versaries. Plato and
Aristotle (whose tenets the Christian Schoolmen afterwards endeavoured
to harmonize with the teaching of the Gospel) were at first brought
forward to oppose the new religion, these doctrines of Greek philosophy
being largely supplemented by mystic ideas derived from oriental
sources. It was however Pythagoras, the great Greek-Italian philosopher
of the sixth century B.C., the predecessor and to some extent the
inspirer of Socrates and Plato, who was most generally accepted as the
rival of St. Paul. It was his mystical doctrines of Number and Harmony,
of the Unit and the Triad, which were most often marshalled against the
Christian doctrine of the Unity and Trinity of the Godhead. Indeed it
even seems that Pythagoras was believed by some of these adversaries of
Christianity to be the incarnation of Deity (as had been believed in his
lifetime) and to be the friend and saviour of mankind, like Prometheus
of old, who was said to have given his life for the human race devoted
to destruction by the anger of an offended God.

No wonder that, embittered by such opponents, the Church launched her
anathema against all the profane learning of the day--all study of the
ancient heathen philosophers and poets. The gods of Olympus became
synonymous with demons and monsters of the Christian hell, as we see in
Dante and in such old legends as that of the Hill of Venus. Plato and
Aristotle, and even Homer, were put on the index. Virgil especially was
regarded as a dangerous wizard--although in another age he was honoured
almost as a prophet and a foreteller of the Messiah. I remember that
many years ago, when I was searching for Virgil's tomb on Posilipo near
Naples, I was informed by a contadino, of whom I had asked my way, that
Virgil ('Marone,' as he called him) was a great magician. The man knew
nothing of Virgil as poet. Probably Virgil's account of the descent of
Aeneas into the lower world, and that strange _Eclogue_ of his, the
_Pollio_, in which possibly a Sibylline prophecy of the coming of a
Messiah is reproduced, may have credited him with magic lore, and may
also have invested him for a time with almost the dignity of a canonical
Minor Prophet.

Now, during these ante-Reformation ages the Roman Church claimed, as I
have said, a monopoly in orthodox magic. She could send a soul to hell,
or by rites and exorcism she could save the sinner from his compact with
Satan, as one sees in such legends as those of