ho does that a magician? No more, in my opinion,
than if I should seek to purchase hares or boar's flesh or fatted
capons. Or is there something mysterious in fish and fish alone,
hidden from all save sorcerers only? If you know what it is, clearly
you are a magician. If you do not know, you must confess that you are
bringing an accusation of the nature of which you are entirely
ignorant. To think that you should be so ignorant not only of all
literature, but even of popular tales, that you cannot even invent
charges that will have some show of plausibility! For of what use for
the kindling of love is an unfeeling chilly creature like a fish, or
indeed anything else drawn from the sea, unless indeed you propose to
bring forward in support of your lie the legend that Venus was born
from the sea? I beg you to listen to me, Tannonius Pudens, that you
may learn the extent of the ignorance which you have shown by
accepting the possession of a fish as a proof of sorcery. If you had
read your Vergil, you would certainly have known that very different
things are sought for this purpose. He, as far as I recollect,
mentions 'soft garlands' and 'rich herbs and 'male incense' and
'threads of diverse hues', and, in addition to these, 'brittle
laurel,' 'clay to be hardened,' and 'wax to be melted in the fire'.
There are also the objects mentioned by him in a more serious poem.

_Rank herbs are sought, with milky venom dark
By brazen sickles under moonlight mown;
Sought also is that wondrous talisman,
Torn from the forehead of the foal at birth
Ere yet its dam could snatch it._

But you who take such exception to fish attribute far different
instruments to magicians, charms not to be torn from new-born
foreheads, but to be cut from scaly backs; not to be plucked from the
fields of earth, but to be drawn up from the deep fields of ocean; not
to be mowed with sickles, but to be caught on hooks. Finally, when he
is speaking of the black art, Vergil mentions poison, you produce an
_entree_; he mentions herbs and young shoots, you talk of scales and
bones; he crops the meadow, you search the waves. I would also have
quoted for your benefit similar passages from Theocritus with many
others from Homer and Orpheus, from the comic and tragic poets and
from the historians, had I not noticed ere now that you were unable to
read Pudentilla's letter which was written in Greek. I will,
therefore, do no more than cite one