[877] N. H., V. 5.
[878] Aristotle (H. A., III. 11), states that the hair does grow in dead bodies. Since his time many descriptions of remarkable growth after death have been published, and many people believe that such growth does take place. Erasmus Wilson pronounces that “the lengthening of the hairs observed in a dead person is merely the result of the contraction of the skin towards their bulb.”
[879] Blakey, op. cit., 207, states an engraving was found at Herculaneum “representing a little Cupid fishing with the ringlets of her (sic) hair for lovers.” So far I have failed to track this hermaphroditic representation, nor is Sir C. Waldstein aware of its existence.
[880] Translated by Dasent. Frodi’s flour = gold.
[881] Professor Grenfell tells me that ὃτε here has no connection, unless the main verb came in line 16, where there is a lacuna, but the traces do not suggest any verb. He also approves my rendering of ψωμίσας having the sense of “baiting the swim” with bits of flesh from the corpses.
[882] Aristophanes, Thesm., 928. Cf. also Wasps, 174-6.
[883] Wiener Studien, XXVII. (1905), pp. 299, ff.
[884] Or early Gnostics, also called Ophites, who honoured serpents.
[885] But as one of the earliest instances of imitative magic the story is notable. In the tale of Overthrowing Apep, based on the XXXIXth Chapter of The Book of the Dead, the priestly directions for destroying this enemy of Ra, or the Sun, run as follows: “Thou shalt say a prayer over a figure of Apep, which hath been drawn upon a sheet of papyrus, and over a wax figure of Apep upon which his name has been cut: and thou shalt lay them on the fire, so that it may consume the enemy of Ra.” Six figures in all, presumably “to mak siccar,” are to be placed on the fire at stated hours of the day and night. Cf. Theocritus, Id., II. 27 ff., where the slighted damsel prays, “Even as I melt this wax, with the god to aid, so speedily may he (her lover) by love be molten.”
[886] III. 40 ff.