>>11265621 There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and quite famous in
medicine. [91] He was proconsul then, and with his own hand he placed
on my distempered head the crown I had won in a rhetorical contest. He
did not do this as a physician, however; and for this distemper "only
thou canst heal who resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the
humble." [92] But didst thou fail me in that old man, or forbear from
healing my soul? Actually when I became better acquainted with him, I
used to listen, rapt and eager, to his words; for, though he spoke in
simple language, his conversation was replete with vivacity, life, and
earnestness. He recognized from my own talk that I was given to books
of the horoscope-casters, but he, in a kind and fatherly way, advised
me to throw them away and not to spend idly on these vanities care and
labor that might otherwise go into useful things. He said that he
himself in his earlier years had studied the astrologers' art with a
view to gaining his living by it as a profession. Since he had already
understood Hippocrates, he was fully qualified to understand this too.
Yet, he had given it up and followed medicine for the simple reason
that he had discovered astrology to be utterly false and, as a man of
honest character, he was unwilling to gain his living by beguiling
people. "But you," he said, "have the profession of rhetoric to support
yourself by, so that you are following this delusion in free will and
not necessity. All the more, therefore, you ought to believe me, since
I worked at it to learn the art perfectly because I wished to gain my
living by it."
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