Greek imagination drew the line between fact and allegory; nor
need we attempt to analyse the early poetic narratives to this
end. It will better serve our present purpose to cite three or
four instances which illustrate the tangibility of beliefs based
upon pseudo-scientific inductions.

Let us cite, for example, the account which Herodotus gives us of
the actions of the Greeks at Plataea, when their army confronted
the remnant of the army of Xerxes, in the year 479 B.C. Here we
see each side hesitating to attack the other, merely because the
oracle had declared that whichever side struck the first blow
would lose the conflict. Even after the Persian soldiers, who
seemingly were a jot less superstitious or a shade more impatient
than their opponents, had begun the attack, we are told that the
Greeks dared not respond at first, though they were falling
before the javelins of the enemy, because, forsooth, the entrails
of a fowl did not present an auspicious appearance. And these
were Greeks of the same generation with Empedocles and Anaxagoras
and aeschylus; of the same epoch with Pericles and Sophocles and
Euripides and Phidias. Such was the scientific status of the
average mind--nay, of the best minds--with here and there a rare
exception, in the golden age of Grecian culture.

Were we to follow down the pages of Greek history, we should but
repeat the same story over and over. We should, for example, see
Alexander the Great balked at the banks of the Hyphasis, and
forced to turn back because of inauspicious auguries based as
before upon the dissection of a fowl. Alexander himself, to be
sure, would have scorned the augury; had he been the prey of such
petty superstitions he would never have conquered Asia. We know
how he compelled the oracle at Delphi to yield to his wishes; how
he cut the Gordian knot; how he made his dominating personality
felt at the temple of Ammon in Egypt. We know, in a word, that he
yielded to superstitions only in so far as they served his
purpose. Left to his own devices, he would not have consulted an
oracle at the banks of the Hyphasis; or, consulting, would have
forced from the oracle a favorable answer. But his subordinates
were mutinous and he had no choice. Suffice it for our present
purpose that the oracle was consulted, and that its answer turned
the conqueror back.

One or two instances from Roman history may complete the picture.
Passing over all those mythical narratives which virtually
constitute the early history of Rome, as preserved to us by such
historians as Livy and Dionysius, we find so logical an historian
as Tacitus recording a miraculous achievement of Vespasian
without adverse comment. "During the months when Vespasian was
waiting at Alexandria for the periodical season of the summer
winds, and a safe navigation, many miracles occurred by which the
favor of Heaven and a sort of bias in the powers above towards
Vespasian were manifested." Tacitus then describes in detail the
cure of various maladies by the emperor, and relates that the
emperor on visiting a temple was met there, in the spirit, by a
prominent Egyptian who was proved to be at the same time some
eighty miles distant from Alexandria.

It must be admitted that Tacitus, in relating that Vespasian
caused the blind to see and the lame to walk, qualifies his
narrative by asserting that "persons who are present attest the
truth of the transaction when there is nothing to be gained by
falsehood." Nor must we overlook the fact that a similar belief
in the power of royalty has persisted almost to our own day. But
no such savor of scepticism attaches to a narrative which Dion
Cassius gives us of an incident in the life of Marcus
Aurelius--an incident that has become famous as the episode of
The Thundering Legion. Xiphilinus has preserved the account of
Dion, adding certain picturesque interpretations of his own. The
original narrative, as cited, asserts that during one of the
northern campaigns of Marcus Aurelius, the emperor and his army
were surrounded by the hostile Quadi, who had every advantage of
position and who presently ceased hostilities in the hope that
heat and thirst would deliver their adversaries into their hands
without the trouble of further fighting. "Now," says Dion, "while
the Romans, unable either to combat or to retreat, and reduced to
the last extremity by wounds, fatigue, heat, and thirst, were
standing helplessly at their posts, clouds suddenly gathered in
great number and rain descended in floods--certainly not without
divine intervention, since the Egyptian Maege Arnulphis, who was
with Marcus Antoninus, is said to have invoked several genii by
the aerial mercury by enchantment, and thus through them had
brought down rain."

Here, it will be observed, a supernatural explanation is given of
a natural phenomenon. But the narrator does not stop with this.
If we are to accept the account of Xiphilinus, Dion brings
forward some striking proofs of divine interference. Xiphilinus
gives these proofs in the following remarkable paragraph:

"Dion adds that when the rain began to fall every soldier lifted
his head towards heaven to receive the water in his mouth; but
afterwards others hold out their shields or their helmets to
catch the water for themselves and for their horses. Being set
upon by the barbarians . . . while occupied in drinking, they
would have been seriously incommoded had not heavy hail and
numerous thunderbolts thrown consternation into the ranks of the
enemy. Fire and water were seen to mingle as they left the
heavens. The fire, however, did not reach the Romans, but if it
did by chance touch one of them it was immediately extinguished,
while at the same time the rain, instead of comforting the
barbarians, seemed merely to excite like oil the fire with which


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