Astrology (22-25)

’Tis chiefly from the verses of Homer the poet and of Hesiod that we may learn that antiquity holdeth with the astrologers. When he describeth the chain of Jupiter[*] and the kine of the Sun, which I con-

Nay, be it thine to control the delightsome duties of wedlock,

These shall all be the care of impetuous Mars and Minerva.

Discerning all these things, the ancients had divination in very great use and counted it no parergy, but would found no cities, invest themselves with no ramparts, slay no men, wed no women, untill they had been advised in all particulars by diviners. And certainly their oracles were not aloof from astrology, but at Delphi a virgin hath the office of prophet in token of the celestial Virgin, and a serpent giveth voice beneath the tripod because a Serpent giveth light among the stars, and at Didymi also the oracle of Apollo hath its name, methinks, from the heavenly Twins.[*]

So firmly did they believe divination a thing most sacred, that when Ulysses, wearied of wandering, took a phansie to learn the truth as touching his affaires, he went off unto Hell, not “to behold dead men and a land that is joyless,”[*] but because he would come to speech with Tiresias. And when he was come to the place whereunto Circe directed him, and had dug his pit and slain his sheep, although many dead that were by, and amongst them his own mother, were fain to drink of the blood, he suffered none of them, not even his very mother, until he had wet the throstle of Tiresias and constrained him to deliver the prophecy, verily enduring to behold his mother’s shadow athirst.

For the Spartans, Lycurgus drew from the skye his ordering of their whole polity and made it their law never to leave their country, even to go to the wars, before the moon should be at her full, for he conceited that the potency of the moon is not the same when she waxeth and when she waneth, and that all things are subject unto her sway.