Astrology / History

Ancient Greek

    
    It was in 280 B.C., when Aristarchus was thirty years old, that astrology was formally introduced into Greece. Berossus, a priest of Bel from Babylon, opened a school of astrology in that year on the island of Cos, site of the medical school of Hippocrates. Sometime later a Greek school was opened in Babylon, which was by this time no longer a capital city but merely the scholastic centre of the Greek Seleucid Empire. Astrology caught on rapidly among the Greeks and we hear of several philosophers who were proud of the fact that they had studied under the "Chaldeans". Of the activities of practicing Greek astrologers, however, we have almost no record until over two hundred years later.
    
    The final great astronomer of Classical Greece was Hipparchus (c 190-120 B.C.), who is often referred to as "the great father of true astronomy". Hipparchus discovered the Precession of the Equinoxes (the movement of the vernal point through the constellations), the effect of which was to promote the split between the Sidereal zodiac based on the constellations and the Tropical zodiac tied to the seasons. For many years the two zodiacs existed side by side, the Tropical zodiac becoming dominant in Europe due to the patronage of Ptolemy in the 2nd century A.D. The last known use of the Sidereal zodiac in Europe was in 6th century Byzantium (modern Istanbul), then the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, since when its use has been confined to Asia, mainly to India. Hipparchus is also known as the inventor of latitude and longitude as co-ordinates for geographical measurement, without which no modern chart calculation would be possible.
    
    After Hipparchus there are few major figures in either Greek astronomy or astrology, and it is generally recognized that he was the last of the line of Greek philosophers and scientists who started with Thales four hundred years earlier. The interaction between Greek and Semitic thought was in any case by now so thorough that with our limited historical records it is not always possible to distinguish between the two. There was, however, one last major philsopher, Posidonius, a Stoic who was born about 135 B.C. Posidonius was responsible for the major synthesis between Greek and Mesopotamian and Semitic thought within which the astrological advances of the next hundred years took place, and inspired a philosophy known as "Neo-Pythagoreanism" whose devotees encouraged the spread of astrology. It is quite likely that Posidonius, like many of the other astrologers of the Greek and Roman worlds, was in fact of Syrian origin, an important consideration for Syria was one of the homes of Sun worship.
    
    The proportion of astrological texts to astronomical texts dramatically reverses around the time of Posidonius as compared to
    
    It was in 280 B.C., when Aristarchus was thirty years old, that astrology was formally introduced into Greece. Berossus, a priest of Bel from Babylon, opened a school of astrology in that year on the island of Cos, site of the medical school of Hippocrates. Sometime later a Greek school was opened in Babylon, which was by this time no longer a capital city but merely the scholastic centre of the Greek Seleucid Empire. Astrology caught on rapidly among the Greeks and we hear of several philosophers who were proud of the fact that they had studied under the "Chaldeans". Of the activities of practicing Greek astrologers, however, we have almost no record until over two hundred years later.
    
    The final great astronomer of Classical Greece was Hipparchus (c 190-120 B.C.), who is often referred to as "the great father of true astronomy". Hipparchus discovered the Precession of the Equinoxes (the movement of the vernal point through the constellations), the effect of which was to promote the split between the Sidereal zodiac based on the constellations and the Tropical zodiac tied to the seasons. For many years the two zodiacs existed side by side, the Tropical zodiac becoming dominant in Europe due to the patronage of Ptolemy in the 2nd century A.D. The last known use of the Sidereal zodiac in Europe was in 6th century Byzantium (modern Istanbul), then the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, since when its use has been confined to Asia, mainly to India. Hipparchus is also known as the inventor of latitude and longitude as co-ordinates for geographical measurement, without which no modern chart calculation would be possible.
    
    After Hipparchus there are few major figures in either Greek astronomy or astrology, and it is generally recognized that he was the last of the line of Greek philosophers and scientists who started with Thales four hundred years earlier. The interaction between Greek and Semitic thought was in any case by now so thorough that with our limited historical records it is not always possible to distinguish between the two. There was, however, one last major philsopher, Posidonius, a Stoic who was born about 135 B.C. Posidonius was responsible for the major synthesis between Greek and Mesopotamian and Semitic thought within which the astrological advances of the next hundred years took place, and inspired a philosophy known as "Neo-Pythagoreanism" whose devotees encouraged the spread of astrology. It is quite likely that Posidonius, like many of the other astrologers of the Greek and Roman worlds, was in fact of Syrian origin, an important consideration for Syria was one of the homes of Sun worship.
    
    The proportion of astrological texts to astronomical texts dramatically reverses around the time of Posidonius as compared to

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