Marvels wrought with parts of animals.
Pliny occasionally speaks in a vague general way of his citations from the magi concerning the virtues of parts of animals as lies or nonsense or “portentous,” but he does not specifically criticize their procedure any more than he did their methods of employing herbs, and he does not criticize their promised results as much as he did before. Indeed, as we have already indicated, the object in a majority of cases is purely medicinal. The purpose of others is pastoral or agricultural, such as preventing goats from straying or causing swine to follow you.[252] The blood of the basilisk, however, is said to procure answers to petitions made to the powerful and prayers addressed to the gods, and to act as a safeguard against poison or sorcery (veneficiorum amuleta).[253] Invincibility is promised the wearer of the head and tail of a dragon, hairs from a lion’s forehead, a lion’s marrow, the foam of a winning horse, a dog’s claw bound in deer-skin, and the muscles alternately of a deer and a gazelle.[254] A woman will tell secrets in her sleep if the heart of an owl is applied to her right breast, and power of divination is gained by eating the still palpitating heart of a mole.[255]
The magi on stones.
In the case of stones the names are again, as in the case of herbs, of little significance for us.[256] The accompanying ritual is slight. There are one or two suspensions from the neck or elsewhere by such means as a lion’s mane—the hair of the hyena will not do at all—nor the hair of the cynocephalus and swallows’ feathers.[257] There is some use of incantations with the stones, a setting of iron for one stone, burial of another beneath a tree that it may not dull the axe, and placing another on the tongue after rinsing the mouth with honey at certain days and hours of the moon in order to acquire the gift of divination.[258] Indeed, the results promised are all marvelous. The stones benefit public speakers, admit to the presence of royalty, counteract fascination and sorcery, avert hail, thunderbolts, storms, locusts, and scorpions; chill boiling water, produce family discord, render athletes invincible, quench anger and violence, make one invisible, evoke images of the gods and shades from the infernal regions.
Other magical recipes.
We have yet to mention a group of magical recipes and remedies which Pliny for some reason collects in one chapter[259] but which hardly fall under any one head. A whetstone on which iron tools are sharpened, if placed without his knowledge under the pillow of a man who has been poisoned, will cause him to reveal all the circumstances of the crime. If you turn a man who has been struck by lightning over on his injured side, he will speak at once. To cure tumors in the groin, tie seven or nine knots in the remnant of a weaver’s web, naming some widow as each knot is tied. The pain is assuaged by binding to the body the nail that has been trod on. To get rid of warts, on the twentieth day of the moon lie flat in a path gazing at the moon, stretch the hands above the head and rub the warts with anything that comes to hand. A corn may be extracted successfully at the moment a star shoots. Headache may be relieved by a liniment made by pouring vinegar on door hinges or by binding a hangman’s noose about the patient’s temples. To dislodge a fish-bone stuck in the throat, plunge the feet into cold water; to dislodge some other sort of bone, place bones on the head; to dislodge a morsel of bread, stuff bits of bread into both ears. We may add from a neighboring chapter a very magical remedy for fevers, although Pliny calls it “the most modest of their promises.”[260] Toe and finger nail parings mixed with wax are to be attached ere sunrise to another person’s door in order to transfer the disease from the patient to him. Or they may be placed near an ant-hill, in which case the first ant who tries to drag one inside the hill should be captured and suspended from the patient’s neck.
Summary of the statements of the magi.
Such is the picture we derive from numerous passages in the Natural History of the magic art, its materials and rites, the effects it seeks to produce, and its general attitude towards nature. Besides the natural materials employed and the marvelous results sought, we have noted the frequent use of ligatures, suspensions, and amulets, the observance of astrological conditions, of certain times and numbers, rules for plucking herbs and tying knots, stress on the use of the right or left hand—in other words, on position or direction, some employment of incantations, some sacrifice and fumigation, some specimens of sympathetic magic, of the theory that “like cures like,” and of other types of magic logic.
V. Pliny’s Magical Science
From the magi to Pliny’s magic.