Part 2 (1/2)
26. Do you hear, you who so rashly accuse the art of magic? It is an art acceptable to the immortal G.o.ds, full of all knowledge of wors.h.i.+p and of prayer, full of piety and wisdom in things divine, full of honour and glory since the day when Zoroaster and Oromazes established it, high-priestess of the powers of heaven. Nay, it is one of the first elements of princely instruction, nor do they lightly admit any chance person to be a magician, any more than they would admit him to be a king. Plato--if I may quote him again--in another pa.s.sage dealing with a certain Zalmoxis, a Thracian and also a master of this art, has written that 'magical charms are merely beautiful words'. If that is so, why should I be forbidden to learn the fair words of Zalmoxis or the priestly lore of Zoroaster? But if these accusers of mine, after the fas.h.i.+on of the common herd, define a magician as one who by communion of speech with the immortal G.o.ds has power to do all the marvels that he will, through a strange power of incantation, I really wonder that they are not afraid to attack one whom they acknowledge to be so powerful. For it is impossible to guard against such a mysterious and divine power. Against other dangers we may take adequate precautions. He who summons a murderer before the judge comes into court with an escort of friends; he who denounces a poisoner is unusually careful as to what he eats; he who accuses a thief sets a guard over his possessions. But for the man who exposes a magician, credited with such awful powers, to the danger of a capital sentence, how can escort or precaution or watchmen save him from unforeseen and inevitable disaster? Nothing can save him, and therefore the man who believes in the truth of such a charge as this is certainly the last person in the world who should bring such an accusation.
27. But it is a common and general error of the uninitiated to bring the following accusations against philosophers. Some of them think that those who explore the origins and elements of material things are irreligious, and a.s.sert that they deny the existence of the G.o.ds.
Take, for instance, the cases of Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, and other natural philosophers. Others call those magicians who bestow unusual care on the investigation of the workings of providence and unusual devotion on their wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds, as though, forsooth, they knew _how_ to perform everything that they know actually to _be_ performed. So Epimenides, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Ostanes were regarded as magicians, while a similar suspicion attached to the 'purifications' of Empedocles, the 'demon' of Socrates and the 'good' of Plato. I congratulate myself therefore on being admitted to such distinguished company.
I fear, however, Maximus, that you may regard the empty, ridiculous and childish[9] fictions which my opponents have advanced in support of their case as serious charges merely because they have been put forward. 'Why,' says my accuser, 'have you sought out particular kinds of fish?' Why should not a philosopher be permitted to do for the satisfaction of his desire for knowledge what the _gourmand_, is permitted to do for the satisfaction of his gluttony? 'What,' he asks, 'induced a free woman to marry you after thirteen years of widowhood?'
'Surely,' I answer, 'it is more remarkable that she should have remained a widow so long.' 'Why, before she married you, did she express certain opinions in a letter?' 'Is it reasonable,' I ask, 'to demand of any one the reasons of another person's private opinions?'
'But,' he goes on, 'although she was your senior in years, she did not despise your youth.' Surely this simply serves to show that there was no need of magic to induce a woman to marry a man, or a widow to wed a bachelor some years her junior. There are more charges equally frivolous. 'Apuleius,' he persists, 'keeps a mysterious object in his house which he wors.h.i.+ps with veneration.' Surely it would be a worse offence to have nothing to wors.h.i.+p at all. 'A boy fell to the ground in Apuleius' presence.' What if a young man or even an old man had fallen in my presence through a sudden stroke of disease or merely owing to the slipperiness of the ground? Do you really think to prove your charge of magic by such arguments as these; the fall of a wretched boy, my marriage to my wife, my purchases of fish?
[Footnote 9: _et simplicia_, vulgo.]
28. I should run but small risk if I were to content myself with what I have already said and begin my peroration. But since as a result of the length at which my accusers spoke, the water-clock still allows me plenty of time, let us, if there is no objection, consider the charges in detail. I will deny none of them, be they true or false. I will a.s.sume their truth, that this great crowd, which has gathered from all directions to hear this case, may clearly understand not only that no true incrimination can be brought against philosophers, but that not even any false charge can be fabricated against them, which--such is their confidence in their innocence--they will not be prepared to admit and to defend, even though it be in their power to deny it. I will therefore begin by refuting their arguments, and will prove that they have nothing to do with magic. Next I will show that even on the a.s.sumption of my being the most consummate magician, I have never given cause or occasion for conviction of any evil practice. I will also deal with the lies with which they have endeavoured to arouse hostility against me, with their misquotation and misinterpretation of my wife's letters, and with my marriage with Pudentilla, whom, as I will proceed to prove, I married for love and not for money. This marriage of ours caused frightful annoyance and distress to Aemilia.n.u.s. Hence springs all the anger, frenzy, and raving madness that he has shown in the conduct of this accusation. If I succeed in making all these points abundantly clear and obvious, I shall then appeal to you, Claudius Maximus, and to all here present to bear me out, that the boy Sicinius Pudens, my step-son, through whom and with whose consent his uncle now accuses me, was quite recently stolen from my charge after the death of Pontia.n.u.s his brother, who was as much his superior in character as in years, and that he was fiercely embittered against myself and his mother through no fault of mine: that he abandoned his study of the liberal arts and cast off all restraint, and--thanks to the education afforded him by this villainous accusation--is more likely to resemble his uncle Aemilia.n.u.s than his brother Pontia.n.u.s.
29. I will now, as I promised, take Aemilia.n.u.s' ravings one by one, beginning with that charge which you must have noticed was given the place of honour in the accuser's speech, as his most effective method of exciting suspicion against me as a sorcerer, the charge that I had sought to purchase certain kinds of fish from some fishermen. Which of these two points is of the slightest value as affording suspicion of sorcery? That fishermen sought to procure me the fish? Would you have me entrust such a task to gold-embroiderers or carpenters, and, to avoid your calumnies, make them change their trades so that the carpenter would net me the fish, and the fisherman take his place and hew his timber? Or did you infer that the fish were wanted for evil purposes because I paid to get them? I presume, if I had wanted them for a dinner-party, I should have got them for nothing. Why do not you go farther and accuse me on many similar grounds? I have often bought wine and vegetables, fruit and bread. The principles laid down by you would involve the starvation of all purveyors of dainties. Who will ever venture to purchase food from them, if it be decided that all provisions for which money is given are wanted not for food but for sorcery? But if there is nothing in all this that can give rise to suspicion, neither the payment of the fishermen to ply their usual trade, to wit, the capture of fish--I may point out that the prosecution never produced any of these fishermen, who are, as a matter of fact, wholly creatures of their imagination--nor the purchase of a common article of sale--the prosecution have never stated the amount paid, for fear that if they mentioned a small sum, it would be regarded as trivial, or if they mentioned a large sum it would fail to win belief,--if, I say, there is no cause for suspicion on any of these grounds, I would ask Aemilia.n.u.s to tell me what, failing these, induced them to accuse me of magic.
30. 'You seek to purchase fish,' says he. I will not deny it. But, I ask you, is any one who does that a magician? No more, in my opinion, than if I should seek to purchase hares or boar's flesh or fatted capons. Or is there something mysterious in fish and fish alone, hidden from all save sorcerers only? If you know what it is, clearly you are a magician. If you do not know, you must confess that you are bringing an accusation of the nature of which you are entirely ignorant. To think that you should be so ignorant not only of all literature, but even of popular tales, that you cannot even invent charges that will have some show of plausibility! For of what use for the kindling of love is an unfeeling chilly creature like a fish, or indeed anything else drawn from the sea, unless indeed you propose to bring forward in support of your lie the legend that Venus was born from the sea? I beg you to listen to me, Tannonius Pudens, that you may learn the extent of the ignorance which you have shown by accepting the possession of a fish as a proof of sorcery. If you had read your Vergil, you would certainly have known that very different things are sought for this purpose. He, as far as I recollect, mentions 'soft garlands' and 'rich herbs and 'male incense' and 'threads of diverse hues', and, in addition to these, 'brittle laurel,' 'clay to be hardened,' and 'wax to be melted in the fire'.
There are also the objects mentioned by him in a more serious poem.
_Rank herbs are sought, with milky venom dark By brazen sickles under moonlight mown; Sought also is that wondrous talisman, Torn from the forehead of the foal at birth Ere yet its dam could s.n.a.t.c.h it._
But you who take such exception to fish attribute far different instruments to magicians, charms not to be torn from new-born foreheads, but to be cut from scaly backs; not to be plucked from the fields of earth, but to be drawn up from the deep fields of ocean; not to be mowed with sickles, but to be caught on hooks. Finally, when he is speaking of the black art, Vergil mentions poison, you produce an _entree_; he mentions herbs and young shoots, you talk of scales and bones; he crops the meadow, you search the waves. I would also have quoted for your benefit similar pa.s.sages from Theocritus with many others from Homer and Orpheus, from the comic and tragic poets and from the historians, had I not noticed ere now that you were unable to read Pudentilla's letter which was written in Greek. I will, therefore, do no more than cite one Latin poet. Those who have read Laevius[10] will recognize the lines.
[Footnote 10: MSS. _Laelius_.]
_Love-charms the warlocks seek through all the world: The 'lover's knot' they try, the magic wheel, Ribbons and, nails and roots and herbs and shoots, The two-tailed lizard that draws on to love,[11]
And eke the charm that glads the whinnying mare._
[Footnote 11: _Saurae inlices bicodulae._ Helm, wrongly I think, places a comma between _saurae_ and _inlices_.]
31. You would have made out a far more plausible case by pretending that I made use of such things instead of fish, if only you had possessed the slightest erudition. For the belief in the use of these things is so widespread that you might have been believed. But of what use are fish save to be cooked and eaten at meals? In magic they seem to me to be absolutely useless. I will tell you why I think so. Many hold Pythagoras to have been a pupil of Zoroaster, and, like him, to have been skilled in magic. And yet it is recorded that once near Metapontum, on the sh.o.r.es of Italy, his home, which his influence had converted into a second Greece, he noticed certain fishermen draw up their net. He offered to buy whatever it might contain, and after depositing the price ordered all the fish caught in meshes of the net to be released and thrown back into the sea. He would a.s.suredly never have allowed them to slip from his possession had he known them to possess any valuable magical properties. For being a man of abnormal learning, and a great admirer of the men of old, he remembered that Homer, a poet of manifold or, rather I should say, absolute knowledge of all that may be known, spoke of the power of all the drugs that earth produces, but made no mention of the sea, when speaking of a certain witch, he wrote the line:
_All drugs, that wide earth nourishes, she knew._
Similarly in another pa.s.sage he says:
_Earth the grain-giver Yields up to her its store of drugs, whereof Many be healing, mingled in the cup, And many baneful._
But never in the works of Homer did Proteus anoint his face nor Ulysses his magic trench, nor Aeolus his windbags, nor Helen her mixing bowl, nor Circe her cup, nor Venus her girdle, with any charm drawn from the sea or its inhabitants. You alone within the memory of man have been found to sweep as it were by some convulsion of nature all the powers of herbs and roots and young shoots and small pebbles from their hilltops into the sea, and there confine them in the entrails of fish. And so whereas sorcerers at their rites used to call on Mercury the giver of oracles, Venus that lures the soul, the moon that knows the mystery of the night, and Trivia the mistress of the shades, you will transfer Neptune, with Salacia and Portumnus and all the company of Nereids from the cold tides of the sea to the burning tides of love.
32. I have given my reasons for refusing to believe that magicians and fish have anything to do with one another. But now, if it please you, we will a.s.sume with Aemilia.n.u.s that fish are useful for making magical charms as well as for their usual purposes. But does that prove that whoever acquires fish is _ipso facto_ a magician? On those lines it might be urged that whoever acquires a sloop is a pirate, whoever acquires a crowbar a burglar, whoever acquires a sword an a.s.sa.s.sin.
You will say that there is nothing in the world, however harmless, that may not be put to some bad use, nothing so cheerful that it may not be given a gloomy meaning. And yet we do not on that account put a bad interpretation on everything, as though, for instance, you should hold that incense, ca.s.sia, myrrh, and similar other scents are purchased solely for the purpose of funerals; whereas they are also used for sacrifice and medicine. But on the lines of your argument you must believe that even the comrades of Menelaus were magicians; for they, according to the great poet, averted starvation at the isle of Pharos by their use of curved fish-hooks. Nay, you will cla.s.s in the same category of sorcerers seamews, dolphins, and the lobster; _gourmands_ also, who sink whole fortunes[12] in the sums they pay to fishermen; and fishermen themselves, who by their art capture all manner of fish. 'But what do you want fish for?' you insist. I feel myself under no necessity to tell you, and refuse to do so. But I challenge you to prove unsupported that I bought them for the purpose you a.s.sert; as though I had bought h.e.l.lebore or hemlock or opium or any other of those drugs, the moderate use of which is salutary, although they are deadly when given with other substances or in too large quant.i.ties. Who would endure it if you made this a ground for accusing me of being a poisoner, merely because those drugs are capable of killing a man?
[Footnote 12: _merguntur_ MSS.]
33. However, let us see what these fish were, fish so necessary for my possession and so hard to find, that they were well worth the price I paid for their acquisition. They have mentioned no more than three. To one they gave a false name; as regards the other two they lied. The name was false, for they a.s.serted that the fish was a sea-hare, whereas it was quite another fish, which Themison, my servant, who knows something of medicine, as you heard from his own lips, bought of his own suggestion for me to inspect. For, as a matter of fact, he has not as yet ever come across a sea-hare. But I admit that I search for other kinds of fish as well, and have commissioned not only fishermen but private friends to search for all the rarest kinds of fish, begging them either to describe the appearance of the fish or to send it me, if possible, alive, or, failing that, dead. Why I do so I will soon make clear. My accusers _lied_--and very cunning they thought themselves--when they closed their false accusation by pretending that I had sought for two sea-beasts known by gross names. That fellow Tannonius wished to indicate the nature of the obscenity, but failed, matchless pleader that he is, owing to his inability to speak. After long hesitation he indicated the name of one of them by means of some clumsy and disgusting circ.u.mlocution. The other he found impossible to describe with decency, and evaded the difficulty by turning to my works and quoting a certain pa.s.sage from them in which I described the att.i.tude of a statue of Venus.
34. He also with that lofty puritanism which characterizes him, reproached me for not being ashamed to describe foul things in n.o.ble language. I might justly retort on him that, though he openly professes the study of eloquence, that stammering voice of his often gives utterance to n.o.ble things so basely as to defile them, and that frequently, when what he has to say presents not the slightest difficulty, he begins to stutter or even becomes utterly tongue-tied.
Come now! Suppose I had said nothing about the statue of Venus, nor used the phrase which was of such service to you, what words would you have found to frame a charge, which is as suited to your stupidity as to your powers of speech? I ask you, is there anything more idiotic than the inference that, because the names of two things resemble each other, the things themselves are identical? Or did you think it a particularly clever invention on your part to pretend that I had sought out these two fish for the purpose of using them as magical charms? Remember that it is as absurd an argument to say that these sea-creatures with gross names were sought for gross purposes, as to say that the sea-comb is sought for the adornment of the hair, the fish named sea-hawk to catch birds, the fish named the little boar for the hunting of boars, or the sea-skull to raise the dead. My reply to these lying fabrications, which are as stupid as they are absurd, is that I have never attempted to acquire these playthings of the sea, these tiny trifles of the sh.o.r.e, either gratis or for money.
35. Further, I reply that you were quite ignorant of the nature of the objects which you pretended that I sought to acquire. For these worthless fish you mention can be found on any sh.o.r.e in heaps and mult.i.tudes, and are cast up on dry land by the merest ripple without any need for human agency. Why do you not say that at the same time I commissioned large numbers of fishermen to secure for me at a price striped sea-sh.e.l.ls from the sh.o.r.e, smooth pebbles, crabs' claws, sea-urchins' husks, the tentacles of cuttlefish, s.h.i.+ngle, straws, cordage, not to mention[13] worm-eaten oyster-sh.e.l.ls, moss, and seaweed, and all the flotsam of the sea that the winds drive, or the salt wave casts up, or the storm sweeps back, or the calm leaves high and dry all along our sh.o.r.es? For their names are no less suitable than those I mentioned above for the purpose of awakening suspicions.
You have said that certain objects drawn from the sea have a certain value for gross purposes on account of the similarity of their names.
On this a.n.a.logy why should not a stone be good for diseases of the bladder, a sh.e.l.l for the making of a will, a crab for a cancer, seaweed for an ague? Really, Claudius Maximus, in listening to these appallingly long-winded accusations to their very close you have shown a patience that is excessive and a kindness which is too long-suffering. For my part when they uttered these charges of theirs, as though they were serious and cogent, while I laughed at their stupidity, I marvelled at your patience.