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turn succumbed to the domination of Rome. The earliest historical mention is, I believe, the warning of Cato in his book on agriculture (in the first half of the second century B.C.) to the farmer against consulting the 'Chaldaean,' and in 139 B.C. an edict was passed expelling them from Italy. These facts of course presuppose some prolonged period, during which the movement had time to acquire sufficient force to become dangerous; and before Cato, the most influential of the philosophical sects, the Stoics, who certainly had afterwards a considerable leaning to astrology, may have shewn this tendency. In the first century B.C. the mentions become more frequent. Sulla, for instance, had an astrological prediction forecasting his death. Cicero deals with astrology in his book on divination. His contemporary Posidonius, an important name in the history of Stoicism, did much to give a philosophical form to the belief. When we come to the end of that century and the beginning of our era, we have Augustus publishing his 'theme of geniture' and using it in his coinage[1], while Virgil bases on it an elaborate bit of flattery in the opening of his Georgics. Manilius writes a didactic poem on astrology. Horace alludes to the competing influences of Jupiter and Saturn[2] and assures Maecenas that their two stars are indissolubly bound together.
