Indeed, nearly all the old writers agree in
recognizing the existence of the faculty of fascination; and among the
Romans it was so universally admitted, that in the "Decemvirales Tabulae"
there was a law prohibiting the exercise of it under a capital
penalty:--"_Ne pelliciunto alienas segeles, excantando, ne incantando; ne
agrum defraudanto._" Some jurisconsults skilled in the ancient law say that
boys are sometimes fascinated by the burning eyes of these infected men so
as to lose all their health and strength. Pliny relates that one Caius
Furius Cresinus, a freedman, having been very successful in cultivating his
farms, became an object of envy, and was publicly accused of poisoning by
arts of fascination his neighbors' fruits; whereupon he brought into the
Forum his daughter, ploughs, tools, and oxen, and, pointing to them,
said,--"These which I have brought, and my labor, sweat, watching, and
care, (which I cannot bring,) are all my arts." Let those who consider the
moving of tables as wonderful listen to the surprising statement of Pliny
as to an occurrence in his own time, when a whole olive-orchard belonging
to a certain Vectius Marcellus, a Roman knight, crossed over the public
way, and took its place, ground and all, on the other side. [Footnote:
Plinii _Nat. Hist._ Lib. xvii. cap. 38.] This same fact is also alluded to
by Virgil in his Eighth Eclogue, on _Pharmaceutria_ (all of which, by the
way, he stole from Theocritus):--
"Atque satas alio vidi traducere messes.
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