Astrology's webs and the absurdity of fate

But these clever arguments of theirs are like spider webs: when a gnat or a fly or some other weak creature of that kind gets caught in them, it is held fast; but when one of the stronger animals comes near, it slips through easily and tears the flimsy webs apart and destroys them.

And they do not stop at these things alone. Even the things over which each of us has authority by our own choice—I mean the pursuits of virtue or vice—even these they connect to causes in the heavens. To argue against them in any other way would be laughable, but because so many people are already held captive by the deception, it is perhaps necessary not to pass over it in silence.

First, then, let us ask them this: do not the configurations of the stars change countless times every day? For the so-called planets are always in motion, and some overtake one another more quickly, while others make their circuits more slowly, and at the same hour they often both see one another and are hidden from one another. And the greatest power in nativities, as they themselves say, lies in whether a person is watched over by a beneficent star or a maleficent one. And often, when they fail to discover the exact moment at which the beneficent star was bearing witness, because of ignorance of one of the smallest details, they record the person as lying under evil fortune. For I am compelled to use their own words.

In such arguments there is much foolishness, and far more impiety. For the maleficent stars transfer the cause of their own wickedness to the one who made them. If their evil comes from their nature, then the Creator will be the maker of evil. But if they become evil by choice, then first of all they will be creatures with choice, using free and self-governing impulses—which is beyond madness to attribute falsely to soulless things. And then how irrational it is: evil and good are not distributed to each according to merit, but because a star happens to be in a certain place, it is beneficent, and because it is seen by another star, the same one becomes maleficent; and again, when it shifts a little from its configuration, it immediately forgets its wickedness.

But let this be enough on those points. If at every indivisible moment of time the stars are rearranged into one configuration after another, and in these countless changes, many times a day, the configurations that produce royal nativities are completed, why are kings not born every day? Or why do they have hereditary successions of kingdoms at all? For surely each king does not carefully arrange the birth of his own son to fit the royal configuration of the stars. What human being has control over such a thing? How then did Uzziah beget Jotham, Jotham Ahaz, Ahaz Hezekiah? And in none of these did anyone happen upon a servile hour of birth?

Furthermore, if the origins of our actions in vice and virtue are not within our power, but the necessities come from our nativity, then lawmakers are superfluous, defining what we should do and what we should avoid; and judges are superfluous too, honoring virtue and punishing wickedness. For the theft is not the thief's fault, nor the murder the murderer's—since it was not possible for him, even if he wanted to, to control his hand, because of the inescapable necessity driving him to the deed.