Of the incantations, charms, and magic compounds in the practice of Greek witchcraft, numerous examples occur in the tragic and comic poetry of Greece; and the _philtres_, or love-charms, of Theocritus are well known. The names of Colchis, Chaldea, Assyria, Iberia, Thrace, may indicate the origin of a great part of the Hellenic sorceries. Yet, if the more honourable science may have been of foreign extraction, Hellas was not without something of the sorcery of modern Europe. The infernal goddess Hecate, of Greek celebrity, is the omnipotent patroness of her modern Christian slaves; and she presides at the witch meetings of Christendom with as much solemnity but with far greater malice. Originally of celestial rank, by a later metamorphosis connected, if not personally identical with, Persephone, the Queen of Hades, Hecate was invested with many of the characteristic attributes of a modern devil, or rather perhaps of a witch. The triple goddess, in her various shapes, wandered about at night with the souls of the dead, terrifying the trembling country people by apparitions of herself and infernal satellites, by the horrible whining and howls of her hellhounds which always announced her approach. She frequented cross-roads, tombs, and melancholy places, especially delighting in localities famous for deeds of blood and murder. The hobgoblins, the various malicious demons and spirits, who provoked the lively terrors of the mediaeval peoples, had some prototypes in the fairy-land of Greece, in the Hecatean hobgoblins (like the Latin larvae, &c.), Empusa, Mormo, and other products of an affrighted imagination familiar to the students of Greek literature in the comic pages of Aristophanes.[18] From the earliest literary records down to the latest times of paganism as the state religion, from the times of the Homeric Circe and Ulysses (the latter has been recognised by many as a genuine wizard) to the age of Apollonius or Apuleius, magic and sorcery, as a philosophical science or as a vulgar superstition, had apparently more or less distinctly a place in the popular mythology of old Greece. But in the pagan history of neither Greece nor Rome do we read of holocausts of victims, as in Christian Europe, immolated on the altars of a horrid superstition.[19] The occasion of the composition of the treatise by Apuleius 'On Magic' is somewhat romantic. On his way to Alexandria, the philosopher, being disabled from proceeding on the journey, was hospitably received into the mansion of one Sicinius Pontianus. Here, during the interesting period of his recovery, he captivated, or was captivated by, the love of his host's mother, a wealthy widow, and the lovers were soon united by marriage. Pudentilla's relatives, indignant at the loss of a much-coveted, and perhaps long-expected fortune, brought an action against Apuleius for having gained her affection by means of spells or charms. The cause was heard before the proconsul of