[58] From _voluptas_, pleasure. [59] In a great murrain which destroyed their cattle, the Romans invoked this goddess, and she removed the plague. [60] The image was a head without a body. Horace mentions her (Lib. 1. Epist. XVI. 60). She had a temple without the walls, which gave the name to the Porta Lavernalis. [61] The goddess of eloquence, or persuasion, who had always a great hand in the success of courtship. [62] She was also called Cinxia Juno. [63] She was an old Sabine deity. Some make her the same with Ceres; but Varro imagines her to be the goddess of victory. [64] From this distribution arose, perhaps, the scheme of our modern astrologers, who assign the different parts of the body to the different constellations, or signs of Zodiac: as the head to Aries, the neck to Taurus, the shoulders to Gemini, the heart to Cancer, the breast to Leo, and so on. The pretended issues of astrology have been always inseparable from stellar influence, and the zodiac has ever been the fruitful source of its solemn delusions. [65] Some confound this goddess with Proserpine, others with Venus. CHAPTER VIII. JUDICIAL ASTROLOGY--ITS CHEMICAL APPLICATION TO THE PROLONGATION OF LIFE AND HEALTH--ALCHYMICAL DELUSIONS. The study of astrology, so flattering to human curiosity got into favour with mankind at a very early period,--especially with the weak and ignorant. The first account, of it we meet with is in Chaldea; and at Rome it was known by the name of the "Babylonish calculation," against which Horace very wisely cautioned his readers.[66] It was doubtless the first method of divination, and probably prepared the mind of man for all the various methods since employed of searching into futurity; a brief view therefore of the rise of this pretended science cannot he improper in this place, especially as the history of these absurdities is the best method of confuting them. Others have ascribed the invention of this deception to the Arabs;--be this as it may, Judicial Astrology[67] has been too much used by the priests and physicians of all nations to encrease their own power and emolument. They maintain that the heavens are one great book, in which God has written the history of the world; and in which every man may read his own fortune and the transactions of his time. In this department of astrology (judicial) we meet with all the idle conceits about the horary reign of planets, the _doctrine of horoscopes, the distribution of the houses, the calculation of nativities, fortunes, lucky and unlucky_ hours, and other ominous fatalities. They assert that it had its rise from the same hands as astronomy itself;--that while the ancient Assyrians, whose serene unclouded sky favoured their celestial, observations, were intent on tracing the paths and periods of the heavenly bodies, they discovered a constant settled relation or analogy between them and things below; hence they were led to conclude these to be the fates or destinies