Now these decans, who were also called Gods (Theoi), regulated the destinies of mankind--and they were placed particularly in certain stars.

They afterwards imagined in every ten three other Gods, whom they called arbiters; so that there were nine for every month, and these were farther divided into an infinite number of powers.

The Persians and Indians made their spheres on similar plans; and if a picture thereof were to be drawn from the description given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, we should find in it a complete explanation of their hieroglyphics, for every article forms one.
** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote the name of Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside down and backwards].
*** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is precisely the touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and these deluges in mythology are nothing more than winter and the rains, or the overflowing of the Nile: as their pretended fires which are to destroy the world, are simply the summer season.

And it is for this reason that Aristotle (De Meteor, lib.

I.c.