their predictions will eventuate in inexplicable difficulties. For if, as the mathematicians assert, it is necessary that one born under the barb of Sagittarius' arrow should meet with a violent death, how was it that so may myriads of the barbarians that fought with the Greeks at Marathon or Salamis[1] were simultaneously slaughtered? For unquestionably there was not the same horoscope in the case, at all events, of them all. And again, it is said that one born under the urn of Aquarius will suffer shipwreck: [yet] how is it that so many[2] of the Greeks that returned from Troy were overwhelmed in the deep around the indented shores of Eubœa? For it is incredible that all, distant from one another by a long interval of duration, should have been born under the urn of Aquarius. For it is not reasonable to say, that frequently, for one whose fate it was to be destroyed in the sea, all who were with him in the same vessel should perish. For why should the doom of this man subdue the [destinies] of all? Nay, but why, on account of one for whom it was allotted to die on land, should not all be preserved?
Chapter vi.
Zodiacal Influence—Origin of Sidereal Names.
But since also they frame an account concerning the action of the zodiacal signs, to which they say the creatures that are procreated are assimilated,[3] neither shall we omit this: as,
- ↑ Omitted by Sextus.
- ↑ The Abbe Cruice observes, in regard of some verbal difference here in the text from that of Sextus, that the ms. of The Refutation was probably executed by one who heard the extracts from other writers read to him, and frequently mistook the sound. The transcriber of the ms. was one Michael, as we learn from a marginal note at the end.
- ↑ This was the great doctrine of astrology, the forerunner of the science of astronomy. Astrology seems to have arisen first among the Chaldæans, out of the fundamental principle of their religion—the assimilation of the divine nature to light. This tenet introduced another, the worship of the stars, which was developed into astrology. Others suppose astrology to have been of Arabian or Egyptian origin. From some of these sources it reached the Greeks, and through them the Romans, who held the astrologic art in high repute. The art, after
