Plutarch's Romane Questions · Plutarch
X.—SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.
The traveller who has little or no acquaintance with the language of the land in which he is, resorts naturally to the language of gesture, and mimics the thing which he wishes to have done. Primitive man communicates his wishes to Nature in exactly the same way: if he wishes to have game caught in the trap which he sets, he first pretends to fall into it himself. He has not learnt to "interrogate" Nature in her own language by means of experiment and crucial instances, but he has a presentiment of the method of Concomitant Variations and of the Substitution of Similars. If a thing is itself beyond his reach, he substitutes its counterpart, its image or its name, or something related to it or connected with it, in confidence that any changes he may work in the one will be accompanied by concomitant variations in the other. Hence the reluctance shown by many savages to allow their likenesses to be taken or their names to be known, as with the name or the likeness the man himself would pass into the power of the stranger.[84] So the Romans, as Plutarch informs us (_R. Q._ 61), kept the name of their tutelar god secret, for the same reason, as Plutarch acutely observes, as other nations kept the images of their gods chained;[85] and for the same reason, we may add, as the Romans forbade the living counterpart of the sky-spirit to leave the city, viz., lest he should pass out of their control.
In the same spirit, the Romans would not allow a table to be completely stripped of food (_R. Q._ 64) or a light to be extinguished (75): the action might produce permanent effects. The same feeling prevailed or prevails with regard to the table in Chemnitz, though it is regarded as a sign of death if a light goes out of its own accord.[86] The practice of allowing the spoils taken from an enemy to rust—a practice which Plutarch (37) cannot comprehend—was doubtless a piece of sympathetic magic: as the armour rusted, the enemy's power of armed resistance would diminish. Another interesting instance of sympathetic magic lurks in _R. Q._ 32. The images which, as Plutarch says, were thrown into the river, represented a spirit of vegetation or a corn-spirit; and the object of plunging them into the river was thereby to secure that the crops should be correspondingly drenched with rain.[87] This rite also illustrates the origin of a conception which has its roots in sympathetic magic and yet exerts considerable influence in the civilised world—the conception of "legal fictions." The images, undoubtedly, were substitutes for human beings who were (as representing the corn-spirit) drowned in the Tiber. Human sacrifice, though exceptional, was not unknown at Rome in historic times, as appears from _R. Q._ 83; and the substitution of animals or of inanimate objects for human beings is not peculiar to Rome, but is the usual means by which the transition from the more to the less barbarous custom is effected. But the Romans, who were practical and logical to the extreme, who reduced magic to a system whereby they regulated their daily life, consistently enough also utilised sympathetic magic as a legal instrument. For it would be a great mistake to infer from the ridicule poured by Cicero (_Pro Murena_, xii. 62) on the fictions of Roman law, that those symbolisms were puerile mummeries designed to benefit the legal profession at the expense of its clients. The clod of earth which was brought into court was no mere symbol, but gave to those who held it exactly the same control over the estate from which it came, as the image of a god gives to its possessor, or as the hair or clothing of a person who is to be bewitched gives to the worker of the spell.
A form of sympathetic magic which is practised by agricultural peoples all over the world is a "sacred marriage," whereby two spirits or their images, or their living representatives, are united, in order that their union may be sympathetically followed by fertility in flock and field. The ceremony of the "sacred marriage" frequently survives when its purpose has been forgotten, and then a popular explanation is invented for and by the folk. The myth of Acca Larentia, given by Plutarch, _R. Q._ 35, seems to me a piece of folk-lore of this kind. To begin with, it is not uncommon to find in Greek and Asiatic cults, for instance,[88] a woman shut up with a god in his temple. And the result of this union is an increase in the agricultural wealth or fertility of the community. The same result appears in the "rationalised" explanation of the "sacred marriage" of Acca Larentia and Hercules, given by Plutarch. Further, an exactly similar tale is told of Hercules and Flora,[89] whose name shows that she is a spirit of flowering and blossoming vegetation, whilst her cult points to a realistic sacred marriage in which she took part.[90] Again, Acca Larentia and Flora were evidently felt to be spirits of the same class as the Dea Dia, for sacrifices were offered to them as part of the worship of the Dea Dia; and the Dea Dia was a corn-spirit, as is plainly shown by the _Acta Arvalium Fratrum_.[91] At the same time, though Acca Larentia, Flora, and the Dea Dia were all spirits of the same class, it is clear that they were distinguished from each other, for the Arval Brothers sacrificed to each of them separately and under distinct names.
"If all the world Should in a fit of temp'rance feed on pulse," and, according to Neanthes, quoted by Iamblichus in his life of Pythagoras, the prohibition extended even to treading down the growing bean; for, he informs us, Pythagoras inculcated the virtue of chastity so successfully that when ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by crossing a bean-field, they died to a man rather than tread down the beans: and when another disciple, who was shortly afterwards captured and brought before Dionysius, was bidden by that tyrant to explain the strange conduct of his fellows, he replied, "They suffered themselves to be put to death rather than tread beans under foot; and I will rather tread beans under foot than reveal the reason." This is sufficiently mysterious; and the Pythagorean symbol can scarcely be said to explain the Italian prohibition. But though Plutarch has committed the error of defining _ignotum per ignotius_, he has nevertheless been led by a sound instinct, in comparing the two things together. Mr. Frazer (in _Folk-Lore_, i. 145 _ff._) has abundantly shown that many of the symbols of Pythagoras are but maxims of folk-lore which have gathered round the name of that mysterious philosopher. It would be nothing strange, then, if a piece of Italian folklore should be fathered on Pythagoras, for Magna Graecia was the home of Pythagoreanism.
Now the folk has at all times been fond of discovering resemblances between plants and other objects, as the common names of flowers, &c., sufficiently show. Further, according to popular notions, these resemblances do not exist for nothing: between the plant and the object it resembles there exists an occult but potent relation. The "Doctrine of Signatures" was a quasi-scientific organisation of this branch of folk-lore. "Turmeric has a brilliant yellow colour, which indicates that it has the power of curing jaundice; for the same reason, poppies must relieve diseases of the head," to take a couple of instances from the _Pharmacologia_ of Dr. Paris (p. 43). The ancient Romans who substituted an offering of poppy-heads for a sacrifice of human beings were not practising a childish cheat on the gods: on all sound principles of folk-lore they were offering a perfectly valid equivalent. When then we find Porphyry, in his life of Pythagoras (§ 43), saying that Pythagoras bade his followers "abstain from beans as from human flesh," we may reasonably infer that beans were regarded, in the folk-lore of the day, as resembling some part of the human body, and as having a mysterious affinity with it. This conjecture receives some support from the fact that, whereas Porphyry explains all the other "symbols" as allegorical statements of various moral and civic duties, he explains this by a piece of folk-lore of the same kind as the modern popular belief that a hair kept in water will turn into an eel. The exact part of the body to which beans were supposed to bear a resemblance may be difficult at this distance of time to determine. The passage in Porphyry gives some hints.[95]
A more interesting fact is that, according to Herodotus, ii. 37, the Egyptians had the same aversion to eating beans, and that Egyptian priests might not even look at a bean, so unclean was it considered. From this passage it is usually inferred that Pythagoras obtained this piece of his doctrine from the Egyptians; and V. D. Link (_Die Urwelt_, 225) sought to support the inference by the suggestion that the prohibition originally had reference to the sacred Egyptian bean, and was subsequently extended to the common bean (_faba vulgaris_). Pursuing this line of thought, we are at once struck by the fact that the sacred Egyptian bean (_nelumbium speciosum_) is a lotus; and the lotus, both as a plant and as a symbol,[96] carries our thoughts to India. We thus seem to see a piece of folk-lore migrating, along with the plant to which it was attached, from India to Egypt, from Egypt to Europe. But when did this interesting migration take place? The prohibition was known pretty early in Sicily, for it makes its appearance in the fragments of Empedocles, who was born at Agrigentum, B.C. 490. We can, however, trace it back much earlier in Italy. There it dates from pre-historic times, for it was one of the taboos laid upon the flamen Dialis. And the idea that beans were human flesh is implied in the part which they played in the funeral ceremonies of the primitive Italians. That part is remarkably interesting. Plutarch tells us that "the solemne suppers and bankets at funerals for the dead were usually served with pulse above all other viands." This is a strange contrast to the aversion shown otherwise for eating beans, and it cries aloud for explanation.
Mr. E. S. Hartland, in _Folk Lore_, III. ii., has put forward the theory that the practice of sin-eating is the transformed survival of a savage custom of eating deceased kinsmen. Even those who dissent from his conclusion will not be able to deny that the custom does exist among savages, and that the object of cannibalism is to secure to the eater the courage, cunning, strength, &c., of the person eaten; nor will it be denied that on the first movement from savagery a tendency would manifest itself to substitute for the corpse anything which, according to the canons of savage logic, might be regarded as an equivalent substitute. The Italians, regarding beans as human flesh, might, we may conjecture, substitute beans; as the Bavarian peasant substitutes _Leichen-nudeln_. Before, however, we can regard this as anything more than a guess, we want proof that the Italians did really look upon the beans which they ate at funeral feasts as representative of the deceased. That proof is forthcoming, I submit, in the belief mentioned by Pliny (_N. H._, xviii. 30. 2) that "the spirit of the deceased was in the bean" (_mortuorum animæ sint in ea_, _i.e._, in the _faba_). And inasmuch as the law forbade them that would be chaste to eat pulse, it seems probable that the object of eating beans at funeral banquets was to convey the propagating powers of the deceased to his kinsmen.
If then the superstition about the bean was borrowed by the Italians, it must have been borrowed in primitive times; and we must think that the belief reached the Italians at the same time as the cultivation of the bean itself spread from its original (unknown) home. But, if we may trust comparative philology, the bean was probably known to the European Aryans before they divided into separate peoples, such as Slavs, Italians, &c. And thus we can catch glimpses of this piece of folk-lore on its travels in pro-ethnic times. But this, I confess, I find it rather hard to believe. Of course, if there were channels of communication by which the plant itself could travel in that "time long past," then by those same channels the superstition might be conveyed. But on the other hand, if one people could see a resemblance between the bean and some part of the human body, so might another. We do not imagine that because some of the taboos laid on the Mikado were the same as some laid on the flamen Dialis, they were therefore borrowed. Why, then, should we resort to the hypothesis of borrowing to account for the fact the flamen of pre-historic times was forbidden, exactly in the same way as the priests of ancient Egypt, to see or name a bean?
Folk-lorists will naturally inquire whether any traces of the conceptions and customs we have been examining can be found in fairy-tales. I may therefore conclude by pointing out that in a Lithuanian tale, published and translated into German in the _Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen_ of A. Leskien and K. Brugman (p. 202 and p. 471), the bean has the same "signature" as it had in ancient Italy. Another story in the same collection (pp. 363-371 and 490-494) should also be noticed here: a maiden is given the heart of a dead man to eat, and two hours afterwards she bore a son, who could speak and run the moment he was born.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.