24. This the heathen set as the first among the constellations because in the month of March, which is the beginning of the year, they say the sun is moving in that constellation. 26. Cancer, too, they so named because when the sun comes to that constellation in the month of June, it begins to move backward in the manner of a crab (_in modum cancri_), and brings in the shorter days; for in this creature front and rear are indistinguishable and it advances either way, so that its fore part may be behind and its back part before. 32. Moreover _Aquarius_ and _Pisces_ they named from the rainy season, because heavier rains fall in winter when the sun turns at these constellations. And it is a wonderful folly of the heathen that they have raised to the heavens not only fish, but rams also, and he-goats and bulls, she-bears and dogs, crabs and scorpions. They have also placed among the stars of heaven an eagle and a swan, in memory of Jove, because of the myths about him. 33. They believed, too, that Perseus and his wife Andromeda were received into the heavens after their death, so they marked out likenesses of them in the stars, and did not blush to call them by their names. 37. But by whatever fashion of superstition these are named by men, they are nevertheless stars, which God made at the beginning of the universe and ordained to mark the seasons with regular motion. 38. Therefore observations of these constellations, or nativities, or the rest of the superstition that attaches itself to the observance of the stars—that is, to a knowledge of the fates—and is doubtless opposed to our faith, ought to be ignored by Christians in such a way that it would seem they had not been written. 39. But a good many, enticed by the fairness and brightness of the constellations, have in their blindness fallen into the errors of the stars, so that they endeavor to foreknow future events by the noxious computations that are called _mathesis_; but not only the teachers of the Christian religion, but also Plato and Aristotle and others of the heathen, moved by truth, condemned them with unanimous opinion, saying that confusion as to [future] things was produced rather from such a belief. 40. For if, as they say, men are driven by the compulsion of their birth to various kinds of acts, why should the good deserve praise, or the evil feel the vengeance of the law.... 41. This succession of the seven secular disciplines was terminated in astronomy by the philosophers for this purpose forsooth, that it might free souls, entangled by secular wisdom, from earthly matters, and set them at meditation upon the things on high. BOOK IV ON MEDICINE[276] [276] Subjects of medical interest are treated also in book xi (parts of the body, monstrous births, etc.), in book xii (healing springs), and in book xxii (diet). There is also a chapter (39) on pestilence in _De Natura Rerum_. INTRODUCTION