The Greek Astrology

HOW DID THE GEEKY GREEKS TOOK THE STUDY OF ASTROLOGY?

It wasn't that the Greeks were unluckier with knowledge before Alexander's arrival or that Alexander was the savior of his fellow ignorant citizens. They hold the honor of changing astronomy and astrology. This mix was looked at as a branch of science. They were also the ones who introduced horoscopes (c. 300 BC - 250 BC) in astrology for the prediction of a person's future. The event calendars created by Greek's finest astronomers and mathematicians were highly useful. With those, even the people with an average calculus skill could easily evaluate a horoscope.

Here is a short list of some of the many famous scientists, researchers, philosophers, historians, mathematicians, and scholars before, during, and after the great emperor’s time.

• Ø The mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras (570 BC – 495 BC), formulated the Pythagoras theorem and many others in the line of trigonometry which are still being used in modern astronomy. He was also the first to coin the term ‘cosmos’ and the first to say that the world was round.
• Ø Socrates (470 BC – 399 BC) was a revered philosopher who had a huge influence on Greek and early Islamic philosophies.
• Ø Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a protégé of Plato, who was one of Socrates’ students. Aristotle went on to tutor Alexander the Great. He was not only a philosopher but also a scientist.
• Ø Theophrastus (371 BC – 287 BC), Aristotle’s successor, is often considered the ‘father of botany’. His interests were wide, extending from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics. Two of his surviving botanical works were an important influence on renaissance science. He has also mentioned about how astrology was born and brought up in the city of Babylon.
• Ø Berosus (4th century BC - 3rd century BC) established a school of astrology in the island of Kos, situated off the coast of Asia Minor, by the patronage of the king of Egypt. He has also written three books on the history of Babylonia titled “Babyloniaca” which gives information on the state of astrology during various periods in Babylon.
• Ø Asinopolos was a Babylonian astrologer who immigrated to Greece along with Berosus. He developed a new method, wherein the birth time in a person’s horoscope was the time at which the egg was fertilized.
• Ø Hipparchus (190 BC – 120 BC) was an astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. His solar and lunar theories, combined with trigonometry, he may have been the first person to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses. He is also called as the father of trigonometry.

• Ø Claudius Ptolemy (100 AD – 170 AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer and poet of a single epigram in the Greek anthology. His work, Almagest, is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. He presented his astronomical models in convenient tables which could be used to compute the future or past positions of the planets. His ‘Handy tables’ provided the model for later astronomical tables. He also gave a parapegma, a star calendar or almanac.

The mathematical amazing abilities of the Greeks led to new discoveries in the field of astronomy. Along with many other fields, astrology grew and spread throughout the Roman Empire quickly. It was a blend of astronomy, math, history, philosophy and divinity.

ASTRONOMICA AND ALMAGEST

“Astronomica” was the first known work on Astrology. It was an extensive work on the heavenly phenomena, specifically on astrology and zodiac. The book was written around 10 AD - 20 AD, likely by Marcus Manilius. Though there are some references of history experts, math experts, and astronomers having read this work, the author remained unquoted.

The first two of the five parts of the book focused on astrology. According to Manilius, the earth is inside a hollow sphere that has stars fixed on the inside of it. The stars so fixed show constellations which he grouped as signs of the zodiac. The illustrations for each sign were discussed in the third part. His work helped in studying the distant star groups which were almost completely hidden from the naked eye.

About 100 years later, Claudius Ptolemy wrote one of the most influential texts of all time – “The Almagest”. It not only shed light on Hipparchus' lost works on astronomy but also on the details of the 1022 stars that he claims to have intensively studied. The two books played a big part in the development and widening of Astrology.