The magi on herbs.
Pliny connects the origin of botany rather closely with magic, mentioning Medea and Circe as early investigators of plants and Orpheus among the first writers on the subject.[212] Moreover, Pythagoras and Democritus borrowed from the magi of the orient in their works on the properties of plants.[213] There would be little profit in repeating the names of the herbs concerning which Pliny gives opinions of the magicians, inasmuch as few of them can be associated with any plants known to-day.[214] Suffice it to say that Pliny makes no objection to the herbs which they employed. Nor does he criticize their methods of employing them, although some seem superstitious enough to the modern reader. A chaplet is worn of one herb,[215] others are plucked with the left hand and with a statement of what they are to be used for, and in one case without looking backward.[216] The anemone is to be plucked when it first appears that year with a statement of its intended use, and then is to be wrapped in a red cloth and kept in the shade, and, whenever anyone falls sick of tertian or quartan fever, is to be bound on the patient’s body.[217] The heliotrope is not to be plucked at all but tied in three or four knots with a prayer that the patient may recover to untie the knots.[218]
Marvelous virtues of herbs.
Pliny does not even object to the marvelous results which the magi think can be gained by use of herbs until towards the close of his twenty-fourth book, although already in his twentieth and twenty-first books such powers have been claimed for herbs as to make one well-favored and enable one to attain one’s desires,[219] or to give one grace and glory.[220] At the end of his twenty-fourth book[221] he states that Pythagoras and Democritus, following the magi, ascribe to herbs unusually marvelous virtues such as to freeze water, invoke spirits, force the guilty to confess by frightening them with apparitions, and impart the gift of divination. Early in his twenty-fifth book[222] Pliny suggests that some incredible effects have been attributed to herbs by the magi and their disciples, and in a later chapter[223] he describes the magi as so mad about vervain that they think that if they are anointed with it, they can gain their wishes, drive away fevers and other diseases, and make friendships. The herb should be plucked about the rising of the dog-star when there is neither sun nor moon. Honey and honeycomb should be offered to appease the earth; then the plant should be dug around with iron with the left hand and raised aloft. By the time he reaches his twenty-sixth book Pliny’s courage has risen, so to speak, enough to cause him at last to enter upon quite a tirade against “magical vanities which have been carried so far that they might destroy faith in herbs entirely.”[224] As examples he mentions herbs supposed to dry up rivers and swamps, open barred doors at their touch, turn hostile armies to flight, and supply all the needs of the ambassadors of the Persian kings. He wonders why such herbs have never been employed in Roman warfare or Italian drainage. Pliny’s only objection to magic herbs therefore seems to be the excessive powers which are claimed for some of them. He adds that it would be strange that the credulity which arose from such wholesome beginnings had reached such a pitch, if human ingenuity observed moderation in anything and if the much more recent system of medicine which Asclepiades founded could not be shown to have been carried even beyond the magicians. Here again we see Pliny failing to recognize magic as a primitive social product and regarding it as a degeneration from ancient science rather than science as a comparatively modern development from it. But he may well be right in thinking that many particular far-fetched recipes and rites were the late, artificial product of over-scholarly magicians. Thus he brands as false and magical the assertion of a recent grammarian, Apion, that the herb cynocephalia is divine and a safeguard against poison, but kills the man who uproots it entirely.[225]
Animals and parts of animals.
In a few cases Pliny objects to the animals or parts of animals employed by the magi, as in the passage already cited where he complains that they admire moles more than any other animals.[226] But his assertion is inconsistent, since he has already affirmed that they hold the hyena in most admiration of all animals on the ground that it works magic upon men.[227] Their promise of readier favor with peoples and kings to those who anoint themselves with lion’s fat, especially that between the eyebrows, he criticizes by declaring that no fat can be found there.[228] He also twits the magi for magnifying the importance of so nasty a creature as the tick.[229] They are attracted to it by the fact that it has no outlet to its body and can live only seven days even if it fasts. Whether there is any astrological significance in the number seven here Pliny does not say. He does inform us, however, that the cricket is employed in magic because it moves backward.[230] A very bizarre object employed by the Druids and other magicians is a sort of egg produced by the hissing or foam of snakes.[231] The blood of the basilisk may also be classed as a rarity. Apparently animals in some way unusual are preferred in magic, like a black sheep,[232] but the logic in the reasons given by Pliny for their selection is not clear in every instance. In some other cases not criticized by Pliny[233] we have plainly enough sympathetic magic or the principle of like cures like, as when the milt of a calf or sheep is used to cure diseases of the human spleen.
Further instances.
The magicians, however, do not scorn to use familiar and easily obtainable animals like the goat and dog and cat. The liver and dung of a cat, a puppy’s brains, the blood and genitals of a dog, and the gall of a black male dog are among the animal substances employed.[234] Such substances as those just named are equally in demand from other animals.[235] Minute parts of animals are frequently employed by the magicians, such as the toe of an owl, the liver of a mouse given in a fig, the tooth of a live mole, the stones from young swallows’ gizzards, the eyes of river crabs.[236] Sometimes the part employed is reduced to ashes, perhaps a relic of sacrificial custom. Thus for toothache the magi inject into the ear nearer the tooth the ashes of the head of a mad dog and oil of Cyprus, while they prescribe for affections of the sinews the ashes of an owl’s head in honied wine with lily root.[237] Other living creatures which Pliny mentions as used by the magi are the salamander, earthworm, bat, scarab with reflex horns, lizard, tortoise, bed-bug, frog, and sea-urchin.[238] The dragon’s tail wrapped in a gazelle’s skin and bound on with deer-sinews cures epilepsy,[239] and a mixture of the dragon’s tongue, eyes, gall, and intestines, boiled in oil, cooled in the night air, and rubbed on morning and evening, frees one from nocturnal apparitions.[240]
Magic rites with animals and parts of animals.
Sometimes the parts of animals are bound on outside the patient’s body, sometimes the injured portion of his body is merely touched with them. Once the whole house is to be fumigated with the substance in question;[241] once the walls are to be sprinkled with it; once it is to be buried under the threshold. Some instances follow of more elaborate magic ritual connected with the use of animals or parts of animals. The hyena is more easily captured by a hunter who ties seven knots in his girdle and horsewhip, and it should be captured when the moon is in the sign of Gemini and without the loss of a single hair.[242] Another bit of astrology dispensed by the magi is that the cat, whose salted liver is taken with wine for quartan fever, should have been killed under a waning moon.[243] To cure incontinence of urine one not only drinks ashes of a boar’s genitals in sweet wine, but afterwards urinates in a dog kennel and repeats the formula, “That I may not urinate like a dog in its kennel.”[244] The magicians insist that the sex of the patient be observed in administering burnt cow-dung or bull-dung in honied wine for cases of dropsy.[245] For infantile ailments the brains of a she-goat should be passed through a gold ring and dropped in the baby’s mouth before it is given its milk.[246] After the fresh milt of a sheep has been applied to the patient with the words, “This I do for the cure of the spleen,” it should be plastered into the bedroom wall and sealed with a ring, while the charm should be repeated twenty-seven times.[247] In treating sciatica[248] an earthworm should be placed in a broken wooden dish mended with an iron band, the dish should be filled with water, the worm should be buried again where it was dug up, and the water should be drunk by the patient. The eyes of river crabs are to be attached to the patient’s person before sunrise and the blinded crabs put back into the water.[249] After it has been carried around the house thrice a bat may be nailed head down outside a window as an amulet.[250] For epilepsy goat’s flesh should be given which has been roasted on a funeral pyre, and the animal’s gall should not be allowed to touch the ground.[251]