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30. All the arrangements made by men for the making and worshipping
of idols are superstitious, pertaining as they do either to the worship
of what is created or of some part of it as God, or to consultations
and arrangements about signs and leagues with devils, such, for
example, as are employed in the magical arts, and which the poets are
accustomed not so much to teach as to celebrate. And to this class
belong, but with a bolder teach of deception, the books of the
haruspices and augurs. In this class we must place also all amulets
and cures which the medical art condemns, whether these consist in
Incantations, or in marks which they call characters, or in hanging
or tying on or even dancing in a fashion certain articles, not with
reference to the condition of the body, but to certain signs hidden or
manifest; and these remedies they call by the less offensive name of
physica, so as to appear not to be engaged in superstitious
observances, but to be taking advantage of the forces of nature.
Examples of these are the earrings on the top of each ear, or the
rings of ostrich bone on the fingers, or telling you when you hiccup to
hold your left thumb in your right hand.
31. To these we may add thousands of the most frivolous practices,
that are to be observed if any part of the body should jump, or if,
when friends are walking arm-in-arm, a stone, or a dog, or a boy,
should come between them. And the kicking of a stone, as if it were a
divider of friends, does less harm than to cuff an innocent boy if he
happens to run between men who are walking side by side. But it is
delightful that the boys are sometimes avenged by the dogs; for
frequently men are so superstitious as to venture upon striking a dog
who has run between them, not with impunity however, for instead of a
superstitious remedy, the dog sometimes makes his assailant run in hot
haste for a real surgeon. To this class, too, belong the following
rules: To tread upon the threshold when you go out in front of the
house; to go back to bed if any one should sneeze when you are putting
on your slippers; to return home if you stumble when going to a place;
when your clothes are eaten by mice, to be more frightened at the
prospect of coming misfortune than grieved by your present loss.
Whence that witty saying of Cato, who, when consulted by a man who
told him that the mice had eaten his boots, replied, "That is not
strange, but it would have been very strange indeed if the boots had
eaten the mice."
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