ASTROLOGY. 
G7l 
inquisitive vvilli abundance. He may reau of lambs with pigs’ heads, 
and pigs with human faces, (xxvii. 4.) a wonder which in our own time has 
been reversed ; of weeping images, and bleeding springs, of perspiring 
gods, and triple-headed donkeys ; of armed men and fleets in the 
skies ; of showers of blood, or stones, or flesh, or milk, or chalk ; of 
the mutual tranformation of cocks into hens, and hens into cocks; of 
the shouts of unborn infants foretelling victory from the womb ; of dou- 
ble moons, and triple suns; of burning seas, and fish turned up by the. 
ploughshare; of hermaphrodites ; of children eyeless, noseless, single- 
handed, or elephant-headed ; of flying stones and sweating shields; 
of gore-dropping wheat-sheafs ; of inundations, storms, earthquakes, 
and eclipses. Each and all of these had its peculiar expiation, pi'o- 
curatio, and the skilful augur would forebode to a nicety what each 
portended. 
A sneeze in the morning was ill-omened, and interrupted all the 
business of the day. At noon, it was fortunate, and if it occurred 
after dinner, a dish must be brought back and tasted, to avert misfor- 
tune, which otherwise was certain. The sneeze of Telemacbus was 
grateful to the ears of Penelope, and Xenophon owed his commission 
to a similar opportune interruption in one of his speeches. The sneeze 
of Cupid approved the love of Acme and Septimius; {Catullus, 42.) 
and it w'as only to Hippias, who lost both his native land his grinders, 
that a classical sneeze had been esteemed unlucky : Herod, vi. Fla-, 
minius fell from his horse as he approached the banks of Thrasimenus. 
Augustus put on his left sandal awry on the very morning in which 
he nearly lost his life by a mutiny. Pompey accidentally threw a 
black cloak over his soldiers on the day of Pharsalia. Nero gave up 
his expedition to Alexan 5 lria, because his robe caught in the seat as he 
rose to set out. Caius Gracchus stumbled at his threshold on the 
morning in which he perished; and the son of Crassus, when he took 
the field against the Parthians, lost a toe by a similar accident. 
These are some among the prophetical signs to which the attention 
of the Augur was directed. Many may be found in the course of 
classical reading ; and all, we may assert wdthout constradiction, of 
equal importance, and not less assured certainty. 
Astrology. 
Ptolemy, one of the greatest professors of the art of Astrology, 
who flourished in the reign of Adrian, gives the following definition 
of it. “ It teaches the motions, configurations, and influences of 
the signs, stars, and celestial planets, to prognosticate of the natural 
effects and mutations, and their inferior and elementary bodies 
Quadripartite, i. In this earliest sense of the word. Astrology and 
Astronomy are the same ; latterly, they were w'idely separated ; 
Astrology being divided into tw'o parts, natural and judicial : by the 
first, sundry operations of nature, as changes of the weather, &c. 
vvere predicted ; by the second, moral events, and the destinies of 
nations and individuals, were just as confidently foretold. 
The cultivators of judicial astrology boasted much of its antiquity. 
Adam, they said, received it directly from God, and by it foreknow- 
ing that tl^e earth was twice to be destroyed, once by fire and once 
