lonius of Tyana we are told that, after an
unbroken silence of five years, he comprehended the languages of all
animals and all men; that, under circumstances very picturesquely
related, he detected the genius of a plague at Ephesus, and dragged him,
self-convicted, before the people; that, at the wedding-dinner of
Menippus, he caused all the dishes and viands to vanish, thereby
compelling the bride to acknowledge that she was a vampire, intending to
eat the flesh and lap the blood of her husband in the night; that he
exhibited the prodigy of being in many places at the same time; raised a
young woman from the dead; and, finally, weary of the world, ascended
bodily into heaven.

[Sidenote: Introduction of an Arabian element.] As Arabian influence
spread, ideas of Oriental aspect appear. There are peris who live on
perfumes, and divs who are poisoned by them; enchanted palaces; moving
statues; veiled prophets, like Mokanna; brazen flying horses; charmed
arrows; dervises who can project their soul into the body of a dead
animal, giving it temporary life; enchanted rings, to make the wearer
invisible, or give him two different bodies at the same time; ghouls who
live in cemeteries, and at night eat the flesh of dead men. As the
European counterpart of these Perso-Arabic ideas, there are fairies, and
their dancing by moonlight, their tampering with children, and imposing
changelings on horror-stricken mothers. [Sidenote: Introduction of
European sorcery and witchcraft.] Every one believes that rain and wind
may be purchased of wizards, and that fair weather may be obtained and
storms abated by prayer. Whoever attains to wealth or eminence does so
by a compact with Satan, signed with blood. The head of the Church,
Sylvester II., makes a brazen head, which speaks to him prophetically.
He finds underground treasures in a subterranean magic palace beneath a
mountain. The protestator of the Greek emperor is accused of a
conspiracy against his master's life by making invisible men. Robert
Grostete, the Bishop of Lincoln, makes another speaking head. Nay, more,
Albertus Magnus constructs a complete brazen man, so cunningly contrived
as to serve him for a domestic. This was at the time that Thomas Aquinas
was living with him. The household trouble arising from the excessive
garrulity of this simulacrum grew so intolerable--for it was incessantly
making mischief among the other inmates--that Thomas, unable to bear it
any longer, too