of the Father and of Jesus the Son in the name of Jesus himself, in the alphabet’s
secret harmonies, and in the religious value of numbers. He was actually playing on
Pythagorean patterns; he performed for his numerous pupils and rich sponsors rituals
inspired both by Christianity and the magical recipes or gimmicks of Anaxilaos,
the Pythagorean. The Christian heresiologists Irenaeus (second centuryad) and
Hippolytus (third centuryad) describe several of these rituals. On the other hand
we know a magic lamella(Dupont-Sommer 1946), that is, an amulet, whose text
seems to merge doctrines similar to that of Marcus and to that of the Peratae, a
Gnostic sect passionately addicted to astrology.
At an inferior social and cultural level the common people resorted to magical
practices that, after all, descended from complex theological theories. For instance,
Ammianus Marcellinus (29.2.28) narrates that under emperor Valens “in the baths
a young man was seen to touch alternately with his fingers of either hand first the
marble and then his breast, and to count the seven vowels, thinking it was a help-
ful remedy for a stomach trouble.” Perhaps the youth did not know the ancient
Pythagorean theory of the harmonies of stars and of the seven vowels as tunes of
the planets; maybe even the practitioner of magic arts who prescribed the remedy
did not know its origin, because the Pythagorean theories had been adopted by many
religions and were spread in a thousand beliefs. The learned magicians resorted rather
to contemporary theological literature, such as the works of Porphyry or Jamblichus,
the most influential Neoplatonic thinkers of late antiquity.
Whereas few Roman theologians were concerned with a reappraisal of the
Etruscan divinatory tradition, many others followed Nigidius’ way and looked for
other forms of revelation, which were, in many cases, accessible only to initiates to
secret knowledge practicing a spiritual style of life. The magical papyri (PGM
3.187–96) and Ammianus Marcellinus (29.1.29–32) inform us that some learned
men organized consultations of Apollo’s private oracles, with a home Delphic tripod,
a divinatory instrument reproducing the cosmos, on which the performer, clothed
like an Egyptian priest, by means of particular rituals selected the letters composing
the divine answer. Two triangular bronze tables for private divination have been dis-
covered at Pergamum and Apamea; they are related to the cosmology of the myth
of Er in Plato’s Republicand to Theurgical doctrines on Hecate. The Theurgists
were able to make the gods appear by turning magical instruments called iynges
(Damascius, De principiis 2.95 Ruelle; Psellus, Opuscula 38, Philosophica minora, 2.133
O’Meara; cf. also Marinus, Vita Procli28). Other kind of magicians were described
in many of the recipes of the magical papyri as making the god prophesy or appear
in private séances.
Many learned and religious men of the imperial age studied and commented on
the Oracula Chaldaicaor Orpheus’ ancient theology or the supposed archaic treat-
ises of Hermes. We should not conceive all of them as practicing only Pythagorean
sacrifices, that is, bloodless offerings, or even only silent mental prayers and con-
templation of god. Many cultivated philosophers and theologians took part in pub-
lic religious life, and also animal sacrifices. Some of them resorted to private rituals
which we usually refer to as magic, exorcism, or initiatory rituals, as we can read in
Eunapius’ Lives of Philosophers, in the works of Proclus, or even in the Biography of
Plotinusby Porphyry.
388 Attilio Mastrocinque