chapter devoted particularly to the properties of human

* XXXIII, 34- 18-19.
»XX, 51; XXVIII, 21. ^ XXVIII, 8.
•VII, 13; XXVIII, 23. 'XXVIII, 9-
*XX, Z2\ XXII, 30; XXVIII, 'XXVIII, 9-11.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 83
saliva Pliny lists many diseases and woes which it allevi- ates.^ In this connection he makes the following absurd assertion which he nevertheless declares is easily tested by experiment. "If a person repents of a blow given from a distance or hand-to-hand, let him spit into the palm of the hand with which he struck, and the person who has been struck will feel no resentment. This is often proved by beasts of burden who are induced to mend their pace by this method after the use of the whip has failed." Pliny adds, however, that some persons try to increase the force of their blows by thus spitting on the hands beforehand. He also mentions as counter-charms against sorcery the practices of spitting into one's urine or right shoe, or when crossing a dangerous spot.
The importance of the human operator as a factor in The the performance of marvels, be they medical or magical, is operator, attested by the frequent injunctions of chastity, virginity, nudity, or a state of fasting upon persons concerned in Pliny's procedure. Sometimes they are not to glance be- hind them, sometimes they are to speak to no one during the operation. Pliny also mentions men who have a special capacity for wonder-working, such as Pyrrhus, the touch of whose toe had healing power,^ those whose eyes exert strong fascination, whole tribes of serpent-charmers and venom- curers, and others whose mere presence addles the eggs be- neath a setting hen.^ The power of words spoken by men will be considered separately under the head of incantations.
While Pliny attributes the most extreme medicinal vir- Absence of tues to simples, he excludes from his Natural History the ^^-^^ strange and elaborate compounds which were nevertheless pounds, so popular in the pharmacy of his age. Of one simple, laser, he says that it would be an immense task to attempt to list all the uses that it is supposed to have in compounds.* His position is that the simple remedies alone are the direct work of nature, while the mixtures, tablets, pills, plasters,
* XXVIII, 7. " XXVIII, 6.
*VII, 2. "XXII, 49.
84
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Sympa- thetic magic.
Antipa- thies between animals.
washes are artificial inventions of the apothecaries. Once when he describes a compound called "Hermesias" which aids in the generation of good and beautiful children, it seems to be borrowed by Democritus from the magi} Fur- thermore, Pliny thinks that health can be sufficiently pre- served or restored by nature's simple remedies. Com- pounds are the invention of human conjecture, avarice, and impudence. Such conjecture is often false, not sufficiently taking into account the natural sympathies and antipathies of the numerous ingredients. Often compounds are inex- plicable. Pliny also deplores resort to imported drugs from India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, when there are homely remedies at hand for the poorest man.^
We have just heard Pliny refer to the sympathies and antipathies of natural simples, and he often explains the marvelous effects of natural objects upon one another by this relation of love and hatred, friendship or repugnance, discord or concord which exists between them, which the Greeks call sympathy or antipathy, and which Heracleitus was perhaps the first philosopher to insist upon.^ Some modern students of magic have tried to account for all magic on this theory, and Pliny states that medicine and medicines originated from it.*
This relationship exists between animals, — deer and snakes, for example. So great a force is it that stags track snakes to their holes and extract them thence despite all resistance by the power of their breath. This antipathy continues after death, for the sovereign remedy for snake- bite is the rennet of a fawn killed in its mother's womb, while serpents flee from a man who wears the tooth of a deer. But antipathy may change to sympathy, for Pliny adds that in some cases certain parts of deer treated in cer- tain ways attract serpents.^ This force of antipathy is in-
*XXIV, 102.
'In this paragraph I have com- bined views expressed by Pliny in three different passages : XXII, 49 and 56; XXIV, i.
"IX, 88; XXIV, i; XXVIII, 23; XXXII, 12; XXXVII, 15; etc.
*XXIV, i; XXIX, 17.
•VIII. so; XXVIII. 42.
II
PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY
85
deed capable of taking the strangest turn. Bed-bugs, foul and disgusting as they are, heal the bite of snakes, especially asps, and sows can eat the poisonous salamander.^ The an- tipathy between goats and snakes would seem almost as potent as that between deer and snakes,^ since we are told that snake-bitten persons recover more quickly, if they fre- quent the stalls where goats are kept or wear as an amulet the paunch of a she-goat.
There is also "the hatred and friendship of deaf and insensible things." ^ Instances are the magnet's attraction for iron and the fact that adamant can be broken only by the blood of a he-goat, two stock examples of occult influ- ence and natural marvels which continued classic in the medieval period.'* Pliny indeed regards this last as the clearest illustration possible of the potency of sympathy and antipathy, since a substance which defies iron and fire, nature's two most violent agents, yields to the blood of a foul animal.^
There is furthermore sympathy and antipathy between animate and inanimate objects. So marvelous is the antip- athy of the tamarisk tree for the spleen alone of internal organs, that pigs who drink from troughs of this wood are found when slaughtered to be without spleen, and hence splenetic patients are fed from vessels of tamarisk.^ The spleenless pig, it may be interpolated, is another common- place of ancient and medieval science. Smearing the hives with cow dung kills other insects but stimulates the bees who have an affinity for it {cognatmn hoc iis),'^ probably, although Pliny does not say so, on the theory that they are
'XXIX, 17 and 23.
'XXVIII, 43-
*XX, I. "Odia amicitiaque re- rum surdarum ac sensu carentium . . . quod Graeci sympathiam ap- pellavere." XXIV, i. "Surdis etiam rerum sua cuique sunt venena ac minimis quoque . . • Concordia valent."
* XXVIII, 41; XXXVII, 15. Yet a note in Bostock and Riley's translation, IV, 207, asserts, "Pliny
is the only author who makes mention of this singularly absurd notion."
""Nunc quod totis voluminibus his docere conati summus de dis- cordia rerum concordiaque quam antipathiam Graeci vocavere ac sympathiam non aliter clarius in- telligi potest."
"XXIV, 41.
'XXI, 47.
Love and
hatred
between
inanimate
objects.
Sympathy between animate and inani- mate ob- jects.
86 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
spontaneously generated from it. That the wild cabbage is hostile to dogs is evidenced by the statement of Epicharmus that it cures the bite of a mad dog but kills a dog if he eats it when given to him with meat.^ Snakes hate the ash-tree so, that if they are hemmed in by its foliage on one side and fire on the other, they flee by preference into the flames.^ Betony, too, is so antipathetic to snakes that they lash them- selves to death when a circle of it is drawn about them.^ Scorpions cannot survive in the air of Sicily.* Perhaps antipathy is also the explanation of Pliny's absurd state- ment that loads of apples and pears, even if there are only a few of them, are very heavy for beasts of burden.^ Here, however, the condition may be remedied and perhaps a re- lationship of sympathy established by showing the beasts how few fruit there really are or by giving them some to eat. That sympathy may even attach to places or religious circumstances Pliny infers from the belief that the priestess of the earth at Aegira, when about to descend into the cave and predict, drinks without injury bull's blood which is sup- posed to be a fatal poison.^ Like cures That like cures like, or more precisely and paradoxically
^^^- that the cause of the disease will cure its own result, is an-
other notion which Pliny's medicine shares with magic. This is seen in the use of parts of the mad dog to cure its bite,'^ or in rubbing thighs chafed by horse-back riding with the foam from a horse's mouth.® The bite of the shrew- mouse, too, is best healed by imposition of the very animal which bit you, but another shrew-mouse will do and they are kept ready in oil and mud for this purpose.^ The sting of the phalangium may be cured by merely looking at an- other insect of that species, whether it be dead or alive.
From cases in which the cure for the disease is identical with its cause it is but a short step to remedies similar to
*XX. 36. « XXVIII, 41.
^XVI, 24. ^xxix, 32.
'XXV, 55. " XXVIII, 61.
*XXXVII, 54. "XXIX, 27. ■^ XXIII, 62; XXIV. I.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 87
or in some way associated with the ailment. It seems ob- vious to PHny that stone in the bladder can be broken by the herb on which grow what look exactly like pearls. "In the case of no other herb is it so evident for what medicine it is intended; its species is such that it can be recognized at once by sight without book knowledge."^ Similarly ophites, a marble with serpentine streaks, is used as an amu- let against snake-bite.^ Mithridates discovered that the blood of Pontic ducks should be mixed in antidotes because they live on poison.^ Heliotrope seed looks like a scorpion's tail ; if scorpions are touched with a sprig of heliotrope they die, and they will not enter ground which has been circum- scribed by it.^ To accelerate a woman's delivery her lover should take off his belt and gird her with it, then untie it, saying that he has bound her and will unloose her, and then he should go away.^ An epileptic may be cured by driving an iron nail into the spot where his head rested when he fell in the fit.^
Other instances of association are when the remedy em- The prirv
ploved is some part of an animal who is free from the disease '^'P^^ ?^ , -^ . ^ . • associa-
in question or marked by an opposite state of health. Goats tion. and gazelles never have ophthalmia, hence various portions of their bodies are prescribed for eye diseases.'^ Eagles can gaze at the sun, therefore their gall is efficacious in eye- salves.^ The bird called ossifrage has a single intestine which digests anything; the end of this intestine serves as an amulet against colic, and indigestion may be cured by merely holding the crop of the bird in one hand.^ But do not hold it too long or your flesh will waste away. The virus of mares is an ingredient in a candle which makes heads of horses seem to appear when it burns ; ^® while ink of the sepia is used in a candle which causes Ethiopians to be seen when it is lighted.^^ These magic candles are borrowed
^ XXVII, 74. •'XXVIII, 47.
^ XXXVI, II. 8 XXIX 38
^XXIl'io " XXX, 20.
»XXVilf:'9. "XXVIII, 49.
•■ XXVIII, 17. "XXXII, 52.
88 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap,
by Pliny from the works of Anaxilaus, and we shall find them a feature of medieval collections of experiments. Earth from a cart-wheel rut is thought a remedy against the bite of the shrew-mouse because that creature is too tor- pid to cross such a rut ; ^ and Pliny believes that none of the virtues attributed to moles by the magicians is more probable than that they are an antidote to the bite of the shrew-mouse, which shuns even ruts, whereas moles burrow freely through the soil.^ Pliny finds incredible the assertion made by some that a ship will move more slowly if it has the right foot of a tortoise aboard,^ but the logic of the magic seems evident enough. Magic In Pliny's medicine there are a number of examples of
of disease, what may be called magic transfer, in which the aim of the procedure is not to cure the disease outright but to rid the patient of it by transferring it from him to some other ani- mal or object. Intestinal disease may be transferred to puppies who have not yet opened their eyes by pressing them to the body and giving them milk from the patient's mouth. They will die of the disease, when its cause and exact nature may be determined by dissecting them. But finally they must be buried.* Griping pains in the bowels will also pass to a duck that is held against the abdomen. One may be rid of a cough by spitting in a frog's mouth or cure catarrh by kissing a mule,^ although in these cases we are left unin- formed whether the disease passes to the animal. But if a person who has been stung by a scorpion whispers the news in the ear of an ass, the ill will be transferred to the ass.® A boil may be removed by rubbing nine grains of barley around it, each grain thrice with the left hand, and then throwing them all into the fire.^ Warts are banished by touching each with a grain of the chickpea and then tying the grains up in a linen cloth and throwing them behind one.^ If a root of asphodel is applied to sores and then hung
* XXIX, 27. " XXXII, 29; XXX, II.
"XXX. 7. • XXVIII, 42.
'XXXII, 14. 'XXII, 65.
*XXX, 20 and 14. " XXII, 72.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 89
up in smoke, the sores will dry up along with the root.^ To cure scrofulous sores some bind on as many earthworms as there are sores and let them dry up together.^ A tooth will cease aching if the herb erigeron is dug up with iron and the patient thrice alternately touches the tooth with the root and spits, and if he then replaces the herb in the same spot and it lives. ^ If this last is a case of magic trans- fer, perhaps we may trace the same notion in some of the numerous instances in which Pliny directs that an animal shall be released alive after some part of it has been removed or some other medicinal use made of it.
A common characteristic of magic force and occult vir- Amulets, tue is that it will often act at a distance or without any physical contact or direct application. This is manifested in the practice of carrying or wearing amulets, or, what is the same thing, of ligatures and suspensions, in which ob- jects are hung from the neck or bound to some part of the body in order to ward off danger from without or cure internal disease. Instances of such practices in the Natural History are well nigh innumerable. Roots are suspended from the neck by a thread ; ^ the tongue of a fox is worn in a bracelet ; ^ for quinsy the throat is wound thrice with a thong of dog-skin and catarrh is relieved by winding the same about the fingers.^ A tooth stops aching when worms are taken from a certain prickly plant, put with some bread in a pill-box, and bound to the arm on the same side of the body as the aching tooth."^ Two bed-bugs bound to the left arm in wool stolen from shepherds are a charm against noc- turnal fevers; against diurnal fevers, if wrapped in russet cloth instead.® The heart of a vulture is an amulet against snakes, wild beasts, robbers, and royal wrath.^ The trav- eler who carries the herb artemisia feels no fatigue.^*' In- jurious drugs cannot cross one's threshold and do injury in
'XXII, 32. «xxx, 12, 15.
'XXX, 12. 'XXVII, 62.
"XXV, 106. 'XXIX, 17.
*XX, 8r. "XXIX. 24.
'XXVIII, 47. "XXVI. 89.
90 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
one's household, if a sea-star is smeared with the blood of a fox and attached to the lintel or door-post with a copper nail.^ Not only is a wreath of herbs worn for headache,^ but a sprig of poplar held in the hand prevents chafing be- tween the thighs.^ Often objects are placed under one's pillow, especially for insomnia,* but any psychological ef- fect is precluded in the case where this is to be done without the patient's knowledge.^ All sorts of specifications are given as to the color and kind of string, cloth, skin, box, nail, ring, bracelet, and the like in which should be placed, or with which should be bound on, the various gems, herbs, and parts of animals which serve as amulets. But when we are told that a remedy for headache which always helps many consists of a little bone from a snail found between two cart ruts, passed through gold, silver, and ivory, and attached to the body with dog-skin; or that one may bind on the head with a linen cloth the head of a snail decapitated with a reed when feeding in the morning especially at full moon ; ^ we feel that we have passed beyond mere amulets, ligatures, and suspensions to more elaborate minutiae of magic procedure. Positioner Position or direction is often an important matter in Pliny's, as in magic, ceremonial. It perhaps comes out most frequently in his specification of right or left. An aching tooth should be scarified with the left eye-tooth of a dog; a spider which is placed with oil in the ear should be caught with the left hand;''' epilepsy may be cured if a virgin touches the sufferer with her right thumb ; ^ for ophthalmia of the right eye suspend the right eye of a frog from the patient's neck, and the left eye for the left eye;^ for lum- bago tear off an eagle's feet away from the joint, and use the right foot for the right side and the left for pain in the left side.^*' But we have met other examples already, and
'XXXII, i6; also XX, 39. "XXIX, 36.
'XXII, 30. 'XXX, 8.
"XXIV, 32, 38. " XXVIII, 10.
*XX, 72, 82. " XXXII, 24.
"XXVI, 69. '"XXX, 18.
direction.
11 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 91
also cases of the use of the upper or lower part of this or that according to the corresponding location of an aching tooth in the upper or lower jaw.^ Tracing circles with and about objects, facing towards this or that point of the com- pass, the prohibition against glancing behind one, and the stress laid upon finding things or killing animals between the ruts of cart wheels, are other examples of taking into consideration position and direction which we have already met with incidentally to the treatment of other topics. The prescription of a plant which has grown on the head of a statue and of another which has taken root in a sieve thrown into a hedge - also seem to take mere position largely into account, more so than the accompanying recommendation of an herb growing on the banks of a stream and of another growing upon a dunghill.^
The element of time is also important. Operations should '^,^^ **™®
1 • element,
be performed before sunrise, early in the mornmg, at night,
and so on. The moon is especially regarded in such direc- tions.^ When we are informed that sufferers from quartan fever should be rubbed all over with the fat of a tortoise, we are also told that the tortoise will be fattest on the fif- teenth day of the moon and that the patient should be anointed on the sixteenth.^ But this waxing and waning of the tortoise with the moon is primarily a matter of astrology and planetary influence, under which heading we shall also later speak of Pliny's observance of the rising of the dog- star.
Observance of number is another feature in Pliny's cere- Observ- monial, of which we have already met instances. He also n"^ber alludes to the writings of Pythagoras on the subject and as- cribes to Democritus a work on the number four. Pliny's recipes frequently recommend that the operation be thrice repeated. In the case of curing scrofula by the ashes of vipers he prescribes three fingers thereof taken in drink for
'See also XXX, 8. 75, 79; XXII, 72; XXIII, 71;
'XXIV, 106 and 109. XXVIII, 47; XXIX, 36; XXXII,
^XXIV, 107 and no. 14, 2^, 38, 46.
'Some examples are: XVIII, ° XXXII. 14.
92
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
CHAP.
Relation
between
operator
and
patient.
Incanta- tions.
thrice seven days.^ In another application of a Gallic herb with old axle-grease which has not touched iron, not only must the patient spit thrice to the right, but the remedy is more efficacious if three men representing three different nations anoint the right side with it.^ The virtue of the number one is not, however, entirely slighted. Importance is attached to the death of a stag from a single wound.^ Sometimes three and one are joined in the same operation, as when child-birth is aided by hurling through the hoiise a stone or weapon by which three animals, a man, a boar, and a bear, have been killed with single blows. One of the discoveries of Pythagoras which seldom fails is that an odd number of vowels in a child's given name portends lame- ness, blindness, and like incapacitation on the right side of its body, and an even number, injuries on the left side.'* In a crown of smilax for headache there should be an odd number of leaves,^ and in a diet of snails prescribed for stomach trouble an odd number are to be eaten. ^ For a head-wash ten green lizards are boiled in ten sextarii of oil,"^ and for an application to prevent eyelashes from grow- ing again when they have been pulled out fifteen frogs are impaled on fifteen bulrushes.^ The person who has tied on a certain amulet is thereafter excluded from the patient's sight for five days.^ And so on.
This last item suggests a further intangible factor in Pliny's procedure, the doing of things to or for the patient without his knowledge. But this and any other incorporeal relationships existing between operator and patient should perhaps be classed under the head of sympathy and an- tipathy.
Closely akin to the power of numljers is that of words. Pliny once says of an incantation employed to avert hail- storms that he would not dare in seriousness to insert its
'XXX, 12. 'XXIV, 112. "VIII, so. * XXVIII, 6. "XXIV, 17.
•XXX, 15. ' XXIX, 34. » XXXII, 24. » XXXII, 38.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 93
words, although Cato in his work on agriculture prescribed a similar formula of meaningless words for the cure of frac- tured limbs. ^ But Pliny does not object to the repetition of incantations or prayers if the words spoken have some meaning. He informs us that ocimum is sown with curses and maledictions and that when cummin seed is rammed down into the soil, the sowers pray it not to come up.^ In another case the sower is to be naked and to pray for him- self and his neighbors.^ In a third case in which a poultice is to be applied to an inflammatory tumor, Pliny says that persons of experience regard it as very important that the poultice be put on by a naked virgin and that both she and the patient be fasting. Touching the sufferer with the back of her hand she is to say, "Apollo forbids a disease to in- crease which a naked virgin restrains." Then, withdraw- ing her hand, she is to repeat the same words thrice and to join with the patient in spitting on the ground each time.* Indeed, in another passage Pliny states that it is the uni- versal custom in medicine to spit three times with incanta- tions.'^ Perhaps the power of the words is thought to be increased or renewed by clearing the throat. Words were also occasionally spoken in plucking herbs. Ring-worm or tetter is treated by spitting upon and rubbing together two stones covered with a dry white moss, and by repeating a Greek incantation which may be translated, "Flee, Cantha- rides, a wild wolf seeks your blood." ^ Abscesses and in- flammations are treated with the herb reseda and a Latin translation which seems irrelevant, if not quite senseless, and which may be translated, "Reseda, make disease recede. Don't you know, don't you know what chick has dug up these roots? May they have neither head nor feet." ^ In the book following this passage Pliny raises the general question of the power of words to heal diseases.^ He gives many in- stances of belief in incantations from contemporary popu-
'XVII, 47. ''XXVIII, 7.
'XIX, 36. "XXVII, 75-
'XVIII, 35. 'XXVII, 106.
*XXVI. 60. • XXVIII. 3-4.
94
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
CHAP.
Attitude to love- charms and birth- control.
Pliny and astrology.
lar superstition, from Roman religion, and from the annals of history. He does not doubt that Romans in the past have believed in the power of words, and thinks that if we accept set forms of prayer and religious formulae, we must also admit the force of incantations. But he adds that the wisest individuals believe in neither.
Pliny's recipes and operations are mainly connected with either medicine or agriculture, but he also introduces as we have seen magical procedure employed in child-birth, safeguards against poisons and reptiles, and counter-charms against sorcery. He more than once avers that love-charms (amatoria) lie outside his province,^ in one passage alleging as a reason that the illustrious general Lucullus was killed by one," but he includes a great many of them nevertheless.^ Some herbs are so employed because of a resemblance in shape to the sexual organs,^ another instance of association by similarity. Pliny declared against abortive drugs as well as love-charms,^ but cited from the Commentaries of Caecil- ius one recipe for birth-control for the benefit of over-fecund women, consisting of a ligature of two little worms found in the body of a certain species of spider and bound on in deer-skin before sunrise. After a year the virtue of this charm expires.^
Pliny devotes but a small fraction of his work to the stars and heavens as against terrestrial phenomena, and therefore has less occasion to speak of astrology than of magic. However, had he been a great believer in astrology he doubtless would have devoted more space to the stars and their influence on terrestrial phenomena. He recognizes none the less, as we have seen, that magic and astrology are in-
* XXVII, 35. "Catanancen Thessalam herbam qualis sit de- scribi a nobis supervacuum est, cum sit usus eius ad amatoria tantum." XXVII, 99. "Phyteuma quale sit describere supervacuum habeo cum sit usus eius tantum ad amatoria."
*XXV, 7. "Ego nee abortiva dico ac ne amatoria quidem,
memor Lucullum imperatorem clarissimum amatorio perisse . . ."
^A iew examples are: XX, 15, 84, 92; XXIV, II, 42; XXVI, 64; XXVII, 42, 99; XXVIII, 77, 80; XXX, 49; XXXII, so.
*XXII, 9.
"XXV, 7.
• XXIX, 27.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 95
timately related and that "there is no one who is not eager to learn his own future and who does not think that this is shown most truly by the heavens."^ Parenthetically it may be remarked that the general literature of the time only con- firms this assertion of the widespread prevalence of astrol- ogy; allusions of poets imply a technical knowledge of the art on their readers' part; the very emperors who occasion- ally banished astrologers from Rome themselves consulted other adepts. In another passage Pliny speaks of men who "assign events each to its star according to the rules of na- tivities and believe that God decreed the future once for all and has never interfered with the course of events since.^ This way of thinking has caught learned and vulgar alike in its current and has led to such further methods of divina- tion as those by lightning, oracles, haruspices, and even such petty auguries as from sneezes and shifting of the feet. Furthermore in Pliny's list of men prominent in the various arts and sciences we find Berosus of whom a statue was erected by the Athenians in honor of his skill in astrological prognostication.' In another place where he speaks for a moment of "the science of the stars" Pliny disputes the the- ories of Berosus, Nechepso, and Petosiris that length of human life is ordered by the stars, and also makes the trite objection to the doctrine of nativities tliat masters and slaves, kings and beggars are born at the same moment.* He also is rather inclined to ridicule the enormous figures of 720,000 or 490,000 years set by Epigenes and Berosus and Critodemus for the duration of astronomical observations recorded by the Babylonians.^ From such passages we get the impression that astrology is widely accepted as a science but that the art of nativities at least is not regarded by Pliny
^XXX, I. On the general atti- * II, 5. "Astroque suo eventus
tude to astrology of the preceding adsignat nascendi legibus semel-
Augustan Age and its poets see que in omnes futures umquam dec
H. W. Garrod, Manili Astronomi- decretum in reliquom vero otium
con Liber II, Oxford, 191 1, pp. datur."
Ixv-lxxiii, but I think he overesti- ^ vil 2>7-
mates the probable effect of the ^ ^'
edict of 16 A.D. upon the poem of *^ ' 50-
Manilius. ^VII, 57.
" 96 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.^
with favor. But it would not be safe to say that he denies the control of the stars over human destiny. Indeed, in one chapter he declares that the astronomer Hipparchus can never be praised enough because more than any other man he proved the relationship of man with the stars and that our souls are part of the sky.^ When Pliny disputes the vulgar notion that each man has a star varying in bright- ness according to his fortune, rising when he is born, and fading or falling when he dies, he is not attacking even the doctrine of nativities; he is denying that the stars are con- trolled by man's fate rather than that man's life is ordered by the stars. ^ Celestial j£ pijj^y ^hus leaves us uncertain as to the relation of
portents. ■'
man to the stars, we also receive conflicting impressions
from his discussion of various celestial phenomena regarded as portentous. In one passage he speaks of the debt of gratitude owed by mankind to those great astronomical geniuses who have freed men from their former supersti- tious fear of eclipses.^ But he explains thunderbolts as celestial fire vomited forth from the planet Venus and "bear- ing omens of the future." * He also gives instances from Roman history of comets which signaled disaster, and he expounds the theory of their signifying the future.*^ What they portend may be determined from the direction in which they move and the heavenly body whose power they re- ceive, and more particularly from the shapes they assume and their position in relation to the signs of the zodiac. In- deed, Pliny even gives examples of ominous eclipses of the sun, although it is true that they were also of unusual length.^ He also tells us that many of the common people still believed that women could produce eclipses "by sor- ceries and herbs. '^
'II, 24. "11, 9.
MI, 6, "Non tanta caelo societas *II, 18.
nobiscum est ut nostro fato mor- ' II, 23.
talis sit ibi quoque siderum ful- "II, 30.
gor." ' XXV, 5.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 97
Aside from the question of the control of human des- The stars
, . , ^,. , , , . and the
tiny by the constellations at birth, Plmy s general theories world of
of the universe and of the influence of the stars upon ter- nature, restrial nature are roughly similar to those of astrology. For him the universe itself is God, ''holy, eternal, vast, all in all, nay, in truth itself all;" ^ and the sun is the mind and soul of the whole world and the chief governor of na- ture.^ The planets affect one another. A cold star renders another approaching it pale; a hot star causes its neighbor to redden ; a windy planet gives those near it a lowering ap- pearance.^ At certain points in their orbits the planets are deflected from their regular course by the rays of the sun, — • an unwitting concession to heliocentric theory.* Pliny as- cribes the usual astrological qualities to the planets.^ Saturn is cold and rigid; Mars, a flaming fire; Jupiter, located be- tween them, is temperate and salubrious. Besides their ef- fects upon one another, the planets especially influence the earth.® Venus, for instance, rules the process of genera- tion in all terrestrial beings.''' Following the Georgics of Vergil somewhat, Pliny asserts that the stars give indubi- table signs of the weather and expounds the utility of the constellations to farmers.^ He tells how Democritus by his knowledge of astronomy was able to corner the olive crop and put to shame business men who had been decrying philosophy ; ^ and how on another occasion he gave his brother timely warning of an impending storm.^^ But Pliny does not accept all the theories of the astrologers as to con- trol of the stars over terrestrial nature. He repeats, but without definitely accepting it, the ascription by the Baby- lonians of earthquakes to three of the planets in particular,^^ and the notion that the gem sandastros or garamantica, em-
'II, I. " XVIII, 5, 57, 69.
MI, 4. •XVIII, 68. Other authorities
'II, 16. tell the story of Thales; see
*II, 13. Cicero, De divinatione, II, 201;
*II, 6; and see II, 39. Aristotle, Poiit. I, 7; and Dioge-
*II, 6. "Potentia autem ad ter- nes Laertius.
ram magnopere eorum pertinens." "XVIII, 78.
Ml, 6. "II, 81.
98
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Astrologi- cal medi- cine.
Conclu- sion : magic unity of Pliny's su-T perstitions.
ployed by Chaldeans in their ceremonies, is intimately con- nected with the stars. ^ He is openly incredulous about the gem glossopetra, shaped like a human tongue and supposed to fall from the sky during an eclipse of the moon and to be invaluable in selenomancy.^
Pliny tells how the physician Crinas of Marseilles made a fortune by regulating diet and observing hours according to the motion of the stars. ^ But he does not show much faith in astrological medicine himself, rejecting entirely the elaborate classification of diseases and remedies which the astrologers had by his time already worked out for the revolutions of the sun and moon in the twelve signs of the zodiac* In his own recipes, however, astrological consid- erations are sometimes observed, as we have already seen, especially the rising of the dog-star and the phases of the moon. Pliny, indeed, states that the dog-star exerts an ex- tensive influence upon the earth.'^ As for the moon, the blood in the human body augments and decreases with its waxing and waning as shell-fish and other things in nature do.^ Indeed, painstaking men of research had discovered that even the entrails of the field-mouse corresponded in number to the days of the moon, that the ant stopped work- ing during the interlunar days, and that diseases of the eyes of certain beasts of burden also increased and decreased with the moon.'^ But on the whole Pliny's medicine and science do not seem nearly so immersed in and saturated with astrology as with other forms of magic. This gap was for the middle ages amply filled by the authority of Ptolemy, of whose belief in astrology we shall treat in the next chapter.
We have tried to analyze the contents of the Natural History, bringing out certain main divisions and underly- ing principles of magic in Pliny's agriculture, medicine, and natural science. This is, however, an artificial and difficult
* XXXVII, 28. ''II, 40.
^ XXXVII, 59. on 102
"XXIX, 5. ^^' ° •
*XXX, 29. 'II, 41.
II PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY 99
task, since it is not easy to sever materials from ceremonial or the virtues of objects from the relations of sympathy or antipathy between them. Often the same passage might serve to illustrate several points. Take for example the following sentence : "Thrasyllus is authority that nothing is so hostile to serpents as crabs ; swine who are stung cure themselves by this food, and when the sun is in Cancer, serpents are in pain." ^ Here we have at once antipathy, the remedies used by animals, the reasoning, characteristic of magic, from association and similarity, and the belief in astrology. And this confusion, to illustrate which a hundred other examples might be collected from the Natural His- tory, demonstrates how indissolubly interwoven are all the varied threads that we have been tracing. They all go naturally together, they belong to the same long period of thought, they represent the same stage in mental develop- ment, they all are parts of magic.
^ XXXII, 19.