~ 68 ~
and the like. Yet no one would suppose that these really touched the general life of the people or were capable of bringing into existence a new time-cycle. So with the astrological movement there is no evidence apart from the week that it went down to the bed-rock of life. A simple test of this may be obtained by comparing the quantity of the allusions to astrology in Augustan literature with that of the allusions to the accepted theology or mythology. In the Odes of Horace the names of the gods appear on about every page: to astrology there are, I think, just two allusions. Much the same may be said of Virgil and in various degrees of every other poet, except of course Manilius. The one fact which, outweighing all the rest, testifies to the popular belief in planetary influence is the silent diffusion of the week.
Secondly, though obviously the week is connected with astrology, the tie that connects them is exceedingly loose. Though the idea of time sovereignty is an outcome of the belief that the planets control human destinies and could only be propagated where that belief had taken root, it is only a popular or semi-popular extension. Consequently in the lore of astrology proper it plays no great part. In the catalogues of the astrologers, which I mentioned in the last section, and in Vettius Valens, there is enough to shew us what the astrologers made of the week—enough to shew us that they regarded it as a system of
