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Do not those very persons whom the medical sagacity of Hippocrates led
him to suspect to be twins, because their disease was observed by him
to develop to its crisis and to subside again in the same time in each
of them, do not these, I say, serve as a sufficient refutation of
those who wish to attribute to the influence of the stars that which was
owing to a similarity of bodily constitution? For wherefore were they
both sick of the same disease, and at the same time, and not the one
after the other in the order of their birth? (for certainly they could
not both be born at the same time.) Or, if the fact of their having
been born at different times by no means necessarily implies that they
must be sick at different times, why do they contend that the
difference in the time of their births was the cause of their difference
in other things? Why could they travel in foreign parts at different
times, marry at different times, beget children at different times,
and do many other things at different times, by reason of their having
been born at different times, and yet could not, for the same reason,
also be sick at different times? For if a difference in the moment of
birth changed the horoscope, and occasioned dissimilarity in all other
things, why has that simultaneousness which belonged to their
conception remained in their attacks of sickness? Or, if the
destinies of health are involved in the time of conception, but those
of other things be said to be attached to the time of birth, they ought
not to predict anything concerning health from examination of the
constellations of birth, when the hour of conception is not also
given, that its constellations may be inspected. But if they say that
they predict attacks of sickness without examining the horoscope of
conception, because these are indicated by the moments of birth, how
could they inform either of these twins when he would be sick, from the
horoscope of his birth, when the other also, who had not the same
horoscope of birth, must of necessity fall sick at the same time?
Again, I ask, if the distance of time between the births of twins is
so great as to occasion a difference of their constellations on account
of the difference of their horoscopes, and therefore of all the
cardinal points to which so much influence is attributed, that even
from such change there comes a difference of destiny, how is it
possible that this should be so, since they cannot have been conceived
at different times? Or, if two conceived at the same moment of time
could have different destinies with respect to their births, why may
not also two born at the same moment of time have different destinies
for life and for death? For if the one moment in which both were
conceived did not hinder that the one should be born before the other,
why, if two are born at the same moment, should anything hinder them
from dying at the same moment? If a simultaneous conception allows of
twins being differently affected in the womb, why should not
simultaneousness of birth allow of any two individuals having different
fortunes in the world? and thus would all the fictions of this art, or
rather delusion, be swept away. What strange circumstance is this,
that two children conceived at the same time, nay, at the same
moment, under the same position of the stars, have different fates
which bring them to different hours of birth, whilst two children,
born of two different mothers, at the same moment of time, under one
and the same position of the stars, cannot have different fates which
shall conduct them by necessity to diverse manners of life and of
death? Are they at conception as yet without destinies, because they
can only have them if they be born? What, therefore, do they mean
when they say that, if the hour of the conception be found, many
things can be predicted by these astrologers? from which also arose
that story which is reiterated by some, that a certain sage chose an
hour in which to lie with his wife, in order to secure his begetting an
illustrious son. From this opinion also came that answer of
Posidonius, the great astrologer and also philosopher, concerning
those twins who were attacked with sickness at the same time, namely,
"That this had happened to them because they were conceived at the
same time, and born at the same time." For certainly he added
"conception," lest it should be said to him that they could not both
be born at the same time, knowing that at any rate they must both have
been conceived at the same time; wishing thus to show that he did not
attribute the fact of their being similarly and simultaneously affected
with sickness to the similarity of their bodily constitutions as its
proximate cause, but that he held that even in respect of the
similarity of their health, they were bound together by a sidereal
connection. If, therefore, the time of conception has so much to do
with the similarity of destinies, these same destinies ought not to be
changed by the circumstances of birth; or, if the destinies of twins
be said to be changed because they are born at different times, why
should we not rather understand that they had been already changed in
order that they might be born at different times? Does not, then,
the will of men living in the world change the destinies of birth, when
the order of birth can change the destinies they had at conception?
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