“Arrows.” Esarhaddon is employing a mode of sortilege by arrows, belomancy, which was extensively practised among the Chaldeans, as also among the Arabs. Upon this text S. Jerome comments: “He shall stand in the highway, and consult the oracle after the manner of his nation, that he may cast arrows into a quiver, and mix them together, being written upon or marked with the names of each people, that he may see whose arrow will come forth, and which city he ought first to attack.” The arrows employed by the Arabs were often three in number, upon the first of which was inscribed, “My Lord hath commanded me”; upon the second, “My Lord hath forbidden me”; and the third was blank. If the inquirer drew the first it was an augury of success; the second gave an omen of failure; if the third were drawn, all three were mixed again and another trial was made. In some countries diving rods were employed instead of arrows. These were drawn from a vessel, or, it might be, cast into the air, the position in which they fell being carefully noted. This practice is rhabdomancy. The LXX, “Ezechiel” xxi, 21, reads , not , and rhabdomancy is mentioned by S. Cyril of Alexandria. The “Koran,” V, forbids prognostication by divining arrows, which are there denounced as “an abomination of the work of Satan.” See my “History of Witchcraft,” Chap. V, pp. 182-83.