I do not know what the origin may be of the head of the sorcerer rising from the surface of the earth with ears like mushrooms, implying that they were very large; but I find in an edition of the “Meditations of Saint Augustin,” Venice, A.D. 1588, illustrated with rude, quaint pictures, one in which the holy father is kneeling before a crucifix, while there rises from the ground before him a great and terrible head with one very long ear. By it lies the usual skull, one-fifth its size. Were two women substituted for the saint, it would be a perfect illustration of the strange scene described in the story. It is, to say the least, a singular coincidence.
This story is therefore of some value as indicating that the general term of sorcerer, magician or wizard, is used as a synonym for Virgil, or vice versâ. As Lucan writes in his “Pharsalia”: “Nec sua Virgilio permisit nomina soli.” [150]
It is worth noting that there is in the Museum of Florence an Etruscan mirror on which Mercury and Minerva are represented as looking at a human head apparently coming from the ground. It may be that of Orpheus lying upon it; in any case, it is strangely suggestive of these tales. I am indebted for a tracing of this mirror to the Rev. J. Wood Brown, author of the “Life of Michael Scott, the Magician and Philosopher,” wherein the latter hath a dual affinity to Virgil, and it is very remarkable, as I have elsewhere noted, that the splitting a hill into three is near Rome ascribed to the Roman poet.
A curious book could be written on heads, decapitated, which have spoken. There is, I believe, a legend to the effect that the caput of John the Baptist thus conversed, and it may be that the New Testament only gives a fragment of the original history. The belief that Herodias was a sorceress, and a counterpart of Diana as queen of the witches, was generally established so early as the second century, but is far older, the original Herodias having been a form of Lilith. [151]
It is specially to be noted in connection with this tale that one of the older legends given in “Virgilius the Sorcerer of Rome” expressly declares that
“Virgilius made an iron head which could not only speak, but also foretell the future; and, as some say, it was by misinterpreting the oracle that Virgilius met his death in this wise. Being about to undertake a journey, he asked the head if it would come to a good end. The reply was: ‘Yes, if he took care of his head.’ Taking this to mean the oracle itself, Virgilius took every measure to secure it, and with light heart went his way, but while journeying, exposed to sunshine, he was seized with a fever in the head, of which he died.”
This is again like the death of Michael Scott.
VIRGIL, THE WICKED PRINCESS, AND THE IRON MAN.
“An iron man who did on her attend,
His name was Talus, made of yron mould,
Immoveable, resistlesse—without end.”Spenser: Faerie Queene, v. c. i.
There once lived a Princess who was beautiful beyond words, but wicked beyond belief; her whole soul was given to murder and licentiousness; yet she was so crafty as to escape all suspicion, and this pleased her best of all, for deceit was to her as dear as life itself. And this she managed, as many another did in those days, by inveigling through her agents handsome young men into her palace by night, where they were invited to a banquet and then to a bed, and all went gaily till the next morning at breakfast, when the Princess gave her victim in wine or food a terrible and rapid poison, after which the corpse was carried away secretly by her servants to be thrown into the river, or hidden in some secret vault; and thus it was the lady sinned in secret while she kept up a white name before the world.