Astrology and sculpture of rings.
One passage has already been cited where astrological conditions were observed. Alexander sometimes prescribes the day of the month upon which things shall be done; an oil, for instance, is to be prepared on the fifth of March.[2387] In one place Alexander advises engraving upon a copper die a lion, a half-moon, a star, and the name of the beast. This is to be worn enclosed in a gold ring upon the fourth finger.[2388] That the lion may not stand for a sign of the zodiac is suggested by another instruction concerning an engraved stone to be set in a gold ring, and which is to be carved with a figure of Hercules suffocating a lion.[2389] For gout, however, one writes a verse of Homer on a copper plate when the moon is in Libra or Leo.[2390] For colic one inscribes upon an iron ring with an octangular circumference a charm beginning, “Flee, flee, colic.”[2391]
Incantations.
The employment of such incantations is expressly justified by Alexander, who maintains that even “the most divine” Galen, who once thought that incantations were of no avail, came after a long time and much experience to be convinced that they were of great efficacy. Alexander then quotes from a treatise which is not extant but which he asserts is a work by Galen entitled, On medical treatment in Homer.[2392] “So some think that incantations are like old-wives’ tales and so I thought for a long while, but in process of time from perfectly plain instances I have become persuaded that there is force in them, for I have experienced their aid in the case of persons stung by scorpions. And no less in the case of bones stuck in the throat, which were straightway expelled by an incantation.” Alexander himself thereupon continues, “If such is the testimony of divinest Galen and many other ancients, what prevents us too from communicating to you those which we have learned from experience and which we have received from trustworthy friends?”
Conjuration of an herb.
Both incantations and observance of astrological conditions play an important part in the instructions given by Alexander for digging and plucking with imprecations an herb to be used in the treatment of fluxions of hands or feet. “When the moon is in Aquarius under Pisces, dig before sunset, not touching the root. After digging with two fingers of the left hand, namely, the thumb and middle finger, say, ‘I address you, I address you, sacred herb. I summon you to-morrow to the house of Philia to stay the fluxion of feet and hands of this man or this woman. But I adjure you by the great name, Iaoth, Sabaoth, God who established the earth and fixed the sea abounding in fluid floods, who desiccated Lot’s wife and made her a statue of salt, receive the spirit of thy mother earth and its powers, and dry up this fluxion of feet or of hands of this man or woman.’ On the morrow ere sunrise, taking the bone of some dead animal, dig up the root, and holding it say, ‘I adjure you by the sacred names, Iaoth, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi,’ and sprinkle a pinch of salt on that root, saying, ‘As this salt is not increased, so be not the ailment of this man or of this woman.’ Then bind one end of the root to the patient, taking care that it is not moist, and suspend the rest of it over the fire for 360 days.”[2393] The mention of mother earth in this charm perhaps indicates an ultimate pagan origin, but the allusions to one God, and to incidents in the Old Testament, and the use of names of spirits show Jewish or Christian influence, while the number 360 perhaps points to the Gnostics.
Medieval version seems less superstitious than the original text.
While in conformity with the character of our investigation we have emphasized those passages in Alexander which are suggestive of magic and its methods, it should be said that many of the passages which we have cited are apparently[2394] not found in the medieval Latin versions which seem to omit many, although not all, of the chapters devoted to physical ligatures. Here then apparently is a case where the early medieval translator and adapter, instead of retaining and emphasizing the superstition of the past, has largely purged his text of it. But we have next to consider a Latin work, written apparently about the year 400 A. D. and known to us through two manuscripts of the ninth century, in which magic is far more rampant than in any version of Alexander of Tralles. Judging, however, from the small number of extant manuscripts, it was less influential through the medieval period than was Alexander’s book.
Marcellus: date and identity.
The De medicamentis opens in one of the two extant manuscripts with a dedicatory letter from “Marcellus, an illustrious man of the main office of Theodosius the Elder (?)” to his sons.[2395] This ascription is generally accepted as genuine, and Grimm believed this to be the same Marcellus as the physician who is gratefully mentioned, together with his sons, then mere infants, in the letters of Libanius, whose severe headaches Marcellus had alleviated, and as the Marcellus magister officiorum who is mentioned twice in the Theodosian Code under the year 395. The date of the De medicamentis may be further fixed from its including “a singular remedy for spleen which the patriarch Gamaliel recently revealed from proved experiments.” This Gamaliel was Jewish patriarch at Constantinople from some time before 395 on to 415 or later. The question, however, of Marcellus’ authorship is complicated by the fact that he is twice cited in the work itself. One of these passages concerns an “oxyporium which Nero used for the digestion, which Marcellus the eminent physician revealed, which we too have tested in practice.”[2396] This sounds as if some later person had had a hand in the work as it has reached us, since Marcellus himself would scarcely have cited another person of the same name without some distinguishing epithet. Furthermore Aëtius cites a Marcellus for a passage which does not appear in the De medicamentis concerning wolfish or canine insanity, in which men imagine themselves to be wolves or dogs and act like them during the night in the month of February. But the De medicamentis as a whole is of the character promised by Marcellus in the introductory letter to his sons and so may be taken as his work.