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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput II: De geminorum simili dissimilique ualetudine.

Cicero dicit Hippocratem, nobilissimum medicum, scriptum reliquisse, quosdam fratres, cum simul aegrotare coepissent et eorum morbus eodem tempore ingrauesceret, eodem leuaretur, geminos suspicatum; quos Posidonius Stoicus, multum astrologiae deditus, eadem constitutione astrorum natos eadem que conceptos solebat adserere. ita quod medicus pertinere credebat ad simillimam temperiem ualetudinis, hoc philosophus astrologus ad uim constitutionemque siderum, quae fuerat quo tempore concepti natique sunt. in hac causa multo est acceptabilior et de proximo credibilior coniectura medicinalis, quoniam parentes ut erant corpore adfecti, dum concumberent, ita primordia conceptorum adfici potuerunt, ut consecutis ex materno corpore prioribus incrementis paris ualetudinis nascerentur; deinde in una domo eisdem alimentis nutriti, ubi aerem et loci positionem et uim aquarum plurimum ualere ad corpus uel bene uel male accipiendum medicina testatur, eisdem etiam exercitationibus adsuefacti tam similia corpora gererent, ut etiam ad aegrotandum uno tempore eisdemque causis similiter mouerentur. constitutionem uero caeli ac siderum, quae fuit quando concepti siue nati sunt, uelle trahere ad istam aegrotandi parilitatem, cum tam multa diuersissimi generis diuersissimorum effectuum et euentorum eodem tempore in unius regionis terra eidem caelo subdita potuerint concipi et nasci, nescio cuius sit insolentiae. nos autem nouimus geminos non solum actus et peregrinationes habere diuersas, uerum etiam dispares aegritudines perpeti. de qua re facillimam, quantum mihi uidetur, rationem redderet Hippocrates, diuersis alimentis et exercitationibus, quae non de corporis temperatione, sed de animi uoluntate ueniunt, dissimiles eis accidere potuisse ualetudines. porro autem Posidonius uel quilibet fatalium siderum adsertor mirum si potest hic inuenire quid dicat, si nolit inperitorum mentibus in eis quas nesciunt rebus includere. quod enim conantur efficere de interuallo exiguo temporis, quod inter se gemini dum nascerentur habuerunt, propter caeli particulam, ubi ponitur horae notatio, quem horoscopum uocant: aut non tantum ualet, quanta inuenitur in geminorum uoluntatibus actibus moribus casibusque diuersitas, aut plus etiam ualet, quam est geminorum uel humilitas generis eadem uel nobilitas, cuius maximam diuersitatem nonnisi in hora, qua quisque nascitur, ponunt. ac per hoc si tam celeriter alter post alterum nascitur, ut eadem pars horoscopi maneat, paria cuncta quaero, quae in nullis possunt geminis inueniri; si autem sequentis tarditas horoscopum mutat, parentes diuersos quaero, quos gemini habere non possunt.

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The City of God

Chapter 2.--On the Difference in the Health of Twins.

Cicero says that the famous physician Hippocrates has left in writing that he had suspected that a certain pair of brothers were twins, from the fact that they both took ill at once, and their disease advanced to its crisis and subsided in the same time in each of them. ¹ Posidonius the Stoic, who was much given to astrology, used to explain the fact by supposing that they had been born and conceived under the same constellation. In this question the conjecture of the physician is by far more worthy to be accepted, and approaches much nearer to credibility, since, according as the parents were affected in body at the time of copulation, so might the first elements of the foetuses have been affected, so that all that was necessary for their growth and development up till birth having been supplied from the body of the same mother, they might be born with like constitutions. Thereafter, nourished in the same house, on the same kinds of food, where they would have also the same kinds of air, the same locality, the same quality of water,--which, according to the testimony of medical science, have a very great influence, good or bad, on the condition of bodily health,--and where they would also be accustomed to the same kinds of exercise, they would have bodily constitutions so similar that they would be similarly affected with sickness at the same time and by the same causes. But, to wish to adduce that particular position of the stars which existed at the time when they were born or conceived as the cause of their being simultaneously affected with sickness, manifests the greatest arrogance, when so many beings of most diverse kinds, in the most diverse conditions, and subject to the most diverse events, may have been conceived and born at the same time, and in the same district, lying under the same sky. But we know that twins do not only act differently, and travel to very different places, but that they also suffer from different kinds of sickness; for which Hippocrates would give what is in my opinion the simplest reason, namely, that, through diversity of food and exercise, which arises not from the constitution of the body, but from the inclination of the mind, they may have come to be different from each other in respect of health. Moreover, Posidonius, or any other asserter of the fatal influence of the stars, will have enough to do to find anything to say to this, if he be unwilling to im pose upon the minds of the uninstructed in things of which they are ignorant. But, as to what they attempt to make out from that very small interval of time elapsing between the births of twins, on account of that point in the heavens where the mark of the natal hour is placed, and which they call the "horoscope," it is either disproportionately small to the diversity which is found in the dispositions, actions, habits, and fortunes of twins, or it is disproportionately great when compared with the estate of twins, whether low or high, which is the same for both of them, the cause for whose greatest difference they place, in every case, in the hour on which one is born; and, for this reason, if the one is born so immediately after the other that there is no change in the horoscope, I demand an entire similarity in all that respects them both, which can never be found in the case of any twins. But if the slowness of the birth of the second give time for a change in the horoscope, I demand different parents, which twins can never have.