_Letter to Sura_
Our leisure furnishes me with the opportunity of learning from you, and
you with that of instructing me. Accordingly, I particularly wish to
know whether you think there exist such things as phantoms, possessing
an appearance peculiar to themselves, and a certain supernatural power,
or that mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my
part, I am led to believe in their existence, especially by what I hear
happened to Curtius Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and
obscure, he was a hanger-on in the suite of the Governor of Africa.
While pacing the colonnade one afternoon, there appeared to him a
female form of superhuman size and beauty. She informed the terrified
man that she was "Africa," and had come to foretell future events; for
that he would go to Rome, would fill offices of state there, and would
even return to that same province with the highest powers, and die in
it. All which things were fulfilled. Moreover, as he touched at
Carthage, and was disembarking from his ship, the same form is said to
have presented itself to him on the shore. It is certain that, being
seized with illness, and auguring the future from the past and
misfortune from his previous prosperity, he himself abandoned all hope
of life, though none of those about him despaired.
Is not the following story again still more appalling and not less
marvelous? I will relate it as it was received by me:
There was at Athens a mansion, spacious and commodious, but of evil
repute and dangerous to health. In the dead of night there was a noise
as of iron, and, if you listened more closely, a clanking of chains was
heard, first of all from a distance, and afterwards hard by. Presently
a specter used to appear, an ancient man sinking with emaciation and
squalor, with a long beard and bristly hair, wearing shackles on his
legs and fetters on his hands, and shaking them. Hence the inmates, by
reason of their fears, passed miserable and horrible nights in
sleeplessness. This want of sleep was followed by disease, and, their
terrors increasing, by death. For in the daytime as well, though the
apparition had departed, yet a reminiscence of it flitted before their
eyes, and their dread outlived its cause. The mansion was accordingly
deserted, and, condemned to solitude, was entirely abandoned to the
dreadful ghost. However, it was advertised, on the chance of some one,
ignorant of the fearful curse attached to it, being willing to buy or
to rent it. Athenodorus, the philosopher, came to Athens and read the
advertisement. When he had been informed of the terms, which were so
low as to appear suspicious, he made inquiries, and learned the whole
of the particulars. Yet none the less on that account, nay, all the
more readily, did he rent the house. As evening began to draw on, he
ordered a sofa to be set for himself in the front part of the house,
and called for his notebooks, writing implements, and a light. The
whole of his servants he dismissed to the interior apartments, and for
himself applied his soul, eyes, and hand to composition, that his mind
might not, from want of occupation, picture to itself the phantoms of
which he had heard, or any empty terrors. At the commencement there was
the universal silence of night. Soon the shaking of irons and the
clanking of chains was heard, yet he never raised his eyes nor
slackened his pen, but hardened his soul and deadened his ears by its
help. The noise grew and approached: now it seemed to be heard at the
door, and next inside the door. He looked round, beheld and recognized
the figure he had been told of. It was standing and signaling to him
with its finger, as though inviting him. He, in reply, made a sign with