Further testimony to the parallelism between Etruscan and Babylonian-Assyrian methods of divination in the case of birth-omens is born by an interesting passage in the Annals of Tacitus (XV, 47) that two-headed children or two-headed young of animals were interpreted by the Haruspices as pointing to an approaching change of dynasty and to the appearance of a weak ruler. Again, therefore, prognostications that present a complete parallel to what we find in the Babylonian-Assyrian texts[183]. Macrobius[184] preserves an Etruscan interpretation of a birth-omen relating to the color of newly born lambs. A purple or golden color of the lamb points to good luck. This 'purple' color corresponds to the term =sâmu= frequently occurring in Babylonian-Assyrian omen texts and which is generally rendered 'dark red'[185]. In the collections of the =bârû=-priests, many references are found to the colors of the young animals and among these we have as a complete parallel to the statement in Macrobius the following[186]: [If an ewe] gives birth to a young of dark-red color,--good fortune[187]. Lastly, the terms used to describe all kinds of malformations--=monstra= and =prodigia=[188], i. e., phenomena that 'point' to something show a parallel conception to the Babylonian-Assyrian viewpoint that abnormality in the case of the young of animals and of infants are primarily =signs= sent to indicate unusual events that would shortly happen. That the Greeks also attached an importance to malformations, may be concluded from Aristotle's protest[189] against the supposition that a woman can give birth to an infant with the features of some animal[190], or that an animal can give birth to a young with human features. Such resemblances, he asserts, are merely superficial and he endeavors to account for them as for all malformations in a scientific manner, as due to an insufficient control of the fructifying matter which prevents a normal development of the embryo. While Aristotle does not directly refer to the belief that malformations and monstrosities were looked upon by Greeks as omens, the emphatic manner in which he states that abnormalities cannot be against nature but only against the ordinary course of nature[191] indicates that he is polemicizing against a view which looked upon such anomalies as contrary to nature, and presumably regarded them, therefore, from the same point of view as did the Babylonians and Etruscans. We have a direct proof for this view however, in Valerius Maximus, who includes in his list of =prodigia= birth-omens recorded among the Greeks, such as a mare giving birth to a hare at the time that Xerxes was planning his invasion of Greece which was regarded as an omen of the coming event[192], or again an infant with malformation of the mouth[193]. Herodotus[194] records as another sign at the time of Xerxes' contemplated invasion of Greece a mule giving birth to a chicken with double genital