Full context:   Likewise, Firmicus Maternus, around 335 A.D., dedicates the fourteenth chapter of his second book to eight loci (1: life, 2: hope (of riches), 3: brothers and sisters, 4: parents, 5: children, 6: health, 7: partnerships, 8: death), before undertaking an analysis of the twelve houses.   In Book IV he enumerates once again the sources of geniture: "from nature, from physical subsistence, from the race, from the parents, from the siblings, from marriages, from descendents, from the last day of life."   Bouché-Leclercq suggested in 1899 in his polemical survey that the octotopos (or oktotopos) predates the dodekatopos: "There must have existed a neglected tradition that divided the circle of life into eight parts, or into twelve parts of which only eight were considered to be active, and (...) this system may have been understood neither by Manilius nor by Firmicus, both of whom were capable of distortion but incapable of invention."   This anteriority of the system of eight houses seems to be confirmed by the meanings traditionally attributed to Houses I (life) and VIII (death). It is after passage through the eighth house that a new cycle can begin.