[134] This is the second set of the Dioscuri, as stated by Cicero: they were the children of the third, or Cretan Jupiter (the son of Saturn) and Leda; their names were Castor, Pollux, and Helena. Helena, however, is not mentioned by Cicero. [135] Core is a name of Proserpine; Liber, of Bacchus. And, although the mention here made of Ceres, Proserpine and Bacchus, as being the offspring of one and the same birth, does not accord with the usual notion of the genealogy of these divinities, it seems that Ptolemy did not so represent them without some reason. For, in cap. 24, lib. 2, _De Nat. Deor._, Cicero speaks of Liber as having been deified conjointly with Ceres and Libera (another name of Proserpine); and adds, that “it may be understood, from the rites and mysteries of the worship, how the deification took place.” It appears also, by Davies’s notes on Cicero, that Livy and Tacitus both speak of the copartnership in divinity exercised by Liber, Libera and Ceres. There is not, however, any occasion at present to dive deeper into the question of the generation of these deities; for our author has advertised to them only to point out that so many males or females will be produced at one birth, under certain configurations of the stars. CHAPTER IX MONSTROUS OR DEFECTIVE BIRTHS The same places, as those pointed out in the two chapters last preceding, are again to be considered, in inquiring into the probability of a monstrous or defective birth. For it will be found that, at a birth of this description, the luminaries are either cadent from the ascendant, or else not in any manner configurated with it; while, at the same time, the angles[136] are occupied by the malefics.