to what the eye of faith can deduce in the reports on witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The hypothetical dwarf race, to memories of which the origin of fairies has by some been attributed (a view which I do not personally share) seems to have something to do with the matter, together with some still more elusive race or races which are thought to have carried the worship of Ianus and Diana into Italy. Incidentally, the supposed existence of a pre-historic two-faced god in Italy (p. 12) is based upon a misapprehension. In fact, there is nothing but dubious etymology to connect Ianus and Diana. The former was not anthropomorphically conceived in the earliest stage of Roman religion, and his representation by art in human form cannot precede the later monarchy; while the Diana of medieval lore is, of course, derived not from the aboriginal Italian divinity but from the Graeco-Roman Diana-Artemis-Hecate.
The evidence for the continuity of this religion is not more convincing than that for its existence. Miss Murray quotes a number of passages, but they do not, in fact, prove more than the following indisputable but, for her argument, irrelevant facts. 1. The practice of magic was regarded as anti-social, and as such condemned by the State. This was equally true of classical antiquity.[1] 2. The worship of heathen gods was discountenanced by Church and State. Miss Murray is not entitled to claim a special sense for the word "demons." Christians believed that all heathen gods were devils, but the pagans did not admit or suppose that in continuing the religious rites of their fathers they were worshipping the Devil or devils.[2] 3. The
- ↑ A convenient summary of Roman legislation will be found in Abt, Die Apologie des Apuleius von Madaura und die antike Zauberei (Giessen, 1909), pp. 9 foll. [1]
- ↑ In the middle of the nineteenth century Rawlinson is prepared to accept the view that the oracles of Delphi were delivered through the agency of an "evil spirit" (see his note on Herod. i. 47). With this view, which, of course, was generally held by early Christians, compare the language of sixteenth century travellers in India, e.g. "All the pictures around the said chapel are those of devils and on each side of it there is a Sathanas seated in a seat," Ludovico di Varthema, Travels (Hakluyt Society, 1868), p. 136.
