Page:Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell - Peacock (1818).djvu/13

 fables of Orpheus, Amphion, the Sirens, &c.) ascribed the most miraculous powers: but, strictly speaking, it was included in the mathematical arts, as being a science of numerical proportion.

The belief in the supernatural powers of music and pharmacy ascends to the earliest ages of poetry. Its most beautiful forms are the Circe of Homer, and Medea in the days of her youth, as she appears in the third book of Apollonius.

Lucian's treatise on the Syrian Goddess contains much wild and wonderful imagery; and his Philopseudes, though it does not mention Thessalian magic in particular, is a compendium of almost all the ideas entertained by the ancients of supernatural power, distinct from, and subordinate to, that of the gods; though the gods were supposed to be drawn from their cars by magic, and compelled, however reluctantly, to yield it a