652 JASTKOW— HEPATOSCOPY AND ASTROLOGY [December 4 



elusion that the diviners were far removed from resorting to decep- 

 tion and to tricky devices such as are reported of augurs among 

 Greeks and Romans. ^^ Indeed the mere circumstance that hepatos- 

 copy prevailed uninterruptedly from the earliest to the latest periods, 

 and that on all important occasions it was resorted to as the official 

 means of ascertaining the will and intentions of the gods, is a testi- 

 mony to the conscientious manner in which the priests must have 

 carried out their tasks. 



In passing from hepatoscopy to astrology — the term always used 

 in the larger sense above pointed out^^ — we pass also from the do- 

 main of popular and to a large extent primitive beliefs to a domain 

 of speculation that in comparison justly merits the designation 

 scientific. Astrology in Babylonia and Assyria rests on the identi- 

 fication of the heavenly bodies with the gods of the pantheon. While 

 in the case of the personification of the sun and moon as deities we 

 are still within the province of popular and primitive conceptions, 

 we pass beyond this province in the extension of such personifica- 

 tion to the planets and stars. It lies in the nature of animism, which 

 is certainly to be regarded as a stage in the development of religious 

 beliefs, even if it is not admitted to be the starting-point of such 

 development, not to distinguish sharply between the manifestation 

 of a personified power and the seat of that power. The sun is at 

 once the sun-god and the seat of that god ; and the same applies to 

 the moon. Both, accordingly, have their places in the heavens. 

 Storms, rains, thunder and lightning likewise come from the heavens 

 and hence the gods representing the personification of these powers 

 also have their seats in the heavens. Such conceptions are a 

 direct outcome of popular and primitive methods of thought, and we 

 may perhaps go a step farther and assume that by analogy other 

 powers whose manifestations proceeded from a hidden source were 

 assigned to the heavens, but this step is far removed from the identi- 

 fication of all the stars with deities and still farther from projecting 



" See, e. g., the anecdotes related by Polyasnus, " Strategicon," IV., 20, 

 and Frontinus, " Strategematicon," I., XL, 15. Compare also Hippolytus, 

 Refutatio, IV., 40. 



'^ The earliest reference occurs in the inscriptions of Gudea (c. 2500 

 B. C), the latest in the inscriptions of Nabonidus, the last king of Baby- 

 lonia. See Jastrow, o. c, II., p. 273 and 247 seq. 



^^ Sec above, p. 647. 



