Romans repeatedly banned astrologers, then known as Chaldeans, from the city of Rome, specifically because emperors were terrified that citizens would cast charts to predict the exact date of their assassinations.

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Romans repeatedly banned astrologers, then known as Chaldeans, from the city of Rome, specifically because emperors were terrified that citizens would cast charts to predict the exact date of their assassinations. Political forecasting via planetary alignment was considered such a massive threat to state security that numerous decrees were passed to exile anyone caught trying to calculate the death date of the ruling class. Imagine being an ancient Roman emperor with absolute power over the known world, and your biggest source of anxiety is some guy in an alley doing math with a star map to see when you will be poisoned. It perfectly highlights how giving credibility to a fictional predictive system actually gives it real-world power, turning a harmless parlor trick into an act of treason