Eclogue VII. — On the Nature of Timely Childbirth

The sovereign influence of the stars directs all things which we calculate in Nature's manifold activities; it is the limbs of man alone that are of clay: his lot, his life coming from the realms above, must be controlled by the company of the Seven Planets. But chief among them is the golden Sun, to whom the governance of the bright upper air has been allotted. And it is not the seasons of our life alone which he guides in us, while we spin out the short span of our troubled years: it is believed that by his glance are formed in the womb those hidden seeds from which there spring the seasons of that life we are to spend, and those laws laid down which are to govern the life not yet begun. For when conception first takes place, the Sun must needs stand in some planetary house, whichever it may be. And when he has begun to occupy the mansion of the star next in order, he casts no beam of light upon things begotten in the house near by. But when, after a month's space, he wheels his course and in his glowing car climbs up now into the third constellation, he sheds down upon them a slanting ray of feeble light, breathing some slight stir into the sluggish mass. In his fourth station the Sun first makes strong influence felt, and, streaming in, causes the soft foetus to solidify. And with its fire his triangular aspect flashes an enlivening glow, beaming bright and mild— that aspect which at the threshold of the fifth sign beats upon the mother, astonished at the quickened life within her. For in the sixth House the Sun has no power at all, because for Phoebus no line of sight is marked forming a side of any equal-sided figure. But when he has accomplished half his progress through the starry company, and moved his blazing camp across the frontiers of the seventh House, then he looks upon the ever-growing embryo with a direct aspect and in full flood of light; then he pours down his beams upon it without stint and warms it with all the heat of his fiery crown. And the reason why Lucina sometimes comes before the appointed hour of travail, and why she who is with child feels the pangs of labour stealing over her before the time awaited with prayers, is that, had he not shaken the reluctant bars restraining birth at the time when he poured his light from the place of the seventh sign, the Sun could not afterwards effect what he could have done before. Or can this be the cause, that the ineffective glance of the eighth planet, as of the sixth, cannot form any equal-sided figure? But when he occupies the ninth sign, he brings relief to the long-drawn prayers of mothers, the resultant triangle joining its power with his. Yet if perverse Ilithyia tarries once again, he will break through the bonds of hesitation and delay when he passes on to assume his quadrilateral aspect (in the tenth sign).