I. Its Place in the History of Science
Its importance in our investigation—As a collection of miscellaneous information—As a repository of ancient natural science—As a source for magic—Pliny’s career—His writings—His own description of the Natural History—His devotion to science—Conflict of science and religion—Pliny not a trained naturalist—His use of authorities—His lack of arrangement and classification—His scepticism and credulity—A guide to ancient science—His medieval influence—Early printed editions.
II. Its Experimental Tendency
Importance of observation and experience—Use of the word experimentum—Experiments due to scientific curiosity—Medical experimentation—Chance experience and divine revelation—Marvels proved by experience.
III. Pliny’s Account of Magic
Oriental origin of magic—Its spread to the Greeks—Its spread outside the Graeco-Roman world—Failure to understand its true origin—Magic and divination—Magic and religion—Magic and medicine—Magic and philosophy—Falseness of magic—Crimes of magic—Pliny’s censure of magic is mainly intellectual—Vagueness of Pliny’s scepticism—Magic and science indistinguishable.
IV. The Science of the Magi
Magicians as investigators of nature—The Magi on herbs—Marvelous virtues of herbs—Animals and parts of animals—Further instances—Magic rites with animals and parts of animals—Marvels wrought with parts of animals—The Magi on stones—Other magical recipes—Summary of the statements of the Magi.
V. Pliny’s Magical Science
From the Magi to Pliny’s magic—Habits of animals—Remedies discovered by animals—Jealousy of animals—Occult virtues of animals—The virtues of herbs—Plucking herbs—Agricultural magic—Virtue of stones—Other minerals and metals—Virtues of human parts—Virtues of human saliva—The human operator—Absence of medical compounds—Sympathetic magic—Antipathies between animals—Love and hatred between inanimate objects—Sympathy between animate and inanimate objects—Like cures like—The principle of association—Magic transfer of disease—Amulets—Position or direction—The time element—Observance of number—Relation between operator and patient—Incantations—Attitude towards love-charms and birth control—Pliny and astrology—Celestial portents—The stars and the world of nature—Astrological medicine—Conclusion: magic unity of Pliny’s superstitions.
“Salve, parens rerum omnium Natura, teque nobis Quiritium solis celebratam esse numeris omnibus tuis fave!”
—Closing words of the Natural History.[119]
We should have to search long before finding a better starting-point for the consideration of the union of magic with the science of the Roman Empire, and of the way in which that union influenced the middle ages, than Pliny’s Natural History.[120] The foregoing sentence, with which years ago I opened a chapter on the Natural History of Pliny the Elder in my briefer preliminary study of magic in the intellectual history of the Roman Empire, seems as true as ever; and although I there considered his confusion of magic and science at some length, I do not see how I can make the present work well-rounded and complete without including in it a yet more detailed analysis of the contents of Pliny’s book.
Pliny’s Natural History, which appeared about 77 A.D. and is dedicated to the Emperor Titus, is perhaps the most important single source extant for the history of ancient civilization. Its thirty-seven books, written in a very compact style, constitute a vast collection of the most miscellaneous information. Whether one is investigating ancient painting, sculpture, and other fine arts; or the geography of the Roman Empire; or Roman triumphs, gladiatorial contests, and theatrical exhibitions; or the industrial processes of antiquity; or Mediterranean trade; or Italian agriculture; or mining in ancient Spain; or the history of Roman coinage; or the fluctuation of prices in antiquity; or the Roman attitude towards usury; or the pagan attitude towards immortality; or the nature of ancient beverages; or the religious usages of the ancient Romans; or any of a number of other topics; one will find something concerning all of them in Pliny. He is apt both to depict such conditions in his own time and to trace them back to their origins. Furthermore he repeats many detailed incidents of interest to the political or narrative historian of Rome as well as to the student of the economic, social, artistic, and religious life of antiquity. Probably there is no place where an isolated point is more likely to be run down by the investigator, and it is regrettable that exhaustive analytical indices of the work are not available. We may add that, although the work is supposedly a collection of facts, Pliny contrives to introduce many moral reflections and sharp comments on the luxury, vice, and unintellectual character of his times, suggesting Juvenal’s picture of degenerate Roman society and his own lofty moral standards.
Indeed, Pliny’s title, Naturalis Historia, or at least the common English translation of it, “Natural History,” has been criticized as too limited in scope, and the work has been described as “rather a vast encyclopedia of ancient knowledge and belief upon almost every known subject.”[121] Pliny himself mentions in his preface the Greek word “encyclopedia” as indicative of his scope. Nevertheless, his work is primarily an account of nature rather than of civilization, and much of its information concerning such matters as the arts and business is incidental. Most of its books bear such titles as Aquatic Animals, Exotic Trees, Medicines from Forest Trees, The Natures of Metals. After an introductory book containing the preface and a table of contents and lists of authorities for each of the subsequent books, the second book treats of the universe, heavenly bodies, meteorology, and the chief changes, such as earthquakes and tides, in the land and water forming the earth’s surface. After four books devoted to geography, the seventh deals with man and human inventions. Four more follow on terrestrial and aquatic animals, birds, and insects. Sixteen more are concerned with plants, trees, vines, and other vegetation, and the medicinal simples derived from them. Five books discuss the medicinal simples derived from animals, including the human body; and the last five books treat of metals and minerals and the arts in which they are employed. It is thus evident that in the main Pliny is concerned with natural science, and that, if his work is a mine of miscellaneous historical information, it should even more prove a rich treasure-house—“quoniam, ut ait Domitius Piso, thesauros oportet esse non libros”[122]—for an investigation concerned as intimately as is ours with the history of science.
The Natural History is a great storehouse of misinformation as well as of information, for Pliny’s credulity and lack of discrimination harvested the tares of legend and magic along with the wheat of historical fact and ancient science in his voluminous granary. This may put other historical investigators upon their guard in accepting its statements, but only increases its value for our purpose. Perhaps it is even more valuable as a collection of ancient errors than it is as a repository of ancient science. It touches upon many of the varieties, and illustrates most of the characteristics, of magic. Moreover, Pliny often mentions the Magi or magicians and discusses “magic” expressly at some length in the opening chapters of his thirtieth book—one of the most important passages on the theme in any ancient writer.
Pliny the Elder, as we learn from his own statements in the Natural History and from one or two letters concerning him written by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, whom he adopted, went through the usual military, forensic, and official career of the Roman of good family, and spent his life largely in the service of the emperors. He visited various Mediterranean lands, such as Spain, Africa, Greece, and Egypt, and fought in Germany. He was in charge of the Roman fleet on the west coast of Italy when he met his death at the age of fifty-six by suffocation as he was trying to rescue others from the fumes and vapors from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Of Pliny’s writings the Natural History is alone extant, but other titles have been preserved which serve to show his great literary industry and the extent of his interests. He wrote on the use of the javelin by cavalry, a life of his friend Pomponius, an account in twenty books of all the wars waged by the Romans in Germany, a rather long work on oratory called The Student, a grammatical or philological work in eight books entitled De dubio sermone, and a continuation of the History of Aufidius Bassus in thirty-one books. Yet in the dedication of the Natural History to the emperor Titus he states that his days were taken up with official business and only his nights were free for literary labor. This statement is supported by a letter of his nephew telling how he used to study by candle-light both late at night and before daybreak. Pliny the Younger narrates several incidents to illustrate how jealous and economical of every spare moment his uncle was. He would dictate or have books read to him while lying down or in the bath, and on journeys a secretary was always by his side with books and tablets. If the weather was very cold, the amanuensis wore gloves so that his hands might not become too numb to write. Pliny always took notes on what he read, and at his death left his nephew one hundred and sixty notebooks written in a small hand on both sides.
Such were the conditions under which, and the methods by which, Pliny compiled his encyclopedia on nature. No single writer either Greek or Latin, he tells us, had ever before attempted so extensive a task. He adds that he treats of some twenty thousand topics gleaned from the perusal of about two thousand volumes by one hundred authors.[123] Judging from his bibliographies and citations, however, he would seem to have utilized more than one hundred authors. But possibly he had not read all the writers mentioned in his bibliographies. He affirms that previous students have had access to but few of the volumes which he has used, and that he adds many things unknown to his ancient authorities and recently discovered. Occasionally he shows an acquaintance with beliefs and practices of the Gauls and Druids. Thus his work assumes to be something more than a compilation from other books. He says, however, that no doubt he has omitted much, since he is only human and has had many other demands upon his time. He admits that his subject is dry (sterilis materia) and does not lend itself to literary exhibitions, nor include matters stimulating to write about and pleasant to read about, like speeches and marvelous occurrences and varied incidents. Nor does it permit purity and elegance of diction, since one must at times employ the terminology of rustics, foreigners, and even barbarians. Furthermore, “it is an arduous task to give novelty to what is ancient, authority to what is new, interest to what is obsolete, light to what is obscure, charm to what is loathsome”—as many of his medicinal simples undoubtedly are—“credit to what is dubious.”
It is a great comfort to Pliny, however, in his immense task, when many laugh at him as wasting his time over worthless trifles, to reflect that he is being spurned along with Nature.[124] In another passage[125] he contrasts the blood and slaughter of military history with the benefits bestowed upon mankind by astronomers. In a third passage[126] he looks back regretfully at the widespread interest in science among the Greeks, although those were times of political disunion and strife and although communication between different lands was interrupted by piracy as well as war, whereas now, with the whole empire at peace, not only is no new scientific inquiry undertaken, but men do not even thoroughly study the works of the ancients, and are intent on the acquisition of lucre rather than learning. These and other passages which might be cited attest Pliny’s devotion to science.
In Pliny we also detect signs of the conflict between science and religion. In a single chapter on God he says pretty much all that the church fathers later repeated at much greater length against paganism and polytheism. But his discussion would hardly satisfy a Christian. He asserts that “it is God for man to aid his fellow man,[127] and this is the path to eternal glory,” but he turns this noble sentiment to justify deification of the emperors who have done so much for mankind. He questions whether God is concerned with human affairs; slyly suggests that if so, God must be too busy to punish all crimes promptly; and points out that there are some things which God cannot do. He cannot commit suicide as men can, nor alter past events, nor make twice ten anything else than twenty. Pliny then concludes: “By which is revealed in no uncertain wise the power of Nature, and that is what we call God.” In many other passages he exclaims at Nature’s benignity or providence. He believed that the soul had no separate existence from the body,[128] and that after death there was no more sense left in body or soul than was there before birth. The hope of personal immortality he scorned as “puerile ravings” produced by the fear of death, and he believed still less in the possibility of any resurrection of the body. In short, natural law, mechanical force, and facts capable of scientific investigation would seem to be all that he will admit and to suffice to satisfy his strong intellect. Yet we shall later find him having the greatest difficulty in distinguishing between science and magic, and giving credence to many details in science which seem to us quite as superstitious as the pagan beliefs concerning the gods which he rejected. But if any reader is inclined to belittle Pliny for this, let him first stop and think how Pliny would ridicule some modern scientists for their religious beliefs, or for their spiritualism or psychic research.
It is desirable, however, to form some estimate of Pliny’s fitness for his task in order to judge how accurate a picture of ancient science his work is. He does not seem to have had much detailed training or experience in the natural sciences himself. He writes not as a naturalist who has observed widely and profoundly the phenomena and operations of nature, but as an omnivorous reader and voluminous note-taker who owes his knowledge largely to books or hearsay, although occasionally he says “I know” instead of “they say,” or gives the results of his own observation and experience. In the main he is not a scientist himself but only a historian of science or nature; after all, his title, Natural History, is a very fitting one. The question, of course, arises whether he has sufficient scientific training to evaluate properly the work of the past. Has he read the best authors, has he noted their best passages, has he understood their meaning? Does he repeat inferior theories and omit the correcter views of certain Alexandrian scientists? These questions are hard to answer. On his behalf it may be said that he deals little with abstruse scientific theory and mainly with simple substances and geographical places, matters in which it seems difficult for him to go far astray. Scientific specialists were not numerous in those days, anyway, and science had not yet so far advanced and ramified that one man might not hope to cover the entire field and do it substantial justice. Pliny the Younger was perhaps a partial judge, but he described the Natural History as “a work remarkable for its comprehensiveness and erudition, and not less varied than Nature herself.”[129]
One thing in Pliny’s favor as a compiler, besides his personal industry, unflagging interest, and apparently abundant supply of clerical assistance, is his full and honest statement of his authorities, although he adds that he has caught many authors transcribing others verbatim without acknowledgment. He has, however, great admiration for many of his authorities, exclaiming more than once at the care and diligence of the men of the past who have left nothing untried or unexperienced, from trackless mountain tops to the roots of herbs.[130] Sometimes, nevertheless, he disputes their assertions. For instance, Hippocrates said that the appearance of jaundice on the seventh day in fever is a fatal sign, “but we know some who have lived even after this.”[131] Pliny also scolds Sophocles for his falsehoods concerning amber.[132] It may seem surprising that he should expect strict scientific truth from a dramatic poet, but Pliny, like many medieval writers, seems to regard poets as good scientific authorities. In another passage he accepts Sophocles’ statement that a certain plant is poisonous, rather than the contrary view of other writers, saying “the authority of so prominent a man moves me against their opinions.”[133] He also cites Menander concerning fish and, like almost all the ancients, regards Homer as an authority on all matters.[134] Pliny sometimes cites the works of King Juba of Numidia, than whom there hardly seems to have been a greater liar in antiquity.[135] He stated among other things in a work which he wrote for Gaius Caesar, the son of Augustus, that a whale six hundred feet long and three hundred and sixty feet broad had entered a river in Arabia.[136] But where should Pliny turn for sober truth? The Stoic Chrysippus prated of amulets;[137] treatises ascribed to the great philosophers Democritus and Pythagoras[138] were full of magic; and in the works of Cicero he read of a man who could see for a distance of one hundred and thirty-five miles, and in Varro that this man, standing on a Sicilian promontory, could count the number of ships sailing out of the harbor of Carthage.[139]
The Natural History has been criticized as poorly arranged and lacking in scientific classification, but this is a criticism which can be made of many works of the classical period. Their presentation is apt to be rambling and discursive rather than logical and systematic. Even Aristotle’s History of Animals is described by Lewes[140] as unclassified in its arrangement and careless in its selection of material. I have often thought that the scholastic centuries did mankind at least one service, that of teaching lecturers and writers how to arrange their material. Pliny seems rather in advance of his times in supplying full tables of contents for the busy emperor’s convenience. Valerius Soranus seems to have been the only previous Roman writer to do this. One indication of haste in composition and failure to sift and compare his material is the fact that Pliny sometimes makes or includes contradictory statements, probably taken from different authorities. On the other hand, he not infrequently alludes to previous passages in his own work, thus showing that he has his material fairly well in hand.
Pliny once said that there was no book so bad but what some good might be got from it,[141] and to the modern reader he seems almost incredibly credulous and indiscriminate in his selection of material, and to lack any standard of judgment between the true and the false. Yet he often assumes an air of scepticism and censures others sharply for their credulity or exaggeration. “’Tis strange,” he remarks à propos of some tales of men transformed into wolves for nine or ten years, “how far Greek credulity has gone. No lie is so impudent that it lacks a voucher.”[142] Once he expresses his determination to include only those points on which his authorities are in agreement.[143]
On the whole, while to us to-day the Natural History seems a disorderly and indiscriminate conglomeration of fact and fiction, its defects are probably to a great extent those of its age and of the writers from whom it has borrowed. If it does not reflect the highest achievements and clearest thinking of the best scientists of antiquity—and be it said that there are a number of the Hellenistic age of whom we should know less than we do but for Pliny—it probably is a fairly faithful epitome of science and error concerning nature in his own time and the centuries preceding. At any rate it is the best portrayal that has reached us. From it we can get our background of the confusion of magic and science in the Hellenistic age, and then reveal against this setting the development of them both in the course of the Roman Empire and middle ages. Pliny gives so many items upon each point, and is so much fuller than the average ancient or medieval book of science, that he serves as a reference book, being the likeliest place to look to find duplicated some statement concerning nature by a later writer. This of course shows that such a statement did not originate with the later writer, but is not a sure sign that he copied from Pliny; they may both have used the same authorities, as seems the case with Greek authors later in the empire who probably did not know of Pliny’s work.
In the middle ages, however, Pliny had an undoubted direct influence.[144] Manuscripts of the Natural History are numerous, although in a scarcely legible condition owing to corrections and emendations which enhance the obscurity of the text and perhaps do Pliny grave injustice in other respects.[145] Also many manuscripts contain only a few books or fragments of the text, so that it is possible that many medieval scholars knew their Pliny only in part.[146] This, however, can scarcely be argued from their failure to include more from him in their own works; for that might be due to their knowing the Natural History so well that they took its contents for granted and tried to include other material in their own works. In a later chapter we shall treat of The Medicine of Pliny, a treatise derived from the Natural History. Pliny’s phrase rerum natura figures as the title of several medieval encyclopedias of somewhat similar scope. And his own name was too well known in the middle ages to escape having a work on the philosopher’s stone ascribed to him.[147]
That the Natural History was well known as a whole at least by the close of the middle ages is shown by the numerous editions, some of them magnificently printed, which were turned off from the Italian presses immediately after the invention of printing. In the Magliabechian Library of Florence alone are editions printed at Venice in 1469 and 1472, at Rome in 1473 and Parma in 1481, again at Venice in 1487, 1491, and 1499, not to mention Italian translations which appeared at Venice in 1476 and 1489.[148] These editions were accompanied by some published criticism of Pliny’s statements, since in 1492 appeared at Ferrara a treatise On the Errors of Pliny and Others in Medicine by Nicholas Leonicenus of Vicenza with a dedication to Politian.[149] But two years later Pliny found a defender in Pandulph Collenucius.[150]
But Pliny’s future influence will come out repeatedly in later chapters. We shall now inquire, first, what signs of experimental science he shows, either derived from the past or added by himself. Second, what he defines as magic and what he has to say about it. Third, how much of what he supposes to be natural science must we regard as essentially magic?
It is probably only a coincidence that two medieval manuscripts close the Natural History in the midst of the seventy-sixth chapter of the last book with the words, “Experimenta pluribus modis constant.... Primum pondere.”[151] But although from the very nature of his work Pliny makes extensive use of authorities, he not infrequently manifests a realization, as one dealing with the facts of nature should, of the importance of observation and experience as means of reaching the truth. The claims of many Romans of high rank to have carried their arms as far as Mount Atlas, which Pliny declares has been repeatedly shown by experience to be most fallacious, leads him to the further reflection that nowhere is a lapse of one’s credulity easier than where a dignified author supports a false statement.[152] In other passages he calls experience the best teacher in all things,[153] and contrasts unfavorably garrulity of words and sitting in schools with going to solitudes and seeking herbs at their appropriate seasons. That upon our globe the land is entirely surrounded by water does not require, he says, investigation by arguments, but is now known by experience.[154] And if the salamander really extinguished fire, it would have been tried at Rome long ago.[155] On the other hand, we find some assertions in the Natural History which Pliny might easily have tested himself and found false, such as his statement that an egg-shell cannot be broken by force or any weight unless it is tipped a little to one side.[156] Sometimes he gives his personal experience,[157] but also mentions experience in many other connections.
The word employed most of the time by Pliny to denote experience is experimentum.[158] In many passages the word does not indicate anything like a purposive, prearranged, scientific experiment in our sense of that word, but simply the ordinary experience of daily life.[159] We are also told what experti,[160] or men of experience, advise. In a number of passages, however, experimentum is used in a sense somewhat more closely approaching our “experiment.” These are cases where something is being tested. For instance, a method of determining whether an egg is fresh or rotten by putting it in water and watching if it floats or sinks is called an experimentum.[161] That horses would whinny at no other painting of a horse than that by Apelles is spoken of as illius experimentum artis, a test of, or testimony to, his art.[162] The expression religionis experimento is applied to a religious test or ordeal by which the virginity of Claudia was vindicated.[163] The word is also used of ways of telling if unguents are good[164] and if wine is beginning to turn;[165] and of various tests of the genuineness of drugs, gems, earths, and metals.[166] It is also twice used of letting down a lighted lamp into a huge wine cask or into wells to discover if there is danger at the bottom from noxious vapors.[167] If the lamp was extinguished, it was a sign of peril to human life. Pliny further suggests purposive experimentation in speaking of experimenta to discover water under ground[168] and in grafting trees.[169]
Most of the tests and experiences thus far mentioned have been practical operations connected with husbandry and industry. But Pliny recounts one or two others which seem to have been dictated solely by scientific curiosity. He classifies the following as experimenta:[170] the sinking of a well to prove by its complete illumination that the sun casts no shadow at noon of the summer solstice; the marking of a dolphin’s tail in order to throw some light upon its length of life, should it ever be captured again, as it was three hundred years later—perhaps the experiment of longest duration on record;[171] and the casting of a man into a pit of serpents at Rome to determine if he was really immune from their stings.[172]
Experimentum is employed by Pliny in a medical sense which becomes very common in the middle ages. He calls some remedies for toothache and inflamed eyes certa experimenta—sure experiences.[173] Later experimentum came to be applied to almost any recipe or remedy. Pliny, indeed, speaks of the doctors as learning at our risk and getting experience through our deaths.[174] In another passage he states more favorably that “there is no end to experimenting with everything so that even poisons are forced to cure us.”[175] He also briefly mentions the medical sect of Empirics, of whom we shall hear more from Galen. He says that they so name themselves from experiences[176] and originated at Agrigentum in Sicily under Acron and Empedocles.
Pliny is puzzled how some things which he finds stated in “authors famous for wisdom” were ever learned by experience, for example, that the star-fish has such fiery fervor that it burns everything in the sea which it touches, and digests its food instantly.[177] That adamant can be broken only by goat’s blood he thinks must have been divinely revealed, for it would hardly have been discovered by chance, and he cannot imagine that anyone would ever have thought of testing a substance of immense value in a fluid of one of the foulest of animals.[178] In several other passages he suggests chance, accident, dreams,[179] or divine revelation as the ways in which the medicinal virtues of certain simples were discovered. Recently, for example, it was discovered that the root of the wild rose is a remedy for hydrophobia by the mother of a soldier in the praetorian guard, who was warned in a dream to send her son this root, which cured him and many others who have tried it since.[180] And a soldier in Pompey’s time accidentally discovered a cure for elephantiasis when he hid his face for shame in some wild mint leaves.[181] Another herb was accidentally found to be a cure for disorders of the spleen when the entrails of a sacrificial victim happened to be thrown on it and it entirely consumed the milt.[182] The healing properties of vinegar for the sting of the asp were discovered by chance in this wise. A man who was stung by an asp while carrying a leather bottle of vinegar noticed that he felt the sting only when he set the bottle down.[183] He therefore decided to try the effects of a drink of the liquid and was thereby fully cured.[184] Other remedies are learned through the experience of rustics and illiterate persons, and yet others may be discovered by observing animals who cure their ills by them.[185] Pliny’s opinion is that the animals have hit upon them by chance.
Pliny represents a number of marvelous and to us incredible things as proved by experience. Divination from thunder, for instance, is supported by innumerable experiences, public and private. In two passages out of the three mentioning experti which I cited above, those experienced persons recommended a decidedly magical sort of procedure.[186] In another passage “the experience of many” supports “a strange observance” in plucking a bud.[187] A fourth bit of magical procedure is called “marvelous but easily tested.”[188] Thus the transition is an easy one from signs of experimental science in the Natural History to our next topic, Pliny’s account of magic.
Pliny supplies some account of the origin and spread of magic[189] but a rather confused and possibly unreliable one, as he mentions two Zoroasters separated by an interval of five or six thousand years, and two Osthaneses, one of whom accompanied Xerxes, and the other Alexander, in their respective expeditions. He says, indeed, that it is not clear whether one or two Zoroasters existed. In any case magic has flourished greatly the world over for many centuries, and was founded in Persia by Zoroaster. Some other magicians of Media, Babylonia, and Assyria are mere names to Pliny; later he mentions others like Apollobeches and Dardanus. Although he thus derives magic from the orient, he appears to make no distinction, as we shall find other writers doing, between the Magi of Persia and ordinary magicians, nor does he employ the word magic in two senses. He makes it evident, however, that there have been other men who have regarded magic more favorably than he does.
Pliny next traces the spread of magic among the Greeks. He marvels at the lack of it in the Iliad and the abundance of it in the Odyssey. He is uncertain whether to class Orpheus as a magician, and mentions Thessaly as famous for its witches at least as early as the time of Menander who named one of his comedies after them. But he regards the Osthanes who accompanied Xerxes as the prime introducer of magic to the Greek-speaking world, which straightway went mad over it. In order to learn more of it, the philosophers Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato went into distant exile and on their return disseminated their lore. Pliny regards the works of Democritus as the greatest single factor in that dissemination of the doctrines of magic which occurred at about the same time that medicine was being developed by the works of Hippocrates. Some regarded the books on magic ascribed to Democritus as spurious, but Pliny insists that they are genuine.[190]
Outside of the Greek-speaking world, whence of course magic spread to Rome, Pliny mentions Jewish magic, represented by such names as Moses, Jannes, and Lotapes. But he holds that magic did not originate among the Hebrews until long after Zoroaster. He also speaks of the magic of Cyprus; of the Druids, who were the magicians, diviners, and medicine men of Gaul until the emperor Tiberius suppressed them; and of distant Britain.[191] Thus discordant nations and even those ignorant of one another’s existence agree the world over in their devotion to magic. From what Pliny tells us elsewhere of the Scythians we can see that the nomads of the Russian steppes and Turkestan were devoted to magic too.
It has been shown that Pliny regarded magic as a mass of doctrines formulated by a single founder and not as a gradual social evolution, just as the Greeks and Romans ascribed their laws and customs to some single legislator. He admits in a way, however, the great antiquity claimed by magic for itself, although he questions how the bulky dicta of Zoroaster and Dardanus could have been handed down by memory during so long a period. This remark again shows how little he thinks of magic as a set of social customs and attitudes perpetuated through constant and universal practice from generation to generation. Yet what he says of its widespread prevalence among unconnected peoples goes to prove this.