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μείς. Each month in Egypt was consecrated to a god, from whom sometimes its name was derived. The days of the month too were assigned, the first to Thoth, the second to Horus, the third to Osiris, &c.

H. is right that horoscopes were much cast in Egypt. The day on which a man was born determined his fate, e. g. a man born on the 9th Phaophi would live to be old, on the 23rd would be killed by a crocodile; no child born on the 23rd of Thoth could live, &c. Cf. Papyrus Sallier IV, now in the B. M., for a calendar of this kind.

οἱ ἐν ποιήσι, ‘those who have employed themselves in poetry’; the contemptuous reference is to books like Hesiod's Works and Days, and also to the oracular poems attributed to Orpheus and Musaeus.

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