Pliny has a clearer comprehension of the extensive scope of magic and of its essential characteristics, at least as it was in his day. “No one should wonder,” he says, “that its authority has been very great, since alone of the arts it has embraced and united with itself the three other subjects which make the greatest appeal to the human mind,” namely, medicine, religion, and the arts of divination, especially astrology. That his phrase artes mathematicas has reference to astrology is shown by his immediately continuing, “since there is no one who is not eager to learn the future about himself and who does not think that this is most truly revealed by the sky.” But magic further “promises to reveal the future by water and spheres and air and stars and lamps and basins and the blades of axes and by many other methods, besides conferences with shades from the infernal regions.” There can therefore be no doubt that Pliny regards the various arts of divination as parts of magic.
Magic and religion.
While we have heard Pliny assert in general the close connection between magic and religion, the character of the Natural History, which deals with natural rather than religious matters, does not lead him to enter into much further detail upon this point. His occasional mention of religious usages in his own day, however, supports our information from other sources that the original Roman religion was very largely composed of magic forces, rules, and ceremonial.
Magic and medicine.
Nearly half the books of the Natural History deal in whole or in part with remedies for diseases, and it is therefore of the relations between magic and natural science, and more particularly between magic and medicine, that Pliny gives us the most detailed information. Indeed, he asserts that “no one doubts” that magic “originally sprang from medicine and crept in under the show of promoting health as a loftier and more sacred medicine.” Magic and medicine have developed together, and the latter is now in imminent danger of being overwhelmed by the follies of magic, which have made men doubt whether plants possess any medicinal properties.
Magic and philosophy.
In the opinion of many, however, magic is sound and beneficial learning. In antiquity, and for that matter at almost all times, the height of literary fame and glory has been sought from that science.[192] Eudoxus would have it the most noted and useful of all schools of philosophy. Empedocles and Plato studied it; Pythagoras and Democritus perpetuated it in their writings.
Falseness of magic.
But Pliny himself feels that the assertions of the books of magic are fantastic, exaggerated, and untrue. He repeatedly brands the magi or magicians as fools or impostors, and their statements as absurd and impudent tissues of lies.[193] Vanitas, or “nonsense,” is his stock-word for their beliefs.[194] Some of their writings must, in his opinion, have been dictated by a feeling of contempt and derision for humanity.[195] Nero proved the falseness of the art, for although he studied magic eagerly and with his unlimited wealth and power had every opportunity to become a skilful practitioner, he was unable to work any marvels and abandoned the attempt.[196] Pliny therefore comes to the conclusion that magic is “invalid and empty, yet has some shadows of truth, which however are due more to poisons than to magic.”[197]
Crimes of magic.