Ancient Rome and Modern Italy 21 



Similia similibus curantur, "like cures like", is sound doctrine 

 in magic, with a very broad application of the principle: one needs 

 no great amount of imagination to find some sort of connection 

 between a disease or other physical evil and an occult cure that 

 may be recommended. Sometimes a similarity between the rem- 

 edy used and the result to be obtained is not at once apparent to 

 an investigator, but among the cases which can be adduced from 

 modern as well as ancient therapy there are many in which at least 

 a superficial correspondence or some sort of mystic analogy is dis- 

 cernible. For example, the woman who is pale from the hemor- 

 rhages of parturition may expect to recover her color, provided she 

 wear something red, but she must avoid anything of a different 

 color, and especially a mixture of colors, lest she finally leave her 

 bed with a mottled face. 97 In some instances, color is only one of 

 the factors in the service that the object performs. A red ribbon 

 round the body, la misura di San Sebastiano, i.e., the chest measure 

 of the saint, is declared a cure for fever, while the dark gray cord 

 of San Francesco di Paola, when fastened around the waist of a 

 woman in confinement, is thought to insure her a happy outcome 

 to her travail. 98 In the latter case it is perhaps the saint alone 

 and not at all the color which should receive the credit for success: 

 I should not dare to guess at what is in any Italian peasant's mind, 

 even when she is not bearing a child. It is only after eight days 

 have passed from the birth of her baby that a properly supersti- 

 tious Abruzzese woman will comb her hair, and, if she does not wish 

 to lose her hair, she will have under her feet, as she combs it, a 

 piece of iron, e.g., a spit or hatchet, which has been heated. 99 



But it is time for us now to imagine that the infant has been 

 born, that the mother is doing as well as could be expected, and 

 that her offspring cannot receive too much attention from us in the 

 opinion of either old Roman or modern Italian parents. 



According to the ancient mythological story, Athena sprang to 

 life, full-grown, from the head of Zeus, and the thought may well 

 occur to an imaginative student that a large part of the populace 

 of Rome in ancient days must have had a similar birth of full ma- 

 turity, since Latin literature has so little to say of the life of chil- 

 dren, and the sculptors of Rome have so infrequently given us 

 their portraits. But we may be sure that Italian communities of 

 those days teemed with boys and girls, and the references to them 



