,
the chorus of swans which sang for joy on the occasion, the
casting out of devils, raising the dead, and healing the
sick, the sudden appearances and disappearances of
Apollonius, his adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and
the sacred voice which called him at his death, to which may
be added his claim as a teacher having authority to reform
the world, 'cannot fail to suggest,' says a writer in the
_Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography_, &c., ed. by Dr.
W. Smith, 'the parallel passages in the Gospel history.'

Of the incantations, charms, and magic compounds in the practice
of Greek witchcraft, numerous examples occur in the tragic and
comic poetry of Greece; and the _philtres_, or love-charms, of
Theocritus are well known. The names of Colchis, Chaldea,
Assyria, Iberia, Thrace, may indicate the origin of a great part
of the Hellenic sorceries. Yet, if the more honourable science
may have been of foreign extraction, Hellas was not without
something of the sorcery of modern Europe. The infernal goddess
Hecate, of Greek celebrity, is the omnipotent patroness of her
modern Christian slaves; and she presides at the witch meetings
of Christendom with as much solemnity but with far greater
malice. Originally of celestial rank, by a later metamorphosis
connected, if not personally identical with, Persephone,
the Queen of Hades, Hecate was invested with many of the
characteristic attributes of a modern devil, or rather perhaps of
a witch. The triple goddess, in her various shapes, wandered
about at night with the souls of the dead, terrifying the
trembling country people by apparitions of herself and infernal
satellites, by the horrible whining and howls of her hellhounds
which always announced her approach. She frequented cross-roads,
tombs, and melancholy places, especially delighting in localities
famous for deeds of blood and murder. The hobgoblins, the various
malicious demons and spirits, who provoked the lively terrors of
the mediaeval peoples, had some prototypes in the fairy-land of
Greece, in the Hecatean hobgoblins (like the Latin larvae, &c.),
Empusa, Mormo, and other products of an affrighted imagination
familiar to the students of Greek literature in the comic pages
of Aristophanes.[18] From the earliest literary records down to
the latest times of paganism as the state religion, from the
times of the Homeric Circe and Ulysses (the latter has been
recognised by many as a genuine wizard