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The news of his appearance upon the hill, and the account of the victory which he had subsequently gained, had already reached the city; and the elders poured out to the gate to meet him. The prophets and astrologers also flocked together to welcome him as the appointed Sultan, and to escort him to the royal palace.
Some lose theirs by yielding to the sway of the passions; some in braving tempests and shoals in search of wealth; some by trusting too much to the promises of the great; some by setting their hearts on trifles. As might have been expected, the bottles which held the wits of astrologers, inventors, metaphysicians, and above all, of poets, were in general the best filled of all.
Since I have been in the East, I have consulted you and your science of the stars, in every intended step, and your warnings have never failed." "Chaldean" astrologers played an almost incredibly important part among even the highest-class Romans of the period.
Never was the opinion of sensible men on this subject better expressed than by Sir Thomas Browne: "Nor do we hereby reject or condemn a sober and regulated Astrology; we hold there is more truth therein than in ASTROLOGERS; in some more than many allow, yet in none so much as some pretend.
One of his famous documents was "The Starry Messenger," a little pamphlet purporting to explain the phenomenon of a "strange apparition of three suns" that were seen in London on November 19, 1644 -the anniversary of the birth of Charles I., then the reigning monarch. This phenomenon caused a great stir among the English astrologers, coming, as it did, at a time of great political disturbance.
So one day it befell that he summoned the Olema and astrologers, the mathematicians and almanac-makers, and said, 'Draw me my horoscope and look if Allah will grant me a son to succeed me. Accordingly, they consulted their books and calculated his dominant star and the aspects thereof; after which they said to him, 'Know, O King, that thou shalt be blessed with a son, but by none other than the daughter of the King of Khorasan. Hearing this Teghmus joyed with exceeding joy and, bestowing on the astrologers and wizards treasure beyond numbering or reckoning, dismissed them.
And what have they done? It was they who drove out the Jesuits; but to whom did the Society's lands go? To the Duke, every acre of them! And the peasantry suffered far less under the fathers, who were good agriculturists, than under the Duke, who is too busy with monks and astrologers to give his mind to irrigation or the reclaiming of waste land.
If ye think well thereof, I will set him over the land which he hath saved by his wisdom." The astrologers, who were his counsellors, demurred, saying, "A slave, one whom his present owner hath acquired for twenty pieces of silver, thou proposest to set over us as master?"
This Lorenzo, or Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio, as his most intimate acquaintances called him, was destined to murder Alessandro; and it is worthy of notice that the Duke had received frequent warnings of his fate. A Perugian page, for instance, who suffered from some infirmity, saw in a dream that Lorenzino would kill his master. Astrologers predicted that the Duke must die by having his throat cut.
Zingis commanded his astrologers to shew him what was to be the event of the approaching battle; on which they split a reed into two pieces, on one of which they wrote the name of Zingis, and the name of Umcan on the other, and struck them separately into the ground, saying to Zingis: "While we read in our holy books, it shall come to pass through the power of the idol, that these two pieces of reed shall fight together, and whose part shall get the better, to that king shall the victory be given."
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