And they devised other inventions much greater than
these. For they divided the entire skye and the
other stars that are inerrant and fixed, and do never
move, into twelve segments for such as move: which
they styled “houses,” although they resemble living
creatures, each patterned after the figure of a
different kind, whereof some are sea-monsters, some
humans, some wild beasts, some volatiles, some
juments.
 
For this reason, indeed, the Aegyptian deities are
portrayed in various aspects. In accrediting the invention of the signs of the Zodiac to the Egyptians, our author is at one with his contemporaries (cf. Macrobius, loc. cit.), but in deriving from these signs the animal forms of the Egyptian gods, and in connecting the fishtaboo in that country with the constellation Pisces he presents the results of original research. For it is not to be
supposed that all Aegyptians were wont to draw
prognosticks from all the twelve signs; but some
had one sign in use, others another. The ram is
reverenced by those who looked up unto Aries, fish
is not eaten by those who attached signality unto
Pisces, the goat is not slain by those who had knowledge of Capricorn, and the other creatures are
severally venerated by other folk. Assuredly the
bull too is adored in honour of the celestial Taurus,
and Apis, esteemed by them an object of the uttermost sanctity, depastureth their land, and they that
inhabit it vouchsafe him an oracle in token of the
auspiciality of Taurus.
 
Not long after, the Libyans also espoused the
science; for the Libyan oracle of Ammon was founded
in regard of the heavens and his knowledge thereof;


 

whence they represent Ammon with a ram’s head.
 
And the Babylonians came to know all these things,
even before the others, as they themselves say; but
I think that the science reached them long afterward. In the Goddesse of Surrye (2) Lucian is similarly minded as to Babylonian claims of priority in religion; and in the Runaways Philosophy goes successively to India, Ethiopia, Egypt, Babylon, and Greece.