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humanity displaying itself in its entirety, which in the progress of time daily invented something new in that art—an art in which men profess their madness rather than their wisdom. As to when this foreign practice was first received as a guest by the Greeks, I could not say for certain: since before the time of Berosus the Babylonian A Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer and astronomer (3rd century BCE) who brought Chaldean astrology to Greece., who flourished under the first Seleucids The dynasty ruling the Greek empire in the East after Alexander the Great., I can find no trace of it among Greek writers that I can recall at present, unless perhaps the twelve-year cycles original: "δωδεκαετηρίδες" (dōdekaetērides) of Onomacritus, written under the name of Orpheus, fall into this category. This one thing is clear to us: that at almost the same time, it spread from the Greeks to the Romans like some kind of disease.

For Plutarch writes in his Life of Marius that the Chaldeans A term used here for astrologers or soothsayers from the East. detained the consul Octavius in the city; and in his Life of Sulla, that the Chaldeans promised Sulla a most happy end to his life while his affairs were most flourishing and great victories had been won. I will not say how often, how severely, or by what means the Romans took action against this class of men, nor what decrees of the Senate or edicts of the Emperors were issued against them. For those belong to later times, and the subject has been taken up by others.

Among the Greeks, however, many not only professed the art, but also left behind books on the craft: Berosus, Antiochus, Teucer the Babylonian, the poet Dorotheus of Sidon, and that Thrasyllus, the guest of Tiberius and a fellow-hostage of the prison of Capri. To doubt their prognostications, which are called astrological outcomes original: "ἀποτελέσματα" (apotelesmata) — the effects of the stars on human destiny, was considered the same as denying the evidence of one's eyes.

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