PREFACE.
The ancient celebrity of Thessalian magic is familiar, even from Horace, to every classical reader. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius turn entirely upon it, and the following passage in that work might serve as the text of a long commentary on the subject. "Considering that I was now in the middle of Thessaly, celebrated by the accordant voice of the world as the birthplace of the magic art, I examined all things with intense curiosity. Nor did I believe any thing which I saw in that city (Hypata) to be what it appeared; but I imagined that every object around me had been changed by incantation from
