EPISTLE LXXXVIII.
father? Can you explain what people (I will not say what person) held it originally? You did not enter upon it as a master, but merely as a tenant. And whose tenant are you? If your claim is successful, you are tenant of the heir. The lawyers say that public property cannot be acquired privately by possession[1]; what you hold and call your own is public property—indeed, it belongs to mankind at large. 13. O what marvellous skill! You know how to measure the circle; you find the square of any shape which is set before you; you compute the distances between the stars; there is nothing which does not come within the scope of your calculations. But if you are a real master of your profession, measure me the mind of man! Tell me how great it is, or how puny! You know what a straight line is; but how does it benefit you if you do not know what is straight in this life of ours?
14. I come next to the person who boasts his knowledge of the heavenly bodies, who knows
Whither the chilling star of Saturn hides,
And through what orbit Mercury doth stray.[2]
Of what benefit will it be to know this? That I shall be disturbed because Saturn and Mars are in opposition, or when Mercury sets at eventide in plain view of Saturn, rather than learn that those stars, wherever they are, are propitious,[3] and that they are not subject to change? 15. They are driven along by an unending round of destiny, on a course from which they cannot swerve. They return at stated seasons; they either set in motion, or mark the
- ↑ i.e., for a certain term of years; see R. W. Leage, Roman Private Law, pp. 133 ff. Compare also Lucretius iii. 971, and Horace, Ep. ii. 2. 159.
- ↑ Vergil, Georg. i. 336 f.
- ↑ Saturn and Mars were regarded as unlucky stars. Astrology, which dates back beyond 3000 B.C. in Babylonia, was developed by the Greeks of the Alexandrian age and got a foothold in Rome by the second century B.C., flourished greatly under Tiberius. Cf. Horace, Od. i. 11. 1 f.; Juv. iii. 42 f., and F. Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (trans.), esp. pp. 68 ff. and 84 ff.
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