Robert Wagman

CHAPTER XIX

But let us now take leave from the dead and turn to beautiful women—the ones whom Greeks incorrectly call Naragidas when they should really say Nereides. To the people, they are the ‘Beautiful Ladies.’ They belong to those types of Nymphs who dwell in the countryside but can also be seen in cities as well. They like to sing and dance in very deep woods or pleasant dales, especially where there is source of running water. Mostly they stay in the shade of trees, particularly at noon. They are attracted to young men—especially good-looking ones—to the point of insanity, and they are delighted by small children of both sexes. These they abduct whenever they can: some they give back, after making them much more beautiful and endowing them with many precious gifts; others they keep in their midst and raise. Many people report having seen them, either in large groups, dancing together, or in pairs, conversing under a tree or just wandering around. Men of undeniable trust also tell this tale: one summer they were spending time in the countryside with their families (as is the custom of those citizens from the island who can afford it), when some little girl of particularly beautiful looks dropped out of her relatives’ sight and ran to a well which stood nearby. There pretending, as children of that age do, to do something else, she leaned over the well. And as she was looking at the water at the bottom of the well, she was lifted up by some force, slowly and imperceptibly—but pushed down into the well by a power that she felt all to well. Catching sight of her lifted in the air, the relatives rushed to the well and gathered around it: and they could see the girl playing atop the water and as if she were sitting in her little bed. When the father, alarmed and emboldened, tried to climb down the well, he was seized by [the same unseen] force and found himself next to his daughter. Then the others brought a ladder and put it in the well, asking the father to climb back out. And up the ladder he came, unscathed, carrying his daughter in his arms: but what really stunned all people present, was the fact that, although he and his daughter both had been in the water for a while, when they came out their clothes were completely dry, without even a wet spot on them. The abduction of the girl and her father is attributed to the Nereids who are believed to inhabit that well. The girl herself claimed that while she was looking inside the well, she saw some women playing with great delight on the water’s surface. When they started calling her, she threw herself into the well of her own volition. Another common occurrence is when a young man or a boy of particularly good looks, who is walking at noon absorbed in his own thoughts, suddenly falls on the ground and starts curling up as his tendons simultaneously contract, or twists his face, limps on one foot (if not both), develops a hump, or shows some other physical illness. When something like this happens, everybody agrees that it was the work of the aforementioned women, but wishing not to irritate them, they omit to speak their name, using a proverbial expression to refer to the event, ‘The Hour caught up with him’, or ‘He is out’. But there is no doubt among them that at the origin of the young man’s transformation are the Beautiful Heroines, who turned him into the misshapen figure which everybody can now see.  This is such a firm belief among them that, because at some time or another they have seen people fall sick with the foulest of diseases while defecating outdoors, they themselves, if they try anything like that out in the fields, spit on the ground three times before they do it.  For while they are answering the call of nature, [Nereids] might be sitting on that spot, and, cursing the deed, might bring suffering to the man or cast an effective curse. Thus they believe that they can avert such evils by spitting as a form of protection. They also say that, when the winds are spinning with particular fury and sweep almost everything away in a whirlwind, Nereids happen to be passing by at that moment. So the Nereids, as we just saw, are almost always dangerous, except for when they fall in love and make their lovers very powerful, rich, and fortunate. Such are the foolish beliefs of the common folk. But what about Psellus, then? Like for other things, for the Nereids, too, he finds a scientific explanation:

In the expression ‘Beautiful Fair’, the verb ‘begets’ appears to be missing [i.e. as in ‘Beautiful begets Fair’]. For the Virgin, beautiful above all other women and resplendent with virtue, gave birth to a most beautiful child, fair above all sons of men. It is also possible, if we want, to take this expression as the result of a misspelling. For spelling is often altered by popular parlance. This should be ‘The Beautiful One of the Mountains’, but it was changed to ‘Beautiful Fair’. That is why many people think that the ‘Beautiful One’ is a female demon who lives on the mountains, restlessly roaming, as they depict her in their foolish imagination. But when the month Sextilis—which Augustus, the second Caesar, called August after himself (since he was born and also won many victories during this month) rises with the constellation of the Dog, bodies begin to attract a kind of fiery emanation flowing from the universe, so that we feel a greater need to cool ourselves. Thus in August we often appeal for help to the Beautiful Mother of God, who gave birth to the Fair One, and to the Cross. Now the Cross can be considered the true Beauty of the Mountains: for as the historical sources attest, it was made of pine, cedar, and cypress. Such is the beauty of mountain trees, the way they cover everything with their thick foliage, or the way they project high up in the air. That is why the Cross, this weapon of victory, is called ‘Beauty of the Mountains’. Nor is this in disagreement with what many people mantain, that the famous Solomonia, the mother of the Maccabees praised in so many rhetorical contests, is the sister of She who gave birth to the Fair One, or of the ‘Beauty of the Mountains’—the Cross, I mean to say. For, if this name Solomonia is modelled after its masculine equivalent—and Solomon is so universally credited with wisdom, that the epithet ‘The Wise’ is enough to identify him, instead of his own name—the philosophical term ‘Solomonia’ is used much in the same way. It refers in fact to true Wisdom, and for this reason Solomonia is the sister of the Lord’s mother and is related to the Cross. For, if all understanding results from affinity between similar things, and all things intellectual we perceive through the intellect, all things sensual we perceive through the senses, then we also perceive all things wise through wisdom. It is through Solomonis, which is like a wisdom above all wisdom, that we apprehend the mystery of the Mother of God and its meaning. Nor could we refer in any other way to the ineffable faculty of the Cross and to the type of knowledge which can comprehend similar things, being their own sister. So what we call ‘Beautiful One of the Mountains’ is not a demon at all. Nor, for that matter, is what we call Barychnas a demon, but an affection of the head caused by acrid fumes or undigested food. Doctors call this condition ‘Ephialtes’, borrowing the name from the idea of ‘jumping down on something’. For a vapor which accidentally finds its way into the head, being of a thicker and earthier substance, clogs the ventricles of the brain upon which it falls, depriving the affected person of any ability to feel or move. Common folk call this condition Barychnas because of the sensation of pressure which is its main symptom.

NOTES

Forthcoming