They had
Some of them cured madness by
Orpheotelestat,
Their equip-
Some of their customs are described by Apuleius,
Met. viii. 25 ff. Among them was included a parody of the confession and expiation (see A, VII (6f.), above): one of the strolling band (who are described as Galli) in a loud voice confessed publicly that he had been guilty of violating the law of the goddess in some way, and demanded from himself the just punishment of his crime (in the same way as the goddess is represented in the confessional steles as demanding expiation and penalty from the criminal). and beat himself, till the blood flowed and the sympathy of the multitude showed itself in gifts.
Thereupon the devotee took a whip
(5) Magic.—The practices of such impostors as
are described in the previous section are not always distinguishable from magic, into which they shade off by imperceptible gradation. strict sense was always felt by the Greeks to be a foreign and specially an Oriental art, as is shown by the very name pdyos, a magician, literally a magian or Persian priest. called yonrefa in reference to the loud howling utterance of magic formule. +
Magic in the
The magical art was
In Homer, apart from the tale of the obviously
Oriental Circe, little approach to magic appears except in the art of medicine, which was to a great extent learned from the older civilizations of the East, and which always assumes an uncanny char- acter to a primitive people: charms (ézaovdol) are uttered over wounds: Helena has a care-soothing drink, nepenthe; Aphrodite, a love - producing girdle; and Athena changes the form of men. But the use of all such arts is confined to gods and half-Divine heroes, and is therefore clearly distinguished from magic.
Later, the power of transforming men into other
shapes, of making love-philtres, of stilling the
* Compare, for example, the story of Cleisthenes, the demo-
cratic tyrant ef Sicyon, who expelled the aristocratic hero Adrastus, and substituted Dionysia for Adrastus festivals (Herod. v. 67).
t+ Ar. Ran. 159; cf. Plat. Rep. ii. 364, Huthyd. 277 D;
Theophr. Char. xvi.; Apul. Metam. viii. c. 27 ; Lucian, As, ch, 35.
t See W. Headlam in Class, Review, 1902, p. 52.
154 RELIGION OF GREECE
RELIGION OF GREECE
winds, causing rain, etc., was believed to be attainable by human beings through arts which were strictly magical, and quite distinct from the process whereby (according to a primitive form of religious belief) priests through their prayers and rites could induce the gods to do those things.* The magical art whereby men could attain such powers was so well known and widely practised in Thessaly that the word 7hessalis was used in the sense of ‘witch.’ Witches could draw down the moon (as Aristophanes says, Clouds 748), turn men into wolves, still the winds, and so on. This magic power was gained by compelling the gods ; in other words, by appealing to a higher and supreme power to which the gods must bow. Magical art, then, was associated with an older pre-Hellenic religion and the Divine power of a more ancient system, and was always related to the Chthonian religion and the gods of the world of death.
The foreign origin of magic as practised in Greece must not be pressed too far. There can hardly be any doubt that it embodied elements of the primitive pre-Hellenic religion, which persisted in the form of popular superstition and occult lore after the public and acknowledged religion had assumed a new form.
The power of magic was most frequently invoked to attract reluctant persons to a lover, or to bring disease and death upon an enemy. Numerous ex- amples of curses of this latter kind have been found in recent years, and have considerably enlarged our knowledge of the subject. They were usually scratched rudely on plates of lead, the proper metal, and buried in the ground, often in a grave, or in the Temenos of Chthonian deities. They were, however, also turned to a utilitarian purpose, and employed, ¢.g., almost like advertise- ments of lost or stolen property, the finder of which was subjected to a terrible curse if he failed to restore it to the owner. Such curses were intended to be seen by the thief, and must there- fore have been publicly exposed ; but even these seem to have been connected with Chthonian worship, and attached to the shrines of Chthonian deities. The penalty invoked most frequently in all curses was fever, the hidden fire of the gods of death, which burns up imperceptibly the strength and life of the sufferer. +
To this subject belong also the belief in the evil eye (which, while epeaely injurious to children and domestic animals, was dangerous to all) and other forms of baleful influence, and the use of charms and preservatives against them (dmrorpérrava). This belief was a debased form of the doctrine seen in Herodotus, that the gods are jealous of any surpassing success, or power, or beauty, or happiness in man, and interfere to destroy it ; and that it is wise te propitiate them by voluntarily sacrificing part of one’s good fortune or wealth’: hence arose the common practice of guarding against evil by spitting, and by ugly or obscene gestures.
It would, however, serve no useful purpose at present to enumerate the various forms which magic and other superstitious practices assumed in the Greek world. For our purpose, the im- portant point is, that they were alien to and in the long-run stronger than the true Hellenic relicion and helped to destroy it. aay