CHAPTER IX

LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ATTACKS UPON SUPER- STITION : CICERO, FAVORINUS, SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, AND LUCIAN
Authors to be considered — Their standpoint — De divinatione ; argu- ment of Quintus — Cicero attacks past authority— Divination distinct from natural science — Unreasonable in method — Requires violation^ of natural law — Cicero and astrology — His crude historical criticism — Favorinus against astrologers — Sextus Empiricus — Lucius, or The Ass: is it by Lucian? — Career of Lucian — Alexander the pseudo-prophet — Magical procedure in medicine satirized — Snake-charming — A Hyp^er- borean magician — Some ghost stories — Pancrates, the magician — Credulity and scepticism — Menippus, or Necromancy — Astrological in- terpretation of Greek myth — History and defense of astrology — Lucian not always sceptical — Lucian and medicine — Inevitable intermingling of scepticism and superstition — Lucian on writing history.
Authors Having noted the large amount of magic that still existed sidered. ^oth in the leading works of natural science of the early Roman empire and in the more general literature of that period, it is only fair that we should note such extremes of scepticism towards the superstitions then current as can be found during the same period. They are, however, few and far between, and we shall have to go back to the close of the Republican period for the best instance in the De divinatione of Cicero. As Pliny's Ncttural History was mainly a compilation of earlier Greek science, so Cicero's arguments against divination were not entirely original with him. As his other philosophical writings are largely in- debted to the Greeks, so his attack upon divination is sup- posed to be under considerable obligations to Clitomachus and Panaetius,-^ philosophers of the New Academy and the
* T. Schiche, De foniibus libra- Die Quellen von Ciceros swei rum Ciccronis qui sunt de divina- BHichern de Divinatione, Freiburg, Hone, Jena, 1875; K. Hartf elder, 1878.
268
CHAP. IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 269
Stoic school who flourished respectively at Carthage and Athens and at Rhodes and Rome in the second century be- fore our era. We shall next briefly note the criticisms of astrologers and astrology made by Favorinus, a rhetorician from Gaul who resided at Rome under Hadrian and was a friend of Plutarch but whose argument against the astrolo- gers has been preserved only in the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius/ and by Sextus Empiricus,^ a sceptical philosopher who wrote about 200. Finally we shall consider Lucian's satirical depiction of various superstitions of his time.
It will be noticed that no one of these critics of magic, Their if we may so designate them, is primarily a natural scientist. Cicero and Lucian and Favorinus are primarily men of let- ters and rhetoricians. And all four of our critics write to a greater or less extent from the professed standpoint of a general sceptical attitude in all matters of philosophy and not merely in the matter of superstition. Thus the attack of Sextus Empiricus upon astrology occurs in a work which is directed against learning in general, and in which he assails grammarians, rhetoricians, geometricians, arithmeticians, students of music, logicians, physicists, and students of ethics, as well as the casters of horoscopes. Aulus Gellius did not know whether to take the arguments of Favorinus against the astrologers seriously or not. He says that he heard Favorinus make the speech the substance of which he repeats, but that he is unable to state whether the philosopher really meant what he said or argued merely in order to exercise and to display his genius. There was reason for this perplexity of Aulus Gellius, since Favorinus was in- clined to such tours de force as eulogies of Thersites or of Quartan Fever.
De divinatione takes the form of a supposititious conver- De divina-
sation, or better, informal debate, between the author and argument
his brother Quintus. In the first book Ouintus, in a rather °^ Quin-
. . . '^ . . . tus.
rambling and leisurely fashion and with occasional repetition
* Aulus Gellius, Nodes Atticae, 'Adv. astro!., in Opera, ed.
XIV, I. Johannes Albertus Fabricius,
Leipzig, 1718.
270
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
of ideas, upholds divination to the best of his ability, citing* many reported instances of successful recourse to it in antiquity. In the second book Tully proceeds with a some- what patronizing air to pull entirely to pieces the arguments of his brother who assents with cheerful readiness to their demolition. On the whole the appeal to the past is the main point in the argument of Quintus. What race or state, he asks, has not believed in some form of divination? "For before the revelation of philosophy, which was discovered but recently, public opinion had no doubt of the truth of this art; and after philosophy emerged no philosopher of authority thought otherwise. I have mentioned Pytha- goras, Democritus, Socrates. I have left out no one of the ancients save Xenophanes. I have added the Old Academy, the Peripatetics, the Stoics. Epicurus alone dissented." ^ Quintus closes his long argument in favor of the truth of divination by solemnly asserting that he does not approve of sorcerers, nor of those who prophesy for the sake of gain, nor of the practice of questioning the spirits of the dead — which nevertheless, he says, was a custom of his brother's friend Appius."
When Tully's turn to speak comes, he rudely disturbs his brother's reliance upon tradition. "I think it not the part of a philosopher to employ witnesses, who are only haply true and often purposely false and deceiving. He ought to show why a thing is so by arguments and reasons, not by events, especially those I cannot credit." ^ "Antiquity," Cicero declares later, "has erred in many respects." ** The existence of the art of divination in every age and nation has little effect upon him. There is nothing, he asserts, so widespread as ignorance.^ Divination "^^^^ brothers distinguish divination as a separate sub-
distinct ject from the natural or even the applied sciences. Quintus rafscience! says that medical men, pilots, and farmers foresee many things, yet their arts are not divination. "Not even Phere-
^ De dizinatione, I, 39. * Ibid., II, 2>2>-
^Ibid., I, 58. ^Ibid.. II, 36.
'Ibid., II, II.
Cicero attacks past authority.
IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 271
cydes, that famous Pythagorean master, who predicted an earthquake when he saw that the water had disappeared from a well which usually was well filled, should be re- garded as a diviner rather than a physicist." ^ Tully carries the distinction a step further and asserts that the sick seek a doctor, not a soothsayer; that diviners cannot instruct us in astronomy; that no one consults them concerning philo- sophic problems or ethical questions ; that they can give us no light on the problems of the natural universe; and that they are of no service in logic, dialectic, or political science.^ An admirable declaration of independence of natural science and medicine and other arts and constructive forms of thought from the methods of divination ! But also one more easy to state in general terms of theory than to enforce in details of practice, as Pliny, Galen, and Ptolemy have already shown us. None the less it is indeed a noteworthy restriction of the field of divination when Cicero remarks to his brother, "For those things which can be perceived beforehand either by art or reason or experience or conjec- ture you regard as not the affair of diviners but of scien- tists." ^ But the question remains whether too large powers of prediction may not be claimed by "science."
Cicero proceeds to attack the methods and assumptions of divination as neither reasonable nor scientific. Why, Unreason- he asks, did Calchas deduce from the devoured sparrows ^gfj^*'^ that the Trojan war would last ten years rather than ten weeks or ten months ? * He points out that the art is con- ducted in different places according to quite different rules of procedure, even to the extent that a favorable omen in one locality is a sinister warning elsewhere.^ He refuses to believe in any extraordinary bonds of sympathy between things which, in so far as our daily experience and our
'I, so. ''11,30.
a Tj - . " II, 12. An astrologer, how-
' '^ ^' ever, would probably say that
* II, 5. "Quae enim praesentiri seeming contradiction could be ac-
aut arte aut ratione aut usu aut counted for by the varying influ-
coniectura possunt, ea non divinis ence of the constellations upon
tribuenda putas sed peritis." different regions.
2^2
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Requires violation of natural law.
Cicero and astrology.
knowledge of the workings of nature can inform us, have no causal connection. What intimate connection, he asks, what bond of natural causality can there be between the liver or heart or lung of a fat bull and the divine eternal cause of all which rules the universe?^ "That anything certain is signified by uncertain things, is not this the last thing a scientist should admit?" " He refuses to accept dreams as fit channels either of natural divination or divine revelation.^ The Sibylline Books, like most oracles, are vague and the evident product of labored ingenuity.*
Moreover, divination asserts the existence of phenomena which science denies. Such a figment, Cicero scornfully affirms, as that the heart will vanish from the carcass of a victim is not believed even by old-wives now-a-days. How can the heart vanish from the body? Surely it must be there as long as life lasts, and how can it disappear in an instant? "Believe me, you are abandoning the citadel of phi- losophy while you defend its outposts. For in your effort to prove soothsaying true you utterly pervert physiology. . . . For there will be something which either springs from nothing or suddenly vanishes into nothingness. What scien- tist ever said that? The soothsayers say so? Are they then, do you think, to be trusted rather than scientists?"*^ Cicero makes other arguments against divination such as the stock contentions that it is useless to know prede- termined events beforehand since they cannot be avoided, and that even if we can learn the future, we shall be happier not to do it, but his outstanding argument is that it is un- scientific.
Cicero's attack upon divination is mainly directed against liver divination and analogous methods of predict- ing the future, but he devotes a few chapters ^ to the doc- trines of the Chaldeans. They postulate a certain force in the constellations called the zodiac and hold that between *II, 12. 'II, 60-71.
^11, 19. "Quid igitur minus a ^11, 54.
physicis dici debet quam quidquam 'II, 16.
certi significari rebus incertis ?" " II, 42-47.
IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 273
man and the position of the stars and planets at the moment of his birth there exists a relation of sympathy so that his personality and all the events of his life are thereby deter- mined. Diogenes the Stoic limited this influence to the determination of one's aptitude and vocation, but Cicero regards even this much as going too far. The immense spaces intervening between the different planets seem to him a reason for rejecting the contentions of the Chaldeans. His further criticism that they insist that all men born at the same moment are alike in character regardless of hori- zons and different aspects of the sky in different places is one that at least did not hold good permanently against astrology and is not true of Ptolemy. He asks if all the men who perished at Cannae were born beneath the same star and how it came about that there was only one Homer if several men are born every instant. He also adduces the stock argument from twins. He attacks the practice, which we shall find continued in the middle ages, of astro- logical prediction of the fate of cities. He says that if all animals are to be subjected to the stars, then inanimate things must be, too, than which nothing can be more absurd. This suggests that he hardly conceives of the fundamental hypothesis of medieval science that all inferior nature is under the influence of the celestial bodies and their motion and light. At any rate his arguments are directed against the casting of horoscopes or genethlialogy. And in the matter of the influence of the planets upon man he was not entirely antagonistic, at least in other writings than the De divinatione, for in the Dream of Scipio he speaks of Jupiter as a star wholesome and favorable to the human race, of Mars as most unfavorable. He further calls seven and eight perfect numbers and speaks of their product, fifty-six, as signifying the fatal year in Scipio's life. Incidentally, as another instance that Cicero was not always sceptical, it may be recalled that it was in Cicero that Pliny read of a man who could see one hundred and thirty-five miles. -^
^NH, VII, 21.
274
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
His crude historical criticism.
Favorinus against as- trologers.
Such apparent inconsistency is perhaps a sign of some- what indiscriminating eclecticism on Cicero's part. We ex- perience something of a shock, although perhaps we should not be surprised, to find him in his Republic ^ arguing as seriously in favor of the ascension or apotheosis of Romulus as a historic fact as a professor of natural science in a denominational college might argue in favor of the his- toricity of the resurrection of Christ. Although in the De divinatione he impatiently brushed aside the testimony of so great a cloud of witnesses and of most philosophers in favor of divination, he now argues that the opinion that Romulus had become a god "could not have prevailed so universally unless there had been some extraordinary manifestation of power," and that "this is the more remarkable because other men, said to have become gods, lived in less learned times when the mind was prone to invent and the inexperienced were easily led to believe," whereas Romulus lived only six centuries ago when literature and learning had already made great progress in removing error, when "Greece was already full of poets and musicians, and little faith was placed in legends unless they concerned remote antiquity." Yet a few chapters later Cicero notes that Numa could not have been a pupil of Pythagoras, since the latter did not come to Italy until 140 years after his death; ^ and in a third chap- ter ^ when Laelius remarks, "That king is indeed praised but Roman History is obscure, for although we know the mother of this king, we are ignorant of his father," Scipio replies, "That is so ; but in those times it was almost enough if only the names of the kings were recorded." We can only add, "Consistency, thou art a jewel 1"
Favorinus denied that the doctrine of nativities was the work of the Chaldeans and regarded it as the more recent invention of marvel-mongers, tricksters, and mountebanks. He regards the inference from the effect of the moon on tides to that of the stars on every incident of our daily life
^Republic, II, 10.
'Ibid.. II, 15.
'Ibid., II, 18.
IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 275
as unwarranted. He further objects that if the Chaldeans did record astronomical observations these would apply only to their own region and that observations extended over a vast lapse of time would be necessary to establish any system of astrology, since it requires ages before the stars return to their previous positions. Like Cicero, Favorinus prob- ably manifests his ignorance of the technique of astrology in complaining that astrologers do not allow for the differ- ent influence of different constellations in different parts of the earth. More cogent is his suggestion that there may be other stars equal in power to the planets which men cannot see either for their excess of splendor or because of their position. He also objects that the position of the stars is not the same at the time of conception and the time of birth, and that, if the different fate of twins may be explained by the fact that after all they are not born at precisely the same moment, the time of birth and the position of the stars must be measured with an exactness practically impossible. He also contends that it is not for human beings to predict the future and that the subjection of man not merely in matters of external fortune but in his own acts of will to the stars is not to be borne. These two arguments of the divine pre- rogative and of human free will became Christian favorites. He complains that the astrologers predict great events like battles but cannot predict small ones, and declares that they may congratulate themselves that he does not propose such a question to them as that of astral influence on minute ani- mals. This and his further question why, out of all the grand works of nature, the astrologers limit their attention to petty human fortune, suggest that like Cicero he did not realize that astrology was or would become a theory of all nature and not mere genethlialogy.
To the arguments against nativities that men die the Sextus same death who were not born at the same time and that Empincus. men who are born at the same time are not identical in character or fortune Sextus Empiricus adds the derisive question whether a man and an ass born in the same instant
276
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Lucius or The Ass: is it by Lucian ?
would suffer exactly the same destiny. Ptolemy would of course reply that while the influence of the stars is constant in both cases it is variably received by men and donkeys; and Sextus's query does not show him very well versed in astrology. He mentions the obstacle of free will to astro- logical theory but does not make very much of it. The chief point which he makes is that even if the stars do rule human destiny, their effect cannot be accurately measured. He lays stress on the difficulty of exactly determining the date of birth or of conception, or the precise moment when a star passes into a new sign of the zodiac. He notes the variability and unreliability of water-clocks. He calls atten- tion to the fact that observers at varying altitudes as well as in different localities would arrive at different conclu- sions. Differences in eyesight would also affect results, and it is difficult to tell just when the sun sets or any sign of the zodiac drops below the horizon owing to reflection and refraction of rays. Sextus thus leaves us somewhat in doubt whether his objections are to be taken as indicative of a spirit of captious criticism towards an art, the fundamental principles of which he tacitly recognizes as well-nigh incon- testible, or whether he is simply trying to make his case doubly sure by showing astrology to be impracticable as well as unreasonable. In any case we shall find his argument that the influence of the stars cannot be measured accurately repeated by Christian writers.
The main plot of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius ap- pears, shorn of the many additional stories, the religious mysticism, and the autobiographical element which charac- terize his narrative, in a brief and perhaps epitomized Greek version, entitled Lucius or The Ass, among the works of Lucian of Samosata, the contemporary of Apuleius and noted satirist. The work is now commonly regarded as spurious, since the style seems different from that of Lucian and the Attic Greek less pure. The narrative, too, is bare, at least compared with the exuberant fancy of Apuleius, and seems to avoid the marvelous and romantic details in which
IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 277
he abounds. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, who regarded the work as Lucian's, said that he wrote in it as one deriding the extravagance of super- stition. Whether this be true of The Ass or not, it is true of other satires by Lucian of undisputed genuineness, in which he ridicules the impostures of the magic and pseudo- science of his day. In place of the genial humor and fantas- tic imagination with which his African contemporary credu- lously welcomed the magic and occult science of his time, the Syrian satirist probes the same with the cool mockery of his keen and sceptical wit.
Lucian was born at Samosata near Antioch about 120 or Career of 125 A. D. and after an unsuccessful beginning as a sculptor's apprentice turned to literature and philosophy. He prac- ticed in the law courts at Antioch for some time and also wrote speeches for others. For a considerable period of his life he roamed about the Mediterranean world from Paphla gonia to Gaul as a rhetorician, and like Apuleius resided both at Athens and Rome. After forty he ceased teaching rhetoric and devoted himself to literary production, living at Athens. Towards the close of his life, "when he already had one foot in Charon's boat," ^ he was holding a well paid and important legal position in Egypt. His death occurred perhaps about 200 A. D. Some ascribe it to gout, probably because he wrote two satires on that disease. Suidas states that Lucian was torn to pieces by dogs as a punishment for his attacks upon Christianity, which again is probably a perversion of Lucian's own statement in Peregrinus that he narrowly escaped being torn to pieces by the Cynics.
It was at the request of that same adversary of Chris- Alexander
tianity against whom Origen composed the Reply to Ceisus 'A'^j^j^.
that Lucian wrote his account of the impostor, Alexander prophet.
of Abonutichus, a pseudo-prophet of Paphlagonia. This
Alexander pretended to discover the god Asclepius in th«
form of a small viper which he had sealed up in a goose tgg.
'^Apologia pro mercede conduc- H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, tis. Most of Lucian's Essays have 1905, 4 vols, been translated into English by
278 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
He then replaced the tiny viper by a huge tame serpent which he had purchased at Pella in Macedon and which was trained to hide its head in Alexander's armpit, while to the crowd, who were also permitted to touch the tail and body of the real snake, was shown a false serpent's head made of linen with human features and a mouth that opened and shut and a tongue that could be made to dart in and out. Having thus convinced the people that the viper had really been a god and had miraculously increased in size, Alexander proceeded to sell oracular responses as from the god. Inquirers sub- mitted their questions in sealed packages which were later returned to them with appropriate answers and with the seals unbroken and apparently untouched. Similarly Plutarch tells of a sceptical opponent of oracles who became converted into their ardent supporter by receiving such an answer to a sealed letter.^ Lucian, however, explains that Alexander sometimes used a hot needle to melt the seal and then restore it to practically its original shape, or employed other methods by which he took exact impressions of the seal, then boldly broke it, read the question, and afterwards replaced the seal by an exact replica of the original made in the mould. Lucian adds that there are plenty of other devices of this sort which he does not need to repeat to Celsus who has already made a sufficient collection of them in his "excellent treatises against the magicians." Lucian tells later, how- ever, how Alexander made his god seem to speak by attach- ing a tube made of the windpipes of cranes to the artificial head and having an assistant outside speak through this concealed tube. In our later discussion of the church father Hippolytus we shall find that he apparently made use of this expose of magic by Lucian as well as of the arguments of Sextus Empiricus against astrology. Lucian's personal ex- periences with this Alexander were quite interesting but are less germane to our investigation.
^ De defectu oraculorum, 45.
IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 279
We must not fail, however, to note another essay, Philo- Magicai pseudes or Apiston, in which the superstition and pseudo- fn^medr-^^ science of antiquity are sharply satirized in what purports cine to be a conversation of several philosophers, including a Stoic, a Peripatetic, and a Platonist, and a representative of ancient medicine in the person of Antigonus, a doctor. Some of the magical procedure then employed in curing diseases is first satirized. Cleodemus the Peripatetic advises as a remedy for gout to take in the left hand the tooth of a field mouse which has been killed in a prescribed manner, to wrap it in the skin of a lion freshly-flayed, and thus to bind it about the ailing foot. He affirms that it will give instant relief. Dinomachus the Stoic admits that the occult virtue of the lion is very great and that its fat or right fore-paw or the bristles of its beard, if combined with the proper incantations, have wonderful efficacy. But he holds that for the cure of gout the skin of a virgin hind would be superior on the ground that the hind is speedier than the lion and so more beneficial to the feet. Cleodemus retorts that he used to think the same, but that a Libyan has convinced him that the lion can run faster than the hind or it would never catch one. The sceptical reporter of this conversation states that he vainly attempted to convince them that an internal disease could not be cured by external attachments or by incanta- tions, methods which he regards as the veriest sorcery (goefia).
His protests, however, merely lead Ion the Platonist to Snake; recount how a Magus, a Chaldean of Babylonia, cured his '^ ^^^^S- father's gardener who had been stung by an adder on the great toe and was already all swollen up and nearly dead. The magician's method was to apply a splinter of stone from the statue of a virgin to the toe, uttering at the same time an incantation. He then led the way to the field where the gardener had been stung; pronounced seven sacred names from an ancient volume, and fumigated the place thrice with torches and sulphur. All the snakes in the field then came forth from their holes with the exception of one very aged
2S0
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
A Hyper- borean magician.
Some ghost stories.
Pancrates,
the
magician.
and decrepit serpent, whom the magician sent a young snake back to fetch. Having thus assembled every last serpent, he blew upon them, and they all vanished into thin air.
This tale reminds the Stoic of another magician, a bar- barian and Hyperborean, who could walk through fire or upon water and even fly through the air. He could also "make people fall in love, call up spirits, resuscitate corpses, bring down the moon, and show you Hecate herself as large as life." ^ More specific illustration of the exercise of these powers is given in an account of a love spell which he per- formed for a young man for a big fee. Digging a trench, he raised the ghost of the youth's father and also summoned Hecate, Cerberus, and the Moon. The last named appeared in three successive forms of a woman, an ox, and a puppy. The sorcerer then constructed a clay image of the god of love and sent it to fetch the girl, who came and stayed until cock-crow, when all the apparitions vanished with her. In vain the sceptic argues that the girl in question would have come willingly enough without any magic. The Platonist matches the previous story with one of a Syrian from Pales- tine who cast out demons.
The discussion then further degenerates into ghost stories and tales of statuettes that leave their pedestals after the household has retired for the night. One speaker says that he no longer has any fear of ghosts since an Arab gave him a magic ring made of nails from crosses and taught him an incantation to use against spooks. At this juncture a Pythagorean philosopher of great repute enters and adds his testimony in the form of an account of how he laid a ghost at Corinth by employing an Egyptian incantation.
Eucrates, the host, then tells of Pancrates, whom he had met in Egypt and who "had spent twenty-three years under- ground learning magic from Isis," and whom crocodiles would allow to ride on their backs. They traveled a time together without a servant, since Pancrates was able to dress up the door-bar or a broom or pestle, turn it into human ^ Fowler's translation.
IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 281
form, and make it wait upon them. There follows the familiar story of Eucrates' overhearing the incantation of three syllables which Pancrates employed and of trying it out himself when the magician was absent. The pestle turned into human form all right enough and obeyed his order to bring in water, but then he discovered that he could not make it stop, and when he seized an axe and chopped it in two, the only effect was to produce two water-carriers in place of one.
The conversation is turning to the subject of oracles Credulity when the sceptic can stand it no longer and retires in dis- scepticism, gust. As he tells what he has heard to a friend, he remarks upon the childish credulity of "these admired teachers from whom our youth are to learn wisdom." At the same time, the stories seem to have made a considerable impression even upon him, and he wishes that he had some lethal drug to make him forget all these monsters, demons, and Hecates that he seems still to see before him. His friend, too, de- clares that he has filled him with demons. Their dialogue then concludes with the consoling reflection that truth and sound reason are the best drugs for the cure of such empty lies.
The Menippus or Necromancy, while an obvious imita- Menippus, tion and parody of Odysseus' mode of descent to the under- world to consult Teiresias, also throws some light on the magic of Lucian's time. In order to reach the other world Menippus went to Babylon and consulted Mithrobarzanes, one of the Magi and followers of Zoroaster. He is also called one of the Chaldeans. Besides a final sacrifice similar to that of Odysseus, the procedure by which the magician procured their passage to the other world included on his part muttered incantations and invocations, for the most part unintelligible to Menippus, spitting thrice in the latter's face, waving torches about, drawing a magic circle, and wearing a magic robe. As for Menippus, he had to bathe in the Euphrates at sunrise every morning for the full twenty-nine days of a moon, after which he was purified
tnancy.
282
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Astrologi- cal inter- pretation of Greek myth.
at midnight in the Tigris and by fumigation. He had to sleep out-of-doors and observe a special diet, not look any- one in the eye on his way home, walk backwards, and so on. The ultimate result of all these preparations was that the earth was burst asunder by the final incantation and the way to the underworld laid open. When it came time to return Menippus crawled up with difficulty, like Dante going from the Inferno to Purgatory, through a narrow tunnel which opened on the shrine of Trophonius.
An essay on astrology ascribed to Lucian is usually regarded as spurious.^ Denial of its authenticity, however, should rest on such grounds as its literary style and the manuscript history of the work rather than upon its — to modern eyes — superstitious character. In antiquity a man might be sceptical about most superstitions and yet believe in astrology as a science. Lucian's sceptical friend Celsus, for example, as we shall see in our chapter on Origen's Reply to Celsus, believed that the future could be foretold from the stars. And whether the present essay is genuine or spurious, it is certainly noteworthy that for all his mockery of other superstition Lucian does not attack astrology in any of his essays. Moreover, this essay on astrology is very sceptical in one way, since it denies the literal truth of vari- ous Greek myths and gives an astrological interpretation of them, as in the case of Zeus and Kronos and the so-called adultery of Mars. This is not inconsistent with Lucian's ridicule elsewhere of the anthropomorphic Olympian divini- ties. What Orpheus taught the Greeks was astrology, and the planets were signified by the seven strings of his lyre. Teiresias taught them further to distinguish which stars were masculine and which feminine in character and influence. A proper interpretation of the myth of Atreus and Thyestes also shows the Greeks at an early date acquainted with astro- logical doctrine. Bellerophon soared to the sky, not on a
* Fowler omits it. It appears in the Teubner edition, Luciani Samosatensis opera, ed. C. Jaco- bitz, II (1887), 187-95, but both
Jacobitz and Dindorf mark it as spurious. Croiset, Essai sur la vie et les oouvrcs de Lucien, Paris, 1882, p. 43, also rejects it.
IX ATTACKS UPON SUPERSTITION 283
horse but by the scientific power of his mind. Daedalus taught Icarus astrology and the fable of Phaethon is to be similarly interpreted. Aeneas was not really the son of the goddess Venus, nor Minos of Jupiter, nor Aesculapius of Mars, nor Autolycus of Mercury. These are to be taken simply as the planets under whose rule they were born. The author also connects Egyptian animal worship with the signs of the zodiac.
The author of the essay also delves into the history of History astrology, to which he assigns a high antiquity. The ^^^^^ ^'f Ethiopians were the first to cultivate it and handed it on in a astrology, still imperfect stage to the Egyptians who developed it. The Babylonians claim to have studied it before other peoples, but our author thinks that they did so long after the Ethi- opians and Egyptians. The Greeks were instructed in the art neither by the Ethiopians nor the Egyptians, but, as we have seen, by Orpheus. Our author not only states that the ancient Greeks never built towns or walls or got married without first resorting to divination, but even asserts that astrology was their sole method of divination, that the Pythia at Delphi was the type of celestial purity and that the snake under the tripod represented the dragon among the constellations, Lycurgus taught his Lacedaemonians to ob- serve the moon, and only the uncultured Arcadians held themselves aloof from astrology. Yet at the present day some oppose the art, declaring either that the stars have naught to do with human affairs or that astrology is useless since what is fated cannot be avoided. To the latter objec- tion our author makes the usual retort that forewarned is forearmed; as for the former denial, if a horse stirs the stones in the road as it runs, if a passing breath of wind moves straws to and fro, if a tiny flame burns the finger, will not the courses and deflexions of the brilliant celestial bodies have their influence upon earth and mankind?
The manner of the essay does not seem like Lucian's Lucian not usual style, and the astrological interpretation of religious sceptical, myth was characteristic of the Stoic philosophy, whereas
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MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Lucian
and
medicine.
Lucian's philosophical affinities, if he can be said to have any, are perhaps rather with the Epicureans. But Celsus was an Epicurean and yet believed in astrology. It must not be thought, however, that Lucian in his other essays is always sceptical in regard to what we should classify as superstition. He tells us how his career was determined by a dream in the autobiographical essay of that title. In the Dialogues of the Gods magic is mentioned as a matter-of- course, Zeus complaining that he has to resort to magic in order to win women and Athene warning Paris to have Aphrodite remove her girdle, since it is drugged or enchanted and may bewitch him.
The writings of Lucian contain many allusions to the doctors, diseases, and medicines of his time.^ On the whole he confirms Galen's picture. Numerous passages show that the medical profession was held in high esteem, and Lucian himself first went to Rome in order to consult an oculist. At the same time Lucian satirizes the quacks and medical superstition of the time, as we have already seen, and describes several statues which were believed to possess heal- ing powers. In the burlesque tragedy on gout, Tragodopo- dagra, whose authenticity, however, is questioned, the dis- ease personified is triumphant, and the moral seems to be that all the remedies which men have tried are of no avail. On the other hand, Lucian wrote seriously of the African snake whose bite causes one to die of thirst {De dipsadibus). He admits that he has never seen anyone in this condition and has not even been in Libya where these snakes are found, but a friend has assured him that he has seen the tombstone epitaph of a man who had died thus, a rather indirect mode of proof which we are surprised should satisfy the author of How to Write History. Lucian also repeats the common notion that persons bitten by a mad dog can be cured only by a hair or other portion of the same animal.^
^ See the interesting paper of J. Proceedings of the Royal Society