those who were called genethliaci, on account of their attention
CHAP. XXI.] SLTEESTITIOX OF ASTEOLOGEPvS. 57 sneeze when you are putting on your slippers ; to return home if you stumble when going to a place ; when your clothes are eaten by mice, to be more frightened at the prospect of coming misfortune than grieved by your present loss. Whence that witty saying of Cato, who, when consulted by a man who told him that the mice had eaten his boots, replied, " That is not strange, but it would have been very strange indeed if the boots had eaten the mice."
Chap. xxi.—Superstition of astrologers.
32. I^or can we exclude from this kind of superstition those who were called genethliaci, on account of their attention to birthdays, but are now commonly called matlicmatici. For these, too, although they may seek with pains for the true position of the stars at the time of our birth, and may sometimes even find it out, yet in so far as they attempt thence to predict our actions, or the consequences of our actions, grievously err, and sell inexperienced men into a miserable bondage. For when any freeman goes to an astrologer of this kind, he gives money that he may come away the slave either of Mars or of Venus, or rather, perhaps, of all the stars to which those who first fell into this error, and handed it on to posterity, have given the names either of beasts on account of their likeness to beasts, or of men with a view to confer honour on those men. And this is not to be wondered at, when we consider that even in times more recent and nearer our own, the Eomans made an attempt to dedicate the star which we call Lucifer to the name and honour of Ctesar. And this would, perhaps, have beendone, and the name handed down to distant ages, only that his ancestress Venus had given her name to this star before him, and could not by any law transfer to her heirs what she had never possessed, nor sought to possess, in life. For where a place was vacant, or not held in honour of any of the dead of former times, the usual proceeding in such cases was carried out. For example, we have changed the names of the months Quintilis and Sextilis to July and
August, naming them in honour of the men Julius Cix?sar and Augustus Caesar ; and from this instance any one who cares can easily see that the stars spoken of above formerly