cious fate, and
were like the intelligent slave who guesses the desires of his master to
satisfy them, and {181} knows how to make the hardest servitude
tolerable.[53] The masses, however, never reached that height of
resignation. They looked at astrology far more from a religious than from a
logical standpoint.[54] The planets and constellations were not only cosmic
forces, whose favorable or inauspicious action grew weaker or stronger
according to the turnings of a course established for eternity; they were
deities who saw and heard, who were glad or sad, who had a voice and sex,
who were prolific or sterile, gentle or savage, obsequious or arrogant.[55]
Their anger could therefore be soothed and their favor obtained through
rites and offerings; even the adverse stars were not unrelenting and could
be persuaded through sacrifices and supplications. The narrow and pedantic
Firmicus Maternus strongly asserts the omnipotence of fate, but at the same
time he invokes the gods and asks for their aid against the influence of
the stars. As late as the fourth century the pagans of Rome who were about
to marry, or to make a purchase, or to solicit a public office, went to the
diviner for his prognostics, at the same time praying to Fate for
prosperity in their undertaking.[56] Thus a fundamental antinomy manifested
itself all through the development of astrology, which pretended to be an
exact science, but always remained a sacerdotal theology.

Of course, the more the idea of fatalism imposed itself and spread, the
more the weight of this hopeless theory oppressed the consciousness. Man
felt himself dominated and crushed by blind forces that dragged him on as
irresistibly as they kept the celestial spheres in motion. His soul tried
to escape the oppression of this cosmic mechanism, and to leave the slavery
of {182} Ananke. But he no longer had confidence in the ceremonies of his
old religion. The new powers that had taken possession of heaven had to be
propitiated by new means. The Oriental religions themselves offered a
remedy against the evils they had created, and taught powerful and
mysterious processes for conjuring fate.[57] And side by side with
astrology we see magic, a more pernicious aberration, gaining ground.[58]

* * * * *

If, from the reading of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, we pass on to read a magic
papyrus, our first impression is that we have stepped from one end of the
intellectual