Astrology appealed

Between the 5th century BC and the birth of Christ, astrology appealed to various sections of Greek soy, cietamong them not only philosophers and scientists, but such men as Hippocrates, the physician and ‘father of medicine’, who taught astrology to his students so that they could discover the ‘critical days’ in an illness. He is said to have remarked that ‘any man who does not understand astrology is a fool rather than a physician’. And the young intelligentsia often took an intense interest in the subject; when Plato visited Dionysus’ school, he saw two pupils arguing with great vigour about the theories of Anaxagoras, illustrating their argument by imitating the sweep of the ecliptic with their arms. Aristophanes in The Clouds ridicules the study of astrology as one of the cults of the Athens upper classes.