Books: Lives of the Necromancers

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Cylon, the richest man, or, as he is in one place styled, the prince,
of Crotona, had manifested the greatest partiality to Pythagoras. He
was at the same time a man of rude, impatient and boisterous character.
He, together with Perialus of Thurium, submitted to all the severities
of the Pythagorean school. They passed the three years of probation,
and the five years of silence. They were received into the familiarity
of the master. They were then initiated, and delivered all their
wealth into the common stock. They were however ultimately pronounced
deficient in intellectual power, or for some other reason were not
judged worthy to continue among the confidential pupils of Pythagoras.
They were expelled. The double of the property they had contributed
was paid back to them. A monument was set up in memory of what they
had been; and they were pronounced dead to the school.

It will easily be conceived in what temper Cylon sustained this
degradation. Of Perialus we hear nothing further. But Cylon, from
feelings of the deepest reverence and awe for Pythagoras, which he had
cherished for years, was filled even to bursting with inextinguishable
hatred and revenge. The unparalleled merits, the venerable age of the
master whom he had so long followed, had no power to control his
violence. His paramount influence in the city insured him the command
of a great body of followers. He excited them to a frame of turbulence
and riot. He represented to them how intolerable was the despotism of
this pretended philosopher. They surrounded the school in which the
pupils were accustomed to assemble, and set it on fire. Forty persons
perished in the flames. [73] According to some accounts Pythagoras was
absent at the time. According to others he and two of his pupils
escaped. He retired from Crotona to Metapontum. But the hostility
which had broken out in the former city, followed him there. He took
refuge in the Temple of the Muses. But he was held so closely besieged
that no provisions could be conveyed to him; and he finally perished
with hunger, after, according to Laertius, forty days' abstinence. [74]

It is difficult to imagine any thing more instructive, and more
pregnant with matter for salutary reflection, than the contrast
presented to us by the character and system of action of Pythagoras
on the one hand, and those of the great enquirers of the last two
centuries, for example, Bacon, Newton and Locke, on the other.
Pythagoras probably does not yield to any one of these in the
evidences of true intellectual greatness. In his school, in the
followers he trained resembling himself, and in the salutary effects
he produced on the institutions of the various republics of Magna
Graecia and Sicily, he must be allowed greatly to have excelled them.
His discoveries of various propositions in geometry, of the earth as
a planet, and of the solar system as now universally recognised,
clearly stamp him a genius of the highest order.

Yet this man, thus enlightened and philanthropical, established his
system of proceeding upon narrow and exclusive principles, and
conducted it by methods of artifice, quackery and delusion. One of his
leading maxims was, that the great and fundamental truths to the
establishment of which he devoted himself, were studiously to be
concealed from the vulgar, and only to be imparted to a select few,
and after years of the severest noviciate and trial. He learned his
earliest lessons of wisdom in Egypt after this method, and he
conformed through life to the example which had thus been delivered to
him. The severe examination that he made of the candidates previously
to their being admitted into his school, and the years of silence that
were then prescribed to them, testify this. He instructed them by
symbols, obscure and enigmatical propositions, which they were first
to exercise their ingenuity to expound. The authority and dogmatical
assertions of the master were to remain unquestioned; and the pupils
were to fashion themselves to obsequious and implicit submission, and
were the furthest in the world from being encouraged to the independent
exercise of their own understandings. There was nothing that Pythagoras
was more fixed to discountenance, than the communication of the truths
upon which he placed the highest value, to the uninitiated. It is not
probable therefore that he wrote any thing: all was communicated
orally, by such gradations, and with such discretion, as he might
think fit to adopt and to exercise.

Delusion and falsehood were main features of his instruction. With
what respect therefore can we consider, and what manliness worthy of
his high character and endowments can we impute to, his discourses
delivered from behind a curtain, his hiding himself during the day,
and only appearing by night in a garb assumed for the purpose of
exciting awe and veneration? What shall we say to the story of his
various transmigrations? At first sight it appears in the light of the
most audacious and unblushing imposition. And, if we were to yield so
far as to admit that by a high-wrought enthusiasm, by a long train of
maceration and visionary reveries, he succeeded in imposing on himself,
this, though in a different way, would scarcely less detract from the
high stage of eminence upon which the nobler parts of his character
would induce us to place him.

Such were some of the main causes that have made his efforts
perishable, and the lustre which should have attended his genius in a
great degree transitory and fugitive. He was probably much under the
influence of a contemptible jealousy, and must be considered as
desirous that none of his contemporaries or followers should eclipse
their master. All was oracular and dogmatic in the school of
Pythagoras. He prized and justly prized the greatness of his
attainments and discoveries, and had no conception that any thing
could go beyond them. He did not encourage, nay, he resolutely opposed,
all true independence of mind, and that undaunted spirit of enterprise
which is the atmosphere in which the sublimest thoughts are most
naturally generated. He therefore did not throw open the gates of
science and wisdom, and invite every comer; but on the contrary
narrowed the entrance, and carefully reduced the number of aspirants.
He thought not of the most likely methods to give strength and
permanence and an extensive sphere to the progress of the human mind.
For these reasons he wrote nothing; but consigned all to the frail and
uncertain custody of tradition. And distant posterity has amply
avenged itself upon the narrowness of his policy; and the name of
Pythagoras, which would otherwise have been ranked with the first
luminaries of mankind, and consigned to everlasting gratitude, has in
consequence of a few radical and fatal mistakes, been often loaded
with obloquy, and the hero who bore it been indiscriminately classed
among the votaries of imposture and artifice.

EPIMENIDES.

Epimenides has been mentioned among the disciples of Pythagoras; but
he probably lived at an earlier period. He was a native of Crete. The
first extraordinary circumstance that is recorded of him is, that,
being very young, he was sent by his father in search of a stray
sheep, when, being overcome by the heat of the weather, he retired
into a cave, and slept fifty-seven years. Supposing that he had slept
only a few hours, he repaired first to his father's country-house,
which he found in possession of a new tenant, and then to the city,
where he encountered his younger brother, now grown an old man, who
with difficulty was brought to acknowledge him. [75] It was probably
this circumstance that originally brought Epimenides into repute as a
prophet, and a favourite of the Gods.

Epimenides appears to have been one of those persons, who make it
their whole study to delude their fellow-men, and to obtain for
themselves the reputation of possessing supernatural gifts. Such
persons, almost universally, and particularly in ages of ignorance and
wonder, become themselves the dupes of their own pretensions. He gave
out that he was secretly subsisted by food brought to him by the
nymphs; and he is said to have taken nourishment in so small
quantities, as to be exempted from the ordinary necessities of nature.
[76] He boasted that he could send his soul out of his body, and recal
it, when he pleased; and alternately appeared an inanimate corpse, and
then again his life would return to him, and he appear capable of
every human function as before. [77] He is said to have practised the
ceremony of exorcising houses and fields, and thus rendering them
fruitful and blessed. [78] He frequently uttered prophecies of events
with such forms of ceremony and such sagacious judgment, that they
seemed to come to pass as he predicted.

One of the most memorable acts of his life happened in this manner.
Cylon, the head of one of the principal families in Athens, set on
foot a rebellion against the government, and surprised the citadel.
His power however was of short duration. Siege was laid to the place,
and Cylon found his safety in flight. His partisans forsook their
arms, and took refuge at the altars. Seduced from this security by
fallacious promises, they were brought to judgment and all of them put
to death. The Gods were said to be offended with this violation of the
sanctions of religion, and sent a plague upon the city. All things
were in confusion, and sadness possessed the whole community.
Prodigies were perpetually seen; the spectres of the dead walked the
streets; and terror universally prevailed. The sacrifices offered to
the gods exhibited the most unfavourable symptoms. [79] In this
emergency the Athenian senate resolved to send for Epimenides to come
to their relief. His reputation was great. He was held for a holy and
devout man, and wise in celestial things by inspiration from above. A
vessel was fitted out under the command of one of the first citizens
of the state to fetch Epimenides from Crete. He performed various
rites and purifications. He took a certain number of sheep, black and
white, and led them to the Areopagus, where he caused them to be let
loose to go wherever they would. He directed certain persons to follow
them, and mark the place where they lay down. He enquired to what
particular deity the spot was consecrated, and sacrificed the sheep to
that deity; and in the result of these ceremonies the plague was
stayed. According to others he put an end to the plague by the
sacrifice of two human victims. The Athenian senate, full of gratitude
to their benefactor, tendered him the gift of a talent. But Epimenides
refused all compensation, and only required, as an acknowledgment of
what he had done, that there should be perpetual peace between the
Athenians and the people of Gnossus, his native city. [80] He is said
to have died shortly after his return to his country, being of the age
of one hundred and fifty-seven years. [81]

EMPEDOCLES.

Empedocles has also been mentioned as a disciple of Pythagoras. But he
probably lived too late for that to have been the case. His principles
were in a great degree similar to those of that illustrious personage;
and he might have studied under one of the immediate successors of
Pythagoras. He was a citizen of Agrigentum in Sicily; and, having
inherited considerable wealth, exercised great authority in his native
place. [82] He was a distinguished orator and poet. He was greatly
conversant in the study of nature, and was eminent for his skill in
medicine. [83] In addition to these accomplishments, he appears to
have been a devoted adherent to the principles of liberty. He effected
the dissolution of the ruling council of Agrigentum, and substituted
in their room a triennial magistracy, by means of which the public
authority became not solely in the hands of the rich as before, but
was shared by them with expert and intelligent men of an inferior
class. [84] He opposed all arbitrary exercises of rule. He gave
dowries from his own stores to many young maidens of impoverished
families, and settled them in eligible marriages. [85] He performed
many cures upon his fellow-citizens; and is especially celebrated for
having restored a woman to life, who had been apparently dead,
according to one account for seven days, but according to others for
thirty. [86]

But the most memorable things known of Empedocles, are contained in
the fragments of his verses that have been preserved to us. In one of
them he says of himself, "I well remember the time before I was
Empedocles, that I once was a boy, then a girl, a plant, a glittering
fish, a bird that cut the air." [87] Addressing those who resorted to
him for improvement and wisdom, he says, "By my instructions you shall
learn medicines that are powerful to cure disease, and re-animate old
age; you shall be able to calm the savage winds which lay waste the
labours of the husbandman, and, when you will, shall send forth the
tempest again; you shall cause the skies to be fair and serene, or
once more shall draw down refreshing showers, re-animating the fruits
of the earth; nay, you shall recal the strength of the dead man, when
he has already become the victim of Pluto." [88] Further, speaking of
himself, Empedocles exclaims: "Friends, who inhabit the great city
laved by the yellow Acragas, all hail! I mix with you a God, no longer
a mortal, and am every where honoured by you, as is just; crowned with
fillets, and fragrant garlands, adorned with which when I visit
populous cities, I am revered by both men and women, who follow me by
ten thousands, enquiring the road to boundless wealth, seeking the
gift of prophecy, and who would learn the marvellous skill to cure all
kinds of diseases." [89]

The best known account of the death of Empedocles may reasonably be
considered as fabulous. From what has been said it sufficiently
appears, that he was a man of extraordinary intellectual endowments,
and the most philanthropical dispositions; at the same time that he
was immoderately vain, aspiring by every means in his power to acquire
to himself a deathless remembrance. Working on these hints, a story
has been invented that he aspired to a miraculous way of disappearing
from among men; and for this purpose repaired, when alone, to the top
of Mount Aetna, then in a state of eruption, and threw himself down the
burning crater: but it is added, that in the result of this perverse
ambition he was baffled, the volcano having thrown up one of his
brazen sandals, by means of which the mode of his death became known.
[90]

ARISTEAS.

Herodotus tells a marvellous story of one Aristeas, a poet of
Proconnesus, an island of the Propontis. This man, coming by chance
into a fuller's workshop in his native place, suddenly fell down dead.
As the man was of considerable rank, the fuller immediately, quitting
and locking up his shop, proceeded to inform his family of what had
happened. The relations went accordingly, having procured what was
requisite to give the deceased the rites of sepulture, to the shop;
but, when it was opened, they could discover no vestige of Aristeas,
either dead or alive. A traveller however from the neighbouring town
of Cyzicus on the continent, protested that he had just left that
place, and, as he set foot in the wherry which had brought him over,
had met Aristeas, and held a particular conversation with him. Seven
years after, Aristeas reappeared at Proconnesus, resided there a
considerable time, and during this abode wrote his poem of the wars of
the one-eyed Arimaspians and the Gryphons. He then again disappeared
in an unaccountable manner. But, what is more than all extraordinary,
three hundred and forty years after this disappearance, he shewed
himself again at Metapontum, in Magna Graecia, and commanded the
citizens to erect a statue in his honour near the temple of Apollo in
the forum; which being done, he raised himself in the air; and flew
away in the form of a crow. [91]

HERMOTIMUS.

Hermotimus, or, as Plutarch names him, Hermodorus of Clazomene, is
said to have possessed, like Epimenides, the marvellous power of
quitting his body, and returning to it again, as often, and for as
long a time as he pleased. In these absences his unembodied spirit
would visit what places he thought proper, observe every thing that
was going on, and, when he returned to his fleshy tabernacle, make a
minute relation of what he had seen. Hermotimus had enemies, who, one
time when his body had lain unanimated unusually long, beguiled his
wife, made her believe that he was certainly dead, and that it was
disrespectful and indecent to keep him so long in that state. The
woman therefore placed her husband on the funeral pyre, and consumed
him to ashes; so that, continues the philosopher, when the soul of
Hermotimus came back again, it no longer found its customary
receptacle to retire into. [92] Certainly this kind of treatment
appeared to furnish an infallible criterion, whether the seeming
absences of the soul of this miraculous man were pretended or real.

THE MOTHER OF DEMARATUS, KING OF SPARTA.

Herodotus [93] tells a story of the mother of Demaratus, king of
Sparta, which bears a striking resemblance to the fairy tales of
modern times. This lady, afterward queen of Sparta, was sprung from
opulent parents, but, when she was born, was so extravagantly ugly,
that her parents hid her from all human observation. According to the
mode of the times however, they sent the babe daily in its nurse's
arms to the shrine of Helen, now metamorphosed into a Goddess, to pray
that the child might be delivered from its present preternatural
deformity. On these occasions the child was shrouded in many coverings,
that it might escape being seen. One day as the nurse came out of the
temple, a strange woman met her, and asked her what she carried so
carefully concealed. The nurse said it was a female child, but of
opulent parents, and she was strictly enjoined that it should be seen
by no one. The stranger was importunate, and by dint of perseverance
overcame the nurse's reluctance. The woman took the babe in her arms,
stroked down its hair, kissed it, and then returning it to the nurse,
said that it should grow up the most perfect beauty in Sparta. So
accordingly it proved: and the king of the country, having seen her,
became so enamoured of her, that, though he already had a wife, and
she a husband, he overcame all obstacles, and made her his queen.

ORACLES.

One of the most extraordinary things to be met with in the history of
ancient times is the oracles. They maintained their reputation for
many successive centuries. The most famous perhaps were that of Delphi
in Greece, and that of Jupiter Ammon in the deserts of Lybia. But they
were scattered through many cities, many plains, and many islands.
They were consulted by the foolish and the wise; and scarcely anything
considerable was undertaken, especially about the time of the Persian
invasion into Greece, without the parties having first had recourse to
these; and they in most cases modified the conduct of princes and
armies accordingly. To render the delusion more successful, every kind
of artifice was put in practice. The oracle could only be consulted on
fixed days; and the persons who resorted to it, prefaced their
application with costly offerings to the presiding God. Their
questions passed through the hands of certain priests, residing in
and about the temple. These priests received the embassy with all due
solemnity, and retired. A priestess, or Pythia, who was seldom or
never seen by any of the profane vulgar, was the immediate vehicle of
communication with the God. She was cut off from all intercourse with
the world, and was carefully trained by the attendant priests.
Spending almost the whole of her time in solitude, and taught to
consider her office as ineffably sacred, she saw visions, and was for
the most part in a state of great excitement. The Pythia, at least of
the Delphian God, was led on with much ceremony to the performance of
her office, and placed upon the sacred tripod. The tripod, we are
told, stood over a chasm in the rock, from which issued fumes of an
inebriating quality. The Pythia became gradually penetrated through
every limb with these fumes, till her bosom swelled, her features
enlarged, her mouth foamed, her voice seemed supernatural, and she
uttered words that could sometimes scarcely be called articulate.
She could with difficulty contain herself, and seemed to be possessed,
and wholly overpowered, with the God. After a prelude of many
unintelligible sounds, uttered with fervour and a sort of frenzy, she
became by degrees more distinct. She uttered incoherent sentences,
with breaks and pauses, that were filled up with preternatural efforts
and distorted gestures; while the priests stood by, carefully recording
her words, and then reducing them into a sort of obscure signification.
They finally digested them for the most part into a species of
hexameter verse. We may suppose the supplicants during this ceremony
placed at a proper distance, so as to observe these things imperfectly,
while the less they understood, they were ordinarily the more impressed
with religious awe, and prepared implicitly to receive what was
communicated to them. Sometimes the priestess found herself in a frame,
not entirely equal to her function, and refused for the present to
proceed with the ceremony.

The priests of the oracle doubtless conducted them in a certain degree
like the gipsies and fortune-tellers of modern times, cunningly
procuring to themselves intelligence in whatever way they could, and
ingeniously worming out the secrets of their suitors, at the same time
contriving that their drift should least of all be suspected. But
their main resource probably was in the obscurity, almost amounting to
unintelligibleness, of their responses. Their prophecies in most cases
required the comment of the event to make them understood; and it not
seldom happened, that the meaning in the sequel was found to be the
diametrically opposite of that which the pious votaries had originally
conceived.

In the mean time the obscurity of the oracles was of inexpressible
service to the cause of superstition. If the event turned out to be
such as could in no way be twisted to come within the scope of the
response, the pious suitor only concluded that the failure was owing
to the grossness and carnality of his own apprehension, and not to any
deficiency in the institution. Thus the oracle by no means lost credit,
even when its meaning remained for ever in its original obscurity. But,
when, by any fortunate chance, its predictions seemed to be verified,
then the unerringness of the oracle was lauded from nation to nation;
and the omniscience of the God was admitted with astonishment and
adoration.

It would be a vulgar and absurd mistake however, to suppose that all
this was merely the affair of craft, the multitude only being the
dupes, while the priests in cold blood carried on the deception, and
secretly laughed at the juggle they were palming on the world. They
felt their own importance; and they cherished it. They felt that they
were regarded by their countrymen as something more than human; and
the opinion entertained of them by the world around them, did not fail
to excite a responsive sentiment in their own bosoms. If their
contemporaries willingly ascribed to them an exclusive sacredness, by
how much stronger an impulse were they led fully to receive so
flattering a suggestion! Their minds were in a perpetual state of
exaltation; and they believed themselves specially favoured by the God
whose temple constituted their residence. A small matter is found
sufficient to place a creed which flatters all the passions of its
votaries, on the most indubitable basis. Modern philosophers think
that by their doctrine of gases they can explain all the appearances
of the Pythia; but the ancients, to whom this doctrine was unknown,
admitted these appearances as the undoubted evidence of an
interposition from heaven.

It is certainly a matter of the extremest difficulty, for us in
imagination to place ourselves in the situation of those who believed
in the ancient polytheistical creed. And yet these believers nearly
constituted the whole of the population of the kingdoms of antiquity.
Even those who professed to have shaken off the prejudices of their
education, and to rise above the absurdities of paganism, had still
some of the old leaven adhering to them. One of the last acts of the
life of Socrates, was to order the sacrifice of a cock to be made to
Aesculapius.

Now the creed of paganism is said to have made up to the number of
thirty thousand deities. Every kingdom, every city, every street, nay,
in a manner every house, had its protecting God. These Gods were
rivals to each other; and were each jealous of his own particular
province, and watchful against the intrusion of any neighbour deity
upon ground where he had a superior right. The province of each of
these deities was of small extent; and therefore their watchfulness
and jealousy of their appropriate honours do not enter into the
slightest comparison with the Providence of the God who directs the
concerns of the universe. They had ample leisure to employ in
vindicating their prerogatives. Prophecy was of all means the plainest
and most obvious for each deity to assert his existence, and to
inforce the reverence and submission of his votaries. Prophecy was
that species of interference which was least liable to the being
confuted and exposed. The oracles, as we have said, were delivered in
terms and phrases that were nearly unintelligible. If therefore they
met with no intelligible fulfilment, this lost them nothing; and, if
it gained them no additional credit, neither did it expose them to any
disgrace. Whereas every example, where the obscure prediction seemed
to tally with, and be illustrated by any subsequent event, was hailed
with wonder and applause, confirmed the faith of the true believers,
and was held forth as a victorious confutation of the doubts of the
infidel.

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