The earliest attempts to deal with the first branch of the inquiry may be called physiognomical.
Some of these authors attempt to separate the physiognomical part of the subject (Chirognomia) from the astrological (Chiromantia); see especially Caspar Schott in Magia naturalis universalis, Bamberg, 1677.
But in its second aspect it touched divination and astrology, of which Galen' says that the physiognomical part is the greater, and this aspect of the subject ' bulked largely in the fanciful literature of the middle ages.
In this passage he deprecates current physiognomical speculations, saying that he might criticize them but feared to waste time and become tedious over them.
A physiognomical study of the Homeric heroes is given by Malalas, Chronogr.