have collected observations of the Stars through
long ages, and teach how every event in the heavens has its
meaning, as part of the eternal scheme of divine forethought.
Especially the seven Wanderers, or Planets, are called by them
Hermeneis, Interpreters: and among them the Interpreter in
chief is Saturn. Their work is to interpret beforehand +ten
ton theon ennoian+, the thought that is in the mind of the
Gods. By their risings and settings, and by the colours they
assume, the Chaldaeans predict great winds and storms and
waves of excessive heat, comets, and earthquakes, and in
general all changes fraught with weal or woe not only to
nations and regions of the world, but to kings and to ordinary
men and women. Beneath the Seven are thirty Gods of Counsel,
half below and half above the Earth; every ten days a
Messenger or Angel star passes from above below and another
from below above. Above these gods are twelve Masters, who are
the twelve signs of the Zodiac; and the planets pass through
all the Houses of these twelve in turn. The Chaldaeans have
made prophecies for various kings, such as Alexander who
conquered Darius, and Antigonus and Seleucus Nikator, and have
always been right. And private persons who have consulted them
consider their wisdom as marvellous and above human power.'

Astrology fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls upon
some remote island people. The tomb of Ozymandias, as described by
Diodorus (i. 49, 5), was covered with astrological symbols, and that of
Antiochus I, which has been discovered in Commagene, is of the same
character. It was natural for monarchs to believe that the stars watched
over them. But every one was ready to receive the germ. The Epicureans,
of course, held out, and so did Panaetius, the coolest head among the
Stoics. But the Stoics as a whole gave way. They formed with good reason
the leading school of philosophy, and it would have been a service to
mankind if they had resisted. But they were already committed to a
belief in the deity of the stars and to the doctrine of Heimarmene, or
Destiny. They believed in the pervading Pronoia,[145:1] or Forethought,
of the divine mind, and in the +Sympatheia ton holon+--the Sympathy of
all Creation,[145:2] whereby whatever happens to any one part, however
remote or insignificant, affects all the rest. It seemed onl