[176]. Bk. vii, ch. 30. “Egregie Aristoteles ait, numquam nos verecundiores esse debere, quam quum de diis agitur. Si intramus templa compositi, si ad sacrificium accesuri vultum submittimus, togam adducimus, si in omne argumentum modestiae fingimur; quanto hoc magis facere debemus, quum de sideribus, de stellis, de deorum natura disputamus, ne quid temere, ne quid impudenter, aut ignorantes affirmemus, aut scientes mentiamur?”
[177]. Bk. ii, ch. 10.
[178]. Bk. vii, ch. 28. “Chaldean” was often used to denote an astrologer without reference to the person’s nationality.
[179]. Bk. ii, ch. 32. “Quinque stellarum potestatem Chaldaeorum observatio excepit. Quid tu? tot millia siderum judicas otiosa lucere? Quid est porro aliud, quod errorem incutiat peritis natalium, quam quod paucis nos sideribus assignant: quum omnia quae supra nos sunt, partem sibi nostri vindicent? Submissiora forsitan in nos propius vim suam dirigunt; et ea quae frequentius mota aliter nos, aliter cetera animalia prospiciunt. Ceterum et illa quae aut immota sunt, aut propter velocitatem universo mundo parem immotis similia, non extra ius dominiumque nostri sunt. Aliud aspice et distributis rem officiis tractas. Non magis autem facile est scire quid possint, quam dubitari debet, an possint.”
[180]. Bk. iii, ch. 29.
[181]. Bk. ii, ch. 32. Seneca has been describing other manifestations of the “divina et subtilis potentia” of thunderbolts; he proceeds, “Quid, quod futura portendunt: nec unius tantum aut alterius rei signa dant, sed saepe totum fatorum sequentium ordinem nuntiant, et quidem decretis evidentibus, longeque clarioribus, quam si scriberentur?”
[182]. His discussion of divination by thunderbolts is contained in bk. ii, ch. 31–50.
[183]. The edition of the Tetrabiblos which I used is that by Philip Melanchthon, 1553. It gives the Greek text, a Latin translation and an introduction of interest, in which Melanchthon affirms his own more modest trust in astrology.
Two other treatises of considerable length setting forth the principles of astrology and which have come down to us from the Roman Empire, are a poem consisting of five books of about 900 lines each by Manilius, probably of the Augustan age; and a prose treatise in eight books, and apparently left unfinished, by Firmicus who was a Neo-Platonist of about 350 A. D. M. Manilii Astronomicon, London, 1828, Delphin edition. Iulii Firmici Materni Matheseos Libri VIII, (ediderunt W. Kroll et K. Skutsch, Lipsiae, 1897, 2 vols., Teubner edition). The essay on astrology purporting to be by Lucian is probably spurious.
[184]. “C’était la capitulation de la science.” Rev. Hist., vol. lxv, p. 257, note 3.