De astrologia

It was the Aethiopians that first delivered this doctrine unto men. The ground thereof was in part the wisdom of that nation, the Aethiopians being in all else wiser than all men; but in part also the benignity of their clime, since clear skyes and calm weather ever invest them, and they are not subjected to the vicissitudes of the yeere, but live in onely one season.[*](In Lucian’s day current theory ascribed the origin of astronomy to the Egyptians. We must applaud his insight in favo the Ethiopians, since Diodorus (III, 2,1; doubtless on good authority) records that they were the first men, that they first taught people to worship the gods, that the Egyptians were their colonists, and that most of the Egyptian institutions were Ethiopian. And if, as we read in the Platonic Epinomis and in Macrobius (Comm. in Cic. Somn. Scip., I, 21, 9), the climate of Egypt is conducive to the study of the heavens, that of Ethiopia, naturally, would be far more so. ) Therefore when they discerned, first of all, that the moon hath not perpetually the same appearance, but carrieth a various aspect and changeth into divers figures, they accounted the thing good reason for wonder and empuzzlement. In consequence they sought and found the cause thereof, that the lustre of the moon is not her own but cometh to her from the sun.

And they determined also the course of the other stars, which we call planets or wanderers because they alone of all the stars do move; also their nature and potency, and the works that are brought to pass by each of them. Also, they ascribed names unto them, that yet were not names, as they seemed, but symboles.