[137.2] Plato, Rep., ii. 364.
[137.3] There are of course plenty of magical Greek texts, but they are much later. The papyri unearthed in such numbers during recent years contain many; and they often imply that the deity invoked is compelled to perform his votary’s wishes. He is addressed in terms of command, adjured by names of power and bidden to be quick about his work. Such spells, however, are not purely Greek. They are produced under foreign influence, and the gods or demons invoked bear alien names. The texts are frequently defixiones. Simaitha’s incantation in the second idyll of Theocritus, so far as it is addressed to the Moon, to Hecate or Artemis, is not couched in terms of command. The goddesses, if they grant the damsel’s desires, are accomplices who cannot plead vis major. Yet threats and insults to the gods were, it seems, sometimes made use of, probably in the hope of driving them by taunts to do what was wanted (see below, [p. 190]). The dividing line here is very thin.
[139.1] Hodson, Naga, 139, 141; cf. 102, 164.
[139.2] Parker, Tales, i. 97.
[140.1] Brett, Ind. Tribes, 401.
[140.2] Anthropos, viii. 3. For the belief in and cult of the Kaya, see ibid., iii. 1005; and of the Inal, ibid., v. 95.
[140.3] Shakespear, Lushai, 109 (cf. 61).
[141.1] W. G. Aston, F. L., xxiii. 187 sq.
[141.2] Wiedemann, 227. On Thoth as magician and the words of power which he uttered and wrote down compare Budge, Egypt. Magic, 128 sqq.
[142.1] Morris, Heimskringla, i. 18, 19.