transport of indignation. "It is to you that the shade and fetters in
which I live are due!" With that he struck the lion's form a heavy blow
with his fist. Hidden under the tapestry a great nail offered its cruel
point, and upon this his hand was impaled. The wound grew beyond the
reach of medical skill, and in the end this life, so guarded and
cherished, was lost by means of the very care taken to preserve it.


The same jealous precaution proved fatal to the poet Æschylus. It is
said that some fortune-teller menaced him with the fall of a house as
his doom, upon which he at once left the town and made his bed in the
open fields, far from roofs and beneath the sky. But an eagle flew by
overhead carrying in its talons a tortoise, and seeing the bald head of
the poet beneath, which it mistook for a stone, the bird let fall its
prey in order to break the shell of the tortoise. Thus were the days of
poor Æschylus ended.


From these two examples it would seem that this art of fortune-telling,
if there be any truth in it, causes one to fall into the very evil one
would be in dread of when one consulted it. But I will demonstrate and
maintain that the art is false. I do not believe that Nature would have
tied her own hands, and ours also, to the extent of marking our fate in
the heavens. For our fate depends upon certain combinations of time,
place, and people; not upon the combinations of charlatans. A shepherd
and a king are born under the same planet: one carries the sceptre; the
other the crook. The planet Jupiter willed it so! But what is this
planet Jupiter? A body without senses. Whence comes it then that its
influence works so differently on these two men? Further, how could its
influence, if it had any, penetrate through endless voids to our world?