anded fifteen slaves to support an accusation of
magic; how many would you be demanding if it were a charge of
violence? The inference is that fifteen slaves know something, and
that something is still a mystery. Or is it nothing mysterious and yet
something connected with magic? You must admit one of these two
alternatives: either the proceeding to which I admitted so many
witnesses had nothing improper about it, or, if it had, it should not
have been witnessed by so many. Now this magic of which you accuse me
is, I am told, a crime in the eyes of the law, and was forbidden in
remote antiquity by the Twelve Tables because in some incredible
manner crops had been charmed away from one field to another. It is
then as mysterious an art as it is loathly and horrible; it needs as a
rule night-watches and concealing darkness, solitude absolute and
murmured incantations, to hear which few free men are admitted, not to
speak of slaves. And yet you will have it that there were fifteen
slaves present on this occasion. Was it a marriage? or any other
crowded ceremony? or a seasonable banquet? Fifteen slaves take part
in a magic rite as though they had been created _quindecimvirs_ for
the performance of sacrifice! Is it likely that I should have
permitted so large a number to be present on such an occasion, if they
were too many to be accomplices? Fifteen free men form a borough,
fifteen slaves a household, fifteen fettered serfs a chain-gang. Did I
need such a crowd to help me by holding the lustral victims during the
lengthy rite? No! the only victims you mentioned were hens! Were they
to count the grains of incense? or to knock Thallus down?

48. You assert also that by promising to heal her I inveigled to my
house a free woman who suffered from the same disease as Thallus; that
she, too, fell senseless as a result of my incantations. It appears to
me that you are accusing a wrestler not a magician, since you say that
all who visited me had a fall. And yet Themison, who is a physician
and who brought the woman for my inspection, denied, when you asked
him, Maximus, that I had done anything to the woman other than ask her
whether she heard noises in her ears, and if so, which ear suffered
most. He added that she departed immediately after telling me that her
right ear was most troubled in that way. At this point, Maximus,
although I have for the present been careful to abstain from praising
you, lest I should seem to have flatte