To what extent the planets rule man’s life Pliny does not specify—an instance of prudent reticence on his part, if he really consciously avoided the question. He disclaims any belief in the vulgar notion that a star, varying in brightness according to our wealth, is assigned to each of us, and that the eternal stars rise and fade at the birth or death of insignificant mortals. “Non tanta caelo societas nobiscum est ut nostro fato mortalis sit ibi quoque siderum fulgor.”[107] But thus to deny that the stars are ruled by man’s destiny or doings is far from refusing to believe that men’s lives are ordered by the stars. Pliny, as we have seen, holds that Venus has a considerable influence over the process of birth in all animals. Also he certainly accepts the portentous character of various particular celestial phenomena. “From the stars celestial fire is vomited forth bearing omens of the future.”[108] He gives instances from Roman history of comets which signalled disaster, expounds the theory that their significance is to be determined from the direction in which they move and the heavenly body whose powers they receive, and states that the particular phase of life to which they apply may be deduced from the shape which they assume or from their position in relation to the signs of the zodiac.[109] Pliny’s belief in portents seems to have been general and not limited to celestial phenomena. In a passage on earthquakes he declares, “Never has the city of Rome shaken but that this was a forewarning of some future event.”[110] Pliny is less certain in regard to the superstitious observances so common then, to secure good luck or ward off evil fortune. In chapter five of his twenty-eighth book he gives quite a list of practices, such as selecting persons with lucky names to lead the victims at public lustrations, saluting those who sneeze, placing saliva behind the ear to escape mental anxiety, removing rings while eating, averting the ill-omen of mentioning fire at meal-time by pouring water beneath the table, and other superstitious table etiquette. He cites beliefs of the same nature, as that odd numbers are for every purpose the more efficacious, that medicines do no good if placed on a table before being administered, that baldness and headaches may be prevented by cutting the hair on the seventeenth and twenty-ninth days of the moon, and that women who walk along country roads twirling distaffs, or even having these uncovered, bring very bad luck, especially to the crops. He seems to have inclined to the belief that there was a modicum of truth, at any rate, in these notions and customs—and certainly we have already seen him affirming the validity of analogous practices—but he finally decides that amid the great variety of opinion existing in the matter he will not be dogmatic and that each person may think as he deems best. His attitude is much the same in regard to divination from thunder and lightning.[111]