Moreover, magi or magicians deal with the inhuman, the obscene and the abominable. Osthanes, and even the philosopher Democritus, are led by their devotion to magic into propounding such remedies as drinking human blood or utilizing in magic compounds or ceremonies portions of the corpses of men violently slain.[1] Magic is a malicious and criminal art. Its devotees attempt the transfer of disease from one person to another or the exercise of baleful sorcery.[2] "It cannot be sufficiently estimated how great a debt is due the Romans who did away with those monstrous rites in which to slay a man was most pious; nay more, to eat men most wholesome."[3] In fine, we may rest persuaded that magic is "execrable, ineffectual and inane." Yet it possesses some shadow of truth, but is of avail through "veneficas artes . . . non magicas,"[4] whatever that distinction may be.
III. Illustrations of Pliny's fundamental belief in magic.—Pliny, we have seen, made a bold pretense of utter disbelief in magic, and also censured the art on grounds of decency, morality and humanity. Yet despite this wholesale condemnation, in some places in his work it is difficult to tell where his quotations from magicians cease and where statements which he accepts recommence. Sometimes he explicitly quoted theories or facts from the writings of the "magi" without censure and without any expression of disbelief. If it is contended that he none the less regarded
- ↑ Bk. xxviii, ch. 2. Pliny's own medicine, is not prudish, and elsewhere he gives instances of devotees of magic guarding against defilement. (Bk. xxx, ch. 6 and xxviii, ch. 19).
- ↑ Bk. xxviii, ch. 23. "Quanta vanitate," adds Pliny, "si falsum est, quanta vero noxia, si transferunt morbos!"
- ↑ Bk. xxx, ch. 4.
- ↑ Bk. xxx, ch. 6. "Proinde ita persuasum sit, intestabilem, inritam, inanem esse, habentem tamen quasdam veritatis umbras, sed in his veneficas artis pollere non magicas."
