If Pliny thus leaves us uncertain as to the relation of man to the stars, we also receive conflicting impressions from his discussion of various celestial phenomena regarded as portentous. In one passage he speaks of the debt of gratitude owed by mankind to those great astronomical geniuses who have freed men from their former superstitious fear of eclipses.[451] But he explains thunderbolts as celestial fire vomited forth from the planet Venus and “bearing omens of the future.”[452] He also gives instances from Roman history of comets which signaled disaster, and he expounds the theory of their signifying the future.[453] What they portend may be determined from the direction in which they move and the heavenly body whose power they receive, and more particularly from the shapes they assume and their position in relation to the signs of the zodiac. Indeed, Pliny even gives examples of ominous eclipses of the sun, although it is true that they were also of unusual length.[454] He also tells us that many of the common people still believed that women could produce eclipses “by sorceries and herbs.”[455]
The stars and the world of nature.
Aside from the question of the control of human destiny by the constellations at birth, Pliny’s general theories of the universe and of the influence of the stars upon terrestrial nature are roughly similar to those of astrology. For him the universe itself is God, “holy, eternal, vast, all in all, nay, in truth itself all;”[456] and the sun is the mind and soul of the whole world and the chief governor of nature.[457] The planets affect one another. A cold star renders another approaching it pale; a hot star causes its neighbor to redden; a windy planet gives those near it a lowering appearance.[458] At certain points in their orbits the planets are deflected from their regular course by the rays of the sun,—an unwitting concession to heliocentric theory.[459] Pliny ascribes the usual astrological qualities to the planets.[460] Saturn is cold and rigid; Mars, a flaming fire; Jupiter, located between them, is temperate and salubrious. Besides their effects upon one another, the planets especially influence the earth.[461] Venus, for instance, rules the process of generation in all terrestrial beings.[462] Following the Georgics of Vergil somewhat, Pliny asserts that the stars give indubitable signs of the weather and expounds the utility of the constellations to farmers.[463] He tells how Democritus by his knowledge of astronomy was able to corner the olive crop and put to shame business men who had been decrying philosophy;[464] and how on another occasion he gave his brother timely warning of an impending storm.[465] But Pliny does not accept all the theories of the astrologers as to control of the stars over terrestrial nature. He repeats, but without definitely accepting it, the ascription by the Babylonians of earthquakes to three of the planets in particular,[466] and the notion that the gem sandastros or garamantica, employed by Chaldeans in their ceremonies, is intimately connected with the stars.[467] He is openly incredulous about the gem glossopetra, shaped like a human tongue and supposed to fall from the sky during an eclipse of the moon and to be invaluable in selenomancy.[468]
Astrological medicine.
Pliny tells how the physician Crinas of Marseilles made a fortune by regulating diet and observing hours according to the motion of the stars.[469] But he does not show much faith in astrological medicine himself, rejecting entirely the elaborate classification of diseases and remedies which the astrologers had by his time already worked out for the revolutions of the sun and moon in the twelve signs of the zodiac.[470] In his own recipes, however, astrological considerations are sometimes observed, as we have already seen, especially the rising of the dog-star and the phases of the moon. Pliny, indeed, states that the dog-star exerts an extensive influence upon the earth.[471] As for the moon, the blood in the human body augments and decreases with its waxing and waning as shell-fish and other things in nature do.[472] Indeed, painstaking men of research had discovered that even the entrails of the field-mouse corresponded in number to the days of the moon, that the ant stopped working during the interlunar days, and that diseases of the eyes of certain beasts of burden also increased and decreased with the moon.[473] But on the whole Pliny’s medicine and science do not seem nearly so immersed in and saturated with astrology as with other forms of magic. This gap was for the middle ages amply filled by the authority of Ptolemy, of whose belief in astrology we shall treat in the next chapter.
Conclusion: magic unity of Pliny’s superstitions.
We have tried to analyze the contents of the Natural History, bringing out certain main divisions and underlying principles of magic in Pliny’s agriculture, medicine, and natural science. This is, however, an artificial and difficult task, since it is not easy to sever materials from ceremonial or the virtues of objects from the relations of sympathy or antipathy between them. Often the same passage might serve to illustrate several points. Take for example the following sentence: “Thrasyllus is authority that nothing is so hostile to serpents as crabs; swine who are stung cure themselves by this food, and when the sun is in Cancer, serpents are in pain.”[474] Here we have at once antipathy, the remedies used by animals, the reasoning, characteristic of magic, from association and similarity, and the belief in astrology. And this confusion, to illustrate which a hundred other examples might be collected from the Natural History, demonstrates how indissolubly interwoven are all the varied threads that we have been tracing. They all go naturally together, they belong to the same long period of thought, they represent the same stage in mental development, they all are parts of magic.
CHAPTER III
SENECA AND PTOLEMY: NATURAL DIVINATION AND ASTROLOGY
Seneca’s Natural Questions—Nature study as an ethical substitute for existing religion—Limited field of Seneca’s work—Marvels accepted, questioned, or denied—Belief in natural divination and astrology—Divination from thunder—Ptolemy—His two chief works—His mathematical method—Attitude towards authority and observation—The Optics—Medieval translations of Almagest—Tetrabiblos or Quadripartitum—A genuine reflection of Ptolemy’s approval of astrology—Validity of Astrology—Influence of the stars not inevitable—Astrology as natural science—Properties of the planets—Remaining contents of Book One—Book Two: regions—Nativities—Future influence of the Tetrabiblos.
“When the stars twinkle through the loops of time.”