As often as he consulted this way concerning any affair, he retired to the roof of the house, attended by one freedman trusted with the secret. This man strong of body, but destitute of letters, guided along the astrologer, whose art Tiberius meant to try, over solitary precipices (for upon a rock the house stood) and, as he returned, if any suspicion arose that his predictions were vain, or that the author designed fraud, cast him headlong into the sea, to prevent his making discoveries. Thrasullus being therefore led over the same rocks, and minutely consulted, his answers were full, and struck Tiberius; as approaching Empire and many future revolutions were specifically foretold him. The artist was then questioned, "whether he had calculated his own nativity, and thence presaged what was to befall him that same year, nay, that very day?" Thrasullus surveying the positions of the stars, and calculating their aspects, began at first to hesitate, then to quake, and the more he meditated, being more and more dismayed with wonder and dread, he at last cried out, "that over him just then hung a boding danger and well-nigh fatal." Forthwith Tiberius embraced him, congratulated him "upon his foresight of perils, and his security from them;" and esteeming his predictions as so many oracles, held him thenceforward in the rank of his most intimate friends.
For myself, while I listen to these and the like relations, my judgment wavers, whether things human are in their course and rotation determined by Fate and immutable necessity, or left to roll at random. For upon this subject the wisest of the ancients and those addicted to their Sects, are of opposite sentiments. [Footnote: The Epicureans.] Many are of opinion "that to the Gods neither the generation of us men nor our death, and in truth neither men nor the actions of men, are of any importance or concernment: and thence such numberless calamities afflict the upright, while pleasure and prosperity surround the wicked." Others [Footnote: The Stoics.] hold the contrary position, and believe "a Fate to preside over events; a fate however not resulting from wandering stars, but coeval with the first principles of things, and operating by the continued connection of natural causes. Yet their philosophy leaves our course of life in our own free option; but that after the choice is made, the chain of consequences is inevitable: neither is that good or evil, which passes for such in the estimation of the vulgar: many, who seem wounded with adversity, are yet happy; numbers, that wallow in wealth, are yet most wretched: since the first often bear with magnanimity the blows of fortune; and the latter abuse her bounty in baneful pursuits." For the rest, it is common to multitudes of men "to have each their whole future fortunes determined from the moment of their birth: or if some events thwart the prediction, it is through the mistakes of such as pronounce at random, and thence debase the credit of an art, which, both in ages past and our own, hath given signal instances of its certainty." For, to avoid lengthening this digression, I shall remember in its order, how by the son of this same Thrasullus the Empire was predicted to Nero.