~ 73 ~
The ascription of each day to a planet is to him a matter of universal knowledge. If the ascription of each hour to a planet had been an equally accepted fact, he would not have needed to give his explanation at all.
If the people had no hour-lore had they any definite day-lore? Did they think that illnesses ran a different course according to the days on which they were contracted, or that Friday's thief would be of a different stamp to Wednesday's? I know of only one scrap of evidence which bears on this, and it is a very little scrap and does not come from the earliest period. Ausonius[1], a poet and scholar of the fourth century, a Christian by profession, though with much or more of the pagan about him, quotes a proverbial line
Beard on Jupiter's day,
Hair on Venus's day,
and proceeds in a little set of verses to refute this on the grounds that Mercury being the god of thieves presumably approves of sharp nails, that Jupiter is represented with a beard and Venus with long hair, and that therefore these are the wrong days for these several processes. The verses are not seriously meant and are only relevant in so far as they are founded on what we may by a stretch call a piece of folk-lore bearing
- ↑ Ecloga, 26.
