Astrology / History

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

    
    Contemporary with Ptolemy was Vettius Valens of Antioch (c 144-170 A.D.) who ran his own school and wrote a teachers' manual, perhaps indicating that the teaching of astrology was a flourishing business in the eastern Mediterranean. Vettius also published the first known collection of horoscopes, again indicating the presence of a demand for this type of literature. It is interesting that it is clear from his collection both that the rising sign was still not regarded as particularly important, and that he does not seem to have been aware of the work of Ptolemy.
    
    Galen (120-200 A.D.) produced the next major advance in medical astrology after Hippocrates, and the 'Galenic' system persisted up until the time of Paracelsus in the 16th century. Plotinus (b 203 A.D.), perhaps the last major philosopher of the Pagan world, is credited with the foundation of Neo-Platonism, the philosophy which more than any other is the philosophy of astrology. Neo-Platonism is a combination of Platonism and Aristotelianism, and states that the influence of the Ideal, perfect sphere, the residence of the Creative Intelligence that exists beyond the spheres of the fixed stars, filters down through the 7 planetary spheres, gradually becoming more corrupt as it moves farther away from its divine source. The influence finally arrives at the sub-lunary sphere, wherein resides the Earth, the home of change and hence decay. In its more gloomy form, that the Earth is irredeemably corrupted and separated from its divine creator, this philosophy later had a great impact on some Christians, ironically mainly those such as St Augustine who were opposed to astrology.
    
    Porphyry (232-304 A.D.) is perhaps the best known of Roman astrologers after Ptolemy, as he was the originator of one of the earliest house-systems, indicating that the vexed problem of house division was beginning to pre-occupy astrologers. Like so many astrologers, Porphyry was Syrian by birth, but his influence spread throughout the Roman Empire. In the later Roman Empire, particularly after 200 A.D., the influence of astrology on mass belief became very pronounced through the importation into Rome and Western Europe of new eastern-based religions. Mithraism, Orphism and the Cult, of Sol Invictus (the unvanquished Sun) all used zodiacal symbolism, but ironically the association of astrology with such cults helped discredit it when Christianity became the main religion of the Empire after 313 A.D. Christianity, of course, inherited the basic structure of the astrological religious calendar and Christmas Day, the celebration of the birth of God on Earth was fixed to coincide with the re-birth of Sol Invictus at the winter solstice.
    
    The last major astrologer of the Roman era was Julius Firmicus Maternus, who lived in the first part of the 4th century A.D. He is notable to the history of astrology as a Christian convert, and his work therefore spanned the religious divide between pagan and Christian. His most enduring achievement, apart from publicizing the work of Manilius, was his publication of a textbook, the Mathesis. This was one of the first Roman works on astrology to be rediscovered in Mediaeval Europe, being first made available again in 10th century Spain, and reaching England by the end of the 11th century, even before the works of Ptolemy were translated.

 1  2  3  4  5