First Book

Of the Causes from which such wonderful things and effects arise in Nature.

The I. Chapter.

What Magic is called, according to its name.

(a) In oratione pro Magia.

1. That Magic (which in German may quite aptly be termed the Art of Wonders) derives from Persia, as much in name as in origin, is attested by the famous Platonic teachers Porphyry and Apuleius. (a)
2. According to Suidas, it takes its name from certain peoples called the Magusaei.
(b) Libro de Divinatione.

3. Cicero (b) says: A Magus, or wonder-worker, is in the Persian tongue nothing other than one who interprets divine things and occupies himself with them; and this is a class of wise men among that people.
4. Jerome, in his epistle to Paulinus, says that Apollonius of Tyana was, according to common report, a Magus or wonder-worker; but as the Py-

thagoreans report, he was a philosopher, or lover of wisdom.
5. Pliny writes: it is among writers an indubitable and settled matter that this art originated in Persia with one named Zoroaster, son of Oromasius; but those who are more diligent assert that there was yet another Zoroaster before him, whom they called the Proconnesian. The first to write of these things was Osthanes, who accompanied the Persian king Xerxes when he invaded Greece with war; he scattered, as it were, seeds of this wonderful art here and there, almost by chance; but thereby he so infected the world in every place he visited that the people in Greece conceived such a desire for it as if they were out of their senses.
6. Thus, Magic signifies to everyone as much as wisdom and the perfect knowledge of natural things: and