’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 Homer, in the Iliad, VIII, 18-26: Zeus, boasting of his strength, says that if a golden “chain should be let down from heaven and all the other gods and ni agi should lay hold of it, they could not pull him down, but he could pull them up, along with the earth and the sea, fasten the chain about the peak of Olympus, and leave everything hanging. Socrates in the Theaetetus, 153A, says that by the golden chain Homer means nothing else than the sun; others, according to Hysteria (695, 9), took him to mean the orbits of the planets. and the kine of the Sun, which I con-



 

ceive to be daies, Odyssey, XI, 104 ff.; XII, 260 ff. and the cities that Vulcan made
upon the shield, and the choir, and the vineyard Iliad, XVII, 490 (the cities); 561 (the vineyard); 590 (the chorus). Following these words there appears to be a break in the text which very probably has deprived us of Lucian’s allegorical explanation. It is easy to see that the chorus would be the planetary song and dance (cf. Dance, § 7), but the astronomical significance of the cities and the vineyard is just a bit obscure. ...
All that he hath said of Venus and of Mars his
passion, is also manifestly composed from no other
source than this science. Indeed, it is the conjunction of Venus and Mars that createth the poetry of
Homer. And in other verses he distinguished the
duties of each, saying unto Venus,


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


and anent those of warfare,

 These shall all be the care of impetuous Mars and
Minerva. Iliad, V, 429, 430. 
 
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. Modern philology soberly rejects the happy thought that Didyma (Dids i) owes its name to the constellation Didymi (Gemini), and explains that the name is Carian, like Idyma, Sidyma, Loryma, etc. (Birchner, in Pauly-Wissowa, 3.v.). 





 
 
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,” Odyssey, XI, 94. 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.