Sol tempora dividit aeviMutat nocte diem, radiisque potentibus astraIre vetat, cursusque vagos statione moratur.
Sol tempora dividit aeviMutat nocte diem, radiisque potentibus astraIre vetat, cursusque vagos statione moratur.
Sol tempora dividit aevi
Mutat nocte diem, radiisque potentibus astra
Ire vetat, cursusque vagos statione moratur.
Chapter 67. On the wandering stars.
1. Certain stars are calledplanetae, that is, wandering, because they hasten around through the whole universe with varying motions....
Chapter 68.
1.Praecedentiaorantegradatioof stars is when a star seems to be making its usual course and [really] is somewhat ahead of it.
Chapter 69.
1.Remotioorretrogradatioof stars is when a star, while moving on its regular orbit, seems at the same time to be moving backward.
Chapter 70.
1. Thestatusof stars means that while a star is continuing its proper motion it nevertheless seems in some places to stand still.
Chapter 71. On the names of stars.
3.Stellaeis derived fromstare, because the stars always remain (stant) fixed in the heavens and do not fall. As to our seeing stars fall, as it were, from heaven, they are not stars but little bits of fire that have fallen from the ether, and this happens when the wind, blowing high, carries along with it fire from the ether, which as it is carried along gives the appearance of falling stars. For stars cannot fall; they are motionless (as has been said above) and are fixed in the heavens and carried around with them.
16. A comet is so-called because it spreads light from itself as if it were hair (comas). And when this kind of star appears it indicates pestilence, famine, or war.
17. Comets are called in the Latincrinitaebecause they have a trail of flames resembling hair (in modum crinium). The Stoics say there are over thirty of them, and certain astrologers have written down their names and qualities.
20. The planets are stars which are not fixed in the heavens like the rest, but move along in the air.... Sometimes they move towards the south, sometimes towards the north, generally in a direction opposite to that of the universe, sometimes with it, and their Greek names are Phaeton, Phaenon, Pyrois, Hesperus, Stilbon.
21. To these the Romans have given the names of their gods, that is, of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury. Deceiving themselves and wishing to deceive [others] into worship of these gods, who had bestowed upon them somewhat in accordance with the desire of the world, they pointed to the stars in heaven, saying that that was Jove’s star, that Mercury’s, and the empty idea arose. This erroneous belief the devil cherished, but Christ destroyed.
22. Moreover as to the constellations which are given names by the heathen, in which the likeness of living creatures is traced by means of the stars, like Arctos, Aries, Taurus, Libra, and others, they who first discerned constellations in a number of stars were influenced by superstitious vanity and imagined a bodily form, giving them, because of certain reasons, the likenesses and names of their gods.
23. For they named Aries, the first constellation—to which, as to Libra, they assign the middle line of the universe[275]—after Jupiter Ammon, on whose head image makers fix the horns of a ram (arietis cornua).
24. This the heathen set as the first among the constellations because in the month of March, which is the beginning of the year, they say the sun is moving in that constellation.
26. Cancer, too, they so named because when the sun comes to that constellation in the month of June, it begins to move backward in the manner of a crab (in modum cancri), and brings in the shorter days; for in this creature front and rear are indistinguishable and it advances either way, so that its fore part may be behind and its back part before.
32. MoreoverAquariusandPiscesthey named from the rainy season, because heavier rains fall in winter when the sun turns at these constellations. And it is a wonderful folly of the heathen that they have raised to the heavens not only fish, but rams also, and he-goats and bulls, she-bears and dogs, crabs and scorpions. They have also placed among the stars of heaven an eagle and a swan, in memory of Jove, because of the myths about him.
33. They believed, too, that Perseus and his wife Andromeda were received into the heavens after their death, so they marked out likenesses of them in the stars, and did not blush to call them by their names.
37. But by whatever fashion of superstition these are named by men, they are nevertheless stars, which God made at the beginning of the universe and ordained to mark the seasons with regular motion.
38. Therefore observations of these constellations, or nativities, or the rest of the superstition that attaches itself to the observance of the stars—that is, to a knowledge of the fates—and is doubtless opposed to our faith, ought to be ignored by Christians in such a way that it would seem they had not been written.
39. But a good many, enticed by the fairness and brightness of the constellations, have in their blindness fallen into the errors of the stars, so that they endeavor to foreknow future events by the noxious computations that are calledmathesis; but not only the teachers of the Christian religion, but also Plato and Aristotle and others of the heathen, moved by truth, condemned them with unanimous opinion, saying that confusion as to [future] things was produced rather from such a belief.
40. For if, as they say, men are driven by the compulsion of their birth to various kinds of acts, why should the good deserve praise, or the evil feel the vengeance of the law....
41. This succession of the seven secular disciplines was terminated in astronomy by the philosophers for this purpose forsooth, that it might free souls, entangled by secular wisdom, from earthly matters, and set them at meditation upon the things on high.