~ 33 ~
about A.D. 60[1]. By far the best known episode in this earliest of novels is the story of the evening spent in feasting at the house of the rich but vulgar parvenu Trimalchio in Naples. On one of Trimalchio's doorposts was fixed a tablet 'shewing the courses of the Moon and paintings of the Seven Stars and different marks to shew what days were lucky and what unlucky.' Here the 'Seven Stars' are clearly the seven planets, but it is not stated that they were in week-order. The only suggestion of a week comes in the words 'what days were lucky or unlucky,' and this may quite well refer to the days of the month. Even if we insist on connecting them with the 'Seven Stars,' they may be astrological in the proper sense and refer to the various combinations or positions of the planets on particular days. We know that calendars of this kind existed and were used even by astrologically-minded doctors in dieting their patients. And if it be objected that it would be difficult to represent these in a single tablet on Trimalchio's door, we have to remember the licence of the novelist who did not have to construct the tablet in actual fact. If the words are taken, as is no doubt quite possible, of the week, we may see in them a confirmation of the view which on other grounds seems probable that it was among the vulgar rather than the educated that the week originally obtained its currency.
- ↑ Sat. 30.
