Good and evil are different from the vulgar opinion of
them. Often those who seem to battle with adversity are to be accounted
blessed; but the many, even in their prosperity, are miserable. It needs
only to bear misfortune bravely, while the fool perishes in his wealth.
Outside these rival schools stands the man in the street. No one will
take from him his conviction that at our birth are fixed for us the
things that shall be. If some things fall out differently from what was
foretold, that is due to the deceit of men that speak what they know
not: calling into contempt a science to which past and present alike
bear a glorious testimony" (Ann. vi, 22).
(20) Manili Astronomicon Liber II, ed. H. W. Garrod, Oxford,
1911, p. lxix, and II, ll. 84-86.
(21) Pliny: Natural History, Bk. XVIII, Chap. XXV, Sect.
57.
Cato waged war on the Greek physicians and forbade "his uilicus all
resort to haruspicem, augurem, hariolum Chaldaeum," but in vain; so
widespread became the belief that the great philosopher, Panaetius (who
died about 111 B.C.), and two of his friends alone among the stoics,
rejected the claims of astrology as a science (Garrod). So closely
related was the subject of mathematics that it, too, fell into
disfavor, and in the Theodosian code sentence of death was passed upon
mathematicians.
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