282 
plint's katural history. 
[Bi)ok XXVIII. 
Hence it is, no doubt, that the name of the tutelary deity of 
Rome has been so strictly kept concealed, lest any of our enemies 
should act in a similar manner. There is no one, too, who does 
not dread being spell-bound by means of evil imprecations and 
hence the practice, after eating eggs or snails, of immedi- 
ately breaking^^ the shells, or piercing them with the spoon. 
Hence, too, those love- sick imitations of enchantments which 
we find described by Theocritus among the Greeks, and by 
Catullus, and more recently, Yirgil,^''' among our own writers* 
Many persons are fully persuaded that articles .of pottery may 
be broken by a similar agency ; and not a few are of opinion 
even that serpents can counteract incantations, and that this is 
the only kind of intelligence they possess — so much so, in fact, 
that by the agency of the magic spells of the Marsi, they may 
be attracted to one spot, even when asleep in the middle of the 
night. Some people go so far, too, as to write certain words^® 
on the walls of houses, deprecatory of accident by fire. 
But it is not easy to say whether the outlandish and unpro- 
nounceable words that are thus employed, or the Latin ex- 
pressions that are used at random, and which must appear 
ridiculous to our judgment, tend the most strongly to stagger 
our belief — seeing that the human imagination is always con- 
ceiving something of the infinite, something deserving of the 
notice of the divinity, or indeed, to speak more correctly, some- 
thing that must command his intervention perforce. Homer^^ 
tells us that Ulysses arrested the flow of blood from a wound 
Ajasson is of opinion that this name was either Favra or Fona, Acca, 
Flora, or Valesia or Valentia. 
"As in saying thus, The Devill take thee, or The Ravens peck out 
thine eyes, or I had rather see thee Pie peckt, and such Hke." — Holland. 
It is a superstition still practised to pierce the shell of an egg after 
eating it, lest the witches should come." Holland gives the following 
Note — " Because afterwards no witches might pricke them with a needle 
in the name and behalfe of those whom they would hurt and mischeefe, 
according to the practice of pricking the images of any person in wax ; 
used in the witchcraft of these dales." We learn from Ajasson that till 
recently it was considered a mark of ill-breeding in France not to pierce 
the shell after eating the esrg. See also Brand's Popular Antiquities, 
Vol. III. p. 19, Bohn's Ed. 
See the Eighth Eclogue of Virgil. 
" That is to say, Arse verse^ out of Afranius, as Festus noteth, which 
in the old Tuscane language signifieth, Averte ignem^ Put backe the fire." 
— Holland. 
Odyss. xix. 457. It is not Ulysses, but the sons of Autolycus that do 
this. Their bandages, however, were more likely to be effectual, 
