This treatise concerneth heaven and the stars, yet
not the stars themselves nor heaven itself, but the
auspiciall verity that from them assuredly entereth
into the life of man. My discourse containeth not
counsell, nor proffereth instruction how to ply this
auspiciall art, but my aim is to chide those learned
men who cultivate and expose unto their disciples all
other studies, but neither esteem nor cultivate
astrology.
 
Although the science is ancient, not come
to us newly, but the creation of divinely favoured
kings of antiquity, yet men of these daies, through
ignorance, supinity, and mislike of labour, hold
opinions repugnant unto theirs, and when they
encounter men that make false prognostickes, they
impeach the stars and contemne astrology itself,
which they consider neither sound nor veridicall but a
vain and idle fiction; wherein, as I think, the
judge unjustly. For a wright’s unskillfullness
argueth not the wright’s art in error, nor a piper’s
untunefullness the art of musick devoid of sense.
Rather are they ignorant of their arts, and each of
these in itself rationall. For the argument, cf. The Dance, 80. 


 
 
It was the Aethiopians that first delivered this
doctrine unto men. The ground thereof was in part
the wisdom of that nation, the Aethiopians being in
all else wiser than all men; but in part also the
benignity of their clime, since clear skyes and calm
weather ever invest them, and they are not subjected
to the vicissitudes of the yeere, but live in onely one
season. In Lucian’s day current theory ascribed the origin of astronomy to the Egyptians. We must applaud his insight in favo the Ethiopians, since Diodorus (III, 2,1; doubtless on good authority) records that they were the first men, that they first taught people to worship the gods, that the Egyptians were their colonists, and that most of the Egyptian institutions were Ethiopian. And if, as we read in the Platonic Epinomis and in Macrobius (Comm. in Cic. Somn. Scip., I, 21, 9), the climate of Egypt is conducive to the study of the heavens, that of Ethiopia, naturally, would be far more so. Therefore when they discerned, first of all,
that the moon hath not perpetually the same appearance, but carrieth a various aspect and changeth into
divers figures, they accounted the thing good reason
for wonder and empuzzlement. In consequence they
sought and found the cause thereof, that the lustre
of the moon is not her own but cometh to her from the
sun.
 
And they determined also the course of the
other stars, which we call planets or wanderers
because they alone of all the stars do move; also
their nature and potency, and the works that are
brought to pass by each of them. Also, they
ascribed names unto them, that yet were not
names, as they seemed, but symboles.
 

All which the Aethiopians observed in the skye,
and afterwards they transmitted their doctrine
incompleat to the Aegyptians. And the Aegyptians,
deriving from them the auspiciall art but half consummated, advanced it; and they indicated the
measure of each planet’s motion, and determined
the numericall extension of yeares and moneths and
hours. The moneths they measured by the moon



 

and her cycle, the year by the sun and his revolution.