The Cake, by me thrice sprinkled, put to flight
The death-denouncing Phantoms of the Night,
And I next have, in linen Garb array’d,
In silent Night, nine Times to Trivia pray’d.
In one of the Eclogues of the Roman poet Nemesianus, who flourished in the third century A.D., there is a dialogue between two shepherds who discuss their amatory affairs and love spells:
Mopsus: What does it benefit me that the mother of rustic Amyntas has purified me thrice with fillets, thrice with a sacred bough, thrice with the vapour of frankincense, burning the crackling laurels with live sulphur, and pours the ashes out into the stream with averted face, when thus wretched I am every way inflamed for Meroë?
Lycidas: These same things the many-colored threads have done for me, and Mycale has carried round me a thousand unknown herbs. She has chanted the charm, by which the moon swells, by which the snake is burst, the rocks run and standing corn removes, and a tree is plucked up. Lo! My handsome Iollas is nevertheless more, is more to me.
Horace, the Roman poet (65 B.C.–8 B.C.) depicts, in his Satires, a scene in which a love philtre is prepared.