CJhap. 2.] 
WHO FIRST PRACTISED MAGIC. 
423 
Homer should be totally silent upon this art in his account^^ of 
the Trojan War, while in his story of the wanderings of 
Ulysses, so much of the work should be taken up with it, that 
we may justly conclude that the poem is based upon nothing 
else ; if, indeed, we are willing to grant that his accounts of 
Proteus and of the songs of the Sirens are to be understood in 
this sense, and that the stories of Circe and of the summoning 
up of the shades below,^'^ bear reference solely to the practices 
of sorcerers. And then, too, to come to more recent times, no 
one has told us how the art of sorcery reached Telmessus,^^ a 
city devoted to all the services of religion, or at what period it 
came over and reached the matrons of Thessaly ; whose name 
has long passed, in our part of the world, as the appellation of 
those who practise an art, originally introduced among them- 
selves even, from foreign lands J ^ For in the days of the Trojan 
War, Thessaly was still contented with such remedies as she 
owed to the skill of Chiron, and her only^''' lightnings were the 
lightnings hurled by Mars.^^ Indeed, for my own part, I am 
surprised that the imputation of magical practices should have so 
strongly attached to the people once under the sway of Achilles, 
that Menander even, a man unrivalled for perception in lite- 
rary knowledge, has entitled one of his Comedies The Thes- 
salian Matron," and has therein described the devices practised 
by the females of that country in bringing down the moon 
from the heavens. I should have been inclined to think 
that Orpheus had been the first to introduce into a country so 
near his own, certain magical superstitions based upon the 
practice of medicine, were it not the fact that Thrace, his 
native land, was at that time totally a stranger to the magic 
art. 
^1 One among the many proofs, Ajasson says, that the Iliad and the 
Odyssey belong to totally different periods. 
In reference to the Tenth Book of the Odyssey. 
1^ See B. V. cc. 28, 29. Cicero mentions a college of Aruspices estab- 
lished at this city. 
1* The name "Thessala" was commonly used by the Romans to signify 
an enchantress, sorceress, or witch. See the story of Apiileius, Books i. 
and iii. xhe countries of the East. 
^6 Purely medicinal remedies. 
^7 In contradistinction to lightnings elicited by the practice of Magic. 
1^ A poetical figure, alluding to the " thunderbolts of war," as wielded 
probably by Achilles and other heroes of Thessaly. 
18* See B. ii. c. 9. 
