The Surgery of Erichtho
A scene of inverted medicine for Walpurgisnacht. Sextus Pompey, desperate to know what is coming, turns to the Thessalian witch Erictho. From there we get a grotesque parody of surgery: she cuts open a corpse, fills it with blood, poison, filth and magic, and forces it to speak (the corpse hears the herbs, has exaudiat herbas, i.e., the magic in them speaks). Body and medicine are turned inside out, and we get necromancy, divination, and reflection on the fate of war.
She began by filling the opened chest with hot blood, the wounds still fresh; then she bathed the marrow in rot and freely poured in lunar poison. Into it she mixed everything nature had monstrously born: foam from rabid dogs; entrails of a lynx; the knot from a hard hyena; the marrow of a stag fed on snakes; the echeneis that holds a ship fast in mid-sea while the east wind strains the cables; the eyes of dragons; stones that sound when warmed beneath a brooding bird; the winged serpent of Arabia; the viper born in the Red Sea, guardian of the precious shell; the skin of a Libyan horned serpent still alive; and the ash of a phoenix laid on an eastern altar. After adding these common plagues and those with famous names, she added leaves steeped in an unspeakable spell, herbs on which her dreadful mouth had spat as they sprouted, and every poison she herself had given to the world.
Then her voice, more powerful than all herbs for charming the gods of Lethe, first poured out confused mutterings, harsh and utterly unlike human speech. It contained the barking of dogs, the howling of wolves, the cry of the trembling eagle-owl, the complaint of the night-owl, the screeching and roaring of wild beasts, the hiss of the snake. It reproduced the crash of waves against rocks, the sound of forests, and the thunder of a broken cloud. A single voice held the sounds of all these things. Then she unfolded the rest in a Haemonian spell and pierced Tartarus with her tongue:
“Eumenides, Stygian crime, punishments of the guilty, Chaos eager to swallow countless worlds into confusion, and ruler of the earth, whose godly death, delayed for long ages, torments you; Styx, and the Elysian fields no Thessalian deserves; Persephone, hater of heaven and of your mother; you, last aspect of our Hecate, through whom the dead and I communicate in a silent language; gatekeeper of the open house, who throws our entrails to the savage dog; sisters who will draw back again the threads you have spun; and you, ferryman of the burning river, old man already exhausted by the ghosts returning to me: hear my prayers. If I call you with a mouth wicked and polluted enough; if I never chant these spells without human entrails; if I have often washed breasts filled with divine power after cutting them open with warm brain; if every infant whose head and organs I placed on your platters would otherwise have lived, obey my prayer.
“I do not ask for a soul hidden deep in a Tartarean cave, long used to darkness, coming down only after light has been left behind. This soul still clings at the first opening of pale Orcus, though it can hear these herbs, destined to come only once to the dead. Let the ghost of our soldier, a Pompeian only moments ago, tell everything to the general’s son, if civil wars have earned your favor.”
pectora tum primum feruenti sanguine supplet
uolneribus laxata nouis taboque medullas
abluit et uirus large lunare ministrat.
huc quidquid fetu genuit natura sinistro
miscetur: non spuma canum quibus unda timori est,
uiscera non lyncis, non durae nodus hyaenae
defuit et cerui pastae serpente medullae,
non puppem retinens Euro tendente rudentis
in mediis echenais aquis oculique draconum
quaeque sonant feta tepefacta sub alite saxa,
non Arabum uolucer serpens innataque rubris
aequoribus custos pretiosae uipera conchae
aut uiuentis adhuc Libyci membrana cerastae
aut cinis Eoa positi phoenicis in ara.
quo postquam uiles et habentis nomina pestis
contulit, infando saturatas carmine frondis
et, quibus os dirum nascentibus inspuit, herbas
addidit et quidquid mundo dedit ipsa ueneni.
tum uox Lethaeos cunctis pollentior herbis
excantare deos confundit murmura primum
dissona et humanae multum discordia linguae.
latratus habet illa canum gemitusque luporum,
quod trepidus bubo, quod strix nocturna queruntur,
quod strident ululantque ferae, quod sibilat anguis;
exprimit et planctus inlisae cautibus undae
siluarumque sonum fractaeque tonitrua nubis:
tot rerum uox una fuit. mox cetera cantu
explicat Haemonio penetratque in Tartara lingua.
“Eumenides Stygiumque nefas Poenaeque nocentum
et Chaos innumeros auidum confundere mundos
et rector terrae, quem longa in saecula torquet
mors dilata deum; Styx et quos nulla meretur
Thessalis Elysios; caelum matremque perosa
Persephone, nostraeque Hecates pars ultima, per quam
manibus et mihi sunt tacitae commercia linguae,
ianitor et sedis laxae, qui uiscera saeuo
spargis nostra cani, repetitaque fila sorores
tracturae, tuque o flagrantis portitor undae,
iam lassate senex ad me redeuntibus umbris,
exaudite preces. si uos satis ore nefando
pollutoque uoco, si numquam haec carmina fibris
humanis ieiuna cano, si pectora plena
saepe deo laui calido prosecta cerebro,
si quisquis uestris caput extaque lancibus infans
inposuit uicturus erat, parete precanti.
non in Tartareo latitantem poscimus antro
adsuetamque diu tenebris, modo luce fugata
descendentem animam; primo pallentis hiatu
haeret adhuc Orci, licet has exaudiat herbas,
ad manes uentura semel. ducis omnia nato
Pompeiana canat nostri modo militis umbra,
si bene de uobis ciuilia bella merentur.”
