Thus far one might take Ptolemy for a well-balanced and accurate scientist in the modern sense of the term, but he does not maintain this level. After showing that it is useful to know the future and that astrology does not depend on fatal necessity, he proceeds to explain why the stars give knowledge of the future. This he intends to show from natural causes: ubique naturalium causarum rationem sequentes. This sounds well but his reasoning is superficial and childish, as his discussion of the influence exercised by the planets will indicate.
In each planet one of the four elemental qualities predominates (or perhaps two divide the supremacy) and endows the star with a peculiar nature and power. The sun warms and, to some extent, makes dry, for the nearer it comes to our pole the more heat and drought it produces. The moon, on the contrary, causes humidity, since it is close to the earth and gets the effect of vapors from the latter. Evidently the moon influences other bodies in this way, rendering them soft and producing putrefaction. It also warms a little owing to the light it receives from the sun. Saturn, however, chills and, to some extent, dries, for it is very far from the heat of the sun and the damp mists of the earth. Mars emits a parching heat, as its color and proximity to the sun lead one to infer. Jupiter, situated between cold Saturn and burning Mars, is of a sort of lukewarm nature, but tends more to warmth and moisture than to the other two qualities. So does Venus, but conversely, for it warms less than Jupiter but makes moist more, since its large area catches many damp vapors from the neighboring earth. In Mercury, situated near the sun, moon and earth, neither drought nor dampness predominates; but that planet, incited by its own velocity, is a potent cause of sudden changes. In general, the planets are of good or evil influence according as they abound in the two rich and vivifying qualities, heat and moisture, or in the detrimental and destructive ones, cold and drought.
Ptolemy then goes on to discuss the powers of fixed stars. These powers he would seem to make depend chiefly on the relation of the fixed star to the planets or on its position in some constellation. Then he treats of the influence of the seasons and of the four cardinal points, to each of which he assigns some one predominating quality. A discussion of the importance of such things as the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve “houses,” the Trigones (equilateral triangles each comprising three signs of the zodiac), and the position of the star in reference to the horizon, ends the first book and also the presentation of fundamental considerations.
The other three books contain “doctrinam de praedictione singularium.” The second book, however, deals in the main with four points of general though subordinate bearing: under what stars different regions belong, how the effects of the stars vary according to time as well as place, how the heavenly bodies influence the nature of events, and finally how they determine their quality, good or bad. The third and fourth books, besides taking up separately the particular effects of each planet as it enters into conjunction with each of the others, comprise chapters with such headings as the following: “de parentibus,” “de fratribus,” “de masculis et femellis,” “de geminis,” “de natis qui nutrire non possunt sed mox extinguuntur,” “de dignitate,” “de magisterio,” “de coniugiis,” “de liberis,” “de amicis et inimicis,” “de servis,” “de perigrinatione,” “de genere mortis.” These two books discuss how length of years, fortune, diseases, and various qualities of body and mind may be predicted from the stars; in short, how man’s entire life is ordered by the constellations. Such is the book which Bouché-Leclercq calls “science’s surrender.”[[184]]
V. The hermetic books and occultism.—An account of belief in magic in the Roman Empire would be incomplete without some reference to the famous hermetic books. Hermes Trismegistus might, as deservedly as any other man—had he only been a man and not a myth—be called the father of magic, just as he used to be known as the father of Egyptian science and just as he was regarded by many as the inventor of all philosophy.[[185]] In the time of Plato the Egyptian god Thoth acquired the name of Hermes from the similarity of his functions to those of the Greek god. He also came to be considered as the author of pretty much all knowledge and was given the epithet of “Thrice Great.” The entire body of Egyptian occult lore was attributed to him, and Manetho, who pictured him as reigning over the ancient Egyptians, declared that in addition to his royal duties he succeeded in turning off some 36,000 volumes. Clement of Alexandria, however, speaks of but forty-two books as “indispensably necessary,” and says that the priests having charge of the hermetic books, by memorizing these forty-two, cover the entire philosophy of the Egyptians.[[186]] Diocletian is said to have dispersed the priests and burned their books, because he came to the conclusion that the frequent revolts in the locality received pecuniary aid by means of gold artificially manufactured in the temples.[[187]] Before that, however, lore supposed to be similar to that contained within the books had become disseminated. In the days of Hadrian and the Antonines, Jews and other Orientals at Rome offered to initiate persons into those occult sciences previously the monopoly of the Egyptian priesthood. Marcus Aurelius, in his later years, was thus instructed by an Egyptian diviner, who followed him in all his campaigns.[[188]] Also the custom grew up rather early of passing off works on occult subjects under Hermes’ name and of ascribing to him all such books which were of doubtful authorship. Of alchemy was this tendency especially true, so that it came to be known as the hermetic art. Sosimus, Stephanus and other Greek writers cited alchemical treatises under Hermes’ name, and the practice of publishing spurious hermetic books continued well into the Middle Ages.[[189]] Several such alchemical treatises are still extant; and writings on astrological medicine and the magical powers of gems, plants and animals have also come down to us under Hermes’ name.[[190]]
Some of the supposed writings of Hermes were mystical rather than magical; for instance, the famous Poemander,[[191]] which consists mainly of brief and disconnected utterances concerning God and the human soul and other subjects of a religious character. Still, one does not have to read far into its sixteen “books” before finding evidence of belief in astrology, of the mysticism of number and of an esoteric view of knowledge. It tells us “to avoid all conversation with the multitude” and to “take heed of them as not understanding the virtue and power of the things that are said.” It speaks frequently of the seven circles of heaven, the seven zones, and the seven “Governors.” It affirms that “the Gods were seen in their Ideas of the Stars with all their signs, and the stars were numbered with the Gods in them.” Hence, it is probably safe enough, when, for instance, we hear that Theon, father of Hypatia, celebrated in his day as a mathematician, and professor at the Alexandrian Museum, lectured upon the writings of Hermes Trismegistus and of Orpheus[[192]]—another legendary worthy charged with works of an occult character—to conclude that we have met one more case of the mingling of magic with learning.
In short, then, the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistus became an actuating ideal to the Middle Ages, and the works appearing under his name had a considerable influence in extending belief in magic. Secondly, the hermetic books serve to typify that mass of Eastern occult philosophy and occult science which was so strong a force in the mental life of the Roman Empire.
CHAPTER VI
Critics of Magic
The reader will remember how men in the Roman Empire condemned “magic” but understood the word in a restricted and bad sense; how Pliny made pretensions to complete freedom from all belief in magic and how inconsistent was his actual attitude; how Seneca rejected magic only in part, accepting divination in all its ramifications. This partial rejection and partial acceptance of magic by the same individual seem characteristic of the age of the Empire, as one would expect of a time when magic was in a state of decay and science in a process of development. It is true that this rejection of certain varieties of magic often proceeded from the motive of morality rather than of scepticism. Thus in Cicero’s De Divinatione, Quintus Cicero is represented as closing his long argument in favor of the truth of divination by solemnly asserting that he does not approve of sorcerers, nor of those who prophesy for sake of gain, nor of the practice of questioning spirits of the dead—which nevertheless, he says, was a custom of his brother’s friend Appius.[[193]] But there were some men, we may well believe, who would reject even those varieties of magic which found a welcome in the minds of most educated people and in the general mass of the thought and science of the age. Such cases we shall now consider.
I. Opponents of astrology.—Astrology, as we have seen, was very popular. Yet there was some scepticism as to its truth beyond the ridicule of satirists, who perhaps at bottom were themselves believers in the art. Outside of Christian writers the three chief opponents of astrology in the Roman world, judging by the works that have come down to us, were Cicero—who lived before the Empire in the constitutional sense can be said to have begun—in his De Divinatione; Favorinus, a Gaul who resided at Rome in the reigns of Hadrian and Trajan, and was a friend of Plutarch, and whose arguments against astrology have been preserved only in the pages of Aulus Gellius; and Sextus Empiricus, a physician who flourished at about the beginning of the third century of our era.[[194]]