secret matters, was as follows: It was placed in the midst of a house purified with Arabian odors; upon it was placed a round dish, made of various metallic substances, which had the twenty-four letters of the alphabet curiously engraved round the rim, at accurately-measured distances from each other. One clothed with linen garments, carrying branches of a sacred tree, and having, by charms framed for the purpose, propitiated the deity who is the giver of prescience, places other lesser cortinæ on this larger one, with ceremonial skill. He holds over them a ring which has been subjected to some mysterious preparation, and which is suspended by a very fine Carpathian thread. This ring, passing over the intervals, and falling on one letter after the other, spells out heroic verses pertinent to the questions asked. We then thus inquired who should succeed to the government of the empire. The leaping ring had indicated two syllables, (The-od;) and on the addition of the last letter one of the persons present cried out, “Theodorus.”
Theodorus, and many others, were executed for their share in this dark transaction, (see Gibbon;) but Theodosius the Great finally succeeded to the empire, and was, of course, supposed to be the person indicated by the magic rites. The above literal translation is given by the learned Dr. Maitland in a little book, lately published, Essay on False Worship, London, 1856. The original was hardly intelligible, till light had been thrown on it by recent practices, of which we have all heard so much. The coincidence is, to say the least, extraordinary, and opens views which are briefly considered in the above-mentioned work.