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Many ills of no great moment are made to result fatally by men’s superstition. Midas of old, dispirited and disturbed, as it appears, as the result of some dreams, reached such a state of mind that he committed suicide by drinking bull’s blood. Plutarch, in trying to be a physician of the soul to cure superstition, has here unwittingly turned homeopath. Cf. B. Perrin’s note on chap. xxxi. (p. 128 A) of the Life of Themistocles in Plutarch’s Themistocles and Aristides (New York, 1901), page 256. To the references there given should be added Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 312. And Aristodemus, king of the Messenians in the war against the Spartans, when dogs howled like wolves, and quitch-grass began to grow around his ancestral hearth, and the seers were alarmed by these signs, lost heart and hope by his forebodings, and slew himself by his own hand.Other portents which disheartened Aristodemus are related by Pausanias, iv. 13. It would perhaps have been the best thing in the world for Nicias, general of the Athenians, to have got rid of his superstition in the same way as Midas and Aristodemus,rather than to be affrighted at the shadow on the moon in eclipse and sit inactive while the enemy’s wall was being built around him, and later to fall into their hands together with forty thousand men, who were either slain or captured alive, and himself meet an inglorious end.The details regarding Nicias are to be found in Thucydides, vii. 35-87, and in Plutarch’s Life of Nicias, chap. xxiii. (p. 538 D) ff. For the obstruction of light caused by the earth’s coming between sun and moon is nothing frightful, nor is the meeting of a shadow with the moon at the proper time in its revolutions anything frightful, but frightful is the darkness of superstition falling upon man, and confounding and blinding his power to reason in circumstances that most loudly demand the power to reason. Glaucus, see, the mighty ocean Even now with billows roars, Round about the Gyrian summits Sheer in air a dark cloud soars, Sign of storm . . .;A fragment from Archilochus; cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 696, Archilochus, No. 54. when the pilot sees this, he prays that he may escape the storm, and calls upon the Saviours,Castor and Pollux. but while he is praying he throws the helm over, lowers the yard, and Furling the big main sail, Hastens to make his escape Out from the murky sea. Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. iii. p. 730; Plutarch, Moralia, 475 F, and Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 910, Adespota, No. 377. Hesiod advises Works and Days, 465-8. that the farmer before ploughing and sowing should Pray to Zeus of the world below and to holy Demeter with his hand on the plough-handle; and Homer says Homer, Il. vii. 193 ff. that Ajax, as he was about to engage in single combat with Hector, bade the Greeks pray to the gods for him, and then, while they were praying, donned his armour; and when Agamemnon enjoined Ibid.ii. 382. on the fighting men, See that each spear is well sharpened, and each man’s shield in good order, at the same time he asked in prayer from Zeus, Grant that I raze to the level of earth the palace of Priam;Adapted from Homer, Il. ii. 413-414. for God is brave hope, not cowardly excuse. But the Jews, Perhaps the reference is to the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 B.C. (cf. Dio Cassius, xxxvii. 16), or possibly to its capture by Antony in 28 B.C. (cf. Dio Cassius, xlix. 22). Cf. also Josephus, Antiquitates Jud. xii. 6. 2, and 1 Maccabees, ii. 32 ff. because it was the Sabbath day, sat in their places immovable, while the enemy were planting ladders against the walls and capturing the defences, and they did not get up, but remained there, fast bound in the toils of superstition as in one great net.
