Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/119

 (in another mime, VII) the ladies visit Kerdon the leather-worker who has fashioned this masterpiece. Truly Herodas is as modern to-day in London or in Paris as he ever was those centuries ago in the isle of Cos. Fascinum, explains the Glossarium Eroticum Linguæ Latinæ, “Penis fictitius ex corio, aut pannis lineis uel sericis, quibus mulieres uirum mentiebantur. Antiquissima libido, lesbiis et milesiis feminis præsertim usitatissima. Fascinis illis abutebantur meretrices in tardos ascensores.” As one might expect Petronius has something to say on the subject in a famous passage where that savage old hag Œnothea fairly frightened Encolpius with her scorteum fascinum, upon which an erudite Spanish scholar, Don Antonio Gonzalez de Salas, glosses: “Rubrum penem coriaceum ut Suidas exsertim tradit uoce φαλλόι. Confecti & ex uaria materia uarios in usus olim phalli ex ligno, ficu potissimum qui ficulnei sæpius adpellati, ex ebore, ex auro, ex serico, & ex lineo panno, quibus Lesbiæ tribades abutebantur.” And Tibullus, speaking of the image of Priapus, has:

The Church, of course, condemned with unhesitating voice all such practices, whether they were connected (in however slight a degree) with Witchcraft or not. Arnobius, who regards all such offences as detestable, in his Aduersus Nationes, V (circa 296), relates a curiously obscene anecdote which seems to point to the use of the fascinum by the Galli, the priests of Berecynthian Cybele, whose orgies were closely akin to those of Dionysus. And the same story is related by Clement of Alexandria Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας (circa 190); by Julius Firmicus Maternus, De Errore profanarum Religionum ( 337–350); by Nicetas (ob. circa  414) in a commentary on S. Gregory of Nanzianzus, oratio XXXIX; and by Theodoret (ob. circa  457) Sermo octaua de Martyribus. Obviously some very primitive rite is in question.

Lactantius, in his De Falsa Religione (Diuinarum Institutionum, I, circa 304), speaks of a phallic superstituion, akin to the fascinum, as favoured by the vestals, and implies