Book XI, 365

Catuicenes the husbandman, when he had cast the seed into the land, came to the house of Aristophanes the astrologer and begged him to tell him if he would have a favourable harvest and great abundance of corn. ‘Taking his counters and spreading them on a tray, and bending his fingers, he said to Calligenes: “If your bit of land receives sufficient rain and produces no crop of wild flowers, if the frost does not break the furrows, if the hail does not nip off the tops of the sprouting ears, if no goat browses on the corn, and if it meet with no other injury by air or earth, I prophesy that your harvest will be excellent and you will cut the ears with success; only look out for the locusts.”