The author of the essay also delves into the history of astrology, to which he assigns a high antiquity. The Ethiopians were the first to cultivate it and handed it on in a still imperfect stage to the Egyptians who developed it. The Babylonians claim to have studied it before other peoples, but our author thinks that they did so long after the Ethiopians and Egyptians. The Greeks were instructed in the art neither by the Ethiopians nor the Egyptians, but, as we have seen, by Orpheus. Our author not only states that the ancient Greeks never built towns or walls or got married without first resorting to divination, but even asserts that astrology was their sole method of divination, that the Pythia at Delphi was the type of celestial purity and that the snake under the tripod represented the dragon among the constellations. Lycurgus taught his Lacedaemonians to observe the moon, and only the uncultured Arcadians held themselves aloof from astrology. Yet at the present day some oppose the art, declaring either that the stars have naught to do with human affairs or that astrology is useless since what is fated cannot be avoided. To the latter objection our author makes the usual retort that forewarned is forearmed; as for the former denial, if a horse stirs the stones in the road as it runs, if a passing breath of wind moves straws to and fro, if a tiny flame burns the finger, will not the courses and deflexions of the brilliant celestial bodies have their influence upon earth and mankind? [Sidenote: Lucian not always sceptical.] The manner of the essay does not seem like Lucian’s usual style, and the astrological interpretation of religious myth was characteristic of the Stoic philosophy, whereas Lucian’s philosophical affinities, if he can be said to have any, are perhaps rather with the Epicureans. But Celsus was an Epicurean and yet believed in astrology. It must not be thought, however, that Lucian in his other essays is always sceptical in regard to what we should classify as superstition. He tells us how his career was determined by a dream in the autobiographical essay of that title. In the _Dialogues of the Gods_ magic is mentioned as a matter-of-course, Zeus complaining that he has to resort to magic in order to win women and Athene warning Paris to have Aphrodite remove her girdle, since it is drugged or enchanted and may bewitch him. [Sidenote: Lucian and medicine.]