Pig grease, Pliny somewhere informs us, possesses especially strong virtue, “because that animal feeds on the roots of herbs.”[285] From the virtues of animals, therefore, let us turn to those of herbs.[286] Pliny met on every hand assertion of their wonderful powers. The empire-builders of Rome employed the sacred herbs sagmina and verbenae in their embassies and legations. The Gauls, too, use the verbena in lot-casting and prophetic responses.[287] Pliny also states more sceptically that there is another root which diviners take in drink in order to feign inspiration.[288] The Scythians know of a plant which prevents hunger and thirst if held in the mouth, and of another which has the same effect upon their horses, so that they can go for twelve days without meat or drink,[289]—an exaggerated estimate of the hardihood of the mounted Asiatic nomads and their steeds. Musaeus and Hesiod say that one anointed with polion will attain fame and dignities.[290]
Pliny perhaps did not intend to subscribe fully to such statements, although he cannot be said to call many of them into question. He did complain that some writers had asserted incredible powers of herbs, such as to restore dragons or men to life or withdraw wedges from trees,[291] yet he seems on the whole in sympathy with the opinion of the majority that there is practically nothing which the force of herbs cannot accomplish. Herophilus, illustrious in medicine, had said that certain herbs were beneficial if merely trod upon, and Pliny himself says the same of more than one plant. He tells us further that binding the wild fig tree about their necks makes the fiercest bulls stand immobile;[292] that another plant subjects fractious beasts of burden to the yoke;[293] while cows who eat buprestis burst asunder.[294] Another herb contacto genitali kills any female animal.[295] Betony is considered an amulet for houses,[296] and fishermen in Pliny’s neighborhood mix a plant with chalk and scatter it on the waves.[297] “The fish dart towards it with marvelous desire and straightway float lifeless on the surface.” Dogs will not bark at persons carrying peristereos.[298] The “impious plant” prevents any human being who tastes it from having quinsy, while swine are sure to have that disease if they do not eat it. Some place it in birds’ nests to prevent the voracious nestlings from strangling. Bitter almonds provide another amusing combination of effects. Eating five of them permits one to drink without experiencing intoxication, but if foxes eat them they will die unless they find water near by to drink.[299] There are some herbs which have a medicinal effect, if one merely looks at them.[300] In two cases the masculine or feminine variety of a herb is used to secure the birth of a child of the desired sex.[301]
Plucking herbs.
That the plucking of herbs and digging up of roots was a process very apt to be attended by magical procedure we find abundant evidence in the Natural History. Often plants should be plucked before sunrise.[302] Twice Pliny tells us that the peony should be uprooted by night lest the woodpecker of Mars try to pick the digger’s eyes out.[303] The state of the moon is another point to be observed,[304] and once an herb is to be gathered before thunder is heard.[305] A common instruction is to pick the plant with the left hand,[306] and once with the thumb and fourth finger of the left hand.[307] Once the right hand should be stretched covertly after the fashion of a pickpocket through the left sleeve in order to pluck the plant.[308] Sometimes one faces east in plucking herbs; sometimes, west; again one is careful not to face the wind.[309] Sometimes the gatherer must not glance behind him. Sometimes he must fast before he takes the plant from the ground;[310] again he must observe a state of chastity.[311] Sometimes he should be barefoot and clothed in white; again he should remove every stitch of clothing and even his rings.[312] Sometimes the use of iron implements is forbidden; again gold or some other material is prescribed;[313] once the herb is to be dug with a nail.[314] Sometimes circles are traced about the plant with the point of a sword.[315] Often the plant must not touch the ground again after it is picked,[316] presumably from a fear that its virtue would run off like an electric current. Pliny alludes at least three times[317] to the practice of herbalists of retaining portions of the herbs they sell, and then, if they are not paid in full, replanting the herb in the same spot with the idea that thereby the disease will return to plague the delinquent patient. Frequently one is directed to state why one plucks the herb or for whom it is intended.[318] In one case the digger says, “This is the herb Argemon which Minerva discovered was a remedy for swine who taste it.”[319] In another case one should salute the plant and extract its juice before saying a word; thus its virtue will be much greater.[320] In other cases, as an offering to appease the earth, the soil about the plant is soaked with hydromel three months before plucking it, or the hole left by pulling it up is filled with different kinds of grain.[321] Sometimes one sacrifices beforehand with bread and wine or prays to the gods for permission to gather the herb.[322] The customs of the Druids in gathering herbs are mentioned more than once.[323] In gathering the sacred mistletoe on the sixth day of the moon they hold sacrifices and a banquet beneath the tree.[324] Two white bulls are the victims; a priest clad in white cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle and receives it in a white cloak.[325]
Agricultural magic.
To Pliny’s discussion of herbs we may append some specimens of the employment of magic procedure in agriculture and of the superstitions of the peasantry in which his pages abound. To guard against diseases of grain the seeds before planting should be steeped in wine, the juice of a certain herb, the gall of a cow, or human urine, or should be touched with the shoulders of a mole[326]—the animal whose use by the magi we heard Pliny ridicule. One should sow at the moon’s conjunction. Before the field is hoed, a frog should be carried around it and then buried in the center in an earthen vessel. But it should be disinterred before harvest lest the millet be bitter. Birds may be kept away from the grain by planting in the four corners of the field an herb whose name is unfortunately unknown to Pliny.[327] Mice are kept out by the ashes of a weasel, mildew by laurel branches, caterpillars by placing the skull of a female beast of burden upon a stick in the garden.[328] To ward off fogs and storms from orchards and vineyards a frog may be buried as directed above, or live crabs may be burnt in the trees, or a painted grape may be consecrated.[329] Suspending a frog in the granary preserves the corn stored there.[330] To keep wolves away catch one, break its legs, attach it to the ploughshare, and thus scatter its blood about the boundaries of the field; then bury the carcass at the starting-point.[331] Or consecrate at the altar of the Lar the ploughshare with which the first furrow was traced. Foxes will not touch poultry who have eaten the dried liver of a fox or who wear a bit of its skin about their necks. Fern will not spring up again if it is mowed with the edge of a reed or uprooted by a ploughshare upon which a reed has been placed.[332] Of the use of incantations in agriculture we shall treat later.
Virtues of stones.
Pliny appears to have much less faith in the possession of marvelous virtues by gems than by herbs and parts of animals. He not only characterizes the powers attributed to gems by the magi and Democritus and Pythagoras as “terrible lies” and “unspeakable nonsense”;[333] but refrains from mentioning many such himself or inserts a cautious “if we believe it” or “if they tell the truth.”[334] Of the gem supposed to be produced from the urine of the lynx he says, “I think that this is quite false and no gem of that name has been seen in our time. What is stated concerning its medicinal virtue is also false.”[335] To other stones, however, he ascribes various medicinal virtues, either when taken pulverized in drink or when worn as amulets.[336] A few other occult properties are stated without reservation, as that amiantus resists all sorceries,[337] that adamant expels idle fears from the mind, that sideritis produces discord and litigation, and that eumeces, placed beneath one’s pillow at night, causes oracular visions.[338] Magnets are said to differ in sex, and the belief of Theophrastus and Mucianus is repeated that certain stones bear offspring.[339]
Other minerals and metals.
Of the metals iron sometimes figures in Pliny’s magical procedure, as when he either prescribes or taboos the use of it in cutting herbs or killing animals. In Arcadia the yew-tree is a fatal poison to persons sleeping beneath it, but driving a copper nail into the tree makes it harmless.[340] Pliny says that gold is medicinal in many ways and in particular is applied to wounded persons and to infants as a safeguard against witchcraft.[341] Earth itself is often used to work marvels, but usually some particular portion, such as that between cart ruts or that thrown up by ants, beetles, and moles, or in the right footprint where one first heard a cuckoo sing.[342] However, the rule that an object should not touch the ground is enforced in many other connections[343] than the plucking of herbs, and Pliny twice states that the earth will not permit a serpent who has stung a human being to re-enter its hole.[344] In his discussion of metals Pliny does not allude to transmutation or alchemy, unless it be in his accounts of various fraudulent practices of workers in metal and how Caligula extracted gold from orpiment. But the following directions for preparing antimony show how closely akin to magic the procedure in ancient metallurgy might be. The antimony should be coated with cow-flap and burnt in furnaces, then quenched in woman’s milk and pounded in mortars with an admixture of rain-water.[345]