CHAPTER XV.

THE SUPERNATURAL IN ANCIENT ROME.

Multa esse naturæ miracula incompertæ rationis et in naturæ majes-
tate penitus abdita.-PLINY, Hist. N. xxx. 1

In this state of corruption, who so fit as a good honest Christian-Pagan
for a moderator between Pagan-Christians? SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE. *

HAVE gone at such length into the supernaturalism of ancient Greece, that it is not necessary to dwell long on that of ancient Rome, for they are identical. The poetry, the philosophy, the theology of Rome, were all imported from Greece, as Greece had imported them from Egypt. The very laws of Athens were introduced in the year of Rome 301. The poetry of Rome, the dramas of Terence, Seneca, and even of Plautus, are but reflexes of those of Greece. It is the same with the epic and the lyric departments of Latin poetry. Virgil's machinery in the Æneid is the reproduced machinery of Homer, the same gods, the same creed, in part the same heroes. Æneas conquers monsters like Hercules, and descends to the shades like Ulysses. Lucan asserts the miraculous in the Pharsalia, and Horace gives us both spiritualism in his descriptions of Roman life and its magic, the dark side of it in Hecate and Canidia. Horace believed that Pan interfered to save his life on one occasion:

A tree when falling on my head,
Had surely crushed me to the dead;
But Pan, the poets' guardian, broke

With saving hand, the destined stroke.-B. II. Ode xviii. 2.

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He reverts to the falling tree again in the Ode to Calliope, and adds that the superior powers saved him from serpents when sleeping on the ground in the woods, and also at the battle of Philippi, though, on the last occasion, it seems to have been rather a good pair of legs. Lucan in his Pharsalia draws an astounding picture of the powers of witchcraft in the person of Erichtho. But we will pass over the poets for the reason assigned, or we might quote the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which are built entirely on the ancient theory that the gods could not only present themselves in any form they pleased, but could turn men and women into any form of animal, vegetable, or mineral life. The same idea which was transmitted to magic. Ovid gravely assures us that, in a very fatal sickness amongst the people in Rome, Quintus Apulinus was despatched to Epidaurus to enquire of the oracle of Esculapius the remedy. The ambassador was assured in a dream that the god in the form of a serpent would himself return with him, and he adds that in presenting himself at the shrine, a serpent rolled out of the temple, made its way to the ship, lay coiled up in the cabin during the voyage, and on its termination, planted itself in an island of the Tiber, as a sign that a temple must there be erected to Esculapius, and that it was done.

In fact, says Wachsmuth, amongst the Greeks, and so also amongst the Romans, everything was explained by divine presence and divine power, and any phenomenon which .could not be explained was regarded as a répas sent by the gods; it was, therefore, not miraculous but something unusual; it was the evidence of divine anger, and so forth. On this rested the worship of the gods, as also prayer, thanksgiving, and penitence. And if a man knew more, and could perform more than others, it was regarded as a divine gift and in this class was reckoned a knowledge of the supposed miraculous powers of nature' (p. 214). This being the case, we shall no farther notice the facts than as indicating a knowledge of something else. Neither need we repeat

the ceremonies of the temple therapeutics; for they were precisely the same as those of Egypt and Greece. Sleep was obtained in the temples by the same means, and curative answers obtained. Incubare dicuntur proprie hi, qui dormiunt ad accipienda responsa, unde ille incubat Jovi, id est dormit in capitolio, ut responsa possit accipere.' (Servius super Virgilium). According to Livy, Hygeia, Isis, Minerva, Mercury and Hercules, besides Jove and Esculapius, were worshipped as healing gods. What is now called mesmerism was every-day practice in these temples. 'Unquestionably,' says Kluge, was the manipulation with strong contact, rubbing and stroking with hands, the oldest and most general of all manipulations.' Seneca in his sixtysixth epistle says, Shall I deem Mucius happy who handles fire, as if he had lent his hand to the magical performers?' The fire streams so frequently now seen from the fingers of mesmeric manipulators, were thus plainly well known to the Roman public. Martial says (lib. iii. epig. 82):

Percurrit agili corpus arte tractatrix,

Manumque doctam spargit omnibus membris.

And Plautus in Amphitryo; How if I stroke him slowly with the hand, so that he sleeps?' These magnetic means of cure were not only practised, but were inscribed on sacred tables and pillars, and their mode of use explained by pictures on the temple walls, so that all might understand them. Pausanius says that in his time there were six such inscriptions in the temple of Epidaurus in Greece, and in modern times, a marble tablet with four different inscriptions from the temple of Esculapius, were dug up in the island of the Tiber, all referring to magnetic modes of treatment. These were published by Mercurialis in his De Arte Gymnastica,' and have been copied by Fabret, Tomasius, Hundertmark, Sprengel and Wolff. Such monuments were also dedicated to Serapis, and Marcus Antoninus thanks the gods for the means of cure revealed to him in this sleep. Apuleius furnishes similar evidences of the ordinary practice of the Romans of magnetic manipulations to induce clair

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347

The

voyance, and thus obtain spiritual revelations of cure. Romans, however, being merely imitators of the Greeks in medical theology, as in everything else, were not equally profound in it. All the tribes of Italy which surrounded early Rome partook of the same knowledge even before Rome. The Etruscans, who were of Egyptian origin, were indeed the teachers of the Romans in both temple therapeutics and magic. They boasted all the old enchantments of their ancestors, the Egyptians. The Marsi and the Daunians, Italian tribes (the latter deriving their descent from Troy), had temples dedicated to the same curative rites as the Greeks, and the same somnambulic phenomena were regarded as miraculous.

The Romans to the very era of Christianity, continued to consult the oracles of Greece, and, according to Suidas and Nicephorus, Augustus sent to enquire at the oracle who should be his successor, and was answered:- The Hebrew child, whom all the gods obey, drives me hence.' Yet, for some time after Christianity, some of the oracles continued to speak, as may be seen in Plutarch and Suetonius. Nero and Julian the Apostate consulted the Grecian oracles after the time of Christ, and received answers.

But, in the time of the Romans, the Sibyls assumed an importance superior to the oracles. These prophetic women are occasionally met with in the history of Greece; but in that of Rome they stand remarkably prominent, and their books became an institution, and were kept under charge of public officers, and were consulted on all occasions of national difficulty. The mode in which the Sibylline books first acquired importance was this. A little old and unknown woman came to Tarquin the Proud (the king in whose reign kingship was abolished by the Romans), with a number of books. According to some writers, she had nine; according to Pliny, only three. Those who assert that there were nine say, that she asked a high price for them, which Tarquin refused, whereupon she flung three of them into the fire, and demanded the same price for the six.

The king still refusing, and thinking her mad, she burnt three more, and asked the same price for the remaining three, demanding whether he would now purchase them. Tarquin, astonished at the conduct of the woman, paid the price, upon which she departed and was never seen again. On examination, the prophecies in them regarding Rome were found so extraordinary, that Tarquin committed their custody to two keepers. These were increased to ten, and afterwards by Sylla to fifteen. These decemviri, or quindecemviri, gave no answers out of the books, except on command of the senate in crises of difficulty.

Livy, Suetonius, and Tacitus, state that these books were kept in the Capitol, and afterwards in the temple of Apollo Palatinus. Both these temples were burnt down, but the Sibylline books, being kept in a vault in a stone chest, were not burnt. The books of the Cumaan Sibyl were held in most esteem, and next to them those of the Erythræan. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says, that these books remained uninjured in a subterranean vault of the Capitol till the Marsian war. It appears that, notwithstanding the careful keeping of them, numbers of copies by some means were abroad. Augustus sent all over Italy, and collected all that he could find, and selecting the spurious from those which were ancient, burnt them. The ancient ones preserved he had transcribed into the current Latin of the age, as they could not otherwise be read without much difficulty. Tacitus and Suetonius assert that many thousands of spurious ones were in circulation, and the government copy was burnt, according to Crasset, in the reign of Constantine the Great, in the year 339 A.D., by one Stilikon, who introduced the Goths into the country, and destroyed the Sibylline books beforehand that no aid might be obtained from them. We have editions of Sibylline books both in Greek and Latin, and an English translation of them by Sir John Floyer, but it is not to be supposed that half of these are genuine. Yet there were a great number, and those containing the most direct and explicit prophecies of Christ,