' Poggio also believes in a battle of magpies and jackdaws. He even
relates, perhaps without being aware of it, a well-preserved piece of
ancient mythology. On the Dalmatian coast a Triton had appeared,
bearded and horned, a genuine sea-satyr, ending in fins and a tail; he
carried away women and children from the shore, till five stout-hearted
washerwomen killed him with sticks and stones. A wooden model of the
monster, which was exhibited at Ferrara, makes the whole story credible
to Poggio. Though there were no more oracles, and it was no longer
possible to take counsel of the gods, yet it became again the fashion
to open Virgil at hazard, and take the passage hit upon as an omen
('Sorted Virgilianae'). Nor can the belief in daemons current in the
later period of antiquity have been without influence on the
Renaissance. The work of Iamblichus or Abarnmon on the Mysteries of the
Egyptians, which may have contributed to this result, was printed in a
Latin translation at the end of the fifteenth century. The Platonic
Academy at Florence was not free from these and other neoplatonic
delusions of the Roman decadence. A 'few words must here be given to
the belief in demons and to the magic which was connected with this
belief.
The popular faith in what is called the spirit-world was nearly the
same in Italy as elsewhere in Europe.
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