[851] See Plutarch, Perikl. capp. 5, 32, 38; Cicero, De Republ. i. 15-16, ed. Maii.
The phytologist Theophrastus, in his valuable collection of facts respecting vegetable organization, is often under the necessity of opposing his scientific interpretation of curious incidents in the vegetable world to the religious interpretation of them which he found current. Anomalous phænomena in the growth or decay of trees were construed as signs from the gods, and submitted to a prophet for explanation (see Histor. Plantar. ii. 3, iv. 16; v. 3).
We may remark, however, that the old faith had still a certain hold over his mind. In commenting on the story of the willow-tree at Philippi, and the venerable old plane-tree at Antandros (more than sixty feet high, and requiring four men to grasp it round in the girth), having been blown down by a high wind, and afterwards spontaneously resuming their erect posture, he offers some explanations how such a phænomenon might have happened, but he admits, at the end, that there may be something extra-natural in the case, Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως ἔξω φυσικῆς αἰτίας ἔστιν, etc. (De Caus. Plant. v. 4): see a similar miracle in reference to the cedar-tree of Vespasian (Tacit. Hist. ii. 78).
Euripidês, in his lost tragedy called Μελανίππη Σοφὴ, placed in the month of Melanippê a formal discussion and confutation of the whole doctrine of τέρατα, or supernatural indications (Dionys. Halicar. Ars Rhetoric. p. 300-356, Reisk). Compare the Fables of Phædrus, iii. 3; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conviv. ch. 3. p. 149; and the curious philosophical explanation by which the learned men of Alexandria tranquillized the alarms of the vulgar, on occasion of the serpent said to have been seen entwined round the head of the crucified Kleomenês (Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 39).
It is one part of the duty of an able physician, according to the Hippocratic treatise called Prognosticon (c. 1. t. ii. p. 112, ed. Littré), when he visits his patient, to examine whether there is anything divine in the malady, ἅμα δὲ καὶ εἴ τι θεῖον ἔνεστιν ἐν τῇσι νούσοισι: this, however, does not agree with the memorable doctrine laid down in the treatise, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis (c. 22. p. 78, ed. Littré), and cited hereafter, in this chapter. Nor does Galen seem to have regarded it as harmonizing with the general views of Hippocratês. In the excellent Prolegomena of M. Littré to his edition of Hippocratês (t. i. p. 76) will be found an inedited scholium, wherein the opinion of Baccheius and other physicians is given, that the affections of the plague were to be looked upon as divine, inasmuch as the disease came from God; and also the opinion of Xenophôn, the friend of Praxagoras, that the “genus of days of crisis” in fever was divine; “For (said Xenophôn) just as the Dioskuri, being gods, appear to the mariner in the storm and bring him salvation, so also do the days of crisis, when they arrive, in fever.” Galen, in commenting upon this doctrine of Xenophôn, says that the author “has expressed his own individual feeling, but has no way set forth the opinion of Hippocratês:” Ὁ δὲ τῶν κρισίμων γένος ἡμερῶν εἰπὼν εἶναι θεῖον, ἑαυτοῦ τι πάθος ὡμολόγησεν· οὐ μὴν Ἱπποκράτους γε τὴν γνώμην ἔδειξεν (Galen, Opp. t. v. p. 120, ed. Basil).
The comparison of the Dioskuri appealed to by Xenophôn is a precise reproduction of their function as described in the Homeric Hymn (Hymn xxxiii. 10): his personification of the “days of crisis” introduces the old religious agency to fill up a gap in his medical science.
I annex an illustration from the Hindoo vein of thought:—“It is a rule with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn, the bodies of those who die of the small pox: for (say they) the small pox is not only caused by the goddess Davey, but is, in fact, Davey herself; and to burn the body of a person affected with this disease, is, in reality, neither more nor less than to burn the goddess.” (Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections, etc., vol. i. ch. xxv. p. 221.)
[852] Horat. de Art. Poet. 79:—
“Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Iambo,” etc.
Compare Epist. i. 19, 23, and Epod. vi. 12; Aristot. Rhetor. iii. 8, 7, and Poetic. c. 4—also Synesius de Somniis—ὥσπερ Ἀλκαῖος καὶ Ἀρχίλοχος, οἳ δεδαπανήκασι τὴν εὐστομίαν εἰς τὸν οἰκεῖον βίον ἑκάτερος (Alcæi Fragment. Halle, 1810, p. 205). Quintilian speaks in striking language of the power of expression manifested by Archilochus (x. 1, 60).