[Sidenote: Other divination than astrology.]

Whatever its date and origin, the magic literature may be classified in three main groups. There are the astrological texts in which the stars are looked upon as gods and predictions are made especially for the king.[64] Then there are the tablets connected with other methods of foretelling the future, especially liver divination, although interpretation of dreams, augury, and divination by mixing oil and water were also practiced.[65] Fossey has further noted the close connection of operative magic with divination among the Assyrians, and calls divination “the indispensable auxiliary of magic.” Many feats of magic imply a precedent knowledge of the future or begin by consultation of a diviner, or a favorable day and hour should be chosen for the magic rite.[66]

[Sidenote: Incantations against sorcery and demons.]

Third, there are the collections of incantations, not however those employed by the sorcerers, which were presumably illicit and hence not publicly preserved—in an incantation which we shall soon quote sorcery is called evil and is said to employ “impure things”—but rather defensive measures against them and exorcisms of evil demons.[67] But doubtless this counter magic reflects the original procedure to a great extent. Inasmuch as diseases generally were regarded as due to demons, who had to be exorcized by incantations, medicine was simply a branch of magic. Evil spirits were also held responsible for disturbances in nature, and frequent incantations were thought necessary to keep them from upsetting the natural order entirely.[68] The various incantations are arranged in series of tablets: the Maklu or burning, Ti’i or headaches, Asakki marsûti or fever, Labartu or hag-demon, and Nis kati or raising of the hand. Besides these tablets there are numerous ceremonial and medical texts which contain magical practice.[69] Also hymns of praise and religious epics which at first sight one would not classify as incantations seem to have had their magical uses, and Farnell suggests that “a magic origin for the practice of theological exegesis may be obscurely traced.”[70] Good spirits are represented as employing magic and exorcisms against the demons.[71] As a last resort when good spirits as well as human magic had failed to check the demons, the aid might be requisitioned of the god Ea, regarded as the repository of all science and who “alone was possessed of the magic secrets by means of which they could be conquered and repulsed.”[72]

[Sidenote: A specimen incantation.]

The incantations themselves show that other factors than the power of words entered into the magic, as may be illustrated by quoting one of them.

“Arise ye great gods, hear my complaint, Grant me justice, take cognizance of my condition. I have made an image of my sorcerer and sorceress; I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause, Because of the evil they have done, Of the impure things which they have handled. May she die! Let me live! May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery be broken. May the plucked sprig of the binu tree purify me; May it release me; may the evil odor of my mouth be scattered to the winds. May the mashtakal herb which fills the earth cleanse me. Before you let me shine like the kankal herb, Let me be brilliant and pure as the lardu herb. The charm of the sorceress is evil; May her words return to her mouth, her tongue be cut off. Because of her witchcraft may the gods of night smite her, The three watches of the night break her evil charm. May her mouth be wax; her tongue, honey. May the word causing my misfortune that she has spoken dissolve like wax. May the charm she had wound up melt like honey, So that her magic knot be cut in twain, her work destroyed.”[73]

[Sidenote: Materials and devices employed in the magic.]

It is evident from this incantation that use was made of magic images and knots, and of the properties of trees and herbs. Magic images were made of clay, wax, tallow, and other substances and were employed in various ways. Thus directions are given for making a tallow image of an enemy of the king and binding its face with a cord in order to deprive the person whom it represents of speech and willpower.[74] Images were also constructed in order that disease demons might be magically transferred into them,[75] and sometimes the images are slain and buried.[76] In the above incantation the magic knot was employed only by the sorceress, but Fossey states that knots were also used as counter-charms against the demons.[77] In the above incantation the names of herbs were left untranslated and it is not possible to say much concerning the pharmacy of the Assyrians and Babylonians because of our lack of a lexicon for their botanical and mineralogical terminology.[78] However, from what scholars have been able to translate it appears that common rather than rare and outlandish substances were the ones most employed. Wine and oil, salt and dates, and onions and saliva are the sort of things used. There is also evidence of the employment of a magic wand.[79] Gems and animal substances were used as well as herbs; all sorts of philters were concocted; and varied rites and ceremonies were employed such as ablutions and fumigations. In the account of the ark of the Babylonian Noah we are told of the magic significance of its various parts; thus the mast and cabin ceiling were made of cedar, a wood that counteracts sorceries.[80]

[Sidenote: Greek culture not free from magic.]

One remarkable corollary of the so-called Italian Renaissance or Humanistic movement at the close of the middle ages with its too exclusive glorification of ancient Greece and Rome has been the strange notion that the ancient Hellenes were unusually free from magic compared with other periods and peoples. It would have been too much to claim any such immunity for the primitive Romans, whose entire religion was originally little else than magic and whose daily life, public and private, was hedged in by superstitious observances and fears. But they, too, were supposed to have risen later under the influence of Hellenic culture to a more enlightened stage,[81] only to relapse again into magic in the declining empire and middle ages under oriental influence. Incidentally let me add that this notion that in the past orientals were more superstitious and fond of marvels than westerners in the same stage of civilization and that the orient must needs be the source of every superstitious cult and romantic tale is a glib assumption which I do not intend to make and which our subsequent investigation will scarcely substantiate. But to return to the supposed immunity of the Hellenes from magic; so far has this hypothesis been carried that textual critics have repeatedly rejected passages as later interpolations or even called entire treatises spurious for no other reason than that they seemed to them too superstitious for a reputable classical author. Even so specialized and recent a student of ancient astrology, superstition, and religion as Cumont still clings to this dubious generalization and affirms that “the limpid Hellenic genius always turned away from the misty speculations of magic.”[82] But, as I suggested some sixteen years since, “the fantasticalness of medieval science was due to ‘the clear light of Hellas’ as well as to the gloom of the ‘dark ages.’”[83]

[Sidenote: Magic in myth, literature, and history.]

It is not difficult to call to mind evidence of the presence of magic in Hellenic religion, literature, and history. One has only to think of the many marvelous metamorphoses in Greek mythology and of its countless other absurdities; of the witches, Circe and Medea, and the necromancy of Odysseus; or the priest-magician of Apollo in the Iliad who could stop the plague, if he wished; of the lucky and unlucky days and other agricultural magic in Hesiod.[84] Then there were the Spartans, whose so-called constitution and method of education, much admired by the Greek philosophers, were largely a retention of the life of the primitive tribe with its ritual and taboos. Or we remember Herodotus and his childish delight in ambiguous oracles or his tale of seceders from Gela brought back by Telines single-handed because he “was possessed of certain mysterious visible symbols of the powers beneath the earth which were deemed to be of wonder-working power.”[85] We recall Xenophon’s punctilious records of sacrifices, divinations, sneezes, and dreams; Nicias, as afraid of eclipses as if he had been a Spartan; and the matter-of-fact mentions of charms, philters, and incantations in even such enlightened writers as Euripides and Plato. Among the titles of ancient Greek comedies magic is represented by the Goetes of Aristophanes, the Mandragorizomene of Alexis, the Pharmacomantis of Anaxandrides, the Circe of Anaxilas, and the Thettale of Menander.[86] When we candidly estimate the significance of such evidence as this, we realize that the Hellenes were not much less inclined to magic than other peoples and periods, and that we need not wait for Theocritus and the Greek romances or for the magical papyri for proof of the existence of magic in ancient Greek civilization.[87]