The wealth of books on magic and divination produced in the ancient city of Ephesus, in Asia Minor, was so great that the designation “Ephesian writings” was quite generally given to writings of this kind, more especially to denote short texts that could be worn as amulets or charms. We read in the Acts of the Apostles (xix, 19) that after hearing the fervent discourses of St. Paul, in which he eloquently attacked the superstitions of the Ephesians, many of those who owned books of this description were so deeply moved that they burned up all such books in their possession, to the value of 50,000 pieces of silver, that is to say $9000, equivalent perhaps to $90,000, if we make due allowance for the greater purchasing power of money nearly two thousand years ago. The small literary value of the writings of this sort that have been preserved for us indicates that the loss to posterity by this auto-da-fé was not very considerable, and yet many queer superstitions and strange usages of which we now lack information must have been noted in these magic rolls and sheets. The following lines may serve to show how highly the jasper was esteemed in ancient times, this designation covering jade as well:[575] Auro, quid melius? Jaspis. Quid Jaspite? Virtus. Quid virtute? Deus. Quid deitate? Nihil. What is better than Gold? Jasper. What is better than Jasper? Virtue. What is better than Virtue? GOD. What is better than the deity? Nothing. The first mention of the famous charm Abracadabra, which so often appears engraved on Gnostic gems, occurs in a Latin medical poem written by Serenus Sammonicus who lived in the third century and is said to have bequeathed his library consisting of sixty-two thousand volumes to the Emperor Gordian the Younger. The poem recommends this mystic word, or name, as a sovereign remedy for the “demitertian” fever, if it were written on a piece of paper and suspended by a linen thread from the neck of the patient. To have its full efficacy the word should be written as many times as there are letters in it, but taking away one letter each time, so that the inscription assumed the form of an inverted cone.[576] It is interesting to note that De Foe, writing in the seventeenth century of the Great Plague in London (1665), alludes to this strange talisman as still in use.[577] Treating of the curious prophylactics employed at that time, he reproaches those who employed such methods, and acted “as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures, as particularly the word Abracadabra formed in triangle or pyramid, thus: