oncilable to civilization and to good principles; when a love affair
did not prosper in the hands of a Grecian, he did not endeavor to become
more engaging in his manners and person, he did not lavish his fortune
in presents, or become more obliging and assiduous in his addresses, but
immediately had recourse to incantations and philtres; in composing and
dispensing of which, the women of Thessaly were reckoned the most
famous, and drove a traffic in them of no considerable advantage. These
potions were given by the women to the men, as well as by the men to the
women, and were generally so violent in their operations as for some
time to deprive the person who took them, of sense, and not uncommonly
of life: their composition was a variety of herbs of the most strong and
virulent nature, which we shall not mention; but herbs were not the only
things they relied on for their purpose; they called in the productions
of the animal and mineral kingdoms to their assistance; when these
failed, they roasted an image of wax before the fire, representing the
object of their love, and as this became warm, they flattered themselves
that the person represented by it would be proportionally warmed with
love. When a lover could obtain any thing belonging to his mistress, he
imagined it of singular advantage, and deposited in the earth beneath
the threshold of her door. Besides these, they had a variety of other
methods equally ridiculous and unavailing, and of which it would be
trifling to give a minute detail; we shall, therefore, just take notice
as we go along, that such of either sex as believed themselves forced
into love by the power of philtres and charms, commonly had recourse to
the same methods to disengage themselves, and break the power of these
enchantments, which they supposed operated involuntarily on their
inclinations; and thus the old women of Greece, like the lawyers of
modern times, were employed to defeat the schemes and operations of each
other, and like them too, it is presumable, laughed in their sleeves,
while they hugged the gains that arose from vulgar credulity.

POWER OF PHILTRES AND CHARMS.

The Romans, who borrowed most of their customs from the Greeks, also
followed them in that of endeavoring to conciliate love by the power of
philtres and charms; a fact of which we have not the least room to
doubt, as they are in Virgil and some other of the Latin poets so many
instances that prove it. But it depend