But if he knows beforehand that any one present will ask a question, he is better prepared for everything. And if he has learned the question beforehand he writes it out with the drug (aforesaid) and as being prepared is thought more adept for having skilfully written what was about to be asked. But if he does not know, he guesses at it, and exhibits some roundabout phrase of double and various meaning, so that the answer of the oracle being meaningless will do for many things at the beginning, but at the end of the events will be thought a prediction of what has happened. p. 98. Then having filled a bowl with water, he puts at the bottom of it the paper with apparently nothing written on it, but at the same time putting in the copperas. For thus there floats to the surface the paper bearing the answer which he has written. To the boy also there often come fearful fancies; for truly the magician strikes blows in abundance to terrify him. For, again casting incense into the fire, he acts in this fashion. Having covered a lump of the so-called quarried salts[120] with Tyrrhenian wax and cutting in halves the lump of incense, he puts between them a lump of the salt and again sticking them together throws them on the burning coals and so leaves them. But when the incense is burnt, the salts leaping up produce an illusion as if some strange and wonderful thing were happening. But indigo black[121] put in the incense produces a blood-red flame as we have before said.[122] And he makes a liquid like blood by mixing wax with rouge and as I have said, putting the wax in the incense. And he makes the coals to move by putting under them stypteria[123] cut in pieces, and when it melts and swells up like bubbles, the coals are moved.
p. 99.2. And they exhibit eggs different (from natural ones) in this way. Having bored a hole in the apex at each end and having extracted the white, and again plunged the egg in boiling water, put in either red earth from Sinope[124] or writing ink. But stop up the holes with pounded eggshell made into a paste with the juice of a fig.
3. This is the way they make sheep cut off their own heads. Secretly anointing the sheep’s throat with a caustic drug, he fixes near the beast a sword and leaves it there. But the sheep, being anxious to scratch himself, leans (heavily) on the knife, rubs himself along it, kills himself and must needs almost cut off his head. And the drug is bryony and marsh salt and squills in equal parts mixed together. So that he may not be seen to have the drug with him, he carries a horn box made double, the visible part of which holds frankincense and the invisible the drug. And he also puts quicksilver into the ears of the animal that is to die. But this is a death-dealing drug.
4. But if one stops up the ears of goats with salve, they say they will shortly die because prevented from breathing. p. 100. For they say that this is with them the way in which the intaken air is breathed forth. And they say that a ram dies if one should bend him backwards against the sun.[125] But they make a house catch fire by anointing it with the ichor of a certain animal called dactylus;[126] and this is very useful because of sea-water. And there is a sea-foam heated in an earthen jar with sweet substances, which if you apply to it a lighted lamp catches fire and is inflamed, but does not burn at all if poured on the head. But if you sprinkle it with melted gum, it catches fire much better; and it does better still if you also add sulphur to it.
5. Thunder is produced in very many ways. For very many large stones rolled from a height over wooden planks and falling upon sheets of brass make a noise very like thunder. And they coil a slender cord round the thin p. 101. board on which the wool-carders press cloth, and then spin the board by whisking away the string when the whirring of it makes the sound of thunder. These tricks they play thus; but there are others which I shall set forth which those who play them also consider great. Putting a cauldron full of pitch upon burning coals, when it boils they plunge their hands in it and are not burned; and further they tread with naked feet upon coals of fire and are not burned. And also putting a pyramid of stone upon the altar, they make it burn and from its mouth it pours forth much smoke and fire. Then laying a linen cloth upon a pan of water and casting upon it many burning coals, the linen remains unburnt. And having made darkness in the house, the magician claims to make gods or dæmons enter in, and if one somehow asks that Esculapius shall be displayed he makes invocation, saying thus:—
“Apollo’s son, once dead and again undying!
I call on thee to come as a helper to my libations.
p. 102.Who erst the myriad tribes of fleeting dead
In the ever-mournful caves of wide Tartarus
Swimming the stream hard to cross and the rising tide,