"(20) Oracles were sought on all
occasions, from the planting of a tree to the mating of a horse, and the
doctrine of the stars influenced deeply all phases of popular thought
and religion. The professional astrologers, as Pliny(21) says, were
Chaldeans, Egyptians and Greeks. The Etruscans, too, the professional
diviners of Rome, cultivated the science. Many of these "Isiaci
conjectores" and "astrologi de circo" were worthless charlatans, but
on the whole the science seems to have attracted the attention of
thoughtful men of the period. Garrod quotes the following remarkable
passage from Tacitus: "My judgment wavers," he says, "I dare not say
whether it be fate and necessity immutable which governs the changing
course of human affairs--or just chance. Among the wisest of the
ancients, as well as among their apes, you will find a conflict of
opinion. Many hold fixedly the idea that our beginning and our end--that
man himself--is nothing to the Gods at all. The wicked are in prosperity
and the good meet tribulation. Others believe that Fate and the facts
of this world work together. But this connection they trace not to
planetary influences but to a concatenation of natural causes. We choose
our life that is free: but the choice once made, what awaits us is fixed
and ordered.
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