sons, and which prove
fatal, have been already discussed; but about other cases in which a
person intentionally and of malice harms another with meats, or drinks,
or ointments, nothing has as yet been determined. For there are two
kinds of poisons used among men, which cannot clearly be distinguished.
There is the kind just now explicitly mentioned, which injures bodies
by the use of other bodies according to a natural law; there is also
another kind which persuades the more daring class that they can do
injury by sorceries, and incantations, and magic knots, as they are
termed, and makes others believe that they above all persons are injured
by the powers of the magician. Now it is not easy to know the nature of
all these things; nor if a man do know can he readily persuade others to
believe him. And when men are disturbed in their minds at the sight of
waxen images fixed either at their doors, or in a place where three
ways meet, or on the sepulchres of parents, there is no use in trying to
persuade them that they should despise all such things because they have
no certain knowledge about them. But we must have a law in two parts,
concerning poisoning, in whichever of the two ways the attempt is made,
and we must entreat, and exhort, and advise men not to have recourse to
such practises, by which they scare the multitude out of their wits, as
if they were children, compelling the legislator and the judge to heal
the fears which the sorcerer arouses, and to tell them in the first
place, that he who attempts to poison or enchant others knows not what
he is doing, either as regards the body (unless he has a knowledge of
medicine), or as regards his enchantments (unless he happens to be a
prophet or diviner). Let the law, then, run as follows about poisoning
or witchcraft: He who employs poison to do any injury, not fatal, to a
man himself, or to his servants, or any injury, whether fatal or not,
to his cattle or his bees, if he be a physician, and be convicted of
poisoning, shall be punished with death; or if he be a private person,
the court shall determine what he is to pay or suffer. But he who
seems to be the sort of man who injures others by magic knots, or
enchantments, or incantations, or any of the like practices, if he be
a prophet or diviner, let him die; and if, not being a prophet, he be
convicted of witchcraft, as in the previous case, let the court fix what
he ought to pay or suffer.

When a man does anothe