Note 862 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 8)

This is well explained by Cumont in his Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, p. 196 foll., following Bouché-Leclercq's work on astrology in Greece. Cumont thinks that astrology took over the business of the augurs and haruspices, which was now dropped, and this is true in the main as regards the individual, but not as regards the State; see above, p. 308 foll.