omy, that no one consults them concerning philosophic problems or ethical questions, that they can give us no light on the problems of the natural universe, and that they are of no service in logic, dialectic or political science.[1] Such would be the ideal condition, but in practice, as we have seen much reason to believe, divination, at least in the broad sense, was confused with science and with other subjects to no small extent both under the Empire and in the Middle Ages. A doctor might be something of a diviner as well: the astrologer was skilled in astronomy; "mathematicus" came within a short time after Cicero's own day to be the word regularly used to denote a soothsayer;[2] Pierre du Bois and Bodin found astrology an aid to political science.
Cicero, however, went further than the assertion that divination had no connection with science and declared that it was contrary to science. Such a figment, he scornfully affirmed, as that the heart will vanish from a corpse for one man's benefit and remain in the body to suit the future of another, was not believed even by old wives now-a-days.[3] Nay more, he asked, how can the heart vanish from the body? Surely it must be there while life lasts, and can it disappear in an instant?
Believe me, you are abandoning the citadel of philosophy while you defend its outposts. For in your effort to prove soothsaying true you utterly pervert physiology. . . . For there will be something which either springs from nothing or suddenly vanishes into nothingness. What scientist ever said that? The soothsayers say so? Are they then, do you think, to be trusted rather than scientists?[4]
Cicero does not think they are.
