Of scientific discussion or information there is little in the _Metamorphoses_. When Pamphile foretells the weather for the next day by inspection of her lamp, Lucius suggests that this artificial flame may retain some properties from its heavenly original.[1054] The herb mandragora is described as inducing a sleep similar to death, but as not fatal; and the beaver is said to emasculate itself in order to escape its hunters.[1055] We should feel lost without mention of a dragon in a book of this sort, and one is introduced who is large enough to devour a man.[1056] It is interesting to note for purposes of comparison,—inasmuch as we shall presently take up the _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_, a Neo-Pythagorean, and later shall learn from the _Recognitions of Clement_ that the apostle Peter was accustomed to bathe at dawn in the sea,—that Lucius, while still in the form of an ass, in his zeal for purification plunged into the sea and submerged his head beneath the wave seven times, because the divine Pythagoras had proclaimed that number as especially appropriate to religious rites.[1057] “It has been said that _The Golden Ass_ is the first book in European literature showing piety in the modern sense, and the most disreputable adventures of Lucius lead, it is true, in the end to a religious climax.” But, adds Professor Duncan B. Macdonald, “Few books, in spite of fantastic gleams of color and light, move under such leaden-weighted skies as _The Golden Ass_. There is no real God in that world; all things are in the hands of enchanters; man is without hope for here and hereafter; full of yearnings he struggles and takes refuge in strange cults.”[1058] [Sidenote: Magic in other Greek romances.] While magic plays a larger part in _The Golden Ass_ than in any other extant Greek romance, it is not unusual in the others to find the hero and heroine exposed to perils from magicians, or themselves falsely charged with magic, as in the _Aethiopica_ of Heliodorus, where Charicles is “condemned to be burned on a charge of poisoning.”[1059] In the Christian romances, too, as the _Recognitions_ will show us later, there are plenty of allusions to magic and demons. Meanwhile we are reminded that in the Roman Empire accusations of magic were made not merely in story books but in real life by the trial for magic of the author of the _Metamorphoses_ himself, and we next turn to the _Apology_ which he delivered upon that occasion. III. _Magic in the Apology_ [Sidenote: Form of the _Apologia_.]