The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

XII POWERFUL ENCHANTMENTS 447
The faith in the power of magic arts was simply
unbounded, as is testified by nearly all the classic writers.
TibuUus {Eleg. II. i. 43) says that a certain famous
enchantress could not only draw down the stars from the
sky, but could change the course of a river. Further, she
could make snow to fall in summer.
Horace, Lucan, Ovid, all bear similar witness : how
that not only could they cause earthquakes and lightnings,
but even could make the dead come out of their tombs.
Hence we see that what was held to be a protector
against the witch, or the witchcraft capable of producing
such calamities, soon got to be considered a specific against
the evil itself Thus our joke about pills good against an
earthquake was once a serious fact devoutly believed.
We find that certain of these incantations had to be
performed during the increase of the moon ; and similarly
we read in the old herbals of Gerard, Turner, and Cul-
pepper, how greatly the influence of the moon is to be
considered in taking the remedies they prescribe.
Even Plato speaks of the Thessalian enchantresses as
able to remove the moon from the sky, and he is followed
by many other writers. This account is moreover confirmed
by both Tibullus and Virgil. All stories- are, how-
ever, capped by Pliny, who gravely states that an entire
olive orchard, belonging to one Vectius Marcellus, was
drawn by enchantment across the public road, while the
land on which it was placed was made to go back and
take the place previously occupied by the olive orchard.''^'^
Ovid, too, gives some very strange stories of how, by
incantation, the stars distilled blood and the moon became
of a bloody purple.
His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs.
And deal in her command without her power.
The Tempest, Act v. Sc. i.
Magicians were also believed to be able to raise the gods
of the upper and lower world, and compel them to answer
697 Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvii. 38 (vol. iii. p. 527, Bohn).