Page:The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe.djvu/87

79] and declares that a comet is a portent of a storm in the same way as the Chaldeans say that a star brings good or ill fate to men at birth. In fact, his chief, if not sole, objection to the Chaldeans would seem to be that in their predictions they take into account only five stars.

What? Think you so many thousand stars shine on in vain? What else, indeed, is it which causes those skilled in nativities to err than that they assign us to a few stars, although all those that are above us have a share in the control of our fate? Perhaps those nearer direct their influence upon us more closely; perhaps those of more rapid motion look down on us and other animals from more varied aspects. But even those stars that are motionless, or because of their speed keep equal pace with the rest of the universe and seem not to move, are not without rule and dominion over us.

Seneca accepts a theory of Berosus, whose acquaintance we have already made, that whenever all the stars are in conjunction in the sign of Cancer there will be a universal conflagration, and a second deluge when they all unite in Capricorn.

It is on thunderbolts as portents of the future that Seneca dwells longest, however. "They give," he declares, "not