back directly to the system of astrology developed by Babylonian baru priests.  The basis on which the modified Greek system rests is likewise the same that we have observed in Babylonia—­a correspondence between heaven and earth, but with this important difference, that instead of the caprice of the gods we have the unalterable fate controlling the entire universe—­the movements of the heavens and the life of the individual alike” (Jastrow).(19)

     (19) Ibid., pp. 257-258.

From this time on until the Renaissance, like a shadow, astrology follows astronomy.  Regarded as two aspects of the same subject, the one, natural astrology, the equivalent of astronomy, was concerned with the study of the heavens, the other, judicial astrology, was concerned with the casting of horoscopes, and reading in the stars the fate of the individual.

As I mentioned, Greek science in its palmy days seems to have been very free from the bad features of astrology.  Gilbert Murray remarks that “astrology fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls upon some remote island people.”  But in the Greek conquest of the Roman mind, astrology took a prominent role.  It came to Rome as part of the great Hellenizing movement, and the strength of its growth may be gauged from the edicts issued against astrologers as early as the middle of the second century B.C.  In his introduction to his recent edition of Book ii of the Astronomicon of Manilius, Garrod traces the growth of the cult, which under the Empire had an extraordinary vogue.  “Though these (heavenly) signs be far removed from us, yet does he (the god) so make their influences felt, that they give to nations their life and their fate and to each man his own character."(20) Oracles were sought on all occasions, from the planting of a tree to the mating of a horse, and the doctrine of the stars influenced deeply all phases of popular thought and religion.  The professional astrologers, as Pliny(21) says, were Chaldeans, Egyptians and Greeks.  The Etruscans, too, the professional diviners of Rome, cultivated the science.  Many of these “Isiaci conjectores” and “astrologi de circo” were worthless charlatans, but on the whole the science seems to have attracted the attention of thoughtful men of the period.  Garrod quotes the following remarkable passage from Tacitus:  “My judgment wavers,” he says, “I dare not say whether it be fate and necessity immutable which governs the changing course of human affairs—­or just chance.  Among the wisest of the ancients, as well as among their apes, you will find a conflict of opinion.  Many hold fixedly the idea that our beginning and our end—­that man himself—­is nothing to the Gods at all.  The wicked are in prosperity and the good meet tribulation.  Others believe that Fate and the facts of this world work together.  But this connection they trace not to planetary influences but to a concatenation of natural causes.  We choose our life that is free: