which could extinguish or recall
life, inflame the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation,
and extort from the reluctant daemons the secrets of futurity. They
believed, with the wildest inconsistency, that this preternatural
dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised, from the
vilest motives of malice or gain, by some wrinkled hags and itinerant
sorcerers, who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt. [47]
The arts of magic were equally condemned by the public opinion, and
by the laws of Rome; but as they tended to gratify the most imperious
passions of the heart of man, they were continually proscribed, and
continually practised. [48] An imaginary cause as capable of producing
the most serious and mischievous effects. The dark predictions of the
death of an emperor, or the success of a conspiracy, were calculated
only to stimulate the hopes of ambition, and to dissolve the ties of
fidelity; and the intentional guilt of magic was aggravated by the
actual crimes of treason and sacrilege. [49] Such vain terrors disturbed
the peace of society, and the happiness of individuals; and the harmless
flame which insensibly melted a waxen image, might derive a powerful and
pernicious energy from the affrighted fancy of the person whom it was
maliciously designed to represent. [50] From the infusion of those
herbs, which were supposed to possess a supernatural influence, it was
an easy step to the use of more substantial poison; and the folly of
mankind sometimes became the instrument, and the mask, of the most
atrocious crimes. As soon as the zeal of informers was encouraged by the
ministers of Valens and Valentinian, they could not refuse to listen to
another charge, too frequently mingled in the scenes of domestic guilt;
a charge of a softer and less malignant nature, for which the pious,
though excessive, rigor of Constantine had recently decreed the
punishment of death. [51] This deadly and incoherent mixture of treason
and magic, of poison and adultery, afforded infinite gradations of guilt
and innocence, of excuse and aggravation, which in these proceedings
appear to have been confounded by the angry or corrupt passions of the
judges. They easily discovered that the degree of their industry and
discernment was estimated, by the Imperial court, according to the
number of executions that were furnished from the respective tribunals.
It was not without extreme reluctance that they pronounced a s