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The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 5

Note 141 — Scene I.—A woody and mountainous district near Mount Ararat.—Time, midnight.

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{289}["The adepts of Incantation ... enter the realms of air, and by their spells they scatter the clouds, they gather the clouds, they still the storm.... We may adduce Ovid (Amor., bk. ii., El., i. 23), who says, 'Charmers draw down the horns of the blood-red moon,' ... Here it is to be observed that in the opinion of simple-minded persons, the moon could be actually drawn down from heaven. So Aristophanes says (Clouds, lines 739, 740), 'If I should purchase a Thessalian witch, and draw down the moon by night;' and Claudian (In Ruffin., bk. i. 145), 'I know by what spell the Thessalian sorceress snatches away the lunar beam.'"—Magic Incantations, by Christianus Pazig (circ. 1700), edited by Edmund Goldsmid, F.R.H.S., F.S.A. (Scot.), 1886, pp. 30, 31. See, too, Virgil, Eclogues, viii. 69, "Carmina vel cœlo possunt de ducere Lunam."]

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