'There were discovered,' says Tacitus, 'dug up
from the ground and out of the walls of the house, the remains of
human corpses, charms and spells, and the name of Germanicus
inscribed on leaden tablets, ashes half consumed covered with
decaying matter, and other practices by which it is believed that
souls are devoted to the deities of hell.'[26]

[25] 'The Canidia of Horace,' Gibbon pronounces, 'is a
vulgar witch. The Erichtho of Lucan is tedious, disgusting,
but sometimes sublime.' The love-charms of Canidia and Medea
are chiefly indebted to the _Pharmakeutria_ of Theocritus.

[26] _Annales_, ii. 69. Writing of the mathematicians and
astrologers in the time of Galba, who urged the governor of
Lusitania on the perilous path to the supreme dignity, the
historian characterises them truly, in his inimitable
language and style, as 'a class of persons not to be trusted
by those in power, deceptive to the expectant; a class which
will always be proscribed and preserved in our state.'

In the fourth century, the first Christian emperor limited the
lawful exercise of magic to the beneficial use of preserving or
restoring the fruits of the earth or the health of the human
body, while the practice of the noxious charms is capitally
punished. The science of those, proclaims the imperial convert,
who, immersed in the arts of magic, are detected either in
attempts against the life and health of their fellow-men, or in
_charming_ the minds of modest persons to the practice of
debauchery, is to be avenged and punished deservedly by severest
penalties. But in no sorts of criminal charges are those remedies
to be involved which are employed for the good of individuals, or
are harmlessly employed in remote places to prevent premature
rains, in the case of vineyards, or the injurious effects of
winds and hailstorms, by which the health and good name of no one
can be injured; but whose practices are of laudable use in
preventing both the gifts of the Deity and the labours of men
from being scattered and destroyed.[27]

[27] _Cod. Justinian_, lib. ix. tit. 18.

Constantine, in distinguishing between good and bad magic,
between the _theurgic_ and _goetic_, maintains a distinction made
by the pagans--a distinction ignored in the later Christian
Church, in whose system 'all demons are infernal spirits, and all
commerce with them is idolatry and apostasy.' Christian zeal has
accused the imperial philosopher and