Pythagorism, which was closely connected with astrology, took possession of these ideas and adapted them to its speculations. According to this philosophy one and the same harmony presided over all physical phenomena and was, like music, subject to laws of number. These laws therefore were at work during pregnancy, and a complicated arithmetic was employed to show by a multiplication of days that a child might be born after seven or nine months with power to live, but not after eight, for such was the strange doctrine of the sect. Thus gestation became a melody in which abortion was a false note.
Nature was said to be like an artist who sometimes breaks an instrument of which he overstretches the chords, and sometimes leaves them too slack and can produce no tune. Now, these harmonic laws necessarily determined not only the formation but also the end of man: “There is a fixed relation of determined numbers which unites souls to bodies,” says a philosopher, “and while it subsists, the body continues to be animate, but so soon as it fails, the hidden energy which maintained this union is dissolved, and this is what we call destiny and the fatal time of life.”[[309]] When the term fixed by nature is reached, the soul departs without effort from the body in which it can no longer exercise its office. But when the soul is violently ejected from the body and the link connecting them is broken by an external force, it is troubled and is afflicted by an ill which will cause it pain in the Beyond.
These ideas had sunk deep into the popular mind. The distinction between an end in conformity with nature and one unexpectedly provoked by extraneous intervention is often expressed in literature as well as in inscriptions. Thus the epitaph of a young woman of twenty-eight, who was believed to have been the victim of witchcraft, states that “her spirit was torn from her by violence rather than returned to nature,”[[310]] which had lent it to her; the Manes or the celestial gods will be the avengers of this crime. Still more frequently an opposition is found between an early death and Fatum. The hour of death is determined at the moment of birth:
“Nascentes morimur; finisque ab origine pendet.”[[311]]
“At the moment we are born, we die; and our end is fixed from our beginning.” He who reaches this term fixed for his life ends “on his day” (suo die); otherwise he dies “before his day” (ante diem).[[312]] The vulgar belief was that the intervention of a human or divine will could oppose the fated course of things and abridge the normal duration of existence. Often the expression occurs of a belief that a demon or, what is more remarkable, an evil god has carried off innocent children or young men whose life has thus been shortened.[[313]] But pagan theology undertook the task of re-establishing the order of nature thus disturbed by fortuitous accidents and by individual and unregulated interferences. The breaking of the laws of the universe was only apparent: a soul might by mischance or by a malevolent act be suddenly severed from its body, but, remaining obedient to Fate, it had thereafter to linger on earth until its appointed time was accomplished.
Its lot was supposed to be analogous to that of the unfortunate who had been deprived of burial (ἄταφοι, insepulti) of whom we spoke in our first lecture.[[314]] It circled about the corpse, which it could not abandon, or fluttered here and there near the place of burial or on the spot where the body which it had occupied had been assailed. Excluded from the abode of the shades these wandering souls flitted near the earth or on the surface of the waters, miserable and plaintive. The fear of never being able to penetrate into the kingdom of blessed shades seems to have inspired the following prayer, which occurs in a metrical epitaph of Capri:[[315]]
“You who dwell in the country of Styx, beneficent demons, receive me too into Hades, me the unfortunate who was not borne away in accordance with the judgment of the Fates, but by a hasty and violent death provoked by unjust anger.”
These brutally disincarnated souls became like the swift and harmful spirits with which the air was filled: like them they belonged to the train of Hecate, the goddess of enchantment, and like them were subject to the power of magicians. At Lesbos, Gello, a young virgin carried off before her time, became a phantom which killed children and caused premature deaths.[[316]] The leaden tablets, which were slipped into tombs in order to injure an enemy, and the magic papyri of Egypt bear a large number of incantations in which these mischievous demons are invoked. In the same way a series of conjurations, dating from the third century and found in the island of Cyprus, appeal to the spirits of the dead thrown in the common ditch, “who have met their death by violence, or before their time, or who have been deprived of burial.”[[317]] In general the sacrifice of newly born children, and the use of their vital organs and bones, was, and not without reason, a most frequent charge against sorcerers. Formulas preserved on papyrus recommend as powerful means to work a charm “a baby’s heart, the blood of a dead maiden, and the carrion of a dog.”[[318]] Witches were believed to steal children in order to use the entrails in their occult operations, a ritualistic murder analogous to that attributed by popular belief, in some countries, to the Jews. Cicero, Horace in an epode, Petronius in his romance,[[319]] and other authors bear witness to the extent to which this opinion was entertained. The epitaph of a young slave of Livia, wife of Drusus, relates his misfortune. Before he was four years old he was cut off by the cruel hand, the “black hand” of a witch, who practised her noxious art everywhere. “Guard well your children, ye parents,” adds the epitaph.[[320]]
Likewise the murder of adults and the use made of objects which had belonged to executed or murdered persons is frequently mentioned. The wonder-workers believed that by practising with the bodies of this class of the dead, or with objects they had used, they became masters of their wandering souls and made them serve their designs. The nails of a crucified criminal, the bloodsoaked linen of a gladiator, were efficacious amulets.[[321]] Faith is still kept nowadays in the rope which has hanged a man.[[322]] The books which circulated under the name of Hostanes the Persian, Nectabis the Egyptian and other illustrious wizards dealt with evocations of ἄωροι and βιαιοθάνατοι.[[323]]
Thus a logical series of beliefs was pushed to its extreme consequence. At the moment of birth Fate fixed for each man the length of his career; if this were interrupted, the soul had to complete it in suffering, near the earth, and became a demon which lent its aid to diviners and sorcerers. This doctrine, supported by astrology and Oriental magic, imposed itself on many minds. Plato, who had found it among the Pythagoreans, alludes to it, and Posidonius seems to have dealt with it more at length in his treatise “On Divination” (περὶ μαντικῆς),[[324]] although we cannot tell in how far he supported it. But it encountered the objections of other Greek philosophers. The reproach made to this theory was that it left out of account morality and merited retribution, and brought together, as subject to the same misfortune, criminals condemned to capital punishment and children whose age had kept them from all sin. Feeling and reason at the same time protested against the cruel doctrine which vowed indifferently the innocent and the guilty to long torture. When accident or illness caused the death of a beloved son, could his parents make up their mind to believe that he would suffer undeserved chastisement? A distinction had to be made between categories of persons, and to this task the pagan theologians applied themselves. Let us follow them in their undertaking.