Commentary on the First and Second Chapters of the Thirtieth Book of the Natural History of Gaius Plinius Secundus

signified, where, writing to Paulinus, he says that Apollonius of Tyana was a Magus, just as the common people say, or a philosopher, as the Pythagoreans maintained. Finally, the evangelical truth testifies that the Magi came to adore Christ our Savior, whom the interpreter of the Chaldeans quite knowingly calls philosophers. Furthermore, one may suspect that Iamblichus understood the Goëtia in his book On the Mysteries, where he says: "The things we imagine through fascination, beyond the phantasms, have no truth of action or essence, for such is the end of the magical art, not to do simply, but to extend phantasms even to appearance, the trace of which may not soon appear." Moreover, that we may discuss Goëtia more fully, they call this Epode chant/incantation from incantations, as if you were to say "excantation," because that which is accustomed to enchant boys is called an epode. Polybius joins the epode and Goëtia; among the Greeks, this is the distinction, that the good call magic the evocation of a good demon, such as the prophecies of Apollonius of Tyana were, but Goëtia is to evoke and raise the dead. They also name another Pharmacia poisoning/drugging, where potions are given for love. It must be weighed further that Theurgy, Goëtia, and Magic, which seem to differ little if we believe Cicero—who writes in his Divination that the Magi among the Persians augur, divine, and gather in the temple for the purpose of meditating and conversing among themselves—are rejected by Augustine. And what is much more serious is the Sympathy; Proclus, in his book On Sacrifice and Magic, while he demonstrated this kinship of natural things, that is, Sympathy, most broadly, even transmits that the Magi were accustomed to use the invocation of divinities through this kind of consensus of things. From this, it is clear that the infamy of the other part of the magical art is that, with the pretense of the name of a divinity, it is reclined toward the deceits of demons and, overwhelmed by the most intricate errors, would precipitate the less discerning into ruin, which Marsilius Ficinus, most learned in Platonic doctrine, has brilliantly committed to memory. But because we have diverted here, let us treat the mysteries of the Magi more abundantly.