Chapter III: Part 3

In the first place, then, on sociological grounds, I think we should not conceive this primitive king as a man deified, but rather as a pre-deistic medicine-man possessed of those powers which more cultured ages have relegated to the gods. In the second place, though I know that etymological arguments are often like broken reeds and pierce the hand of him who leans thereon, I cannot but remember that Curtius derived θεός from the root _thes-_ which appears in πολύθεστος, ἀπόθεστος, θέσσασθαι, perhaps θεσμός, the Latin _festus_ and _feriae_, and which has the special connotation of ‘spell’ or ‘magic prayer’. Professor Conway, who prefers another derivation (Lith. dvãse, ‘spirit, breath,’ MHG. ge-twas, ‘ghost,’ see Brugmann, _Gr. Gr._ s.v.), writes to me that the fatal objection to the _thes-_ derivation is that θεσός could not mean God; it could only mean ‘prayer’ or ‘one who prays’. Now, except that the word suggests ‘spell’ rather than ‘prayer’, that is exactly what I want it to mean. If the word θεός was originally neuter it meant magic or medicine, like φάρμακον. If masculine, it was the medicine-man or magic-man--not very far from φαρμακός.

The process of thought, if I may over-simplify it a little, seems to be like this. First the Theos or Rainmaker on earth makes his rain. Then it is found that he does not always or unconditionally make the rain, and you reach the hypothesis that a greater rainmaker lives far away, on some remote mountain, or perhaps in the sky. That is the true Theos. The Theos on earth only knows his ways, belongs to him, partly controls him; sometimes indeed he can only humbly pray to him. The so-called Theos on earth, in fact, is not Theos at all. Here comes one of the strongest antitheses between Homeric and non-Homeric, between the reformed Olympian religion and the old savage stuff from which it was made. Homer drew clear the line between mortal and immortal, between God in Olympus and man here. And most early Greek poetry rings with the antithesis. Μὴ μάτευε Ζεὺς γενέσθαι. θνητὸν ὄντα θνητὰ χρὴ φρονεῖν. By the fifth century the time was long past when ‘gods and mortal men strove in Mêkônê’, and the gods had carried the day. Yet even Sophocles makes his Thebans go with prayer and supplication to a Basileus, to stop the plague; and it seems significant that he makes the priest explain

θεοῖσι μέν νυν οὐκ ἱσούμενόν σ’ ἑγὼ
οὑδ’ οἴδε παῖδες ἑζόμεσθ’ ἑφέστιοι
ἁνδρῶν δὲ πρῶτον ἔν τε συμφοραῖς βίου
κρίνοντες ἒν τε δαιμόνων συναλλαγαῖς (_O.T._ 31 ff.).

The suppliant comes to him not exactly as a God, but as the first of men and as holding some special intercourse with the δαίμονες.

A great collection of these medicine-kings, especially of rain and thunder-makers, is to be found in Mr. A. B. Cook’s very remarkable articles on ‘Zeus, Jupiter and the Oak’, published in the _Classical Review_ for 1903, and again in his ‘European Sky God’ in _Folk Lore_, xv, pp. 371-90. I will run briefly through a few of them.

The clearest of all is Salmoneus. His nature was explained, I believe, partly by M. Salomon Reinach and partly by Miss Jane Harrison. ‘He declared that he was Zeus,’ says Apollodorus (i. 9, 7), ‘and depriving Zeus of his sacrifices bade men offer them to himself. He attached to a chariot leather thongs with bronze caldrons and, trailing them after him, said he was thundering; he tossed blazing torches into the air and said he was lightening.’--So he was; at least, he was doing his best. Mr. Cook shows that he had also some justification for saying that he was Zeus. For he was an Olympian victor; and thereby became Basileus, or Zeus, of Olympia, and had the thunder-making as part of his official duties.

Almost exactly similar is Remulus Silvius, _Remulus ... imitator fulminis_, as Ovid calls him. ‘In contempt of the gods he contrived mock thunderbolts and noises like thunder, wherewith he thought to frighten men as though he were a god. But a storm fraught with rain and lightning falling upon his house, and the lake near which it stood swelling in an unusual manner, he was drowned with his whole family.’[52] As with Salmoneus, amid his mock thunder-storms came the real thunder-storm and slew him.

More modest and more in accord with later beliefs was Numa. No impiety was to be found in his thunder-making.[53] ‘Picus and Faunus taught Numa many things, including a charm for thunder and lightning, composed of onions, hair, and pilchards, which is used to this day.’ You may remember the story told by Livy, Ovid, and others, how Numa cheated Jupiter of his human sacrifice. He conjured Jupiter by a spell to come to him and reveal a charm for thunder. The god came, but was angry at being brought, and meant to have blood. ‘I want heads’ ... ‘Of onions,’ said Numa. ‘I want human’ ... ‘Hairs,’ said Numa. ‘I want living’ ... ‘Pilchards,’ put in the pious king, and Jupiter gave the matter up.

Minos in much the same way had the power to thunder, but only had it by means of a prayer to his father Zeus.

Now observe that most of these early Roman heroes appear both as men and as gods. The explanation is, I think, that when the celestial gods were introduced the old _Theoi_ or _Basilêes_ had to be either condemned, like Mezentius, Remulus Silvius, Salmoneus, or else deified. Numa and Romulus suggest themselves at once. Aeneas, too, while engaged in battle with Turnus, or some say Mezentius, vanished and became Jupiter Indiges. Latinus vanished while fighting Mezentius, and became Jupiter Latiaris. In later times there were numbers of these ‘_Humani Ioves_’. It is one of the most important social facts to remember about antiquity, that the spread of education was very difficult and slow, and in consequence it was almost impossible for a whole nation at once ever to rise entirely above that primitive state of superstition which Preuss describes by the pleasant word ‘Urdummheit’.

Julius Caesar was worshipped as Jupiter, with M. Antonius for his Flamen Dialis. Caligula was worshipped as Optimus Maximus and also as Jupiter Latiaris; it was perhaps in this capacity that he put to death his rival the Rex Nemorensis at Nemi. Domitian is constantly referred to as Jupiter in the poets. Coins are found inscribed =ΛΙΒΙΑ ΗΡΑ=, and =HADRIANO IOVI OLYMPIO=.

We have further the somewhat mysterious statement of Macrobius (_Sat._ iii. 7. 6) that ‘the souls of consecrated men were called by the Greeks Zânes’, and the express and frequently repeated statement of Tzetzes ‘that the ancients called all their kings Zeus and their queens goddesses’. Οἱ γὰρ πρίν τε Δίας πάντας κάλεον βασιλῆας.[54]

I will not dwell on Zeus-Agamemnon or on Zeus-Minos; nor on the number of priests of Zeus at Corycus who bear the name Zâs. But I will just draw attention to one fact. Two classes of people who are not kings, and I believe two only, are found bearing the title of Zeus. They are prophets--like Zeus-Amphiaraos and Zeus-Trophonios; and doctors--like the celebrated Menekrates, who called himself Zeus and his various attendants by other divine names. That is to say the old conception of medicine-chief has split up into those three channels, king, prophet, and doctor; and to all three the name of Zeus occasionally belongs. It was for a medical miracle at Lystra that Barnabas was hailed as Zeus and Paul as Hermes (Acts xiv. 12).

Now, as has been observed before now, the history of these _Humani Ioves_ is written in blood, and that for two special reasons. First, it is by blood that they come to the throne and by blood that they leave it. Secondly, they are always appealed to in times of great strait or danger, when ‘strong medicine’ is wanted. And the strongest and most favourite medicine in such cases is human blood, of one sort or another. The main object of the Leopard Societies is said to be the wish to obtain human fat as ‘medicine’. The same motive leads to murders in Australia.[55]

We should perhaps add a third cause for the stain of blood which lies so deep on these primitive medicine-kings. I mean, the mere wish to inspire terror and obedience and to keep off as long as possible that inevitable successor who filled their days with dread. Kyknos, Phorbas, Oinomaos, Kerkyon, Amykos, Philomeleides, Sinis, and Procrustes, all those ogres of Greek myth who race or wrestle with all comers and, having defeated them, hang their heads on trees or tear their bodies asunder or fling them to wild beasts or the like, have their parallel in many an African king, whose hut is ringed by heads stuck on poles.[56]

Now I wish to apply these conceptions, as I said, to the most obvious piece of Greek Epic poetry outside Homer, and illustrate anthropologically the main legend of the Theogony. You will remember the outlines of the story. The first possessor of the kingly office--βασιληίδα τιμήν--is Ouranos. He is afraid of his children, and ‘hides’ or imprisons them. At last his son Kronos conquers and mutilates him, and he passes out of sight. Kronos becomes king and is equally afraid of his children; he ‘swallows’ them one after another; eventually Zeus conquers and ‘binds’ him. Zeus now reigns; but Zeus took the precaution of swallowing Metis, when Metis was about to give birth to Athena.

I omit details for the moment. I refrain also from discussing the Maori parallel, first pointed out, I believe, in Mr. Lang’s _Custom and Myth_. This series of conflicts has been explained as referring to a change of religion, an early Pelasgian worship being ousted by that of the incoming Achaeans. There may be that in it: but such an explanation obviously does not explain the whole series of swallowings. There were not three, certainly not four, different religions in question.

Analysing the story I find in it the following elements.

First, the medicine-king, or Theos, is afraid of his successor. In this case the possible successors are represented as his children. That may be a mere piece of convenience in story-telling; it may be the influence of a time when kingship was hereditary.

In all three cases the motive assigned by Hesiod seems to be the fear of a successor. The motive of Ouranos, indeed, is not very clearly stated. He began by hiding his children in the earth because they were ‘the most dangerous of sons’ (155). They ‘were hated of their father’, and ‘he rejoiced in the evil work’.

Kronos arose and conquered him: the exact meaning of the mutilation I leave aside. Kronos proceeded to swallow his children ‘intending that none other of the proud sons of Ouranos should have king’s rank among the immortals; for he had heard from Gaia and Ouranos that he was destined to be vanquished by his son’ (461 ff.). Here the motive is clearly given.

As for Zeus and his strange act in swallowing Metis when she was about to give birth to Athena, two quite distinct motives are attributed to him. First, that which we have met with before. ‘He was determined that none but himself should have the king’s rank, βασιληίδα τιμήν, over the immortals. He had heard an oracle that Metis was destined to give birth to’--one expects the motive of the Marriage of Thetis--‘a child who should be mightier than his father.’ But it is not quite so simple; for Athena was the child of Metis, and she was obviously not mightier than Zeus. The oracle takes the curious form that Metis is to bear ‘first Athena, and secondly a child who shall be mightier than his father.’ Zeus seems to have swallowed her rather prematurely. But he had a second motive also. He swallowed Metis ‘that the goddess being inside him should tell him of good and evil’. The name Μῆτις of course means ‘Counsel’ or ‘Wisdom’.

Leaving this last detail aside for the present, I suggest that the main motive in this strange story of the swallowing or hiding of the successive possible pretenders to the crown is the dread which each king naturally felt of him who was coming after. But this still leaves much unexplained; the second main element which I find is the worship of sacred flints or thunder-stones.

When Kronos set about swallowing Zeus, you will remember, Gaia put a big stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to great Kronos. And he ‘put it inside his belly’, ἑὴν ἑσκάτθετο νηδύν (487). Then, ‘in the passing of the years’--whatever that exactly means--‘beguiled by the counsels of Gaia, great crooked-hearted Kronos spewed up his brood again, being conquered by the craft and force of his son’. (Two reasons there, belonging probably to different stories--in one he was overcome by the craft of Gaia, in the other by the _mana_ of his son.) ‘And the first thing he vomited up was the stone, which he had swallowed last.... Then straightway Zeus set loose his father’s brothers, the Titanes. They were grateful, and gave him three gifts, thunder and thunder-bolt and lightning; formerly vast Earth had hidden them away: and it is by them that Zeus rules over mortals and immortals.’[57]

That is to say Zeus in this story is a thunder-god. The thunder or lightning is his _mana_. And not only a thunder-god, he is a thunder-stone. The identity has been, of course, disguised in our present version of the myth. It is muddled, like everything else in Hesiod.[58] But it shows through. When Kronos sets about swallowing Zeus, it is the stone he swallows. And it is only when ‘by the counsels of Earth’ Cronos vomits up the stone that Zeus can take any action; and that action takes the form of thunder and lightning, the special property of a thunder-stone. In the word ‘thunder-stone’, or κεραυνία, the ancients seem to have mixed, and perhaps confused, two ideas: that of a meteorite, which seemed to be the actual bolt which fell in the thunder, and that of an ordinary flint, nephrite, jade, or the like, which has its mysterious fire inside it. The fire is the soul, or indwelling _mana_, of the flint.

A careful reading of Hesiod’s story will, I think, convince most anthropologists that Zeus _is_ the stone. And as a matter of fact it is not uncommon for both Zeus and Jupiter to appear as stones. In the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, the oldest temple of Jupiter in Rome, founded by Romulus, there was a sacred flint which was called _Jupiter Lapis_--it was not _Jovis Lapis_. It was used for killing the victim in solemn treaties. It must have been one of those ‘thunder-stones resembling axes’ of which Pliny speaks; what we should call neolithic axe-heads. There seems to have been more than one _Jupiter Lapis_; for in 201 B.C. the Senate sent several such with the _fetiales_ to Africa. I need not dwell on other cases; the Zeus Kappôtas at Gythîum, apparently a bigger stone, as Orestes could sit upon it; the Zeus Kasios or Keraunios at Seleucîa; the stone of Zeus Sthenios, on the road from Trozên to Hermione; or the thunder-stone on Mount Ida, in Crete, with which Pythagoras was purified by the Idaean Dactyls, the attendants of Zeus. They are all in De Visser’s book.

The best known of these stones is perhaps that which was believed to be--not to belong to, but actually to be--the Mother of the Gods. Livy (xxix. II) tells of the embassy sent from Rome to Attalus to fetch the Great Mother; and how the king took the legates to Pessinûs in Phrygia and handed over to them the sacred stone which the natives affirmed to be the Mother of the Gods. Arnobius describes its appearance: ‘a stone not large, which could be carried in a man’s hand without noticeable weight, in colour black and _furvus_, in shape more or less round with projecting corners, which is now to be seen in the mouth of the image of the Great Mother.’ Superstitious Rome was ready to accept and to worship the Mother in the form of a stone; but common-sense Rome did at least demand that the Great Mother should have a decently anthropomorphic image, and the stone was then placed in the image’s mouth.

So far, then, we are clear. But there remain some difficult questions. Why was the stone in Hesiod wrapped in swaddling clothes? I do not understand this. But the ritual practice is well attested. Pausanias tells how this Kronos stone was anointed and wrapped in wool.[59] A coin in Macdonald’s Hunter Catalogue (ii. 68. 145) represents the Great Mother stone covered with a goat-skin. This may be merely because of the _hagos_ or taboo, just as the omphalos on vases is commonly covered with an ἄγρηνον and Semitic betyls are wrapped in cloths. The actual body of a god would be dangerous to touch; but it looks as if there was some special connexion between stones and infants. The Orphic poem called Lithica is, of course, full of magic stones, which might be cited here. But take one in especial, the ‘Live Siderite’. This stone has to be prayed to, like a god; it has also to be washed daily for ten days and nursed and wrapped in clean robes, like a baby. At the end of that time it will reward its benefactor by uttering the scream of a young baby when hungry; then, the poet remarks, the great thing is not to drop it.[60]

In some Mexican dances, Preuss tells us, the souls of infants come through the air in the likeness of five stones. Among the Kaitish and the Arunta there are stones inhabited by infant souls, which are induced in one way or another to come out of the stones and be born. And we all remember the stones flung by Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the race of man which is--or is not--sprung ἀπὸ δρυὸς ἡδ’ ἁπὸ πέτρης.[61]

But again, why were the stones swallowed? What does all this swallowing mean? Zeus of course swallowed Metis in order to have her _mana_ inside him. That is sensible enough. Do medicine men or Theoi ever actually swallow smooth stones in order to get the fire-power or other magic inside them? In Mexico the devils which are sucked out of the body in curing diseases are usually in the form of stones. For instance, in the ceremony of the Huichol tribe, where the gods are healed of their weariness by the Dawn-Star, Kaiumari, sucking ‘stones and the like’ out of them.[62] The same practice is common among Australian blacks.

Mr. Marett refers me to a still better case. Among the Yuin of New South Wales the word _joïa_, which is almost like _mana_ and is used to denote the immaterial force in sacred animals, is actually the name of certain stones like these. They are commonly quartz-crystals or bits of glass, but also we hear of Kunambrun, a black stone, apparently lydianite. A black stone probably means thunder. The medicine man often carries these stones in his mouth, and when he sends out a curse or a blessing he projects them out of himself into his victim ‘like the wind,’ that is, invisibly and impalpably.[63]

The actual swallowing seems strange, unless it was a mere fraud. But I used to know an Australian blackfellow--I never thought of asking his tribe--who used to put stones in his mouth and give or sell them to the boys of the neighbourhood as bearing a charm in consequence. They were sure to hit what they were aimed at, unless the aim was very bad. I suppose he put a lot of his _mana_ into them. One of the ways in which a Papuan chief causes death, according to the report of Dr. Bellamy in the White Book for 1907, is to send to a man a present of a smooth stone. The man recognizes the meaning of the stone, and wastes away. Dr. Bellamy cured some by the application of strong smelling salts, which drove away the devils. Presumably the chief had put his _mana_ on the stone in some very strong way.

Lastly, there is another element in this story which calls for explanation from better anthropologists than myself; I mean the constant reference to ‘hiding’ or ‘concealment’. Ouranos (157) _hid_ all his children in a secret place of the Earth; this gave pain to Earth, and she groaned, being squeezed by them. Earth again (482) took Zeus and _hid_ him in a cave. Kronos _put the stone inside_ him--surely a form of hiding. The Titans _were hidden away_--κεκρύφατο, by Kronos (729) till Zeus brought them again to light. Lastly and most important, Zeus _hid away fire_ from man, κρύψε δὲ πῦρ.

This last case is pretty clear. Zeus had the fire hidden away in the heart of the flint or in the veins of Earth; Prometheus, or Pramanthas, the Fire-Stick, introduced the more open visible fire. But the other cases seem different. In them it is always a king or a would-be king, a deposed Theos or a conquered aspirant, who is made to disappear. We are reminded of Aeneas and Latinus who vanished in battles, of Romulus and Numa who vanished in thunderstorms.

In one case we find that the hiding was in a ‘monstrous cave’, and a cave in Crete, too. We know from other sources something about the kind of hiding which took place in that particular cave. At the end of the fatal nine years, if we are to believe the authors quoted by me in the _Rise of the Greek Epic_, p. 127, and much more completely by Mr. A. B. Cook in the articles mentioned above, the divine king Minos in his mask, as a god, went up into the Idaean cave to converse with Zeus. Doubtless the divine mask covered his head. A masked Minos went in, and a masked Minos came out; but one strongly suspects that it was not the same man beneath the mask. My friend Mr. Gordon, an education officer in Lower Nigeria, informs me that there is there a great oracle or ordeal in a cave called the Long Juju. It decides cases between litigants, or persons who have some dispute. And the method is that both go up into the cave, and only one returns. The other, presumably the guilty one, has vanished; he is hidden; κέκρυπται.

All through this pre-Hellenic realm of saga and half-history we find ourselves in contact with these god-kings, or medicine-chiefs, these βασιλῆες or, if I am right, Theoi. And we cannot but wonder whether we have not here the explanation of Herodotus’ famous statement about the origins of Greek Religion (Herod. ii. 52). The Pelasgians, he tells us, did not originally know the names of the Olympian gods; ‘they brought offerings and prayed to the Theoi.’ It was only at a later time that they sent to Dodona to ask if they should worship those definite gods with special names and attributes and ‘Olympian Houses’ which had come into Greece but were still in some sense foreign. And the oracle said ‘Yes’. I am quite aware that the passage may be differently interpreted; and I do not suggest that Herodotus knew all that lay behind his words when he spoke of the nameless Theoi of the Pelasgians in contrast to the Olympians of Homer and Hesiod. But I do suspect that the contrast between these medicine-chiefs and the Homeric gods is one of the cardinal differences between Hellenic and pre-Hellenic religion; and, further, that some reminiscence of this difference has shaped the tradition which Herodotus repeats. Clearer evidence will, no doubt, be forthcoming from some better-equipped anthropologist.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] _Primitive Secret Societies_, Macmillan, 1908.

[42] _Theog._ 681.

[43] Wallis, _The Advance of our West African Empire_, p. 239.

[44] Cf. Dieterich, _Archiv für Relig. Wiss._, xi, p. 173.

[45] Soph. _Ant._ 965.

[46] Eumelus, cp. Schol. _Il. Z._ 131.

[47] _British Central Africa_, p. 439.

[48] Cf. Du Chaillu, _A Journey to Ashongo Land_, p. 52.

[49] Alldridge, _The Sherbro and its Hinterland_, pp. 153 ff.

[50] Plat. (_Rep._ 565 d). Cf. De Visser, _Nicht-menschengestaltige Götter_, p. 46.

[51] _Theog._ 386 ff.

[52] Dionys. Hal. _Antiq._ i. 71.

[53] Plut. _Num._ 15.

[54] See _Folklore_, xv. 304.

[55] According to the White Book of Papua for 1907, containing the governor’s report to the Federal Government, the only murder of a white man committed during last year was due to a wish for this medicine. A native called Hariki had built a new house and wished to make it strong and paint it with a mixture of red-clay and coconut-oil. For this purpose, it seems, special medicine was necessary, and in order to have it as strong as possible, Hariki determined to get it from a white man. He obtained it by killing a market-gardener called Weaver, with whom he was on quite friendly terms. Indeed, when the medicine had been obtained, Hariki and his friends ‘proceeded, under the guidance of one of the party who was skilled in charms,’ to bring Weaver back to life. They began at the feet, and succeeded, so they said, in reviving all the lower part of the body; but there was a great wound in the chest which they could not pass. So at last they hid the corpse away, and arranged that it should seem to have been eaten by alligators.

[56] Phorbas, being the strongest of the Phlegyai, was chosen their king. He lived under an oak, wrestled with all comers, and hung their heads on the oak. Kerkyon (et. _quercus_?) of Eleusis did much the same. So did Oinomaos. His daughter’s suitors had to challenge him to a chariot race; he hung up the heads of those whom he defeated. Pelops, having defeated him, slew him and took the kingdom. Apparently the daughter’s hand carried the kingdom with it, as the daughter of Zeus in the _Birds_ is Basileia, ‘Royalty.’ Kyknos made a pyramid of skulls. The others killed their rivals in various ways.

[57] _Theog._ 485 ff. Cf. 690, where Zeus fights with the thunder as his weapon; also 853 ff., where he crushes Typhoeus, who ‘would have become king over mortals and immortals, but that Zeus saw him and used the thunder’.

[58] Thus in our present version of the _Theogony_ Zeus is not swallowed at all: only the stone is swallowed. And when it reappears Zeus sets it to be a sign at Pytho. Comment is hardly needed. No one supposes that we have the stories of the _Theogony_ in their original state. There is ‘contamination’ and ‘conciliation’ visible throughout the book.

[59] Paus. x. 24, 5; cp. ix. 2, 7 and Frazer’s note.

[60]
ὄρσει νεογιλοῦ παιδὸς ἁυτὴν
μαίης ἑν κόλπῳ κεκληγότος ἁμφὶ γάλακτι (_Lithica_, 360-99).

[61] Cp. Spencer and Gillen, _Central Australia_, p. 337. Several cases are given in Dieterich, _Muttererde_, pp. 20 f. The belief is very widespread.

[62] Preuss, in _Archiv für Rel. Wiss._, xi. 576.

[63] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 371, 533 ff., 546.

LECTURE IV

GRAECO-ITALIAN MAGIC

The Greek words for magic and magician, μαγεία and μάγος, are admittedly of Persian origin, and in all probability did not find their way into Greece before the Persian War, that is, before about 480 B.C. It was therefore an obvious inference, which was drawn in 1863 by O. Hirschfeld (_de incantationibus et devinctionibus amatoriis apud Graecos Romanosque_), that as the name magic was not known in Greece before the Persian Wars, neither was the thing. The inference is indeed obvious, but it is not necessarily correct: magic is practised by tribes who have not developed any general term for magic. It is therefore conceivable, at least, that the Greeks and Italians also before 480 B.C. practised magical rites, even though they then had no word for magic in general. The question is one of facts and not merely of words. What do we know of the facts before 480 B.C.? Unfortunately, according to M. Mauss, in his article on magic in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines_, ‘we are in almost complete ignorance of the primitive and original forms of magic in Italy and Greece.’ In view, then, of our almost complete ignorance, it may perhaps be allowable to start from a hypothesis--the hypothesis that the primitive and original forms of magic amongst the Greeks and Romans were much the same as they are amongst the undeveloped peoples who possess them at the present day, and, like the Greeks and Romans of the earliest times, have no general term for magic.

Amongst the tribes of Central Australia, the person who employs magic to cause sickness or death to his enemy does not omit to use what the natives call ‘singing’. This ‘singing’ is conducted ‘in a low voice’ (Frazer, _Golden Bough_^2, i. 13); and the sort of thing the magician ‘in muttered tones hisses out’ is ‘May your heart be rent asunder’, or, ‘May your head and throat be split open’ (Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, 534 ff.; _Northern Tribes_, 456 ff.).

In the Torres Straits the sorcerer points a spear in the direction of his victim and ‘sings’ similarly, ‘Into body, go, go. Into hands, go, go. Into head, go, go’ (_Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 228, 229). The ‘singing’ assists, Mr. Haddon says (ib., p. 231), ‘in furthering the injury he wishes to inflict.’ Now, was ‘singing’, of this magical nature, a sort of rhythmical muttering in a low voice, known to the Greeks and Romans? In the first place, we have the Latin words _incantare_, _incantator_, _incantamentum_, all implying a singing which is magical in its intention and effects--incantation or enchantment. Next, we have _carmen_, which means not only song in general but ‘singing’ in the magical sense, in Tibullus (i. 8. 17), Ovid (_Met._ vii. 167, 203, 253; xiv. 57, 20, 34, 44, 366, 387; _Fasti_ iv. 551, 552), Horace (_Ep._ v. 72; xvii. 4, 5, 28; _Sat._ i. 8. 19, 20), Virgil (_Ecl._ viii. 69; _Aen._ iv. 487), Juvenal (_Sat._ vi. 133), Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ xxviii. 10, 18), Tacitus (_Annals_, iv. 22), and in other passages for which I may refer to Adam Abt (_Die Apologie des Apuleius_, 22) and L. Fahz (_De Poetarum Romanorum Doctrina Magica_, 138, 139). In Greek we have the same magical singing expressed by the words ἑπάδειν, ἑπωδνή, ἑπῳδὁς; in Euripides (_Bacchae_ 234, _Hippolytus_ 478, 1038, _Phoenissae_ 1260), Sosiphanes (_Fr._ 1), Aristophanes (_Amphiaraus_, _Fr._ 29), Anaxandrides (_Fr._ 33. 31), Antiphanes (_Fr._ 17. 15), Xenophon (_Mem._ iii. 11. 16, 17), Lucian and Heliodorus, and other passages to be found in Abt (ib., p. 43).

It may, however, be objected that all these quotations are of course later than 480 B.C.; and therefore prove nothing as to ‘the primitive and original forms of magic in Italy and Greece’. Indeed, in the _Bacchae_, for instance, and in Plato, _Rep._ ii. 364 A, the magic referred to may reasonably be regarded as exotic and not native to Greece. But fortunately we find the word ἑπαοιδή, in the magical sense, in Homer (_Od._ xix. 457), which takes this group of words in this sense far back beyond 480 B.C. The Homeric use of the word in this sense, however, will not avail against any one who chooses to maintain--though it is impossible to prove, and difficult to believe--that the Greeks originally knew no magic, and borrowed it in Homeric or pre-Homeric times from some neighbouring people. And though the fact that the Twelve Tables ordained punishment for the man ‘qui malum carmen incantassit’ in all reasonable probability indicates that ‘singing’ in the evil sense was a practice already at the time rooted in Italy and not newly imported from abroad; still in this case, as in the case of the Homeric ἑπαοιδή, the objection may be made--though it cannot be supported by anything approaching proof or even probability--that the Italians, as well as the Romans, alone amongst early peoples were incapable of developing the belief for themselves. As against this objection we can only fall back on the evidence of comparative philology. And that evidence is particularly interesting, because, as interpreted by O. Schrader (_Reallexikon der Indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, ii. 974), it shows that amongst the Indo-European peoples much the most common expression for doing magic is ‘singing’. The presumption that ‘singing’ of the magical kind goes back to Indo-European times is as strong as any that linguistic evidence can produce. For the Slavonian, Lithuanian, and Teutonic words I will refer to Schrader’s _Reallexikon_, ii. 975. Of the Greek and Latin words I may mention βασκαίνω and βασκανία, which are connected with βάζω, ‘speak’; γόης and γοητεύω with γόος, ‘howling’; _fascinum_ and _fascinare_ with _fari_.

If, then, we may with some plausibility illustrate the _carmen_, the _incantatio_, and the ἑπαοιδή of the Greeks and the Romans, with the ‘singing’ of the Torres Straits and Central Australia, the question arises, What exactly is it that the magician ‘sings’? In the Torres Straits it apparently is the spear which is ‘sung’, for the words used are, ‘Into body, go, go’; and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say that in Central Australia also it is the stick or the bone which is ‘sung’. But when we examine the words of the ‘singing’ or charm, as given by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, we find that they do not refer to the stick or the bone which is used in the magical rite, but to the person against whom the rite is directed: ‘May your heart be rent asunder, may your head and throat be split open.’ The inference, therefore, seems to be that it is the victim that the ‘singing’ or spell is originally directed against; and only later that the stick or bone itself comes to be bewitched, just as money, which is valuable for what it will purchase, comes to be regarded by the miser as an end in itself.

If this is so, it opens up another possibility of interest which I must be content merely to suggest for consideration and investigation. It is that the earliest form of ‘singing’ or spell may be connected with cursing. Some forms of cursing or imprecation invoke the assistance of the gods, but not all; and it may be that those are the earliest which operate directly and without reference to gods. Caliban invokes no gods when he cries:

All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him
By inch-meal a disease!

or

a south-west blow on ye,
And blister you all o’er.

And, generally speaking, we may say that what makes cursing terrible and appalling to the ears on which it falls is not any reference to the gods that it may contain--for such references maybe absent--but the fear or horror the man inspires. If he inspires none, his curses go unregarded. If they do terrify, it is because they are felt to have some power. Precisely the same difference, and for precisely the same reason, obtains in the case of witchcraft and magic. Some who practise it are feared, others are not; and the reason is that some are believed to have the power to do the mischief, and others not. But if witchcraft and cursing are both terrible because of the fear they inspire and the power they imply, and if so far they resemble each other, or even possibly have a common psychological origin, they soon begin to follow different lines of evolution. The essence of cursing is that it is open and loud; and, except when taken up into religion, is not ceremonialized or formalized; whereas the essence of magic is that it is secret in what it does, and its ‘singing’ is a repeated or rhythmical muttering in a low voice. The mere words, ‘May your heart be rent asunder,’ may be a curse or a spell; and, in either case, if they are feared, power is attributed to the person who utters them. Psychologically, it is probable that belief in the power is due to the fear that is felt. But when the belief has been established that a certain person possesses the power, then the belief in the power in its turn engenders fear.

The belief is that the magician or witch has the power to do things. In _Macbeth_ the first witch says:

But in a sieve I’ll thither sail;
And, like a rat without a tail,
I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

In the Romance languages there is a series of words for magic and witchcraft, going back to the Latin _facio_, all expressing this idea of ‘I’ll do, and I’ll do’, and implying that the witch has the power to do--the Middle Latin _factura_, Italian _fattura_, Old French _faiture_, &c. And in the Indo-European languages there are several sets of words for magic and witchcraft, all expressing this same idea, and indicating that it goes back to the earliest Indo-European times. One set running through Sanskrit, Lithuanian, and Old Slavonic implies, as the Sanskrit _kṛtyâ_ shows, that magic is ‘action’ or ‘doing’. The Old Norse _görningar_, ‘sorceries or witchcraft,’ literally means ‘doing’; and in Old Slavonic the word for magic (_po-tvorü_) is derived from a verb meaning ‘to do’. As illustrating the belief that the witch has power, I may refer to Canidia’s words in the _Epodes_ (xvii. 77):

et polo
deripere Lunam vocibus possim meis,
possim crematos excitare mortuos;

or to Medea’s in Ovid (_Met._ vii. 206):

iubeoque
et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulcris;

and (_Rem. Am._ 253):

tumulo prodire iubebitur umbra.

Still more clearly does Plato in the _Laws_ (933 A) testify to the belief in the power of the witch or magician: those who dare to do injury by ἐπῳδαῖς, or ‘singing’, are encouraged to do so by the belief that they have the power to do so--ὡς δύνανται τὸ τοιοῦτον--and their victims are thoroughly convinced that they are injured because those who practise on them have the power to bewitch them, ὡς παντὸς μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τούτων δυναμένων γοητεύειν βλάπτονται.

To sum up then, thus far, a magician is a person feared, and having power, which power he exercises in secret, muttering in a low voice, ‘May your heart be rent asunder,’ or ‘your head be split open’, and so on. And this muttering is the _carmen_, the _incantatio_, the ἑπαοιδή, the βασκανία and the γοητεία of the Greeks and Romans; the ‘singing’ of the Australian black fellows. That this magical ‘singing’ continued, down to late classical and post-classical times, to be a whispering or a murmuring in a low voice, is easily shown. A _lex Cornelia_ condemned those ‘qui susurris magicis homines occiderunt’ (Just. _Inst._ iv. 18. 5). In Ovid we have ‘carmen magico demurmurat ore’ (_Met._ xiv. 57), and ‘placavit precibusque et murmure longo’ (ib. vii. 251); in Tibullus (i. 2. 47) ‘iam tenet infernas magico stridore catervas’ (where _stridor_ = _murmur_, as in Sil. Ital. viii. 562); in Apuleius (_Metamorph._ i. 3), ‘magico susurramine amnes ... reverti,’ and (_de Magia_, c. 47) ‘et carminibus murmurata’; and in Aristaenetus (_Ep._ ii. 18), ὑποφθεγγόμενος ἑπικλήσεις καὶ ψιθυρίζων ἁπατηλῶν γοητευμάτων λόγους φρικώδεις, and in the Greek magical papyri ποππυσμός, στεναγμός and συριγμός have the same meaning and use (Wessely, _Pap._ CXXI, 833-5).

I have next to note that in Australia and the Torres Straits the magician not only mutters words but points in the direction of his victim with a stick, bone, or spear. This gesture seems to be as essential to the desired effect as the ‘singing’ itself. The fact seems to be that the pointing of the stick is a piece of gesture-language conveying the same idea as the words that are sung; in both the power of the magician goes forth and strikes the victim, rending his heart or splitting his head. The question then arises whether we have in Graeco-Italian magic anything that corresponds to this ‘pointing’, as it is termed in Australia, and to the stick thus pointed at the person to be bewitched or enchanted. I can only suggest that the ῥάβδος, or _virga_, with which, in the _Odyssey_ (x. 238, 319, &c.), Circe works witchcraft, or Hermes, both in the _Iliad_ (xxiv. 343) and the _Odyssey_ (v. 47), entrances men, or Athene transforms Ulysses (xvi. 172), may possibly be a literary version or survival of the primitive pointing-stick become a magic wand. A wand is a common part of a magician‘s outfit.

The blow or thrust which the magician executes with his pointing-stick or staff is supposed to inflict the injury on his victim; and nothing more may be required or done. But usually the magician is not content merely to point his stick in the direction of his victim. To make sure that the blow reaches the head or the heart, he makes a rough image of his victim out of clay or wax or wood, and stabs that in the appropriate place. In doing so, the savage confuses--and even civilized man does not yet always satisfactorily discriminate between--the categories of likeness and identity. The blow which the magician intends to inflict, and the thrust which he actually deals with his pointing-stick, are like and are meant to be identical, and are believed to be so, and, if he has power, they prove to be identical. The image, also, is, to the mind of the believer, not merely like, but in some manner identical with, the victim who suffers and is consumed, like as and to the same degree as the image, and at the very same moment. The Ojibway Indian believes ‘that wherever the needle pierces or the arrow strikes the image, his foe will the same instant be seized with a sharp pain in the corresponding part of his body’ (Frazer, _G. B._^2 i. 10). I need not quote instances from Australia or Africa to corroborate this, but, as indicating that the practice goes back to Indo-European times, I may refer to the _Rigveda_ (iii. 523) and the _Atharva-Veda_ (i. 7. 2); and for a Latin parallel to the Indian image pierced by a needle I need only refer to Ovid (_Heroides_ vi. 91, 92):

simulacraque cerea fingit,
et miserum tenuis in iecur urget acus.

For the Greek use of waxen images I may refer to Plato, who in the _Laws_ (933 B) speaks of the alarm felt by men ἄν ποτε ἄρα ἴδωρί που κήρινα μιμήματα πεπλασμένα, and for other instances to O. Kehr, _Quaest. Mag. Spec._ 12 f. In Theocritus the wax which is spoken of, καρόν, is not indeed described as an image, but it doubtless was; and the mention of it may serve as an excuse for remarking that, though the details into which magic is worked out by different peoples vary considerably, and though the applications which different peoples make of it are far from uniform, still amongst all peoples there are two matters with which magic always, without exception, deals--Love and Death. Thus far it is with the latter that I have dealt. I now, for the moment, turn to the former, and I propose to indicate briefly that the magical methods of procuring Love are precisely the same as those for procuring Death. The power which is used for the one end is equally potent for the other.

For Death-magic, as we have seen, it is essential that the person working magic should believe that he has the power, and that others also should believe him to have it; and all that is necessary is that the magician should put forth the power that he possesses; and this he does by means of words and gesture-language. So too in Love-magic, in the Torres Straits, the essential thing is that the young man should anoint himself on the temples with a paste made from certain plants, and ‘think as intently as possible about the girl’ (_Expedition to Torres Straits_, vi. 221), saying to himself, ‘You come! you come! you come!’ for, Mr. Haddon tells us, ‘the power of words and the projection of the will were greatly believed in by the natives’ (220); and when a young man performed the foregoing operations, at a dance or any meeting at which women would be present, ‘the girl could not resist, but was bound to go with him’ (221). In Rome there was the same belief in the power of words: Virgil, in _Eclogue_ viii, imitates Theocritus, but deviates in details, and one such deviation shows the Roman’s belief in the power of words, of the _carmen_. Whereas Theocritus says:

ἴυγξ, ἔλκε τὺ τῆνον ἑμὸν ποτὶ δῶμα τὸν ἄνδρα,

Virgil says:

Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin.

So, too, the power of the spell is attested by Propertius (iv. 4. 51):

O! utinam magicae nossem cantamina Musae,

and Ovid (_Her._ vi. 83):

Nec facie meritisve placet, sed carmina novit,

and Seneca (_Herc. Oet._ 464):

Flectemus illum, carmina invenient iter,

and Lucan (vi. 452):

Carmine Thessalidum dura in praecordia fluxit
Non fatis addictus amor.

and Tibullus (i. 8. 23):

Quid queror heu misero carmen nocuisse, quid herbas?

In the next place, as Death-magic was considered to gain in efficiency if the magician did not merely ‘point’ with his stick in the direction of his foe, but made an image and wounded it; so Love-magic used a waxen image, and by melting it consumed with love the person imaged:

Haec ut cera liquescit
Uno eodemque igni, sic nostro Daphnis amore.
_Ecl._ viii. 80.

And in Horace the waxen image is thrown into the flames and consumed:

imagine cerea
Largior arserit ignis.
_Sat._ i. 8. 43.

Where sickness, and deaths following on sickness, are ascribed to the action of some malevolent person possessing and exercising mysterious power, that is to say, are explained as being due to magic, the assumption evidently made is that death from sickness is an occurrence which would not take place in the ordinary course of nature, and which therefore must be due to some person who has the power and the art to disturb the ordinary course of nature. This conception of magic is of course not confined to the lower stages of culture; we find it in the definition of the magician given by Quintilian, ‘cuius ars est ire contra naturam’ (_Declamationes_ x. sub fin.). The cure for sickness naturally presents itself as consisting in counteracting the power of the person who produced it. Some one must be procured who possesses power equally great, or greater; and he employs his power in the same way as the person who produced the sickness, but to the opposite end. The author of the sickness ‘sings’ his victim, that is, rhythmically mutters in a low voice, ‘May your heart be rent asunder,’ &c., and, as Mr. Haddon tells us of the Torres Straits natives, ‘thinks as intently as possible’ (221), or ‘projects his will’. Now, amongst the Indo-European peoples, the person who cured the sickness proceeded in exactly the same way; he too had a _carmen_, an ἐπῳδή, with which to ‘sing’ his patient. According to the _Atharva-Veda_ (iv. 12) he sang:

Let marrow join to marrow, and let limb to limb be joined.
Grow flesh that erst had pined away, and now grow every bone also.
Marrow now unite with marrow, and let hide on hide increase.

And the well-known Merseburg charm employs much the same formulae: ‘Let bone to bone and blood to blood and limb to limb be joined.’ Probably Cato’s charm, or _carmen auxiliare_--good for _luxatis membris_--was of this kind (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxviii. 21). In the _Avesta_, healing by singing has a special word for its designation--mᾳθrò-baêšaza. In the _Odyssey_ (xix. 457) the ἑπαοιδή by which the flow of blood from Odysseus’s wound was stayed was a ‘singing’ of the same kind. Amongst the Romans, Pliny says (_Hist. Nat._ xxviii. 29) ‘carmina quaedam exstant contra grandines contraque morborum genera’. And the Greek word φάρμακον bears double evidence to the same effect; its etymological connexion with Lithuanian words meaning ‘to sing’, in this sense, shows that it was originally an ἑπαοιδή, a charm or a counter-charm; and it is used throughout Greek literature to connote both bane and antidote:

φάρμακα πολλὰ μὲν ἑσθλά ... πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά.
_Od._ iv. 230.

The Latin _mederi_, _medicus_, _medicina_, like the corresponding term (_vi-maδay_) in the _Avesta_, go back to a root meaning wisdom--the wisdom of the ‘wise’ woman. The name ‘Medea’ belongs to the same stock and means ‘wise’ woman; and the wisdom presumably consisted originally in the knowledge of the charms (or ‘carmina contra morborum genera’) and simples, just as the ἱατρός or ἱητήρ may have got his name from ἱός and the fact that he dealt in drugs which might, according as they were used, be either the bane or the antidote. That in Greece the ἱατρὄς originally effected his cures by means of spells, soothing spells, is indicated by Pindar (_Pyth._ iii. 55), who is doubtless reproducing the popular belief when he says that Chiron loosed and rescued his patients from divers pangs,

τοὺς μὲν μαλακαῖς ἑπαοιδαῖς ἁμφέπων,
τοὺς δὲ προσανέα πίνοντας, ἣ γυίοις περάπτων πάντοθεν
φάρμακα.

In all ages ‘suggestion’ has operated for good in medical treatment; but it operates only so far as the patient believes that his healer has power and exercises that power to do him good. The medicine-man in early times exercises that power either by gestures which indicate that power is going from him, or by the words with which he banishes or overcomes the sickness. And in either case he effects his faith-healing in exactly the same way as the evil-minded possessor of magical power causes sickness and death by word and gesture, by ‘singing’ and ‘pointing’.

To the mind of the believer in magic the image of a man is not merely like him but is in a mysterious way identical with him, so that blows dealt on the image are felt by the man, and the man and his image are as closely related to one another as is the exterior of a curve to the interior; and so, to the mind of the believer in magic, the relation of a man’s name to the man himself is equally intimate and close. Hence, by way of precaution, the name of a man is often kept a profound secret. The same secrecy too may be observed about the name of a god, or of a city. It would not be surprising, therefore, if the name of a man were put by the magician to the same use as his image, for the name is, if anything, even more intimately identified with the man than any likeness of him can be; and, as a matter of fact, the secrecy, which is often observed about the name of a man or a god, is observed because control of the name is assumed and believed to involve control over the person. If, therefore, the image of a man can be used for malevolent purposes by a magician, so too may his name. The savage’s objection to being photographed, as is well known, is due to the feeling that with his likeness he himself passes into the power of the possessor. I need hardly point out that pictorial signs and writing and runes are regarded, at first, by those who do not understand them, as mysterious and magical, as σήματα λυγρά. The written name of a person is as intimately bound up with the person’s identity as his likeness or a waxen image of him. The name may therefore be used by the magician for the same purposes and in the same way as the image. If the magician can, as the aborigines of Victoria do, ‘draw on the ground a rude likeness of the victim’ (Frazer, _G. B._^2 i. 12), if ‘in Eastern Java an enemy may be killed by means of a likeness of him drawn on a piece of paper which is then incensed or buried in the ground’ (ib., 11), it is obvious that his name, which is identical with him, may be treated in the same way and with the same result. It may be written down and stabbed or incensed or buried in the ground, and the desired result will be produced. Now, just as the Ojibway Indian pierces the image of his enemy with a needle, so the Greek or the Roman wrote down the name of his enemy, drove a nail into it, and then buried it in the ground. This proceeding was called κατάδεσις or _defixio_. ‘Nailed him’ was doubtless the comforting reflection which accompanied the final blow of the hammer. That it was the name which was nailed, just as the image was pierced by the needle, is not a matter of inference: one of the tablets of this kind, which have come down to us (_C. I. A._, _Appendix continens defixionum tabellas_ 57), expressly says (line 20) ὄνομα καταδῶ. And, to leave no room for doubting that to nail the name of the enemy was to nail the enemy himself, just as piercing his image with a needle was to pierce the enemy himself, the inscription says ὄνομα καταδῶ καὶ αὐτόν, ‘I nail his name, that is himself.’ The identity of name and person is thus expressly proclaimed; and it is precisely parallel to the identity of the person and his image, or likeness, which we find to be assumed wherever magic is found to exist.