Sextus Empiricus.
To the arguments against nativities that men die the same death who were not born at the same time and that men who are born at the same time are not identical in character or fortune Sextus Empiricus adds the derisive question whether a man and an ass born in the same instant would suffer exactly the same destiny. Ptolemy would of course reply that while the influence of the stars is constant in both cases it is variably received by men and donkeys; and Sextus’s query does not show him very well versed in astrology. He mentions the obstacle of free will to astrological theory but does not make very much of it. The chief point which he makes is that even if the stars do rule human destiny, their effect cannot be accurately measured. He lays stress on the difficulty of exactly determining the date of birth or of conception, or the precise moment when a star passes into a new sign of the zodiac. He notes the variability and unreliability of water-clocks. He calls attention to the fact that observers at varying altitudes as well as in different localities would arrive at different conclusions. Differences in eyesight would also affect results, and it is difficult to tell just when the sun sets or any sign of the zodiac drops below the horizon owing to reflection and refraction of rays. Sextus thus leaves us somewhat in doubt whether his objections are to be taken as indicative of a spirit of captious criticism towards an art, the fundamental principles of which he tacitly recognizes as well-nigh incontestable, or whether he is simply trying to make his case doubly sure by showing astrology to be impracticable as well as unreasonable. In any case we shall find his argument that the influence of the stars cannot be measured accurately repeated by Christian writers.
Lucius or The Ass: is it by Lucian?
The main plot of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius appears, shorn of the many additional stories, the religious mysticism, and the autobiographical element which characterize his narrative, in a brief and perhaps epitomized Greek version, entitled Lucius or The Ass, among the works of Lucian of Samosata, the contemporary of Apuleius and noted satirist. The work is now commonly regarded as spurious, since the style seems different from that of Lucian and the Attic Greek less pure. The narrative, too, is bare, at least compared with the exuberant fancy of Apuleius, and seems to avoid the marvelous and romantic details in which he abounds. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, who regarded the work as Lucian’s, said that he wrote in it as one deriding the extravagance of superstition. Whether this be true of The Ass or not, it is true of other satires by Lucian of undisputed genuineness, in which he ridicules the impostures of the magic and pseudo-science of his day. In place of the genial humor and fantastic imagination with which his African contemporary credulously welcomed the magic and occult science of his time, the Syrian satirist probes the same with the cool mockery of his keen and sceptical wit.
Career of Lucian.
Lucian was born at Samosata near Antioch about 120 or 125 A. D. and after an unsuccessful beginning as a sculptor’s apprentice turned to literature and philosophy. He practiced in the law courts at Antioch for some time and also wrote speeches for others. For a considerable period of his life he roamed about the Mediterranean world from Paphlagonia to Gaul as a rhetorician, and like Apuleius resided both at Athens and Rome. After forty he ceased teaching rhetoric and devoted himself to literary production, living at Athens. Towards the close of his life, “when he already had one foot in Charon’s boat,”[1279] he was holding a well paid and important legal position in Egypt. His death occurred perhaps about 200 A. D. Some ascribe it to gout, probably because he wrote two satires on that disease. Suidas states that Lucian was torn to pieces by dogs as a punishment for his attacks upon Christianity, which again is probably a perversion of Lucian’s own statement in Peregrinus that he narrowly escaped being torn to pieces by the Cynics.
Alexander the pseudo-prophet.
It was at the request of that same adversary of Christianity against whom Origen composed the Reply to Celsus that Lucian wrote his account of the impostor, Alexander of Abonutichus, a pseudo-prophet of Paphlagonia. This Alexander pretended to discover the god Asclepius in the form of a small viper which he had sealed up in a goose egg. He then replaced the tiny viper by a huge tame serpent which he had purchased at Pella in Macedon and which was trained to hide its head in Alexander’s armpit, while to the crowd, who were also permitted to touch the tail and body of the real snake, was shown a false serpent’s head made of linen with human features and a mouth that opened and shut and a tongue that could be made to dart in and out. Having thus convinced the people that the viper had really been a god and had miraculously increased in size, Alexander proceeded to sell oracular responses as from the god. Inquirers submitted their questions in sealed packages which were later returned to them with appropriate answers and with the seals unbroken and apparently untouched. Similarly Plutarch tells of a sceptical opponent of oracles who became converted into their ardent supporter by receiving such an answer to a sealed letter.[1280] Lucian, however, explains that Alexander sometimes used a hot needle to melt the seal and then restore it to practically its original shape, or employed other methods by which he took exact impressions of the seal, then boldly broke it, read the question, and afterwards replaced the seal by an exact replica of the original made in the mould. Lucian adds that there are plenty of other devices of this sort which he does not need to repeat to Celsus who has already made a sufficient collection of them in his “excellent treatises against the magicians.” Lucian tells later, however, how Alexander made his god seem to speak by attaching a tube made of the windpipes of cranes to the artificial head and having an assistant outside speak through this concealed tube. In our later discussion of the church father Hippolytus we shall find that he apparently made use of this exposé of magic by Lucian as well as of the arguments of Sextus Empiricus against astrology. Lucian’s personal experiences with this Alexander were quite interesting but are less germane to our investigation.
Magical procedure in medicine satirized.
We must not fail, however, to note another essay, Philopseudes or Apiston, in which the superstition and pseudo-science of antiquity are sharply satirized in what purports to be a conversation of several philosophers, including a Stoic, a Peripatetic, and a Platonist, and a representative of ancient medicine in the person of Antigonus, a doctor. Some of the magical procedure then employed in curing diseases is first satirized. Cleodemus the Peripatetic advises as a remedy for gout to take in the left hand the tooth of a field mouse which has been killed in a prescribed manner, to wrap it in the skin of a lion freshly-flayed, and thus to bind it about the ailing foot. He affirms that it will give instant relief. Dinomachus the Stoic admits that the occult virtue of the lion is very great and that its fat or right fore-paw or the bristles of its beard, if combined with the proper incantations, have wonderful efficacy. But he holds that for the cure of gout the skin of a virgin hind would be superior on the ground that the hind is speedier than the lion and so more beneficial to the feet. Cleodemus retorts that he used to think the same, but that a Libyan has convinced him that the lion can run faster than the hind or it would never catch one. The sceptical reporter of this conversation states that he vainly attempted to convince them that an internal disease could not be cured by external attachments or by incantations, methods which he regards as the veriest sorcery (goetia).