43. See Gn 25:25-27.
Book II 213 constellations, in the dock for evil deeds that are very properly condemned. But that our souls are not subject by nature to bodies, not even heavenly ones, they should learn from their own philosophers.
But that those heavenly bodies are not more potent than earthly bodies as regards the effects which these people themselves study, they should sooner or later come to realize at least from this; when many bodies of different species, either of animals or herbs or shrubs, are sown simultaneously at one point of time, and at one point of time a countless multitude of living forms springs up from them, then not only in different regions of the earth but in the same places there are so many variations in their development, in the things they do and the things they undergo, that these people, as the saying goes, may say goodbye to their star-gazing if they but turn their starry gaze on these facts.42
36. What though, l ask you, could be more senseless, more obtuse than to say, when these things have been conclusively demonstrated to them, that the fate-controlling secret of the stars is concerned only with subjecting human beings to their influence? Yet even here the case of twins proves them wrong, living different lives, differing in their good luck and their bad, dying different deaths, but still for the most part given the same constellations, because even if there was some interval between them as they emerged from the womb, still in some cases it is so small that it could not possibly affect these people's calcula tions.
The hand ofJacob, as he followed, when those twins were born, was found to be holding the foot of his brother going ahead of him.43 They were indeed born in such a way that it would seem to have been one unusually long infant born double. The so-called constellations of these two could certainly not have differed in any way at all. So what could be more totally unlikely than that an astrologer, gazing at these constellations in the same horoscope, in the same moon, would say that one of them would be loved by his mother, the other not? I mean, if he said anything else, he would thereby be saying something false, while if he did say this it would indeed be true, but he would not be saying it on the basis of the silly little jingles of his books. And if they refuse to believe this story, because it is told in our books, can they eliminate as well the very nature of things? So then, when they claim that they are never wrong if they can ascertain the hour of conception, at least let them not be too proud, as men, to consider the conception of twins.
42. A feeble effort to echo, at least, the Latin pun or word play: perdant sidera, si ista considerent; literally, "they can lose the stars if they pay attention to these things." But the verb considero was possibly even coined as meaning primarily "put the stars, the sidera, together"; hence to observe, to pay attention to things. 43. See Gn 25:25-27.