Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/405

 GREEK MAGIC. 339 — the invocation of malignant spirits or the use of illicit means for wrongful ends — there was little need, in a religion of which the deities, great and small, were subject to all the weaknesses of humanity, were ready at any moment to inflict on man the direst calamities to gratify their love or their spleen or their caprice, and could be purchased by a prayer or a sacrifice to exercise their om- nipotence irrespective of justice or morality. In such a religion the priest exercises the functions which in purer faiths are rele- gated to the sorcerer. Yet it is only necessary to mention the names of Zetheus and Amphion, of Orpheus and Pythagoras, of Epimenides, Empedocles, and Apollonius of Tyana to show that both tradition and history taught the existence and power of thaumaturgy and theurgy.* This theurgy was developed to its fullest extent in the marvels related of the Neo-Platonists, thus directly influencing Christian thought, which necessarily ascribed its miracles to the invocations of demons. f Yet by the side of all this there was no lack of Goetic magic, such as the legends attrib- ute to the Cretan Dactyls or Curetes, to the Telchines, to Medea, and to Circe4 This is said to have received a powerful impetus in the Medic wars, when the Magian Osthanes, who accompanied Xerxes, scattered the seeds of his unholy lore throughout Greece. Plato speaks with the strongest reprobation of the venal sorcerers who hire themselves at slender wages to those desirous of de- stroying enemies with magic arts and incantations, ligatures, and the figurines, or waxen images, which have always been one of the favorite resources of malignant magic, and which in Greece wrought their evil work by being set up in the cross-roads, or af- fixed to the door of the victim or to the tomb of his ancestors. Philtres, or love-potions, which would excite or arrest love at will xxx.— Apollodor. I. ix. 25. — Plut. de Defectu. Orac. 13; de Pythias Orac. 12.— Diog. Laert. vm. ii. 4; viii. 20.— Iambi. Vit. Pythag. 134-5, 222.— Philost. Vit. Apollon. passim. — ML Lamprid. Alex. Sever, xxix.— Flav. Vopisc. Aurelian. xxiv. — Cedren. Hist. Compend. sub Claud, et Domit. t Porphyr. de Abstinent, n. 41, 52-3.— Marini Vit. Procli 23, 26-8.— Damas- cii Vit. Isidori 107, 116, 126.— Porphyr. Vit. Plotini 10, 11. X Apollon. Rhod. Argonaut. I. 1128-31.— Pherecyd. Frag. 7.— Diod. Sicul. v. 55-6.— Ovid. Metam. vn. 365-7.— Suidas s. v. TtXxtvtg.^ Strabon. X.— Odyss. x. 211-396.
 * Hesiod. Frag. 202.— Pherecycl. Frag. 102, 102«.— Pausan. vi. xx. ; ix. xviii.,