Note 183 — Chapter V · Belief in Magic in the Empire

The edition of the Tetrabiblos which I used is that by Philip Melanchthon, 1553. It gives the Greek text, a Latin translation and an introduction of interest, in which Melanchthon affirms his own more modest trust in astrology.

Two other treatises of considerable length setting forth the principles of astrology and which have come down to us from the Roman Empire, are a poem consisting of five books of about 900 lines each by Manilius, probably of the Augustan age; and a prose treatise in eight books, and apparently left unfinished, by Firmicus who was a Neo-Platonist of about 350 A. D. M. Manilii Astronomicon, London, 1828, Delphin edition. Iulii Firmici Materni Matheseos Libri VIII, (ediderunt W. Kroll et K. Skutsch, Lipsiae, 1897, 2 vols., Teubner edition). The essay on astrology purporting to be by Lucian is probably spurious.