Another method of dealing with the image is to melt or wear it away gradually; if it be of wax or lead, it may be seared with a red-hot poker, or placed bodily in the fire; if it be of clay, it may be scraped with a knife, or put into some stream which will gradually wash it away. Accordingly as it is thus wasted away, slowly or rapidly, so will the person whom it represents waste and die. This is in principle the same system as that adopted by Simaetha in the Idyll of Theocritus to win back the love of Delphis. ‘Even as I melt this wax,’ she cries, ‘with God’s help, so may the Myndian Delphis by love be straightway molten[20]’; and she too used in her magic rites a fringe from Delphis’ cloak, to shred and to cast into the fierce flame.[21] Only, in her case, the incantation turned what might have been a death-spell into a love-charm. Love and jealousy are still the passions which most frequently suggest the use of magic. Occult methods are necessary to the girl whose modesty prevents her from courting openly the man on whom her heart is set, and not less so to her who would punish the faithlessness of a former lover. The following are some recorded recipes[22] for winning the love of an apathetic swain. Obtain some milk from the breasts of a mother and daughter who are both nursing male infants at the same time, or, in default of that, from any two women both nursing first-born male infants; mix it with wheat-flour and leaven, and contrive that the man eat of it. Repeat therewith the following incantation: ὅπως κλαῖνε καὶ λαχταρίζουν τώρα τὰ παιδία ποῦ τοὺς λείπει τὸ γάλα τους, ἔτσι νὰ λαχταρίσῃ καὶ ὁ τάδε γι̯ὰ τὴν τάδε, ‘As the infants now cry and throb with desire for the milk which fails them, so may N. throb with desire for M.’ Take a bat or three young swallows, and roast to cinders on a fire of sticks gathered by a witch at midnight where cross-roads meet: at the same time repeat the words, ὅπως στρηφογυρίζει, τρέμει, καὶ λαχταρίζει ἡ νυχτερίδα ἔτσι νὰ γυρίζῃ ὁ τάδε, νὰ τρέμῃ καὶ νὰ λαχταρίζῃ ἡ καρδι̯ά του γι̯ὰ τὴν τάδε, ‘As the bat writhes, quivers, and throbs, so may N. turn, and his heart quiver and throb with desire for M.’ The ashes of the bat are then to be put into the man’s drink. Take a bat and bury it at cross-roads; burn incense over it for forty days at midnight; dig it up and grind its spine to powder. Put the dust in the man’s drink as before.