Inevitable intermingling of scepticism and superstition.

Our chapter which set out to note cases of scepticism in regard to superstition has ended by including a great deal of such superstition. The sceptics themselves seem credulous on some points, and Lucian’s satire perhaps more reveals than refutes the prevalence of superstition among even the highly educated. The same is true of other literary satirists of the Roman Empire whose jibes against the astrologers and their devotees only attest the popularity of the art and who themselves very probably meant only to ridicule its more extreme pretensions and were perhaps at bottom themselves believers in the fundamentals of the art. Our authors to some extent, as we have pointed out, provided an arsenal of arguments from which later Christian writers took weapons for their assaults upon pagan magic and astrology. But sometimes subsequent writers confused scepticism with credulity, and the influence of our authors upon them became just the opposite of what they intended. Thus Ammianus Marcellinus, the soldier-historian of the falling Roman Empire upon whom Gibbon placed so much reliance, was so attached to divination that he even quoted its arch-opponent, Cicero, in support of it. For he actually concludes his discussion of the subject in these words: “Wherefore in this as in other matters Tully says most admirably,‘Signs of future events are shown by the gods.’”[1285]

Lucian on writing history.

But in order to conclude our chapter on scepticism with a less obscurantist passage, let us return to Lucian. His essay, How to Write History, gives serious expression to those ideals of truth and impartiality which also lie behind his mockery of impostors and the over-credulous. “The historian’s one task,” in his estimation, “is to tell the thing as it happened.” He should be “fearless, incorruptible, independent, a believer in frankness, ... an impartial judge, kind to all but too kind to none.” “He has to make of his brain a mirror, unclouded, bright, and true of surface.” “Facts are not to be collected at haphazard but with careful, laborious, repeated investigation.” “Prefer the disinterested account.”[1286] Such sentences and phrases as these reveal a scientific and critical spirit of high order and seem a vast improvement upon the frailty of Cicero’s historical criticism. But how far Lucian would have been able to follow his own advice is perhaps another matter.

CHAPTER X
THE SPURIOUS MYSTIC WRITINGS OF HERMES, ORPHEUS, AND ZOROASTER

Mystic works of revelation—The Hermetic books—Poimandres and the Hermetic Corpus—Astrological treatises ascribed to Hermes—Hermetic works of alchemy—Nechepso and Petosiris—Manetho—The Lithica of Orpheus—Argument of the poem—Magic powers of stones—Magic rites to gain powers of divination—Power of gems compared with herbs—Magic herbs and demons in Orphic rites—Books ascribed to Zoroaster—The Chaldean Oracles.

Mystic works of revelation.

There were in circulation in the Roman Empire many writings which purported to be of divine origin and authorship, or at least the work of ancient culture-heroes and founders of religions who were of divine descent and divinely inspired. These oracular and mystic compositions usually pretend to great antiquity and often claim as their home such hoary lands as Egypt and Chaldea, although in the Hellenic past Apollo and in the Roman past the Sibylline books[1287] also afford convenient centers about which forgeries cluster. Assuming as these writings do to disclose the secrets of ancient priesthoods and to publish what should not be revealed to the vulgar crowd, they may be confidently expected to embody a great deal of superstition and magic along with their expositions of mystic theologies. Also the authors, editors, or publishers of astrological, alchemistic, and other pseudo-scientific treatises could not be expected to resist the temptation of claiming a venerable and cryptic origin for some of their books. Moreover, such pseudo-literature was not entirely unjustified in its affirmation of high antiquity. Few things in intellectual history antedate magic, and these spurious compositions are not especially distinguished by new ideas, although they to some extent reflect the progress made in learning, occult as well as scientific, in the Hellenistic age. It must be added that much of their contents depends for its effect entirely upon its claim to eminent authorship and great antiquity and upon the impressionability of its public. To-day most of it seems trivial commonplace or marked by the empty vagueness characteristic of oracular utterances. I shall attempt no complete exposition or exhaustive treatment of such writings[1288] but touch upon a few examples which bear upon the relations of science and magic.

The Hermetic books.

Chief among these are the Hermetic books or writings attributed to Hermes the Egyptian or Trismegistus. “Under this name,” wrote Steinschneider in 1906, “there exists in many languages a literature, for the most part superstitious, which seems to have not yet been treated in its totality.”[1289] The Egyptian god Thoth or Tehuti, known in Greek as Θωύθ, Θώθ, and Τάτ, was identified with Hermes, and the epithet “thrice-great” is also derived from the Egyptian aā aā, “the great Great.” Citations of works ascribed to this Hermes Trismegistus can be traced back as early as the first century of our era.[1290] He is also mentioned or quoted by various church fathers from Athenagoras to Augustine and often figures in the magical papyri. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus[1291] in the fourth century ranks him with the great sages of the past such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Apollonius of Tyana. Our two chief descriptions of the Hermetic books from the period of the Roman Empire are found in the Stromata[1292] of the Christian Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.220 A.D.) and in the De mysteriis[1293] ascribed to the Neo-Platonist Iamblichus (died about 330 A. D.). Clement speaks of forty-two books by Hermes which are regarded as “indispensable.” Of these ten are called “Hieratic” and deal with the laws, the gods, and the training of the priests. Ten others detail the sacrifices, prayers, processions, festivals, and other rites of Egyptian worship. Two contain hymns to the gods and rules for the king. Six are medical, “treating of the structure of the body and of diseases and instruments and medicines and about the eyes and the last about women.” Four are astronomical or astrological, and the remaining ten deal with cosmography and geography or with the equipment of the priests and the paraphernalia of the sacred rites. Clement does not say so, but from his brief summary one can imagine how full these volumes probably were of occult virtues of natural substances, of magical procedure, and of intimate relations and interactions between nature, stars, and spirits. Iamblichus repeats the statement of Seleucus that Hermes wrote twenty thousand volumes and the assertion of Manetho that there were 36,525 books, a number doubtless connected with the supposed length of the year, three hundred and sixty-five and one-quarter days.[1294] Iamblichus adds that Hermes wrote one hundred treatises on the ethereal gods and one thousand concerning the celestial gods.[1295] He is aware, however, that most books attributed to Hermes were not really composed by him, since in other passages he speaks of “the books which are circulated under the name of Hermes,”[1296] and explains that “our ancestors ... inscribed all their own writings with the name of Hermes,”[1297] thus dedicating them to him as the patron deity of language and theology. By the time of Iamblichus these books had been translated from the Egyptian tongue into Greek.