ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC.
When we consider the absolute authority that astrology exercised under the Roman empire, we find it hard to escape a feeling of surprise. It is difficult to think that people could ever consider astrology as the most valuable of all arts and the queen of sciences,[[1]] and it is not easy for us to imagine the moral conditions that made such a phenomenon possible, because our state of mind to-day is very different. Little by little the conviction has gained ground that all that can be known about the future, at least the future of man and of human society, is conjecture. The progress of knowledge has taught man to acquiesce in his ignorance.
In former ages it was different: forebodings and predictions found universal credence. The ancient forms of divination, however, had fallen somewhat into disrepute at the beginning of our era, like the rest of the Greco-Roman religion. It was no longer thought that the eagerness or reluctance with which the sacred hens ate their paste, or the direction of the flight of the birds indicated coming success or disaster. Abandoned, the Hellenic oracles were silent. Then appeared astrology, surrounded with all the prestige of an exact science, and based upon the experience of many centuries. It promised to ascertain the
occurrences of any one's life with as much precision as the date of an eclipse. The world was drawn towards it by an irresistible attraction. Astrology did away with, and gradually relegated to oblivion, all the ancient methods that had been devised to solve the enigmas of the future. Haruspicy and the augural art were abandoned, and not even the ancient fame of the oracles could save them from falling into irretrievable desuetude. This great chimera changed religion as well as divination, its spirit penetrated everything. And truly, if, as some scholars still hold, the main feature of science is the ability to predict,[[2]] no branch of learning could compare with this one, nor escape its influence.
The success of astrology was connected with that of the Oriental religions, which lent it their support, as it in turn helped them. We have seen how it forced itself upon Semitic paganism, how it transformed Persian Mazdaism and even subdued the arrogance of the Egyptian sacerdotal caste.[[3]] Certain mystical treatises ascribed to the old Pharaoh Nechepso and his confidant, the priest Petosiris, nebulous and abstruse works that became, one might say, the Bible of the new belief in the power of the stars, were translated into Greek, undoubtedly in Alexandria, about the year 150 before our era.[[4]] About the same time the Chaldean genethlialogy began to spread in Italy, with regard to which Berosus, a priest of the god Baal, who came to Babylon from the island of Cos, had previously succeeded in arousing the curiosity of the Greeks. In 139 a prætor expelled the "Chaldaei" from Rome, together with the Jews. But all the adherents of the Syrian goddess, of whom there was quite a number in the Occident, were patrons and defenders of these Oriental
prophets, and police measures were no more successful in stopping the diffusion of their doctrines, than in the case of the Asiatic mysteries. In the time of Pompey, the senator Nigidius Figulus, who was an ardent occultist, expounded the barbarian uranography in Latin. But the scholar whose authority contributed most to the final acceptance of sidereal divination was a Syrian philosopher of encyclopedic knowledge, Posidonius of Apamea, the teacher of Cicero.[[5]] The works of that erudite and religious writer influenced the development of the entire Roman theology more than anything else.
Under the empire, while the Semitic Baals and Mithra were triumphing, astrology manifested its power everywhere. During that period everybody bowed to it. The Cæsars became its fervent devotees, frequently at the expense of the ancient cults. Tiberius neglected the gods because he believed only in fatalism,[[6]] and Otho, blindly confiding in the Oriental seer, marched against Vitellius in spite of the baneful presages that affrighted his official clergy.[[7]] The most earnest scholars, Ptolemy under the Antonines for instance, expounded the principles of that pseudo-science, and the very best minds received them. In fact, scarcely anybody made a distinction between astronomy and its illegitimate sister. Literature took up this new and difficult subject, and, as early as the time of Augustus or Tiberius, Manilius, inspired by the sidereal fatalism, endeavored to make poetry of that dry "mathematics," as Lucretius, his forerunner, had done with the Epicurean atomism. Even art looked there for inspiration and depicted the stellar deities. At Rome and in the provinces architects erected sumptuous septizonia in the likeness of
the seven spheres in which the planets that rule our destinies move.[[8]] This Asiatic divination was first aristocratic[[9]]—because the obtaining of an exact horoscope was a complicated matter, and consultations were expensive—but it promptly became popular, especially in the urban centers where Oriental slaves gathered in large numbers. The learned genethlialogers of the observatories had unlicensed colleagues, who told fortunes at street-crossings or in barnyards. Even common epitaphs, which Rossi styles "the scum of inscriptions," have retained traces of that belief. The custom arose of stating in epitaphs the exact length of a life to the very hour, for the moment of birth determined that of death:
Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet.[[10]]
Soon neither important nor small matters were undertaken without consulting the astrologer. His previsions were sought not only in regard to great public events like the conduct of a war, the founding of a city, or the accession of a ruler, not only in case of a marriage, a journey, or a change of domicile; but the most trifling acts of every-day life were gravely submitted to his sagacity. People would no longer take a bath, go to the barber, change their clothes or manicure their fingernails, without first awaiting the propitious moment.[[11]] The collections of "initiatives" (καταρχαί) that have come to us contain questions that make us smile: Will a son who is about to be born have a big nose? Will a girl just coming into this world have gallant adventures?[[12]] And certain precepts sound almost like burlesques: he who gets his hair cut while