lius, since Favorinus was fond of writing such essays as Eulogies of Thersites and of Quartan Fever. There is no particular reason for doubting Sextus's seriousness, but, besides being a medical man, he was a member of the sceptical school of philosophy, a circumstance which warns one not to attribute too much emphasis to his attack on astrology. Indeed, the attack occurs in a work directed against learning in general, in which he assails grammarians, rhetoricians, geometricians, arithmeticians, students of music, logicians, "physicists," and students of ethics as well as astrologers. Cicero was not prone to such sweeping scepticism or sophistry, but the force of his opposition to astrology is somewhat neutralized by the fact that in his Dream of Scipio he apparently attributes to planets influence over man.
Now as to their arguments. We have spoken of their "attack on astrology," but in reality they can scarcely be said to attack astrology as a whole. Indeed, it is the doctrines of the Chaldeans which Cicero makes the object of his assault; he says nothing about astrology. Favorinus will not even admit that he attacks the "disciplina Chaldaeorum" in any true sense, but affirms that the Chaldeans were not the authors of such theories at all, but that these have originated of late among traveling fakirs who beg their bread by means of such deceits and trickeries.[1] Some of the arguments of our sceptics are really directed merely
- ↑ "Disciplinam istam Chaldaeorum tantae vetustatis non esse, quantae videri volunt; neque eos principes eius auctoresque esse, quos ipsi ferant: sed id praestigiarum atque offuciarum genus commentos esse homines aeruscatores, et cibum quaestumque ex mendaciis captantes." Noctes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. 1, sect. 2.
Delphin edition expresses preference in place of the words "exercendine autem, anne ostentendi" for the shorter reading "exercendi autem, non ostentandi"—which reading is adopted by Hertz in his edition of the year, 1885.
