It was =embodied= into the study of Human Physiognomy as an integral part of it, because it represented an =established= tradition. The Babylonian-Assyrian birth-omens in which this very comparison between man and animals forms so important a factor furnish the natural conditions for the rise of the tradition, while the long range of time covered by the Babylonian-Assyrian birth-omens supply the second factor needed to account for the persistency of the tradition after it had passed beyond the confines within which it arose. VII Now in order to justify the proposition that the study of Human Physiognomy, as developed among the Greeks and Romans and as passed on to others with its insistence on the fancied resemblance between man and animals as a leading and indeed as a fundamental factor, is to be directly carried back to the birth-omens of Babylonia and Assyria, we ought to be able to establish that among Greeks and Romans the abnormalities observed at the birth of infants and of the young of animals were really regarded as omens, and that such omens show a sufficient affinity to what we find among Babylonians and Assyrians to warrant the conclusion that, just as Hepatoscopy and Astrology came to the Greeks and Romans through influences emanating from the Euphrates Valley, so also the third large division of divination methods may be traced to the same source. Let us first take up the Romans for which the material at our disposal is so much more abundant. Julius Obsequens, a writer whose exact date has not yet been determined, collected in his famous =Liber de Prodigiis=[164] all the omens that had been noted during a certain period of Roman history. He enumerates in all 72 covering the years 55 to 132 A. D. and the list itself is an instructive commentary on the attention that was paid to 'signs' of all kinds among the Romans as an index of the will and the intention of the gods. We find references to such phenomena as a rain of stones,--presumably hail stones--of oil, blood and milk--apparently allusions to volcanic eruptions, disguised in somewhat fanciful language--of the sun seen at night--perhaps a description of an eclipse when to a frightened populace it might appear as though night had suddenly set in--of blood appearing in rivers and of milk in lakes--no doubt a pollution of some kind due perhaps to masses of earth or to glacial deposits pouring into the river--to burning torches in the heavens--probably comets with long tails--and more the like, all indicative of the unbridled play of popular fancy and showing that among the Romans, as among Babylonians and Assyrians, all unusual occurrences were looked upon as omens--portending some unusual happenings. Now among the 72 signs of Julius Obsequens there are quite a number of actual birth-omens, the character of which is so close to what we find in the collections of the =bârû= priests as to show a practical identity in the points of view.