and hope, always reviving, led the anxious
masses to seek a chimerical certainty in astrology, on the other hand, in
the case of magic, the blinding charm of the marvelous, the entreaties of
love and ambition, the bitter desire for revenge, the fascination of crime,
and the intoxication of bloodshed,--all the instincts that are not avowable
and that are satisfied in the dark, took turns in practising their
seductions. During the entire life of the Roman empire its existence
continued, and the very mystery that it was compelled to hide in increased
its prestige and almost gave it the authority of a revelation.

A curious occurrence that took place towards the end of the fifth century
at Beirut, in Syria, shows how deeply even the strongest intellects of that
period believed in the most atrocious practices of magic. One night some
students of the famous law-school of that {193} city attempted to kill a
slave in the circus, to aid the master in obtaining the favor of a woman
who scorned him. Being reported, they had to deliver up their hidden
volumes, of which those of Zoroaster and of Hostanes were found, together
with those written by the astrologer Manetho. The whole city was agitated,
and searches proved that many young men preferred the study of the illicit
science to that of Roman law. By order of the bishop a solemn auto-da-fe
was made of all this literature, in the presence of the city officials and
the clergy, and the most revolting passages were read in public, "in order
to acquaint everybody with the conceited and vain promises of the demons,"
as the pious writer of the story says.[81]

Thus the ancient traditions of magic continued to live in the Christian
Orient after the fall of paganism. They even outlived the domination of the
church. The rigorous principles of its monotheism notwithstanding, Islam
became infected with those Persian superstitions. In the Occident the evil
art resisted persecution and anathemas with the same obstinacy as in the
Orient. It remained alive in Rome all through the fifth century,[82] and
when scientific astrology in Europe went down with science itself, the old
Mazdean dualism continued to manifest itself, during the entire Middle Ages
in the ceremonies of the black mass and the worshiping of Satan, until the
dawn of the modern era.

* * * * *

Twin sisters, born of the superstitions of the learned Orient, magic and
astrology always remained the