Whatever Plato’s opinion of vulgar magic, his view of nature was much like that of primitive man. He humanized material objects and materialized spiritual characteristics. For instance, he asserted that the gods placed the lungs about the heart “as a soft spring that, when passion was rife within, the heart, beating against a yielding body, might be cooled and suffer less, and might thus become more ready to join with passion in the service of reason.”[121] He affirmed that the liver was designed for divination, and was a sort of mirror on which the thoughts of the intellect fell and in which the images of the soul were reflected, but that its predictions ceased to be clear after death.[122] Plato spoke of the existence of harmonious love between the elements as the source of health and plenty for vegetation, beasts and men. Their “wanton love” he made the cause of pestilence and disease. To understand both varieties of love “in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is” he tells us, “termed astronomy.”[123] This suggests that he believed in astrology — in the potent influence of the stars over all changes in earthly matter. He called the stars “divine and eternal animals, ever abiding.”[124] The “lower gods,” of whom many at least are identical with the heavenly bodies, form men who, if they live well, return after death each to a happy existence in his proper star.[125] The implication is, though Plato does not say so distinctly, that the stars influence human life.
Aristotle’s doctrine was similar. Windelband has well expressed his view:
The stars themselves were. . for Aristotle beings of superhuman intelligence, incorporate deities. They appeared to him as the purer forms, those more like the deity, and from them a purposive rational influence upon the lower life of the earth seemed to proceed — a thought which became the root of mediaeval astrology.[126]
Moreover, “his theory of the subordinate gods of the spheres of the planets. . provided for a later demonology.”[127] And a belief in demons fosters a belief in magic. For such subordinate gods — on the one hand movers of nature’s forces, and on the other hand subject to passions like man and open to influence through symbols and conjurations — are evidently most suitable agents for the worker of magic to employ. We must also mention Aristotle’s attribution of “souls” to plants and animals, a theory which would readily lend itself to an assumption of magic properties in herbs and beasts.
Aristotle himself in his works upon natural science accepts such properties to a considerable extent. A few citations from his History of Animals[128] will show that we have not been misled in inferring from Pliny that Greek science at its best was not untainted by magic. The History of Animals seems to attribute undue influence to the full moon and the dog-star,[129] and to hold that honey is distilled from the air by the stars and that the wax alone is made by the bees.[130] Aristotle repeats the story that the salamander is a fire-extinguisher.[131] He mentions as a cure for the sting of a certain snake the drinking of a small stone “taken from the tomb of one of the ancient kings.” Like Pliny, he makes human saliva a defense against serpents.[132] He says of certain things that they are ominous of certain events.[133]
He affirms that the hen-partridge is affected by the mere breath of the cock or by a breeze from his direction.[134] He thinks that insects are spontaneously generated from mud, dung, wood, or flesh.[135] He says it is plain that the Narce causes stupefaction in both fish and men.[136] He has not only an idea that those with lice in their hair are less subject to headaches, but also a notion that those who have lice and take baths become more liable to the pest when they change the water in which they wash themselves.[137] Another amusing illusion which he records is that calves will suffer less in their feet if their horns are waxed.[138] Thus the pages of Aristotle give ground for belief that the fantasticalness of mediaeval science was due to “the clear light of Hellas” as well as to the gloom of the “Dark Ages.”
The book by a Roman which we are to consider as illustrative of the condition of science before the age of the Empire is Cato’s treatise on agriculture. Several passages emphasize the importance of such conditions as that the moon should be new or waning or not shining during the performance of such acts as the transplanting of trees or the manuring of meadows.[139] It is also directed that in administering medicine to oxen the man giving the dose shall have fasted previously and that both he and the ox stand upright during the operation.[140] One medicine prescribed for cattle is a mixture of 3 grains of salt, 3 leaves of laurel, 3 fibres of leek, 3 tufts of ulpican leek, 3 sprigs of the savin, 3 leaves of rue, 3 stalks of the white vine, 3 white beans, 3 live coals, 3 sextarii of wine. Each ox is to be given a portion for three days and the whole is to be divided so that it will suffice for exactly three doses.[141] To heal a sprain or fracture the singing of the following nonsensical incantation or formula is recommended: “In alios S. F. motas vaeta daries dardaries astataries dissunapiter.”[142] This was written by a man generally supposed to have had much common sense and who was enlightened enough to wonder how two augurs could let their eyes meet without laughing.
CHAPTER V
Belief in Magic in the Empire
Having shown reason for believing that the Natural History is a fairly accurate mirror of the science of the past, we come now to examine Pliny’s own age and to observe to what extent his attitude towards magic was characteristic of it. “His own age,” I say, but this is only roughly speaking, for it is the general period of the Roman Empire that we shall now consider, with the exception of the closing century which we reserve for later discussion. We shall have now to speak first of the general attitude towards magic in the Empire, and then in particular of two or three men or works that corroborate the rich evidence which Pliny, for the most part unconsciously, gave of the place of magic in the intellectual life of the time.