[158]. Page 66, note 1.
[159]. Apologia, ch. iii. Even if the oration was a satire and not a speech actually delivered, the inferences to be drawn from it would be practically the same.
[160]. Apuleius may have been guilty of attempting to practice magic. Certainly he believed in its possibility. He affirmed the existence of subordinate gods, or demons,—interpreters and ambassadors between mankind and the superior gods, who live far away from us and have no direct concern with our affairs. The demons, he believed, were susceptible to human influence and capable of working marvels. He stated that the art of divination was due to them. See his De Deo Socratis.
[161]. Apologia, ch. xxvii. Evidently hostility to magic did not commence with Christianity. Not even, as Roger Bacon thought, did the practice of confusing philosophy with magic originate among Christian writers. Bridges, Opus Maius, vol. i, p. 29.
[162]. See Philo’s treatise De Cherubim, cited in vol. ii, p. 243, of Rev. James Drummond’s Philo Judaeus; or The Jewish-Alexandrian Philosophy in its Development and Completion (2 vols., London, 1888). Concerning Philo see also Edouard Herriot, Philon le Juif (Paris, 1898), where a full bibliography of Philonian and Jewish-Alexandrian literature may be found. A third important secondary book on Philo is by Siegfried: Philo von Alexandria (Jena, 1875).
[163]. Drummond, vol. i, p. 13.
[164]. Stromata, bk. v, ch. 9. Nor was such mysticism advocated by theological writers alone. Roger Bacon—but one instance from many—declared that one lessened the majesty of knowledge who divulged its mysteries, and even went to the length of enumerating seven methods by which the arcana of philosophy and science might be concealed from the crowd (a vulgo), De Secretis Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magiae. Rolls Series, vol. xv, pp. 543–544.
[165]. De Civitate Dei, bk. xi, ch. 30.
[166]. “Aliquando De Motu Terrarum volumen iuvenis ediderim.” L. Annaei Senecae Naturalium Quaestionum Libri Septem, bk. vi, ch. 4. The edition by G. D. Koeler, Gottingen, 1819 has convenient summaries indicating contents at the head of each book, and devotes several hundred pages to a “Disquisitio” and “Animadversiones” upon Seneca’s work. In Pancoucke’s Library, vol. cxxxxvii, a French translation accompanies the text.
[167]. “Veniet tempus, quo posteri nostri tam aperta nos nescisse mirentur. Harum quinque stellarum ... modo coepimus scire.” Bk. vii, ch. 25.