758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The two weeks preceding the plenilunium suggest the prime of life, 

 when things in general progress favorably, while the subsequent half 

 months correspond to the age of declining strength and general retro- 

 gression. The haruspices augured on the principle that a bird's flight 

 from left to right was a favorable omen things were going the right 

 way, while by the laws of consistency the opposite direction suggested 

 adverse tendencies. Birds, as creatures of the air, seemed the fittest 

 messengers of the gods, who had a way of imparting their revelations 

 by symbols, and might be supposed to choose the beginning of an un- 

 lucky enterprise as the best time for warning* their favorites : When 

 Conradin of Ilohenstauffen set out for that fatal campaign that ended 

 on the scaffold of Naples, his horse refused to cross the Arno Bridge, 

 and an old citizen adjured him to turn back, but he dismounted and 

 led his horse across. " It means that we are going to prevail afoot,'''' 

 he laughed, alluding to the preponderance of his infantry force. A 

 year before the invasion of the Saracens, King Roderic saw their 

 horses and riders in a dream ; and Appolonius of Tyana foresaw even 

 the great aphanasia, the fifteen hundred years' eclipse of common 

 sense and reason. " Woe be to our children ! " he exclaimed, on 

 awakening from a trance ; " I see a shadow approaching ; a great 

 darkness is going to cover this world." 



After the analogy of great natural catastrophes, events of national 

 importance were supposed to cast premonitory shadows, and in nearly 

 every country on earth the myth-making faculty of the people has 

 accordingly supplied a set of portents for every momentous incident 

 of their history. Tacitus records a due number of obituary prodigies 

 for every one of his Caesars. The battle of Adrianople, where the 

 clubs of the Visigoths broke the power of the Roman Empire, was 

 foretold by an augur who had seen a portentous cloud approaching 

 from the east in the teeth of a strong west wind. The conquest of 

 Mexico was the fulfillment of an omen that had plainly warned the 

 natives of their impending fate. In the night when Abderrahman el 

 Hakim died, shooting-stars showered down as if they were going to 

 set the earth afire. The tyrant Polycrates of Samos was born during 

 an earthquake that shook the foundations of the island. Before the 

 birth of Buddha Sakyamuni the Ganges flowed back to its source, 

 flowers sprouted in desert places, a sound of music rung through the 

 air, corpses left their tombs, and a new star appeared. A new star 

 appeared also after the murder of Julius Caesar, and certainly after the 

 death of Antinous, for the Emperor Hadrian ordered it to be wor- 

 shiped as the transfigured spirit of his favorite. 



The rationale of the superior luckiness of odd numbers is less ob- 

 vious, but they were certainly the favorite numbers of the Gnostics 

 and of all mythological systems. The three Graces, three Fates, three 

 Furies, three Judges of the dead, and three-headed hell-hounds appear 

 as mystical as the Indian Trimurti and its derivatives. The seven 



