V. Pliny's Magical Science

We may now turn to the still more numerous passages of the Natural History where the magi are not cited and com- pare the virtues there ascribed to the things of nature and the methods employed in medicine and agriculture with those of the magicians. We shall find many striking resem- blances and shall soon come to a realization that there is more magic in the Natural History which is not attributed to the magi than there is that is. Pliny did not need to warn us that medicine had been corrupted by magic; his own medicine proves it. It is this fact, that virtually his entire work is crammed with marvelous properties and fantastic ceremo- nial, which makes it so difficult in some places to tell when he begins to draw material from the magi and when he leaves off. By a detailed analysis of this remaining mate- rial we shall now attempt to classify the substances of which Pliny makes use and the virtues which he ascribes to them, the rites and methods of procedure by which they are em- ployed, and certain superstitious doctrines and notions which are involved. We shall thus find that almost pre- cisely the same factors are present in his science as in the lore of the magicians.
PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY
73
Of substances we may begin with animals/ and, before
Habits of
we note the human use of their virtues with its strong sug- animals, gestion of magic, may remark another unscientific and su- perstitious feature which was very common both in ancient and medieval times. This is the tendency to humanize ani- mals, ascribing to them conscious motives, habits, and ruses, or even moral standards and religious veneration. We shall have occasion to note the same thing in other authors and so will give but a few specimens from the many in the Nat- ural History. Such qualities are attributed by Pliny espe- cially to elephants, whom he ranks next to man in intelli- gence, and whom he represents as worshiping the stars, learning difficult tricks, and as having a sense of justice, feel-
* Some works upon animals in antiquity and Greece are :
Aubert und Wimmer, Aristo- teles Thierkunde, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1868.
Baethgen, De vi et signiUcatione gain in religione ct artibus Graecorum et Romanorum, Diss. Inaug., Gottingen, 1887.
Bernays, Theophrasts Schrift liber Frommigkeit.
Bikelas, O., La nomenclature de la Faune grecque, Paris, 1879.
Billerbeck, De locis nonnullis Arist. Hist. Animal. difUcilioribus , Hildesheim, 1806.
Dryoff, A., Die Tierpsychologie des Plutarchs, Progr. Wiirzburg, 1897. tJber die stoische Tierpsy- chologie, in Bl. f. bayr. Gymn., 23 (1897) 399ff.; 34 (1898) 416.
Erhard, Fauna der Cykladen, Leipzig, 1858.
Fowler, W. W., A Year with the Birds, 1895.
Hopf, L., Thierorakel und Ora- kelthiere in alter und ncucr Zeit, Stuttgart, 1888.
Hopfner, T., Der Tierkult der alten ALgypter nach den griech- isch-romischen Berichten und den unchtigen Denkmdlcrn, in Denkschr. d. Akad. Wien, 1913, ii Abh.
Imhoof-Blumer, F., und Keller, O., Tier- und Pilansenbilder auf Miinscn und Gcmmcn des klas- sischen Altertums. illustrated,
Keller, O., Thiere des class.
Altertums.
Kriiper, Zeit en des Gehens und Kommens und des Briitens der Vogel in Griechenland und lonien, in Mommsen's Griech. Jahrcssei- tcn, 1875.
Kiister, E., Die Schlange in der griechischen Kunst und Religion, Giessen, 1913.
Lebour, Zoologist, 1866.
Lewysohn, Zoologie des Tal- mud s.
Lindermayer, A., Die Vogel Griechenlands, Passau, i860.
Locard, Histoire des mollusques dans I'antiquite, Lyon, 1884.
Lorenz, Die Taube im Alter- thutne, 1886.
Marx, A., Griech. Mdrchen von dankbaren Tieren, Stuttgart, 1889,
Miihle, H. v. d., Beitrdge sur Ornithologie Griechenlands, Leip- zig, 1844.
Sundevall, Thierarten des Aris- toteles, Stockholm, 1863.
Thompson, D'Arcy W., A Glos- sary of Greek Birds, 1895. Aris- totle as a Biologist, 1913. Also the notes to his translation of the Historia animalium.
Westermarck, E., The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, I (1906) 251-60, gives further bibliography on the subjects of animals as witnesses and the pun- i:.hment of animal culprits.
■ 74 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
ing of mercy, and so on.^ Similarly the lion has noble cour- age and a sense of gratitude, while the lioness is wily in the devices by which she conceals her amours with the pard.^ A number of the devices of fishes to escape hooks and nets are repeated by Pliny from Ovid's Haliciiticon, extant only in fragments.^ The crocodile opens its jaws to have its teeth picked by a friendly bird ; but sometimes while this operation is being performed the ichneumon "darts down its throat like a javelin and eats away its intestines."* Pliny also marvels at the cleverness displayed by the dragon and the elephant in their combats with one another,^ which, how- ever, almost invariably terminate fatally to both combatants, the elephant falling exhausted in the dragon's coils and crushing the serpent by its weight. Others say that in the hot summer the dragons thirst for the blood of the elephant which is very cold ; in their combat the elephant falls drained of its blood and crushes the dragon who is intoxicated by the same. Remedies The dragon's apparent knowledge that the elephant is
b'^anhnal*^ cold-blooded leads us to a kindred topic, the remedies used by animals and often discovered by men only by seeing ani- mals use them. This notion continued in the middle ages, as we shall see, and of course it did not originate with Pliny. As he says himself, "The ancients have recorded the reme- dies of wild beasts and shown how they are healed even when poisoned." ^ Against aconite the scorpion eats white helle- bore as an antidote, while the panther employs human ex- crement.'^ Animals prepare themselves for combats with poisonous snakes by eating certain herbs; the weasel eats rue, the tortoise and deer use two other plants, while field mice who have been stung by snakes eat condrion.^ The hawk tears open the hawkweed and sprinkles its eyes with the juice.^ The serpent tastes fennel when it sheds its old
»VIII, I-I2. * XXVII, 2; XVIII, I.
»VIII, 17-21. ''XXVII, 2; VIII, 41-
^ XXXII, S. "XX, 51 and 61; XXII, 37 and
* VIII, 37. 45.
"VIII, 11-12. "XX, 26.
II
PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY
75
of ani- mals.
skin,^ Sick bears cure themselves by a diet of ants.^ Swal- lows restore the sight of their young with chelidonia or swal- low-wort,^ and the historian Xanthus says that the dragon restores its dead offspring to life with an herb called balis^ The hippopotamus was the original discoverer of bleeding,^ opening a vein in his leg by wounding himself on sharp reeds along the shore, and afterwards checking the flow of blood by plastering the place with mud.^ Pliny, however, states in one passage that animals hit upon all these remedies by chance and even have to rediscover them by accident in each new case, "since," he continues in conformity with recent animal psychologists, "reason and practice cannot be trans- mitted between wild beasts." '^
Yet in another passage Pliny deplores the spite fulness jealousy of the dog which, while men are looking, will not pluck the herb by which it cures itself of snakebite.^ Probably Pliny is using different authorities in the two passages. Theo- phrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, had written a work on Jealous Animals. More excusable than the spitefulness of the dog is the attitude of the dragon, from whose brain the gem draconitis must be taken while the dragon is alive and preferably asleep. For if the dragon feels that it is mor- tally wounded, it takes revenge by spoiling the gem.^ Ele- phants know that men hunt them only for their tusks, and so bury these when they fall ofif.^°
Animals have marvelous virtues of their own other than the medicinal uses to which men have put them. For in- stance, the mere glance of the basilisk is fatal, and its breath burns up vegetation and breaks rocks. ^^ But the medicinal effects which Pliny ascribes to animals and parts of animals
'VIII, 41; XX, 95. 'XXIX, 39. •XXV, 50.
Occult virtues of animals.
*XXV, 5.
^ VIII, 40; XXVIII, 31.
° For further remedies used by animals see VIII, 41 ; XXIX, 14, 38; XXV, 52-53; XXVIII, 81.
' XXVII, 2. ". . . quod certe casu repertum quis dubitet et quo-
tiens fiat etiam nunc ut novom nasci quoniam feris ratio et usus inter se tradi non possit?" Per- haps Pliny would have denied the inheritance of acquired character- istics.
XXV, 51. ' XXXVII, "VIII, 4. ' VIII, 33.
57.
76 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
are well nigh infinite. Many animal substances will have to be introduced in other connections so that we need mention now but a very few : the heads and blood of flies, honey in which bees have died, cinere genitalis asini, chicks in the t.gg, and thrice seven centipedes diluted with Attic honey,^ — this last a prescription for asthma and to be taken through a reed because it blackens every dish by its contact. Another passage advises eating a rat or shrew-mouse in order to bear a baby with black eyes.^ These items are enough to convince us that the animals and parts of animals employed by the magicians were not one whit more bizarre and nauseating than the others found in the Natural History, nor were the cures which they were expected to work any more improbable. In order to illustrate, however, the delicate distinctions which were imagined to exist not only between the virtues of dif- ferent parts of the same animal, but also between slightly varied uses of the same part, we may note that scales scraped from the topmost part of a tortoise's shell and ad- ministered in drink check sexual desire, considering which, it is, as Pliny remarks, the more marvelous that a powder made of the entire shell is reported to arouse lust.^ But love turns readily to hatred in magic as well as in romance, and it is nothing very unusual, as we shall find in other authors, for the same thing on slight provocation to work in exactly opposite ways. The Pig grease, Pliny somewhere informs us, possesses espe-
he^rbs" ° cially strong virtue, "because that animal feeds on the roots of herbs." ^ From the virtues of animals, therefore, let us turn to those of herbs. ^ Pliny met on every hand assertion of their wonderful powers. The empire-builders of Rome employed the sacred herbs sagmina and verbenae in their em- bassies and legations. The Gauls, too, use the verbena in
^XXIX, 34; XXX, 10, 19; theme is Joret, Les plantes dans
XXVIII, 46; XXIX, 11; XXX, /'anfi^Mjf^', Paris, 1904 ; see also F.
16. Mentz, De plantis qiias ad rem
XXX, 46, magicam facere crediderunt vet-
* XXXII, 14. eres, Leipzig, 1705, 28 pp.; F.
* XXVIII, 27- Unger, Die Pilanze als Zauber-
'A recent work on the general mittel, Vienna, 1859.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 77
lot-casting and prophetic responses.^ Pliny also states more sceptically that there is another root which diviners take in drink in order to feign inspiration.^ 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, ^ — an exaggerated estimate of the hardihood of the mounted Asiatic nomads and their steeds. Musaeus and Hesiod say that one anointed with potion will attain fame and dignities.* 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 as- serted incredible powers of herbs, such as to restore dragons or men to life or withdraw wedges from trees, ^ 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 ; ^ that another plant subjects fractious beasts of burden to the yoke ; ' while cows who eat buprestis burst asunder.^ Another herb con- tacto genitali kills any female animal.® Betony is considered an amulet for houses, ^° and fishermen in Pliny's neighbor- hood mix a plant with chalk and scatter it on the waves. ^'^ "The fish dart towards it with marvelous desire and straight- way float lifeless on the surface." Dogs will not bark at persons carrying peristereos}^ The "impious plant" pre- vents any human being who tastes it from having quinsy, while swine are sure to have that disease if they do not eat it.
^ XXII, 3 ; XXV, 59 ; XXVII, 28. ' XXIII, 64.
' XXI, 105. "Halicacabi radicem ' XXV, 35-
bibunt qui vaticinari gallantesque ' XXII, 36.
vere ad confirmandas superstiti- " XXIV, 94.
ones aspici se volunt." " XXV, 46.
' XXV, 43-44- " XXV, 54.
*XXI, 21, 84. "XXV. 78.
"XXV, 5
78 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Some place it in birds' nests to prevent the voracious nest- lings from strangling. Bitter almonds provide another amusing combination of effects. Eating five of them per- mits one to drink without experiencing intoxication, but if foxes eat them they will die unless they find water near by to drink. ^ There are some herbs which have a medicinal effect, if one merely looks at them.- In two cases the masculine or feminine variety of a herb is used to secure the birth of a child of the desired sex.^ Plucking 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.^ Twice Pliny tells us that the peony should be uprooted by night lest the wood- pecker of Mars try to pick the digger's eyes out.^ The state of the moon is another point to be observed,* and once an herb is to be gathered before thunder is heard.'^ A common instruction is to pick the plant with the left hand,^ and once with the thumb and fourth finger of the left hand.^ Once the right hand should be stretched covertly after the fashion of a pickpocket through the left sleeve in order to pluck the plant. ^'^ Sometimes one faces east in plucking herbs ; sometimes, west ; again one is careful not to face the wind.^^ Sometimes the gatherer must not glance behind liim. Sometimes he must fast before he takes the plant from the ground;^- again he must observe a state of chastity.^^ Sometimes he should be barefoot and clothed in white; again he should remove every^ stitch of clothing and even his rings. ^"* Sometimes the use of iron implements is forbidden ; again gold or some other material is prescribed ; ^^ once the herb is to be dug with a nail.^*' Sometimes circles are traced
* XXIII. 7S. = XXIII, 59.
"XXIV, 56-57. ^^XXIV, 62.
•XXV, 18; XXVII, 100. "XXV 'I 04
^XX. 14; XXIV, 82; XXV, 92. -XXIV ~63 and 118.
'XXV. 10; XXVII, 60. "XXI 19
;^,^,(V' 6. 93. "XXIV, 62; XXIII, 59-
'XX, 49: XXI, 83: XXIII, 54; ">^^"I' 8^; XXIV. 6. 62, 116.
XXIV, 63; XXV, 59; XXVI, 12. "XXVI. 12.
Ti PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 79
about the plant with the point of a sword. ^ Often the plant must not touch the ground again after it is picked,^ presumably from a fear that its virtue would run ofT like an electric current. Pliny alludes at least three times ^ 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 dis- ease will return to plague the delinquent patient. Fre- quently one is directed to state why one plucks the herb or for whom it is intended.'* In one case the digger says, "This is the herb Argemon which Minerva discovered was a remedy for swine who taste it." ^ In another case one should salute the plant and extract its juice before saying a word ; thus its virtue will be much greater.^ 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.'' Sometimes one sacrifices beforehand with bread and wine or prays to the gods for permission to gather the herb.^ The customs of the Druids in gathering herbs are mentioned more than once.^ In gathering the sacred mis- tletoe on the sixth day of the moon they hold sacrifices and a banquet beneath the tree.-^*' Two white bulls are the vic- tims ; a priest clad in white cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle and receives it in a white cloak. ^^
To Pliny's discussion of herbs we may append some Agri- specimens of the employment of magic procedure in agri- magic. culture 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
^ XXI. 19; XXV, 21, 94. « XXV, 92.
xxvn"'-^ ^'' ^'' ^^^^' ^' '^^^' '9= ^^^' "•
'XXI, 83; XXV, 109; XXVI, [XXIV, 62; XXV, 21. 12. "XXIV, 62-63.
*XXII, 16; XXIII, 54; XXIV, "XVI, 95.
82; XXVII, 113. "See XXIV, 6, for other
"XXIV, 116. methods of plucking the mistletoe.
8o MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.^
should be touched with the shoulders of a mole ^ — the ani- mal 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 disin- terred before harvest lest the millet be bitter. Birds may be kept away from the grain by planting in the four cor- ners of the field an herb whose name is unfortunately un- known to Pliny. ^ 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.^ 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.'* Suspending a frog in the granary preserves the corn stored there.^ 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.® 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.''^ Of the use of incantations in agriculture we shall treat later. Virtues Pliny appears to have much less faith in the possession
of marvelous virtues by gems than by herbs and parts of ani- mals. He not only characterizes the powers attributed to gems by the magi and Democritus and Pythagoras as "ter- rible lies" and "unspeakable nonsense" ; ^ but refrains from mentioning many such himself or inserts a cautious "if we believe it" or "if they tell the truth." ^ Of the gem
'XVIII, 45. " XXVIII, 81.
* See also XXV, 6. 1 yvtTT R
a YTV i-Q '
*xviii 70 " XXXVII, 14, 73.
'XVIII. 73. • XXXVII, 55-56.
metals.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 8i
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." ^ To other stones, how- ever, he ascribes various medicinal virtues, either when taken pulverized in drink or when worn as amulets.^ A few other occult properties are stated without reservation, as that amiantus resists all sorceries,^ 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."* Magnets are said to differ in sex, and the belief of Theophrastus and Mucianus.is re- peated that certain stones bear offspring.^
Of the metals iron sometimes figures in Pliny's magical 0*1^^^
_ ° •' ° , minerals
procedure, as when he either prescribes or taboos the use of it and 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.® 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.'^ 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.^ However, the rule that an object should not touch the ground is enforced in many other connections ^ than the plucking of herbs, and Pliny twice states that the earth will not permit a serpent who has stung a human be- ing to re-enter its hole.^° 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
'XXXVII, 13. 'XXXVI, 25, 39.
'For instance, XXXVII, 12 'XVI, 20.
amber, 37 jasper, 39 aetites, 55 ' XXXIII, 25.
"baroptenus." ' XXX, 12, 25.
•XXXVI, 31. "XX, 3; XXVIII, 6, 9; etc.
♦XXXVII, IS. 58, 67. "II, 63; XXIX, 23.
82
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Virtues of
human
parts.
Virtues of
human
saliva.
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.^
Various parts and products of the human body are credited with remarkable virtues as the mention just made of woman's milk suggests. Other passages recommend more especially the milk of a woman just delivered of a male child, but most of all that of the mother of twins.^ Sed nihil facile reperiatur mulierimi profluvio magis mon- strificum, as Pliny proceeds to illustrate by numerous ex- amples.^ Great virtues are also attributed to the urine, par- ticularly of a chaste boy.* A few other instances of rem- edies drawn from the human body are ear-wax or a pow- dered tooth against stings of scorpions and bites of snakes,^ a man's hair for the bite of a dog, the first hairs from a boy's head for gout.® Diseases of women are prevented by wearing constantly in a bracelet the first tooth a boy loses, provided it has not touched the ground. Simply tying two fingers or toes together is recommended for tumors in the groin, catarrh, and sore eyes.'^ Or the eyes may be touched thrice with water in which the feet have been washed. Scrofula and throat diseases may be cured by the touch of the hand of one who has died an early death, although some authorities do not insist upon the circumstance of early death but direct that the corpse be of the same sex as the patient and that the diseased spot be touched with the back of the left dead hand.
Of all fluids and excretions of the human body the saliva is perhaps used most often in ancient and medieval medicine, as the custom of spitting once or thrice in administering other remedies or performing ceremonies goes to prove. The spittle of a fasting person is the more efficacious. In a