Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/510



, who read the above article in proof, kindly sends me the following reference:

Apuleius, Metamorph. III. 17 (p. 59 of the Teubner ed.), speaking of a witch at her incantations: sic noctis initio … iam uecors animi tectum scandulare conscendit, quod altrinsecus aedium patore perflabili nudatum ad orientales ceterosque omnes aspectus peruium (so the MSS.; imperuium van der Vliet, unnecessarily), maxime his artibus suis commodatum, secreto colit, priusque apparatu solito instruit feralem officinam.

"So at nightfall … she went her frenzied way up to a roof reached by a stair, which stands beyond the house, naked and open to the east and every other quarter of the heavens, a well-fitted place for these her arts, and her secret haunt. She began by arranging the usual apparatus of her hellish laboratory."

He also suggests that the passage from Petronius may mean: "I will tell you a story, though I am no better at it than the ass in the fable was at gambolling on the roof." This is grammatically flawless, but I doubt if it fits the naïve boastfulness of Trimalchio as well as the rendering which I adopt.

The following should be added to the classical examples of an unlucky thing coming through the opening in the roof: Terence, Phormio, 707, in a list of monstra or portents alleged as excuses for putting off a wedding; anguis in impluuium decidit de tegulis. To the Greek examples of roof-beliefs add Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 746 H.