Astronomicon, Book I

155-157 Three signs, Gemini Virgo Aquarius, are visibly human; seven, Aries Taurus Cancer Leo Scorpius Capricornus Pisces, are visibly bestial. There remains Libra, which is reckoned human, as I explain at verse 529, because it is often held by a male human figure, and Sagittarius, in which both natures are combined. The bestial are themselves divided into pecudes [cattle], Aries and Taurus, and ferae [wild beasts], the five others.

C.C.A.G. I p. 166 30, v iii p. 97 14, VII p. 206 24, Hephaestio Thebanus I 1 (p. 60 19-21 Engelbrecht) "the twelfth part (i.e. sign) of the Archer... is in part shaped like a human": on the other hand Ludw. Maxim. p. 110 2 has "bestial: Archer," and C.C.A.G. IV p. 152 13 includes Sagittarius in a list of "bestial [signs]" from which Aries Cancer and Pisces are omitted, as also does C.C.A.G. v iii p. 97 12 with the limitation "but in part also the Archer." comm. Ptol. tetr. p. 67 "Rational are Gemini, Virgo, Aquarius, but irrational are the rest. And of the irrational ones, some are untamed and some are tame. Untamed are Leo and Scorpius, but tame are Aries, Taurus, and the like."

157-196 Five of the twelve signs are double: Gemini Virgo Sagittarius Capricornus Pisces. Two of these, Gemini and Pisces, are complete pairs; two are mutilated composites, Sagittarius, half a man upon half a horse, and Capricorn, with a goat’s body and a fish’s tail; the fifth, Virgo, is a woman with wings on her shoulders. The Greek astrologers give the name dísōma [two-bodied] to four only of these, excluding Capricorn (which they allow to be diphues [two-natured] and dímorphon [two-formed]) for a reason which will presently appear: the distinction drawn by Manilius in verses 167-172 between Gemini and Pisces on the one hand and Sagittarius and Capricorn on the other they express by calling the two last hēmitelē [half-finished], a name also given to Taurus because it has no hindquarters. The four dísōma (duplicia Firm. II 22 8, biformia schol. German. Breys. p. 107 13), Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces, are equidistant, and compose one of the three tetragons into which the zodiac, as Manilius explains in II 287-96 and 654-72, is divided; they are followed, as he says in 178 sq., by the tetragon of tropiká [tropical/turning signs], Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn (that is what becomes of Capricorn), on which he expatiates in III 618-82; and these in their turn are succeeded by the tetragon of stereá [solid signs], Taurus, Leo, Scorpius, Aquarius, which at II 664 he very improperly calls simplicia, a name to which three of the tropiká have equal right: the regular Latin version is solida, Firm. II 22 8, anth. Lat. Ries. 640 2. The four tropiká mark the decisive advent of the four seasons; the stereá (of whom Leo is called ametátrepton [immutable] and the other three ametáblēta [unchangeable]) preside over months whose weather is of a settled type, thoroughly spring-like or summer-like or what-