Orpheus is another author more cited than preserved by classical antiquity. Pliny called him the first writer on herbs and suspected him of magic. Ernest Riess affirms that Rohde (_Psyche_, p. 398) “has abundantly proved that Orpheus’ followers were among the chief promulgators of purifications and charms against evil spirits.”[1313] Among poems of some length extant under Orpheus’ name the one of most interest to us is the _Lithica_, where in 770 lines the virtues of some thirty gems are set forth with considerable allusion to magic.[1314] The authorship is uncertain, but the verse is supposed to follow the prose treatise by Damigeron who lived in the second century B. C. The date of the poem is now generally fixed in the fourth century of our era, although King[1315] argued for an earlier date. I agree with him that the allusion in lines 71-74 to decapitation on the charge of magic is, taken alone, too vague and blind to be associated with any particular event or time; editors since Tyrwhitt have connected it with the law of Constantius against magic and the persecution of magicians in 371 A. D. But King’s contention that the _Lithica_ is by the same author as the _Argonautica_, also ascribed to Orpheus, and is therefore of early date, falls to the ground since the _Argonautica_, too, is now dated in the fourth century. [Sidenote: Argument of the poem.] The _Lithica_ opens by representing Hermes as bestowing upon mankind the precious lore of the marvelous virtues of gems. In his cave are stored stones which banish ghosts, robbers, and snakes, which bring health, happiness, victory in war and games, honor at courts and success in love, and which insure safety on journeys, the favor of the gods, and enable one to read the hidden thoughts of others and to understand the language of the birds as they predict the future. Few persons, however, avail themselves of this mystic lore, and those who do so are liable to be executed on the charge of magic. After this introduction, which may be regarded as a piquant appetizer to whet the reader’s taste for further details, the virtues of individual stones are described, first in the words of Theodamas, a wise and divine man[1316] whom the author meets on his way to perform annual sacrifice at an altar of the Sun, where as a child he narrowly escaped from a deadly snake, and then in a speech of the seer Helenus to Philoctetes which Theodamas quotes. Greek gods are often mentioned; as the poem proceeds the virtues of a number of gems are attributed to Apollo rather than Hermes; and there are allusions to Greek mythology and the Trojan war. Some gems are found in animals, for instance, in the viper or the brain of the stag. [Sidenote: Magic powers of stones.]