Ye spells and arts that the wise men use; and thou, O Earth, who dost provide the wise men with thy potent herbs; ye breezes and winds, ye mountains and streams and pools; all ye gods of the groves, all ye gods of the night; be with me now. With your help I stir up the calm seas by my spell; I break the jaws of serpents with my incantations. I bid ghosts to come forth from their tombs. Now I have need of juices by whose aid old age may be renewed and may turn back to the bloom of youth and regain its earthly years. * * * * * The Roman elegiac poet Tibullus (c. 48 B.C.–19 B.C.) addresses Delia, the girl who scorned him. He has employed magic means to regain her love: Thrice I with Sulphur purified you round, And thrice the Rite, with Songs th’Enchantress bound: The Cake, by me thrice sprinkled, put to flight The death-denouncing Phantoms of the Night, And I next have, in linen Garb array’d, In silent Night, nine Times to Trivia pray’d. * * * * * In one of the Eclogues of the Roman poet Nemesianus, who flourished in the third century A.D., there is a dialogue between two shepherds who discuss their amatory affairs and love spells: Mopsus: What does it benefit me that the mother of rustic Amyntas has purified me thrice with fillets, thrice with a sacred bough, thrice with the vapour of frankincense, burning the crackling laurels with live sulphur, and pours the ashes out into the stream with averted face, when thus wretched I am every way inflamed for Meroë? Lycidas: These same things the many-colored threads have done for me, and Mycale has carried round me a thousand unknown herbs. She has chanted the charm, by which the moon swells, by which the snake is burst, the rocks run and standing corn removes, and a tree is plucked up. Lo! My handsome Iollas is nevertheless more, is more to me. * * * * * Horace, the Roman poet (65 B.C.–8 B.C.) depicts, in his _Satires_, a scene in which a love philtre is prepared.