Astrology / History

Astrology in the Roman World 200 B.C.-500 A.D.

    
    Divination had long been a part of the Italian life and religion before the importation of astrology to Rome in the 2nd century B.C. When the Romans discovered astrology some 1,400 years after the Venus Tablet of Amisaduqa, they took to it wholeheartedly and incorporated it into every aspect of their lives from religion to politics to day-to-day affairs. Astrology appealed to the masses on the level of fortune telling, and it is perhaps in Rome that astrology first developed its "fair-ground fortune teller" side, as distinct from its religious and mystical uses. Astrology appealed to the priests as the perfect addition to the worship of planetary deities, and it accorded well with the philosophy of the intellectuals, already impressed by the fatalist Stoicism with its belief in ever-recurrent cycles.
    
    The Romans took astrology and incorporated it into their religion, but astrologers were never too popular with the authorities. Of the philosophical exponents of astrology, the Pythagoreans were banned from Rome, although the Stoics were acceptable on account of their less subversive appearance.
    
    Tradition relates that astrology was first introduced to Rome by a slave, Antiochus, in the second century B.C., and that its spread was encouraged by the arrival of more slaves from the east. The association of astrology with the east was indicated by the Romans in the common name for astrologers: Chaldeans. Astrology took an instant hold on the masses, and the influence of astrologers over public opinion was such that several times the government expelled them from Rome. The first such expulsion took place in 139 B.C.; a sign of how fast the astrologers' influence had grown.
    
    The first Latin writer to mention astrology was Ennius (239-169 B.C.), and his attitude was quite clearly skeptical: 'They note the astrologic signs of heaven whenever the Goats or Scorpions of great Jove or other monstrous names of brutish forms rise in the Zodiac. But not one regards the sensible facts of Earth on which we tread while gazing on starry prodigies.
    
    Cato, the great orator and upholder of Republican virtue, mentioned astrology in 149 B.C. when he issued a warning against consulting 'Chaldeans', whom he regarded as a dangerous foreign influence. The fact that he bothered to make his feelings public is an indication that astrologers were already well known at Rome.
    
    For the intellectual Romans Posidonius the Stoic (135-51 B.C.), was the main inspiration. Posidonius taught at his school on the Island of Rhodes where among his pupils was the first major Roman astrologer, Nigidius Figulus. Later, when Posidonius moved to Rome, he became teacher to many other great Romans, including Cicero, who was himself a member of the College of Augurs, specializing in divination from animal entrails. It was Posidonius, more than any other teacher, who brought together the differing strands of religion and philosophy in Greece and Mesopotamia and then passed them on to Rome.

 1  2  3  4  5