United States or Cabo Verde ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And that fine fellow Eutelidas you mentioned, and the rest that are said to overlook themselves, may be easily and upon good rational grounds accounted for; for, according to Hippocrates, a good habit of body, when at height, is easily perverted, and bodies come to their full maturity do not stand at a stay there, but fall and waste down to the contrary extreme.
For they say that this Eutelidas, appearing very delicate and beauteous to himself, was affected with that sight and grew sick upon it, and lost his beauty and his health. Now, pray sir, what reason can you find for these wonderful effects? At any other time, I replied, I question not but I shall give you full satisfaction.
The existence of the power of fascination was admitted by all, and a philosophical explanation of its phenomena was attempted. In reply to some suggestions of Plutarch, Soclarus says there is no doubt that their ancestors fully believed in this power, and then cites the case of Eutelidas as being well known to his auditors, and celebrated by some poet in these lines:
But it is not only praise administered by others which may inflict evil upon us, we must also be specially careful not to have too "gude a conceit of ourselves," lest we thereby draw down upon us the fate of a certain Eutelidas, who, having regarded his image in the water with peculiar self-satisfaction and laudation, immediately lost his health, and from that time forward was afflicted with sore diseases.
"Eutelidas was once a beauteous youth, But, luckless, in the wave his face beholding, Himself he fascinates, and pines away." V. Prob. Fascination was excited by touch, voice, and look. The fascination by touch was simply mesmerism, or rather the biology of the present day, in an undeveloped stage.
Word Of The Day