The relation of the deities to the luminaries of the sky occupied a very prominent place in the minds of the Babylonians. The powerful operation of the sun was due to the god Samas; the moon, as we have seen, belonged to Sin, Saturn to Adar, Jupiter to Merodach, Mercury to Nebo, Mars to the war-god Nergal, Venus to Istar-Bilit. From the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar II. we learn that there existed at Borsippa, the seat of the worship of Nebo, an ancient temple to "the seven lamps of the earth." The horizon of the Babylonian plain was very extensive; the more uniform and boundless the expanse of earth, the more did the eye turn upwards towards the changes, movements, and life of the sky. In the clear atmosphere the eye followed the regular paths of the planets, and discovered each morning new stars, while others disappeared every evening. With the higher or lower position of the sun, or of this or that star, a new season commenced, or changes took place in the natural world; the inundation rose, and vegetation began to awaken or decay. On the rising and setting of the sun, the moon, and the stars, the life of mankind, their waking and sleeping, their vigour and weariness, depended; the seasons of budding and ripening fruit, of favourable or unfavourable navigation, commenced with the appearance of certain stars and ended with their disappearance. It was natural, amid such conceptions, to believe that the whole life of nature and man depended on the luminaries of the sky, and that the earth and mankind received their laws from above, from the gleaming paths of the constellations. The good or evil effect which these stars were thought to exercise upon the life of nature, applied also to their influence on the life of man. Within the circle of such conceptions the planets naturally occupied a prominent place. The Greeks inform us that the Chaldæans called these stars "interpreters," as proclaiming the will of the gods.[377] Among them Jupiter and Venus (Merodach and Istar-Bilit) passed with the later astrologers as luck-bringing powers. Jupiter was supposed to bring the beneficent and genial warmth of the atmosphere, while Venus, the star of evening (Bilit), poured forth the cool fructifying dew. Saturn (Adar) was an unlucky star, the Great Evil; and this confirms the conclusion already drawn that Adar was thought to be a god averse to generation, and hostile. Mars (Nergal) was also a pernicious planet: his fiery glow brought scorching heat, and he is the Lesser Evil of astrologers. Mercury, the moon, and the sun, _i.e._ Nebo, Sin, and Samas, stood midway between the good and evil stars; they were of an intermediate undefined character.[378]