“What were his discoveries, then?” perhaps you
will ask. Listen, therefore, in order to be able to
show up such impostors. The first, my dear Celsus,
was a well-known method; heating a needle, he
removed the seal by melting through the wax
underneath it, and after reading the contents he
warmed the wax once more with the needle, both
that which was under the thread and that which
contained the seal, and so stuck it together without
difficulty. Another method was by using what they
call plaster; this is a compound of Bruttian pitch,
asphalt, pulverized gypsum, wax, and gum Arabic.
Making his plaster out of all these materials and
warming it over the fire, he applied it to the seal,
which he had previously wetted with saliva, and
took a mould of the impression. Then, since the
plaster hardened at once, after easily opening and
reading the scrolls, he applied the wax and made an
impression upon it precisely like the original, just as
one would with a gem. Let me tell you a third

 

method, in addition to these. Putting marble-dust
into the glue with which they glue books and
making a paste of it, he applied that to the seal
while it was still soft, and then, as it grows hard at
once, more solid than horn or even iron, he removed
it and used it for the impression. There are many
other devices to this end, but they need not all
be mentioned, for fear that we might seem to be
wanting in taste, especially in view of the fact that
in the book which you wrote against the sorcerers, a
very good and useful treatise, capable of preserving
common-sense in its readers, you cited instances
enough, and indeed a great many more than I
have. S. Hippolytus (Refut. omn. Haeres. IV. 28-42) contains a highly interesting section “against sorcerers,” including (34) a treatment of this subject. It is very evidently not his own work; and K. F. Hermann thought it derived from the treatise by Celsus. Ganschinietz, in Harnack’s Texte wnd Untersuchungen 39, 2, has disputed this, but upon grounds that are not convincing. His commentary, however, is valuable.