Chapter II., § 5). A particular impetus was given to magic toward the

end of the last century before Christ and during the first century of the Christian era, when the rise of many fantastic philosophical systems greatly promoted and supported the belief in the supernatural powers of magic. Subsequently, in the middle ages, magic experienced an accepted and systematic development. These conditions, however, will be more explicitly referred to later on.

The treatment of the sick through supernatural agencies assumed quite astonishing dimensions under the Roman emperors. The belief in magicians was so generally disseminated that even the emperors themselves and the imperial authorities were almost completely devoted to it. Thus, for instance, the emperor Hadrian (117-138, A.D.) caused himself to be treated by physicians who claimed miraculous powers, and he is said to have written a book on theurgy. In fact, Suidas (62 Julianus) reports that Hadrian, on account of a severe outbreak of pestilence in Rome, sent for the son of the Chaldean, Julian, who, simply by the power of his miracles, arrested the progress of the disease. Under Antoninus Pius official proclamations were made in the forum, directing the attention of the people to the importance of magicians (Philostratus, 43), and the emperor Marcus Aurelius even relates that, when in Caieta, the gods in a dream prescribed a remedy for the hemorrhagic cough and vertigo from which he was suffering (“Marcus Aurelius,” Chapter I., § 17, page 11).

But it appears that the magicians finally went too far with their tricks, and endangered human life by their treatment; so that several emperors decided upon adopting more rigorous measures against their knaveries. The emperor Septimius Severus (193-211), altho himself originally devoted to magic, prohibited, when on a visit in Egypt, all books which taught curious arts (Aelius Spartianus, “Hadrianus,”