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32. Nor can we exclude from this kind of superstition those who were
called genethliaci, on account of their attention to birthdays, but
are now commonly called mathematici. For these, too, although they
may seek with pains for the true position of the stars at the time of
our birth, and may sometimes even find it out, yet in so far as they
attempt thence to predict our actions, or the consequences of our
actions, grievously err, and sell inexperienced men into a miserable
bondage. For when any freeman goes to an as trologer of this kind, he
gives money that he may come away the slave either of Mars or of
Venus, or rather, perhaps, of all the stars to which those who first
fell into this error, and handed it on to posterity, have given the
names either of beasts on account of their likeness to beasts, or of
men with a view to confer honor on those men. And this is not to be
wondered at, when we consider that even in times more recent and nearer
our own, the Romans made an attempt to dedicate the star which we call
Lucifer to the name and honor of Caesar. And this would, perhaps,
have been done, and the name handed down to distant ages, only that
his ancestress Venus had given her name to this star before him, and
could not by any law transfer to her heirs what she had never
possessed, nor sought to possess, in life. For where a place was
vacant, or not held in honor of any of the dead of former times, the
usual proceeding in such cases was carried out. For example, we have
changed the names of the months Quintilis and Sextilis to July and
August, naming them in honor of the men Julius Caesar and Augustus
Caesar; and from this instance any one who cares can easily see that
the stars spoken of above formerly wandered in the heavens without the
names they now bear. But as the men were dead whose memory people were
either compelled by royal power or impelled by human folly to honor,
they seemed to think that in putting their names upon the stars they
were raising the dead men themselves to heaven. But whatever they may
be called by men, still there are stars which God has made and set in
order after His own pleasure, and they have a fixed movement, by
which the seasons are distinguished and varied. And when any one is
born, it is easy to observe the point at which this movement has
arrived, by use of the rules discovered and laid down by those who are
rebuked by Holy Writ in these terms: "For if they were able to know
so much that they could weigh the world, how did they not more easily
find out the Lord thereof?"
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