Volume VII : Astrology in Medieval Europe

The early Middle Ages, while it produced a fair amount of argument about astrology, and saw a diminution of its influence on monarchs, did not mark as complete a collapse as some historians have suggested. Even where there was some doubt about its use on a personal level, it was still generally admitted to be useful in meteorology and agriculture. And most scholars took the view that it was an important element of general knowledge. Boethius, the 6th-century consul in Rome, some of whose writings were translated by King Alfred the Great, was one of them, and his book The Consolation of Philosophy must have been influential in reinforcing whatever knowledge of astrology there was in Britain in the 10th century. He argued that the movements of the planets derived from the immortal will of Providence, and that ‘the celestial movement of the stars’ translated that will into earthly events, ‘constraining human forces in an indissoluble chain of causes which, since it starts from the decree of immovable Providence, must needs itself also be immutable.’ Nevertheless, he was not a fatalist, for even divine Providence imposed no fatal necessity on the human will, which was always free, while nature was not, but was constrained by the planets. As Canute found, you cannot argue with the tides. Boethius also, by the way, agreed with Plato that each planet has its own musical chord, contributing to the heavenly harmony of the music of the spheres. An attraction of the astrological theory, in the early Middle Ages as now, was that it could be applied to absolutely every facet of human life. But there were some areas into which it soaked with persuasive power, and among these was medicine. The ‘astrological man’ appears again and again in manuscripts of the period, though sometimes to denigrate astrology. There is for instance a splendid 11th-century drawing of the twelve signs grouped around the figure of Christ, hand raised to bless. The names of the parts of the body ‘ruled’ by the various signs appear — but the caption reads: ‘According to the ravings of the philosophers the signs are thus denoted’! Astrology was by now so integral a part of medicine that it was not to be possible to disentangle the two for many centuries. Until the 18th century it was still impossible to qualify as a doctor at some universities unless you had passed an examination in astrology, and the use of the planetary positions in diagnosis and treatment was a commonplace. Like other theories, this was used to a greater or lesser degree according to the temperament of the physician. Constantinus Africanus, for instance, who lived between 1015 and 1087, was enormously important in the history of medicine mainly because of his translation and presentation of earlier medical textbooks. He had studied with Chaldeans, Arabs, Persians and Saracens as well as in Tunis (where he was born) and Baghdad. But in his Be humana natura, apart from tracing the formation of the embryo in the womb and relating this to the positions of the planets, and including a certain amount of mildly eccentric material (someone who consistently wets the bed, for instance, should eat the bladder of a river fish for eight days while the Moon waxes and wanes), he makes relatively little of astrological medicine, though there can be no doubt he studied it. It is not surprising that Constantinus studied in the East, for collaboration between Jewish and Arabian scholars had resulted in a correlation of astrological knowledge at such centres as Cairo, Baghdad, Alexandria and Kairwan in Tunis, which produced at least one remarkable scholar in Isaac ben Solomon Israeli, or Isaac Judaeus, who worked there in the 900s, and wrote books on medical astrology which survived for centuries (Robert Burton quotes from him in The Anatomy of Melancholy). To trace the various contributions to what might be called ‘Arabian’ astrology is an almost impossibly complex task, for pieces of theory drifted towards the Arabian centres from as far away as China and India, as well as from Rome, Greece, Egypt and Persia. This was collected together in the great library founded in Baghdad by Harun al-Rashid and al-Mamun, caliphs of the Abbasside dynasty, and completed in about 850, where apart from the lesser works there were Greek copies of the Tetrabiblos translated for general use. There are hints of the importance of the work done in Baghdad in the writings, six or eight hundred years later, of some Englishmen. Chaucer, for instance, wrote a Treatise on the Astrolabe in the 14th century in which he made use of Messahala’s Commentary on Ptolemy, written in the early 800s; William Lilly quotes from the same source in the 1640s; Dr Dee, in Elizabethan England, owned several manuscripts of Isaac Judaeus’ works. In other countries too the Arabian interest in astrology took hold; in Spain, for instance, where the Western Caliph founded in 948 an academy at Cordova at which Moors and Jews alike built up a body of knowledge which in its turn was disseminated through academies founded at Toledo and Granada. There, Hasdai ibn-Shaprut, a Jew, taught at the end of the 10th century, among other things rationalizing the assignation of all known herbs to separate planets which influenced their growth and virtue. Gerbert of Auvergne probably studied under him before being made Archbishop of Ravenna in 998, and later Pope, as Sylvester II. So there is evidence that Christians as well as Moors and Jews studied under Arabian auspices. Sylvester II was admittedly later accused of having had dealings with the Devil because of his studies at Cordova, and some Christians attempted to attach dark satanic inferences to anyone who had studied astrology; but progress was not, at this stage, to be denied. Despite the vicissitudes of history — the capture of the Moorish cities of Spain by the Christians in the 11th century, for instance, and the driving out of the Jews — the ‘universities’ at such cities as Toledo continued to function for centuries, with a continual stream of scholars benefiting from their libraries and their tradition of scholarship, all of which unhesitatingly supported astrology as a serious study. From the 9th and 10th centuries, visual reminders have survived that help demonstrate the subject’s fascination — sometimes illustrating slight differences between eastern and western astrology. In Islamic countries, human beings could not be represented by artists, and so the ‘human’ zodiac signs were altered: in place of the Geminian twins, Muslim artists showed two peacocks; a wheatsheaf replaced the girl in Virgo, and Aquarius became a mule carrying two baskets. There is at Florence a splendid example of another work of art, this time with a practical purpose: an astrolabe for the latitude of Rome, said to have belonged to Sylvester II. An equally early one is at Oxford, made in 984 by Ahmad and Malmud, sons of Ibrahim, of Ispahan. The development of the astrolabe began, it is believed, in the 1st century BC — there are claims for it as the oldest scientific instrument. Used for measuring the altitude of the stars, it was essential to the astronomer-astrologer, and there are many fine examples of astrolabes in museums. It was often magnificently decorated, a pleasure to look at as well as to use. The spread of astrology across Europe, the extent to which it was practised in any western country before the growth of the Roman Empire, is a subject that must be treated with the utmost delicacy. It depends to some extent, of course, on what kind of astrology one is talking about. It seems fairly clear that natal astrology, the setting up of a map of the sky for the moment of a birth, the construction and interpretation of a horoscope, was not possible in, say, Germany, France or Britain until well into the time of Imperial Rome; and that if it was possible then, the means were only known to a very few people, and those probably attached to Roman armies as Balbillus had been attached to Claudius’ entourage during his journey to Britain. However, if we accept that an interest in astrology often arose from a preoccupation with the simple observation of planetary movements, then the most primitive civilizations showed it, and it may be said that Stonehenge — for instance — betrays such a preoccupation, if we are to accept that that monument (and others like it) was erected to fulfil some astronomical purpose. The many theories about the planning and erection of Stonehenge are too complex to investigate here; but the theory that it was some kind of astronomical computer, while suspect in some quarters, is quite sufficiently well argued to remain a possibility. Whatever its purpose, there certainly seems to be an astronomical connection; and the influence on an ignorant community (we are speaking of something like 2900 BC) of a priestly aristocracy that could forecast even the most basic solar and lunar events would have been very considerable. It is even suggested that the people of Neolithic Britain were ruled by such an aristocracy, the leaders of which possessed at least some of the knowledge of the early Babylonian astronomers. Much of their power as leaders of society may have been derived from their knowledge of astronomy, used ‘magically’ to invoke the aid of those heavenly gods, the planets, in hunting: a sort of astrology, although at that stage invoking the occult as intensely as — if much more vaguely than — the Babylonians or Egyptians did. Three thousand years later we glimpse a more sophisticated astrology in the British Isles: although still much too dimly to draw detailed conclusions. The Druids remain sufficiently mysterious to enable the inventive to saddle them with all sorts of preoccupations of which they may have known nothing. Caesar recorded that the Druids in Gaul were men of dignity, lawgivers and priests, learned in astrology and the natural sciences. Britain seemed to be the headquarters of the Druid cult, if that is what it was, and there was an annual meeting in Gaul from which the most promising novices travelled to Britain for training, where they seem to have studied not only astrology but the same systems of divination as the Babylonians — using patterns of bird flight, for instance, and the convulsions of dying men. Early Christian literature provides examples of the Druids predicting a child’s future from the date of its birth, and the word for cloud divination (neladoracht) is also freely used to mean astrology and divination in general. There are several references to astrology itself; for instance, it is related how an astrologer calculated the planets’ positions in order to tell the foster-father of St Columkille, better known as St Columba of Ireland, when it was a propitious time for the boy to begin lessons. It is clear too that the Druids operated a system of lucky and unlucky days: the thirteenth day of a lunar cycle was considered a bad one on which to begin anything; a boy born on that day would be ‘courageous, bold, rapacious, arrogant, self-pleasing’, and a girl ‘saucy, spirited, and daring of her body with many men’. Little is known about the patterns of international travel in ancient times; however, it is by no means impossible that, as some scholars have suggested, astronomical knowledge of all sorts reached Britain and western Europe in the earliest years of Babylon; it does not seem very likely that men should otherwise spontaneously have started building stone circles and similar monuments in various parts of the western world at the same time. Such legends as those that support the coming of Mediterranean traders to Britain many centuries before Christ may be far from nonsense; and while it does not seem at all likely that men with the knowledge to design and build such a sophisticated monument as Stonehenge would be travelling on a trader’s boat, there is nothing inherently absurd in the idea: scholars have often also been adventurers. We begin to see our way rather more clearly round about the time of the Roman occupation, when Mithraism brought knowledge of the existence of astrology to Gaul, Germany and Britain, and temples to the Roman gods were built — often on the sites of Druidic temples, it seems, for Caesar says that the Gauls worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars and Minerva (and can only have meant that they worshipped local gods like those Roman ones). With the departure of the Roman legions, and the Dark Ages, astrology like so much else vanishes from our view, except for some hints that the knowledge brought by the Romans was treasured by some scholars, especially in the north and west of the province — at the limits of Roman power, whence, eventually, came so many early scholars — Alcuin and Bede, Adelard and Roger Bacon among them. Did the British who had learned to read continue to treasure Roman books after AD 410? A few relics suggest the answer books in Greek or Latin with scribbled comments and notes in a Scottish or Welsh dialect. Geoffrey of Monmouth (c 1100-1154), that early romancer and historian, claims that in King Arthur’s reign, whenever that may have been, there subsisted at Carleon in Glamorganshire a college of two hundred philosophers, who studied astronomy and other sciences; and who were particularly employed in watching the course of the stars, and predicting events to the king from these observations. By the time Geoffrey was writing, Christianity had long been established in Britain; but as we have seen, this may well have meant increased knowledge and approval of astrology rather than the reverse. Can Geoffrey’s word be accepted, though? Well, he tells us that his Historia regum Britanniae is a translation of ‘a certain very ancient book written in the British language’ (that is, Welsh) by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. This may have been a simple, individual manuscript; in any event, it has completely vanished. Geoffrey may have invented some of his history, but he would not have invented it all — indeed his often garbled records of some events match with those of which we have knowledge, and he (or his original source) refers often to Cicero, Juvenal, Lucan, Apuleius and others. So the evidence that astrology was in use ‘at the time of King Arthur’ is worth something, if perhaps not a great deal. Strands of astrological belief must have been preserved not only by the faint and fading tenets of whatever ‘religion’ had been supported by the Druids, but in the fading memories of Mithraism, if these communicated themselves to the British, and in the heritage of knowledge left by Rome; and Christianity contributed, too. In The Panegyric of Lludd the Great, a poem written in the 6th century by Taliesin, the ‘mythical’ British bard, there is a passage, among many dealing with prophesies, which reads To Britain shall come an exaltation, Britons of the stock of Rome, May I be judged by the merciful God. Astronomers are predicting Misfortune in the land. Druids are prophesying Beyond the sea, beyond Britain, That the summer shall not be fair ... Of little value except as evidence, again, that some knowledge of astrology persevered. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle agrees. This was written at various centres up to the mid-12th century; the earlier parts probably originated with King Alfred (871-900). It records various eclipses, and other planetary phenomena. (It also, incidentally, records the travels of the ‘three astrologers’ — rather than kings or wise men — to Christ’s birthplace.) The Chronicle mostly interprets eclipses and comets as symbols of foreboding. In 664, we are told, an eclipse on 10 May brought not only the death of the King of Kent, but a plague; fourteen years later, a comet in August presaged Bishop Wilfrid’s expulsion from his bishopric. The comet of 729 brought a clutch of disasters: St Egbert died, and the Atheling Osward, and Osric, King of Northumbria. Among the astronomical reports appear records of more astonishing incidents: a number of fiery dragons flew over Northumbria in 793 (possibly the Leonide meteors); in 979 ‘was seen a bloody welkin oft times in likeness of a fire’. But for the most part the authors concentrate on comets and eclipses — including the most famous comet of all, Halley’s, which appeared in 1066, and is shown in the Bayeux Tapestry above the head of the crowned King William the Conqueror. By the beginning of the 8th century, the names of individual astrologers begin to appear: such men as Aldhelm, who was taught at the school in Kent started by Abbot Hadrian and his friend Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury — the latter came from Tarsus in Asia Minor, and the two men certainly taught in Greek as well as Latin. Aldhelm left treatises on astrology, as well as on logic and arithmetic, meant as textbooks for future students. Alcuin, or Ealhwine, was educated at York, at a school with a long history (it has been suggested that its tradition went back to the Roman occupation), and went on to become a friend and adviser of the Emperor Charlemagne. He learned, he said, among other things, ‘the harmony of the sky’, the laws governing the rising and setting of the stars and the seven planets. Some of the art and architecture of Britain before the 11th century has astrological references — sometimes at a distance, as when we hear for instance that the old Abbey of Glastonbury had a zodiac in its floor. There is zodiacal ornamentation in a number of pre-Conquest churches in Kent, and the new Canterbury Cathedral had some zodiac figures in it simply because the old one, burned down in 1067, had had them. There are 8th-century zodiacal drawings among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Library, and when the Abbey of Croyland was burned in 1091, according to a history compiled from ancient manuscripts that survived the fire, we lost a most beautiful and precious table, fabricated of different kinds of metals, according to the variety of the stars and heavenly signs. Saturn was of copper, Jupiter of gold, Mars of iron, the Sun of lattern [a yellow metal like brass], Mercury of amber, Venus of tin, and the Moon of silver. The eyes were charmed, as well as the mind instructed, by beholding the coloured circles, with the Zodiac and all its signs formed with wonderful art of metals and precious stones, according to their several natures, forms, figures and colours. After the Norman conquest a new flow of astrological material reached England with Jewish scholars from France and elsewhere who settled not only in London, Oxford and Cambridge, but in other large towns, bringing with them books which contained astrological lore, particularly from Arabic and Moorish sources. There is a tradition that William the Conqueror had his own astrologer, who set the time for his coronation (midday on Christmas Day, 1066) — and astrologers claim that this was a particularly auspicious moment, unlikely to have been chosen at random, and take it as the moment for which to set up a general ‘horoscope’ for England. It was during William’s reign that perhaps the most notable of 11th century English scholars was born, at Bath. Much of the life of Adelard, or Aethelhard, is dark to us, although he certainly travelled extensively in Europe, and perhaps further afield, for in one of his books he says with authority that ‘what the schools of Gaul do not know, those beyond the Alps reveal; what you do not learn among the Latins, well-informed Greece will teach you.’ He is fond, too, of quoting from Arabic texts, and does so, often, as though he is using verbal rather than literary sources. Among his works are many on mathematics, astronomy and alchemy. He seems to have been somewhat strait-laced, or at least to have found the atmosphere of England uncongenial after his travels to more refined lands, for on his return he finds the country under Henry I filled with villainous fellows: Princes are violent, prelates wine-bibbers, judges mercenary, patrons inconstant, the common men flatterers, promise-makers false, friends envious, and everyone in general ambitious. He intends, he says, to settle down to serious work, and certainly did so. He translated several Arabic astrological works, including some (the tables of al-Khowarizmi, for instance) which were directed at teaching the reader to set up a horoscope. He would scarcely have done this had he not been interested in the subject, or indeed had been unable himself to set up a chart. His view was that the planets were ‘superior and divine animals’ which were ‘the causers and principle of inferior natures’. One who studied then could understand the present and the past and predict the future. His charming view of the stars as celestial pets extends to a consideration of their food, which he believed consisted of the humidities of earth and water, refined by a long journey through the upper air, and which by the time they reached the planets were sufficiently light and ethereal not to dull their wits or make them put on weight. Another treatise which was probably written by Adelard quotes from Hermes Trismegistus, Ptolemy, Apollonius and other ancient authorities, and argues for the use of astrology in medicine, for its study makes for better doctors than ‘the narrow medical man who thinks of no effects except those of inferior nature merely’. He also deals with the planets’ effects on animals and plants, and ascribes to them certain metals and colours — and indeed religions: the Jews are ruled by Saturn, the Arabs by Mars and Venus, Christianity by the Sun and Jupiter (for the Sun stands for honesty, liberality and victory, and Jupiter for peace, equity and humanity). The continual battles between the Jews, the Muslims and the Chrktians are explained by the fact that neither Mars nor Saturn is ever in friendly relation with Jupiter. More or less contemporary with Adelard was William of Conches. He also travelled extensively before becoming associated with the court of Geoffrey Plantagenet as tutor of his son, the future King Henry II of England, between 1146 and 1149. Interestingly, William is one of the first scholars to attempt a definition of the difference between astronomy and astrology. Authorities, he says, speak of the planets in three ways: the fabulous, the astrological and the astronomical. Those interested in fables interpret the Greek myths as if they were astronomical. The astrologers treat phenomena as they appear to be, whether accurately or no. Astronomers deal with things as they are, whether they seem to be so or not. He takes the argument no further, but does not seem to be intending to denigrate astrology, for he goes on to misquote Plato in support of the theory that the planets control nature and the human body. The heavenly bodies, he argues, heat the atmosphere, which in turn heats water — which forms a fundamental part of all animal bodies — and so must affect every living thing. He lists the planets and their qualities and humours, and puts forward some theories about how the principles were discovered, not only suggesting practical but symbolic reasons. The ancients, he suggests, discovered that Saturn was a ‘cold’ planet because when the Sun was cooler than usual it was in Cancer and in conjunction with Saturn in the same sign. But he also pointed out that Saturn was said to carry a scythe because a man who did so ‘did more execution when receding than advancing’. Venus was said to have committed adultery with Mars because when those two planets were close together, Mars took away some of Venus’ good influences. It has been suggested that Henry II’s interest in astrology, fostered by his tutor William of Conches and by his father Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, was sufficient to make him the patron of Abenezra (1092-1167), a Jew from Toledo, who came to England in 1158 to lecture in London and Oxford. He was also a poet: The planets and stars in their courses Made way when I first saw the light; If I were a seller of candles The Sun it would shine all the night. I try to succeed, but I cannot, For the heavenly spheres oppose; If I took to winding-sheet sewing, Then no-one would die, I suppose. Abenezra seems to have had a pleasant sense of humour as well as considerable fame as an astrologer-writer (his De nativitatibus was reprinted in the 15th and 16th centuries). He lectured not only in England but all over Europe, and may briefly have occupied the chair of astrology at the university of Bologna. Both Adelard and William of Conches were important in bringing to France and England more Arabic works, some of which they translated, and some of which they used as source material for their own books. There were of course other translators, many of whose names have been lost, though we know others — Bartholomew of Messina, Burgundio of Pisa and Eugenius, Admiral of Sicily, who translated from the Greek; Egidius de Trebaldis of Parma, Arnold of Barcelona and Blasius Armegandus of Montpellier, who translated from the Arabic, and so on. Through their work a great stream of astrological knowledge from Arabia made its way westward — some translators, like Pedro Alfonso, claimed to be intent on bringing knowledge westward to save greater scholars than he the labour of travelling so far to acquire the basis on which they could construct their philosophies. Most translators and scholars believed in observation and experiment as well as the acquisition of knowledge from books. Pedro believed strongly in experience as a good master: ‘It has been proved by experimental argument’, he says, ‘that we can truly affirm that the Sun and Moon and other planets exert their influences in earthly affairs... And indeed many other innumerable things happen on earth in accordance with the courses of the stars, and pass unnoticed by the senses of most men, but are discovered and understood by the subtle acumen of learned men who are skilled in this art.’ He was, incidentally, physician to King Henry I of England, and left notes on astrological medicine. Twenty years after his death, Walcher, Prior of Malvern, made translations of all Pedro’s books into English. It was during the 12th century that a great acceleration occurred in the translation of astrological texts into Latin. By 1150, most major texts were available in that language — Plato of Tivoli had translated the Tetrabiblos (as the Quadripartitum); John of Seville made a version of the Centiloquium, a series of astrological aphorisms attributed (wrongly) to Ptolemy, and translated Albumasar, Alchabitius and Messahala. And Gerard of Cromona (1114-87) made over seventy translations from the Arabic into the Latin, among them Ptolemy’s Almagest (Syntaxis), and two previously unknown works of Aristotle, the Meteorologica and the Generatione et corruptione. By the end of the first decade of the 13th century, the complete works of Aristotle were for the first time available in Western Europe in a language that every scholar could read, and by 1255, despite the misgivings of some churchmen, they were accepted in the universities. This was a great step forward for astrology, for it meant that no serious theologian would now contest the fact that the processes of change and growth on earth depended on the activities of the heavenly bodies; read the medieval scholars on Aristotle, and we find them all — from Albertus Magnus to Thomas Aquinas and Dante — accepting the astrological theory which had become a part of the philosopher’s arguments; if they held strongly to free will as a cornerstone of Christian teaching, they could not now deny Aristotle’s (or, for that matter, Augustine’s) admission that the planets influenced human affairs. The Church was forced to see astrology as a science, and recognized it while at the same time condemning magic. Thomas Aquinas is explicit in his Summa theologiae: The majority of men ... are governed by their passions, which are dependent upon bodily appetites; in these the influence of the stars is clearly felt. Few indeed are the wise who are capable of resisting their animal instincts. Astrologers, consequently, are able to foretell the truth in the majority of cases, especially when they undertake general predictions. In particular predictions, they do not attain certainty, for nothing prevents a man from resisting the dictates of his lower faculties. Wherefore the astrologers themselves are wont to say that ‘the wise man rules the stars’ forasmuch, namely, as he rules his own passions. The spate of translations from the Arabic introduced a new element into western astrology. Ptolemy in the Tetrabiblos had concerned himself almost entirely with judicial astrology — using the positions of the planets at the time of someone’s birth to look at the child’s future. He ignored two aspects of astrology more important to the Arabs: interrogationes and electiones. The first concerned itself with setting up a chart in order to discover the answer to a question — the identity of a thief, perhaps, or the nature of a proposed marriage. The second was a way of discovering the propitious moment for a certain action — the sailing of a vessel, the starting of a business, the consummation of a marriage. The election of a particular moment of time was much used by doctors to discover the proper moment at which to apply medicine, perform an operation, raise a patient from bed; in a sense it is still used in the 20th century when at least some doctors choose to operate at phases of the moon when a patient is likely to bleed less freely, or a blood donor chooses to give his blood at full moon, when he bleeds more freely. At least one Arabic work played an important part in determining the philosophical attitude to astrology held by the English church: this was the Introductorium in astronomiam of Albumasar, translated by Herman of Dalmatia who, with Robert the Englishman (Robert of Retines), travelled in Europe in the 1140s discovering astrological works. Albumasar’s work was particularly important to those concerned about astrology’s relationship to free will. He claimed that while it was certainly true that some things were unarguable — fire was hot, always had been hot, and would continue to be hot — and there was no point in contention, other elements in life were mutable: he was setting pen to paper today, but might or might not continue to write tomorrow. The planets were susceptible to reason, and their powers, divinely governed, could influence both arguable and unarguable fact. Translations of astrological books made during the 12th century were extremely influential and widely read. Some of them became profoundly popular. Bernard Silvester, who wrote in the middle of the 12th century, produced for instance three books, each dealing with astrology, which were very widely read indeed. Silvester’s Experimentarius was a verse translation of a work on astrological geomancy (a means of prediction by which a number of points were dashed down at random, and then joined together by lines, creating a number of shapes then used as a key to certain constellations or sets of tables; the resident astrologer of an hotel in Agra, India, was using it still in 1982). His Mathematicus was a narrative poem based on an astrological prediction, and De mundi universitate, was about the stars themselves and their effect on the whole of creation. The latter was, in the terms of its day, a runaway bestseller, almost immediately accepted in the major schools of Europe, where interestingly there is no record of even the slightest reaction against Silvester’s calling the planets ‘gods’ — ‘gods who serve God in person’ — near enough to the Creator to receive from him the secrets of the future, which they impose upon ‘the lower species of the universe, by inevitable necessity’. The whole of nature derived its life from the skies, and could not move without instructions from on high — although at the same time Silvester speaks of ‘what is free in the will and what is of necessity’; somewhat confusing. The Mathematicus is perhaps the earliest work of fiction to depend entirely on astrology for its plot, which tells of a Roman knight and his lady whose marriage is childless. The wife consults an astrologer, who predicts that she will bear a son who will become a great genius and the ruler of Rome, but will one day kill his father. The wife tells the husband, who makes her promise to kill the child in infancy. Of course, when she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, she cannot bear to have him killed, and sends him away, assuring the husband that he is dead. The child, Patricida (so named to ensure that he will hate the crime of patricide) is intellectually brilliant, learning ‘the orbits of the stars and how human fate is under the stars’ and ‘clasping divine Aristotle to his breast’. He grows up to be a brilliant soldier, too, rescuing Rome from the attacking Carthaginians, after which the king abdicates in his favour. His mother, understandably, is both pleased for her son and anxious for his father. She tells all to her husband, who to her dismay goes to Patricida and confesses how he had once ordered him to be killed, but had been overruled by the planets, which would no doubt one day order the king to kill his father. Patricida decides to commit suicide to save them both from fate; he summons the Romans together, induces them to promise him anything, and then announces that he wishes to die ... And here, alas, the intensely operatic poem breaks off, leaving us to construct our own version of what may have happened. The story was written, and taken, extremely seriously; critics who suggested that it was a satire were for the most part Christian clerics intent on producing anti-astrological polemics. There is no sign in the text itself to suggest that it was anything other than a straightforward tale, and its many readers took it as such. England produced no astrologers to compete in reputation with some of those on the Continent, although the universities taught the subject (not with as determined a conviction as that displayed at, say, the universities of Bologna or Padua). English travelling scholars brought news of the latest developments of the study into the country — among them Alexander Neckham (1157-1215), who was a foster-brother of Richard I, born on the same night as the king, and sharing his mother’s breasts with his future sovereign. He grew up to be a distinguished scholar and Abbot of Cirencester, and in his book De naturis rerum wrote about astrology, astronomy and natural science in general. Richard is said to have written ‘something on astrology’, but the manuscript has not survived. That the peoples of Britain as a whole were affected by astrological prognostications cannot be doubted: together with most other Europeans they were thrown into a panic, for instance, by the conjunction of planets in Libra announced for 1186. Most astrologers predicted disastrous storms (Libra is an ‘air’ sign), with the result that many of their more credulous listeners dug underground shelters in which to pass the crisis, and services were held in many churches in an attempt to persuade the Creator to overrule the planets. Two English writers, Roger of Hoveden and Benedict of Peterborough, attempted to comfort their hearers by recalling that an ancient astrologer, one Corumphira, had predicted that only cities in sandy regions of the earth would be affected; but Hoveden also pointed out that an English astrologer, William, clerk to John, Constable of Chester, argued that England would be included in the area of devastation as it were by divine intervention, and that ‘princes should be on their guard, to serve God and flee the devil, so the Lord may avert their imminent punishments’. As September 1186 approached, panic spread. A tract by a Saracen astrologer, Pharamella, criticizing his western colleagues’ calculations, and arguing that the positions of Mars and Venus were such as to mitigate the effects of the conjunction, was too late to comfort the superstitious. As it happened, September was a rather mild and unexceptional month, and the astrologers were forced to admit that they had been mistaken: the conjunction did not provoke storms at all — instead, it instigated the victories of Saladin in the Holy Land in the following year! As the 12th century wore on, English astrological writers continued to consolidate ancient knowledge into accepted texts. Daniel of Morley did so under the aegis of John, Bishop of Norwich; Roger of Hereford a contemporary, under that of Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford and later of London under Henry II. Daniel wrote a book dealing very thoroughly with astrology as it affected the weather, famine or plenty, events and the history of the state, with the horoscope as it revealed the life of an individual, then with its capacity for answering particular questions, and finally with ‘elections’, or the choosing of a moment for a particular task. The last, of course, was of use for instance when a ship’s master wanted to know an auspicious moment at which to set sail on an important voyage — astrologers had already been used for centuries to predict such moments, and would continue to be used so (even by hard-headed insurers) for centuries to come. With the 13th century came the first really notable court astrologer since Roman times of whom we have a clear record — Michael Scot, who when he died in the 1230s was astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II. There is a good anecdote about Frederick II, incidentally, who during his lifetime seems to have employed a number of astrologers. When one presented himself, he decided to set him a test, and asked, ‘By what gate shall I leave the castle today?’ The astrologer wrote his reply, sealed it, and told the Emperor not to open it until he was outside the castle. Frederick thereupon ordered a new exit to be made in the walls, and left through the roughly cut hole. Opening the sealed message, he read: ‘The king will leave today by a new way.’ The astrologer was engaged. Scot was referred to by one contemporary as ‘a scrutinizer of the stars, an augur, a soothsayer, a second Apollo’. Very little is known of the life of this Scottish scholar and astrologer, but there is extensive evidence of the way in which his mind worked — a mind crammed with curious knowledge and odd theories (that, for instance, since there are fourteen joints in the fingers of the hand — and the reasons for that conclusion are not given! — man’s natural lifespan should be 140 years). He discusses in a voluminous Introduction to Astrology the theory and practice of making use of the planets to discover God’s purpose for man, addressing himself to all the old quesions — how the stars are signs, not causes, and how they can be used to discover ‘something of the truth concerning every body produced in this corruptible world’. He castigates ‘superstitious astrologers’ (those who used numerology or geomancy), though he rather enjoys describing such occult means of divination as the shapes of clouds or the appearance of the surface of liquids. Much of Michael Scot’s work is muddled and derivative, but he seems to have done some original research — on, for instance, menstruation and the phases of the Moon — and to have had a strongly felt belief that the moment of conception was, if anything, more important than the moment of birth.. A woman should always, he says, note the exact time of coitus, when she may conceive, and goes into some detail about how different positions in copulation can, with the aid of the positions of the planets, have certain results at conception. Charming magical and superstitious omens are liberally introduced into more serious astrological theories. To discover the sex of an unborn child, ask the pregnarit woman to give you her hand. If she offers the right, the child will be a boy; if the left, a girl. If a man sneezes two or four times while engaged in business, and rises and walks about immediately, he will prosper in the undertaking; but sneeze twice in the night for three successive nights, and you forecast death or disaster. Many stories of wizardry and magic grew up around the figure of Scot. A rhyme told of his peculiar powers: When he stampeth his foot in Spain The bells do ring in Notre Dame. And people whispered of his going about by riding a demon in shape of a black horse. He is said to have foretold that he would die as the result of a blow on the head, and to avoid this always wore a steel helmet. One day, at church with the emperor, he was forced to remove it, whereupon a small stone fell on his head and killed him instantly. Some more prominent 13th-century figures had a merely peripheral interest in astrology. But all had an interest. Albertus Magnus (1193-1280, for instance, one of the greatest scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages, the teacher of St Thomas Aquinas, wrote little directly about astrology — yet his views on the subject come into most of his writings. Clearly, he shared the common belief that all earthly events were governed by the motions of the planets; it is asserted again and again, both obliquely and overtly. He defends free will, of course, but nevertheless asserts that a properly trained astrologer can, after studying the positions of the planets within the zodiac at the moment of birth, make predictions for the whole life of the infant — within the circumscription of what God allows. He asserts too that if an astrologer suggests a career for a boy, it will be as well to place him in it, for because of the planetary influence a special aptitude will be shown for it, as against another occupation which parents might prefer but the planets do not support. (This illustrates how astrological theory was coagulating: astrological advice about careers for children had been given before — by contemporaries of Aristotle, for instance — but was only now appearing in commentaries and textbooks.) St Thomas Aquinas (c 1226-74), Albertus Magnus’ pupil, was far less of a scientist and more of a theologian, held in high esteem by the Popes Urban IV and Clement III and canonized in 1323, less than half a century after his death, by John XXII. He took an attitude not unlike that of Albertus, denying that the stars were living beings, but claiming that no intelligent man could doubt that all natural motions of inferior bodies are caused by the movements of the planets and stars. He agreed too that many astrologers had made true predictions, if with the caveat that many others had made false ones! Roger Bacon (1214-94), an Englishman born in in Somerset and educated at Oxford, had a troublesome relationship with the Church, being twice imprisoned for heresy. He mounted a violent attack on magic and on those who pretended to practise it; but he saw that some ‘magicians’ were in fact scientists seriously concerned to unravel the mysteries of existence; ‘scientific magic’ was permissible. But he entirely accepted astrology as explained by Albertus and Aquinas, and took much their view of it, going somewhat further than them in arguing that the planets can incline men to good or bad conduct, even if both might be modified by free will. He spent quite a lot of time considering the planets and their connection with Christianity: the connection between Mercury and Christianity, for instance — the fact that that planet is dominant in Virgo, suggesting the Virgin, and the likeness between Mercury’s eccentric orbit (then so difficult to trace) and the mysterious course of the Christian Creed. This theory was clearly expressed, and the Popes knew of it. Bacon was, in fact, a great believer in what we can only call astrological magic: he believed in the efficacy of verbal and real charms, for instance, if made under the proper planetary auspices, for they then stored up in them the strange energy of the stars and of the human spirit. He quotes a story of Moses escaping from a compromising amour with an Ethiopian princess by using a ring which caused her to forget him. And he claims that many of the miracles of the saints were performed by means of magic invocations spoken at the proper astrological moment. The fact that astrology needed defending not against the Church but against some critics who put the word about that was anti-Christian, is underlined by the publication of a work attributed to Albertus, the Speculum astronomiae, a lengthy defence of astrology and astronony which seems to have been published round about 1277, at a time when Stephen, Bishop of Paris, and a number of clerical advisers published a condemnation of various opinions (219 of them, to be precise) attributed to ‘Signor de Brabant, Boetius of Denmark, and others’. Many of these ‘opinions’ had to do with astrology — that (an old suggestion) the world would begin again when all the planets returned to their original positions at the time of the Creation; that ‘the will and intellect are not moved in acts by themselves but by an eternal cause, namely, the heavenly bodies’; ‘that by certain signs men’s intentions and changes of mind are known, and whether their intentions will be achieved; and that by such figures are known the outcome of journeys, the captivity of men, their freedom from captivity, and whether they will become sages or scoundrels’; and ‘that Christianity hinders science’. Whether by intention or coincidence, the Speculum astronomiae answers most of them. There are other less important and far less talented astrological writers of the period whose names survive and whose books were read for centuries, despite often considerable inaccuracies and mistakes. John Holywood of Halifax is a case in point. He was born at Halifax, studied at Oxford, and settled in Paris in about 1230; his name was latinized as Johannes de Sacro Bosco. His fame rested on a short book, Tractatus de sphaera, which was copied and reprinted innumerable times, and printed and reprinted in several translations from the original Latin right up until 1647 — at least forty editions within a century — even after the many astronomical errors had been pointed out. It was used by Chaucer as source material for his Treatise on the astrolabe, and many distinguished scholars wrote commentaries on it. But the most important astrological book published in Latin in the 13th century was the Liber astronomicus of Guido Bonatti, the astrologer Dante described as one of the sufferers in the fourth division of the eighth circle of the Inferno, among those spirits who in life had spent too much time trying to predict the future, and were now condemed to pace about with their heads on backwards. Bonatti, perhaps the most famous astrologer of the 13th century, made his living by advising princes, and was for some time employed by Guido de Montefeltro. When that prince was involved in a dispute that led to military action, Bonatti would climb to the top of the campanile of his castle, and at the auspicious moment strike the bell once for the count and his men to don their armour, again for them to mount their horses, and a third time for them to ride forth to battle. Filippo Villani, a contemporary historian, claims that Montefeltro won many a battle by following his astrologer’s advice. Bonatti was absolutely forthright in his claims for his art: All things [he said] are known to the astrologer. All that has taken place in the past, all that will happen in the future — everything is revealed to him, since he knows the effects of the heavenly motions which have been, those which are, and those which will be, and since he knows at what time they will act, and what effects they ought to produce. His Liber astronomicus expresses the same modesty. He begins by stating that his book will be ‘long and prolix’, and indeed it is. He produced it after a lifetime’s practical work as an astrologer — as a professor at the University of Bologna. His defence was opinionated, firm and pert — particularly where the opposition of some churchmen was concerned. Astrologers, he claimed, knew a great deal more about the stars than theologians knew about God, who preached about Him every day. Abraham had taught astrology to the Egyptians, Christ had used (or at least approved of using) astrology to choose propitious moments for certain tasks (‘Are there not twelve hours in a day?’ he had asked the disciples [John XI.9], obviously meaning that one could choose a fortunate time within them); and churchmen who said that astrology was neither an art nor a science were ‘silly fools’. Despite this, his book had some useful tips for ambitious clergymen; he lists various questions astrology can answer, and among them is whether an enquirer will ever attain the rank of bishop, abbot, cardinal — or even pope. This may have been a joke, although he goes on, very straight-faced, to say that while it may not be proper for a clergyman to ask such a question, many did, and an astrologer should be prepared to give an honest answer. Astrology could and should be used, too, to choose the propitious moment for starting to build a church, just as it would be when building a house or castle or city. There remain two important European astrologers to be mentioned before the end of the century. The first, Peter of Albano, who was born in 1250, had a quiet but distinguished career. He travelled somewhat in his youth (to Sardinia and Constantinople, and allegedly to Spain, England and Scotland), spent some time at the University of Paris, where he was admired by Savanarola, then returned to Italy; was among those who met and talked to the great adventurer Marco Polo on his return from the Orient, and returned to Padua to die there in 1316, a highly paid professor. Apart from his astrological writings, he was between 1285 and 1287 physician to Pope Honorius IV (he charged a hundred florins a day for his services, a very considerable sum), although this did not prevent him from getting into trouble with the Inquisition, which punished him after his death by disinterring him and publicly burning his bones — not because of his practice of astrology, however, but because of some unwise speculations about the raising of Lazarus (after only three days, he concluded, rather than four) and for questioning whether certain people raised from the dead by Christ and the saints might not in fact merely have been in a state of trance. His reputation as a physician was very great, and supported by such authorities as Regiomontanus as well as by the popularity of his books on medicine. In his best-known book, the Conciliator, he lists over 200 questions which he has investigated, and after recalling the opinions of others, gives his own conclusions on medical matters. But elsewhere in the book he states a number of objections to astrology, and answers them with similar forthrightness, taking the standard view of the subject, underlining the fact that it is a science. Certainly, some astrologers might come to mistaken conclusions, sometimes because they were incompetent; but a good astrologer would speak the truth in most cases, and very rarely fail to be accurate in his prognostications. As to medicine, which was his chief preoccupation, those who pursued it ‘as they should, and who industriously study the writings of their predecessors, these grant that this science of astronomy is not only useful but absolutely essential to medicine.’ All potions should be administered after a study of the planets’ positions, and Peter goes into great detail about the theory of ‘critical days’ and their relation, especially, to the phases of the Moon. He discusses at some length whether blood-letting should take place at the first or some other quarter of the Moon. He certainly goes some way towards ascribing intelligence to the planets, describing one of them, on one occasion, as ‘leading through all eternity a life most sufficient unto itself, nor ever growing old’, and repeating a theory that associated certain angels with certain planets — Michael with the Sun, Raphael with Mercury, Gabriel with the Moon, and so on. However, he did not go far enough down the road to heresy to forgo the approval of the Pope, or during his lifetime to have any real difficulty with the Inquisition. Cecco d’Ascoli, on the other hand, was to become famous as the only astrologer to be burned by the Inquisition. Practically nothing is known of his life and career; only that the two books which caused his execution were a poem, L’Acerba, and a commentary on the Sphere of Sacro Bosco. L’Ascerba is really hardly here or there — a sort of parody of Dante’s Inferno; the Sphere commentary seems not in itself to be heretical. D’Ascoli affirms man’s possession of free will, and offers no new or extreme astrological theories to upset the authorities. But there are one or two doubtful passages, in one of which he gives directions how the reader can make an image through which he can receive the messages of spirits (though he condemns magic). He did from time to time refer bitingly to living people, and may well have made enemies. At all events, he was found guilty by the Inquisition at Bologna in 1324 of improper utterances, and given a fifteen day penance of confession, a daily recital of thirty paternosters and thirty Ave Marias, occasional fasting, and regular attendance at a sermon every Sunday. All his astrological books were taken from him, and he was forbidden to teach astrology, deprived permanently of his professor’s chair and doctor’s degree, and heavily fined. Three years later he was again summoned before the Inquisitor — this time at Florence found to be a relapsed heretic who had violated the terms of his sentence (how, we do not know), handed over to the secular arm, and burned with his books by Lord Jacob of Brescia. Anyone found in possession either of the poem or the commentary was automatically excommunicated. We would probably never have heard of Cecco d’Ascoli if he had not been burned; or, perhaps, he would have survived as a mere footnote in astrological history. Ironically, he does not really seem to have perished as a result of his astrological teaching or opinions, which were in no way outrageous — nor did he make such outrageous claims as that the earth was not the centre of the universe, which would have upset the Church. Perhaps most people at the time suspected that personal enemies were responsible for his fate; it was fairly obvious that it had nothing to do with astrology. After all, his astrology was that of Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, and the first had been canonized four years before d’Ascoli’s pyre was lit, while the second was shortly to be beatified. Moreover, during the 14th century astrology was all too often commemorated by ecclesiastical and lay authorities in permanent and respectable form to be anything but a recognizable part of the fabric of intellectual life. Look, for instance, at the capital of the eighteenth of the thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower storey of the Doge’s palace in Venice, built in 1301. Ruskin described it as ‘the most interesting and beautiful’ capital he knew, ‘on the whole, the finest in Europe’. The capitals are octagonal, and decorated by sixteen leaves; on the eighteenth capital are represented the planets in their houses, probably at the time when the cornerstone of the palace was laid. Mars in Aries and Scorpio is particularly effective, showing a very ugly knight in chain mail with a scorpion in his hand, seated on a ram. Venus sits on a bull, with a mirror in her right hand and scales in her left (she rules Taurus and Libra); the Moon appears as a woman in a boat on the ocean, a crescent in her right hand, and drawing a crab (Cancer) out of the waves with her left. On the eighth side, God is represented creating man, his hand on the head of a naked youth. I imagine the whole of this capital, the principal one of the old palace [Ruskin writes in The stones of Venice], to have been intended to signify first, the formation of the planets for the service of man upon earth; secondly, the entire subjugation of the fates and fortunes of man to the will of God, as determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves. He summarized the 14th-century attitude to astrology, which was to remain constant for the next three hundred years.

Volume VI : The Coming of Christianity

Almost the first story we hear about the birth of Jesus is of the ‘wise men from the east’ who came to Herod to announce that they knew that the King of the Jews had been born because they had ‘seen his star in the east’. Herod, having enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared sent them out to Bethlehem to seek for the child, ‘and lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.’ There has been much speculation about what ‘the star’ was: general opinion suggests it may have been a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, possibly with Uranus, which would have made for a very bright and apparently single ‘star’ moving quickly enough to fulfil the conditions of the story. But that is astronomical speculation. The significance of the story for us is that it shows how, right at the beginning of the accounts of Christ’s life, astrology played a part. It would have been remarkable had it been otherwise. To most thoughtful men of the time there would have been no question of a god being born without the fact being announced in the heavens, probably by some strange but obvious celestial phenomenon rather than by his having a remarkable personal horoscope. Apart from the truth or otherwise of the story, it was to say the least extremely helpful to those set on establishing the divinity of Christ to have his birth associated with a spectacular astrological event; no scientist of the time would have accepted the possibility of such a phenomenon unless astrological observation supported it. In fact, of course, the appearance of a single rogue star has no astrological significance, and had none at the time; but the problem of inventing a significant horoscope for a divinity by choosing a propitious moment for the birth boggles the astrological mind, and was certainly beyond the early Christians, if the idea indeed ever occurred to them. The next best thing was some kind of spectacular ‘comet-like’ event, which was what is said to have occurred. The presence in St Matthew’s Gospel of the ‘three wise men’, or kings, or Magi, or astrologers, was to be rather an embarrassment to some of the fathers of the Church; later generations were simply to deny that they were astrologers at all, although that was clearly what the author of the gospel intended. The earliest commentator to seize the nettle and attack the myth was St John Chrysostom (c 347-407), who made heavy weather of his criticism, not so much attacking the notion of astrology itself as berating the three astrologers for calling Jesus the King of the Jews when ‘his kingdom was not of this world’, and suggesting that they were unwise to the point of foolishness in coming to Bethlehem, stirring things up with the king, and instantly leaving. He also pointed out (quite rightly) that the appearance of a single star was not in accordance with astrological tradition, although he agreed that its appearance was a sign that God favoured the wise men. Tacitly, he admitted that he not only believed in the appearance of the star, but that it was shown to the astrologers for a purpose, so demolishing his own argument. Speculation about the wise men was to continue for centuries, with various embroideries. There were not always three, for instance; Chrysostom suggested that there may have been a dozen, and in the earliest Christian art other numbers are given. The Magi do not seem to have been promoted to royal status until as late as the 6th century, and the Venerable Bede, the English historian of the 7th century, seems to be the first man to give their names. Their original home was in Arabia, or Persia, or Chaldea, or India, according to which early authority one reads, and anyone interested in visiting their tomb should look in Cologne, for after their deaths the Empress Helena brought their bodies from India to Constantinople, whence they travelled to Milan and on to Germany. Some Christian commentators invested them with various magical powers, perhaps to denigrate them, and thereby astrology in general; a 10th-century dramatist tells how they flew miraculously to Bethlehem after the birth, causing considerable surprise to the citizens of the cities over which they passed. But some sects seized on the story as proof of astrology as God’s means of regulating affairs on earth. A heretical sect, the Priscillianists, did so, prompting a 10th-century writer to put forward all the traditional anti-astrological arguments, and to present the ‘wise men’ simply as the first Gentiles to seek Christ. Christian opposition to astrology from earliest times to our own has been founded in temperament rather than theology. No considerable Christian scholar or theologian has argued that astrology is unthinkable, except when or if it claims to predict the future, and therefore contests the doctrine of free will. Many of the earliest authorities have astrological allusions. The Old Testament figure Enoch, for instance, claimed to be sixth in descent from Adam and Eve, has passages on the stars and herbs, gems and numbers, and claims that in the sixth heaven angels attend the phases of the Moon and the revolutions of stars and Sun, superintending the good or evil condition of the world. Enoch’s notions of angels are somewhat eccentric (some of them have ‘privy members like those of horses’), but it seems that two hundred of them so fancied earthly women that they came to live on earth, and betrayed to man various secrets, including the science of astrology, magic, witchcraft and divination, and the art of writing with ink and paper. Philo Judaeus, who lived in Alexandria soon after the death of Christ, hotly denied that the planets absolutely ruled men’s lives, attacking astrologers who claimed that the whole of life was subject to the movements of the heavens. He did, however, believe the stars to be beautiful divine beings, intelligent animals who, unlike man, were incapable of evil. He believed also, indeed ‘knew’, that it was possible to predict ‘disturbances and commotions of the earth from the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, and innumerable other events which have turned out most exactly true.’ A Syrian missionary called Bardesanes (154-222) has left in The Dialogue Concerning Fate a good account of what seems to be the most general early Christian attitude to astrology. It was evidently important to tackle the very strong public commitment to the subject, the result of centuries during which its truths had on the whole been accepted as self-evident. Bardesanes takes the pragmatic view: that it is obvious that there is some force from the planets, but this was given them by God and is therefore subject to His will, limited by Him through subjection to free will on the one hand and other natural forces on the other. The Gnostics, an oriental religious movement which played a part in early Christianity, spawning many sects, believed (according to one text) that when Jesus ascended into heaven after the crucifixion, he changed the influences and even the movements of the planets (among other things making them turn to the right for six months of the year, whereas previously they had faced left), and determined how they shaped a new soul, controlled the process of conception and the formation of the embryo in the womb, and every event of life from cradle to tomb. (Incidentally, it is interesting that in the Arabic Gospel of the infancy, attributed to St James, Jesus is an astronomer, lecturing the priests in the temple on ‘the number of the spheres and heavenly bodies, as also their triangular, square and sextile aspect; their progressive and retrograde motion; their twenty-fourths and sixtieths of the twenty-fourths and other things which the reason of man had never discovered...’) Many Christian thinkers saw astrology as a demonstration of the universe devised by God. The Recognitions, an anthology of letters allegedly written to James, Jesus’ brother, by Clement of Rome, a friend and confidant of St Peter, represents the planets and stars as fixed in heaven by God in order that ‘they might be for an indication of things past, present and future’, although only to be understood by the learned who had studied the subject in depth. Abraham was one of these; being an astrologer, he ‘was able from the rational system of the stars to recognize the Creator, while all other men were in error, and understand that all things are regulated by his Providence.’ Clement charmingly called the twelve Apostles the Twelve Months of Christ, who himself was the Year of our Lord. The planets are admitted to have an evil as well as a good influence; ‘possessing freedom of the will, we sometimes resist our desires and sometimes yield to them’. Arguments against astrology are restricted to resisting the idea that there is no Providence and that everything happens by chance and genesis, that ‘whatever your genesis contains, that shall befall you’. It is unthinkable that God should make man sin through an evil disposition of the planets, and then punish him for it! It is also pointed out — and later astrologers have often repeated this, both as explanation and excuse — that the movements and inter-relationships of the planets are so complex, and understanding and interpreting them so difficult, that no astrologer is to be blamed for misreading them. The argument between Origen, an orthodox Christian who lived between 185 and 253, and the philosopher Celsus, who in 176-80 produced The True Word, an anti-Christian tract, inevitably involved astrology. Celsus took the view that the main idiocy of many practised by Christians was the denial of the power of the planets; Origen asserted that the whole idea of free will was demolished if one accepted that the stars were rational beings, and assigned by God to the nations on earth. He accepted that the planets’ movements could foretell events, and was particularly attached to the idea of comets as omens, which had announced wars and natural disasters, but also the birth of Christ. Tertullian, born in about 160, and an eloquent early writer about Christianity, argued that it was the fallen angels who had taught man astrology (and, incidentally, metallurgy and botany). These angels, who lived in the clouds conveniently near the stars, were inevitably excellent meteorologists. Nevertheless, Christians would do well to reject them and their notions, despite the fact that the Magi were astrologers. He obviously saw it as extremely worrying that ‘astrology nowadays, for-sooth, treats of Christ; is the science of the stars of Christ, not of Saturn and Mars’, and argues that since the coming of Christ the drawing up of horoscopes should be discontinued. He was especially pleased that at the time of writing astrologers were positively forbidden to enter Rome. Many Christian apologists made it their business to read the published works of astrologers, in order to refute them; others took the short cut of simply reading anti-astrological works and repeating their arguments. Hippolytus, for instance, who lived in Italy and wrote in Greek (he was buried in Rome in 236) lifted his arguments straight from the writings of Sextus Empiricus. The most prominent of all early antagonists of astrology, St Augustine, cannot entirely be freed from the accusation of taking a short cut, or at least not thinking the subject through thoroughly or originally. Augustine was born in 345 (he died in 430) in Numidia, of a devoutly Christian mother. A trained rhetorician, he was at first a Manichean, but was converted to Christianity by the sermons of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, where Augustine was teaching rhetoric. His early life, which included various sexual irregularities, is frankly described in his Confessions, and astrology is mentioned there too; but his main attack on it comes in the Christian Doctrine and The City of God. His case against astrology is simple, unsubtle and mistaken: simply that it enslaves human will by claiming that the entire course of a life can be predicted from the stars. If predictions did come true, he said, it was through coincidence or demonic intervention. ‘Those that hold’, he writes in the fifth book of The City of God, that the stars do manage our action, our passions, good or ill, without God’s appointment, are to be silenced and not to be heard, be they of the true religion or be they bondslaves to idolatry of what sort soever; for what does this opinion do but flatly exclude all deity? ... and what part has God left him in thus disposing of human affairs, if they be swayed by a necessity from the stars, whereas He is Lord of stars and men. He then produced the old argument that if astrology worked, twins should have precisely the same destiny. (If they did, incidentally, it was nothing to do with astrology, he said, but because their background, environment, upbringing was similar; if they did not, it was a proof that astrology did not work.) True, Nigidius had tried to explain the dissimilarity between the lives of twins by rapidly turning a pot on a potter’s wheel and splashing ink upon it, showing how far apart the splashes landed, and adducing from this that on a swiftly turning earth the planets would be in different positions even for twins born with one holding the other’s heel. St Augustine was unimpressed. If astrology was as complicated as that, how could an astrologer possibly claim to be able to make firm predictions? (He seems to have taken this, and several other arguments, more or less straight from Cicero’s De divinatione.) The trouble with Augustine’s anti-astrological arguments is that they are founded (like those of so many other critics throughout history) on a misunderstanding of the nature of the astrological theory, even as it was practised in his own time. Very few astrologers argued that the planets absolutely controlled every aspect of the life of man, much less that every living thing was under a similar governance. When he points out that astrology is ridiculous because a cow and a human baby born at the same instant do not have precisely the same life, he simply displays his own ignorance of what astrology claims, and his stronger arguments are proportionally weakened. His supposition that astrologers claim that the time and place of birth and nothing else control a man’s destiny leads him to concentrate on that point to the exclusion of more eccentric claims which would have offered him a wider target. He seems to have read very little astrological literature (not, for instance, the Tetrabiblos, which might be thought required reading for anyone preparing an attack on astrology). St Augustine is still often set up as the prime Christian opponent of astrology; and so he is. But that is not saying much. Even he admits that the Sun and planets have an effect on some material things such as the tides, and hence on some living things such as shellfish. It might be argued that he performed a considerable service to astrology by attacking its occult aspects, while not condemning out of hand the kind of scientific astrology that was to provide the more rewarding areas of experiment in the future. The City of God is seen as the apogee of Christianity’s attacks on astrology, and so in a sense it was. That it is an unintelligent, derivative and ineffectual attack is neither here nor there; happily, the Christian church’s generally antagonistic view of science in general has in the long run been equally ineffectual. When Augustine argued that ‘Christians have many better and more serious things to occupy their time than such subtle investigations concerning the relative magnitude of the stars and the intervals of space between them’, he was setting the tone for the official Church attitude to science for many centuries. It has not, in the end, prevailed, even in schools. The fact that some Christian astrologers were not deterred is illustrated by the work of Julius Firmicus Maternus, a contemporary who is likely to have read Augustine. His Matheseos of c 354 accepted the doctrine of free will, but found it odd that man should think the stars and planets mere decoration of the heavens. Firmicus, whose mind seems to have been a great deal keener than Augustine’s (if we are to judge from the organization of his book and the deployment of his arguments), produced one by one the chief anti-astrological arguments and demolished them with ease, demonstrating clearly that the critics had not for the most part bothered to understand the subject. He admits that some astrologers are rogues and others fools, he admits the difficulty of the subject — but claims that the human spirit is capable of coping with it, as it is capable of coping with the mapping of the heavens and the prediction of the planets’ courses. In a brilliantly presented and enormously complex argument, Firmicus in the second half of Matheseos scathingly demolishes superstition and its practitioners, the ‘magicians’ who ‘stay in temples in an unkempt state and always walk abroad thus in order to frighten people. While he accepts that ‘magic’ is a powerful force, he is violently opposed to secrecy in regard to it, and demands that astrologers, rather than shrinking from public view as though ashamed, should place themselves under the protection of God, praying that He should grant them grace to attempt the explanation of the courses of the stars Matheseos was an important book, a major work that accurately and persuasively quoted earlier sources, and was itself to be quoted for centuries by Christian astrologers and theologians who wished to assuage the fears of laymen at times when the Church seemed to be condemning the practice.

Volume V: the Pervasive Planets

Although astrology failed to play as influential a part in the life of any emperor during the last three centuries of the history of Imperial Rome as it had in the lives of, say, Tiberius or Nero, it did not suffer an eclipse. On the contrary, it remained an absolutely integral part of Roman life. Sufficient horoscopes have survived to show that anyone with the means to consult an astrologer did so as a matter of course. Some of them tell us in considerable detail about the lives and ambitions, weaknesses and strengths of ordinary citizens. Apart from that, there were public manifestations of a general interest in the constellations and the planets: the huge eagle of Zeus on the ceiling of the sanctuary of Bel at Palmyra, for instance, was surrounded by the zodiac; at the races, chariots were started from stalls, each one of which bore a sign of the zodiac, and then raced around a circuit where each course represented that of one of the seven planets (hot competition, no doubt, for the one representing Mercury!). Even the division of the year into weeks of seven days, each subordinate to one of the planets, indicates how deep-rooted was the idea that the meaning of the universe was somehow geared to the movement of the planets in their courses. The imagery of astrology was everywhere. One of the most famous examples is the feast described by Petronius in the Satyricon, given by the freedman Trimalchio, who sat his guests around a table on which various dishes were set out under the signs of the zodiac — beef under Taurus, sweetbreads and kidneys under Gemini, a balance with a tart on one scale and a cheesecake on the other under Libra, two mullets under Pisces, and so on. Juvenal mentions several instances of people consulting astrologers, and although he was given to satirical exaggeration, we get a very firm impression of how the upper echelons of Roman society employed them: children would enquire about the time when their parents might be expected to die, women whether their lovers would survive them, and some people positively would not stir abroad without an astrological consultation: Remember to avoid the tracks of women in whose hands you see (as if they were large gems) much-used ephemerides [tables of planetary movements]. Such a woman does not consult any astrologers; she is herself consulted. Nor will she accompany her husband when he goes to camp, or returns home, if warned against doing so by the numerical manual of Thrasyllus. She will not even go out as far as the first milestone unless a favourable hour has been chosen first from the book. When the rubbed corner of her eye itches, she will ask for a soothing balm only after consulting her horoscope. She may lie in bed sick; then no hour will be considered more apt for taking some food than the one which Petosiris has named ... For those who found astrology suspect, and were properly outraged by the superstitious dependence upon it of the unthinking, there came something of a respite for a year or two after AD 96, when Nerva succeeded Domitian as Emperor; although the senators are said to have consulted his horoscope before electing him, his interest in the subject was marginal. Trajan, who succeeded Nerva in 98, was even less interested, although he seems to have been in touch with the grandson of Balbillus, who turned up in Athens. C. Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus (the ruins of whose monument still stand in Athens) was born during Nero’s reign, and grew up safely at the court of his paternal grandfather Antiochus IV, last King of Commagene, at Samosata. Trajan not only made Philopappus a member of the imperial guard, but a consul. The nature of their relationship is unknown, however. With the accession of Hadrian in 117, astrology once more approached the throne — indeed, mounted it, for the new Emperor was himself an astrologer, whose interest in the subject seemed to stem from his early teens, spent studying Greek and Roman culture in Rome, before being sent into the army by his guardian Trajan. He cordially disliked army life, and consulted at least two astrologers to ask for confirmation of the prediction apparently made at his birth, when his great-uncle Aelius Hadrianus, an astrologer, had promised he would one day be emperor. Confirmation was enthusiastically given. Hadrian is the first Roman emperor whose complete horoscope has survived (in several manuscript copies among a selection of horoscopes kept by Antigonus of Nicaea, where they were found by Hephaestion of Thebes in the 4th century). We know that Hadrian was born with the Sun, Moon and Jupiter in Aquarius, Saturn and Mercury in Capricorn, Venus and Mars in Pisces — suggesting, among other things, great ambition and a preoccupation with power, arrogance and obstinacy, a high sense of justice, and a tendency to be ruled entirely by the emotions in personal relationships, which would tend to be unconventional. Interestingly, those with the Moon in Aquarius are traditionally said to have a flair for astrology. Hadrian drew up his own horoscope and consulted it regularly; he is said to have written down on the first of January each year the major events of his life for the following twelve months, and to have predicted the time of his death to the hour. He was intensely superstitious, and interested in all forms of divination. His empress, Sabina, had rather a chill time of it, childless and rejected by her husband in favour of such beautiful young men as Antinous, who he even took with him on his last great ceremonial tour to Athens, on through Asia Minor to Egypt, and back to Italy through Syria and Athens again. Sabina was comforted on that tour by the presence of her lady-in-waiting and friend Julia Balbilla, a considerable poet, and none other than the great-granddaughter of Thrasyllus, who being the descendant of a king and a Roman knight was on easy terms with her mistress. We do not know whether Julia had an interest in astrology greater than the normal; nor do we know whether Hadrian or any of his consultant astrologers foretold the central event of the tour — the death of Antinous by drowning in the Nile. There is a dark hint in Cassius Dio that Antinous may have sacrificed himself, or even perhaps have been sacrificed, because an astrologer had foretold the Emperor’s own death unless someone of importance elected to die for him (remember, Balbillus had told Nero in 64 that only by killing some of Rome’s noblemen could he escape death). Certainly his astrologers tried to console Hadrian by pointing to the convenient new star as the soul of his favourite, now shining in heaven. Astronomers still refer to Antinoos. When Hadrian fell mortally ill in 136, interest in the succession focused on two men: Lucius Ceionius Commodus who, as Aelius Verus, he proclaimed his official successor, and Pedanius Fuscus, who at his birth had been stamped by astrologers as a coming emperor. At the time when Aelius Verus was proclaimed, he was already too ill to make a speech of thanks to the senate, and it seems that Hadrian was relying on a horoscope (drawn up either by himself or someone else) which had promised him a long life. When an astrologer suggested to the Emperor that there was some mistake — the wrong birth time had been used, perhaps — Hadrian answered: ‘It is easier for you to say that when you are looking for an heir to your property, rather than to the empire.’ Anyway, Aelius Verus died before Hadrian, who was left with the necessity of making another choice. This fell upon Antoninus Pius, on condition that he adopted L. Verus (Aelius Verus’ son) and an older boy, Marcus Aurelius, as his own heirs. Pedanius Fuscus was outraged, foolishly became involved in a plot to seize the throne, and was arrested and executed. A surviving horoscope by Antigonus of Nicaca says that he ‘was born to become, at the age of 25, the cause of his own destruction and that of his parents’, and gives the reasons for his fall — which include his being ill-advised because Mercury and Saturn were in a male sign, being discovered in a plot because the Moon was in Scorpio, and dying because Mars and Aquarius rose at the same time. Antoninus Pius, who reigned between 138 and 161, and Marcus Aurelius (161-180), seem to have had few formal dealings with astrologers; at least, there is no record of any, and it has been conjectured that this was because of the increased influence of Stoic philosophy in Rome. If the future is absolutely fixed, then no amount of foreknowledge can make any difference; and in that case, what is the point of prediction? As might be expected, however, Aurelius accepted astrology as a useful tool. He was interested too in dreams as a means of divination. He had the horoscopes of his twin sons drawn up, when they were born in August 161. Both were favourable, and the fact that the elder boy died when he was four does not seem to have shaken the Emperor’s faith. He settled the succession on his younger son, Commodus. As unattractive a personality as ever sat on the throne of Rome, Commodus’ spare time was spent enjoying himself in tavern or brothel, or stripped naked to take part in gladiatorial combat in the public arena. He was as much star-worshipper as genuine astrologer, and saw astrology as some kind of superstitious quasi-religion rather than as a scientific system. His successor, Septimus Severus, returned to a more sensible, practical view. Born in Africa, he rose to high rank under Marcus Aurelius, and is known to have consulted an astrologer about his own destiny. His promotion to the tribunate in 176 confirmed that good fortune was accurately foretold. During a brief eclipse from favour under Commodus, he advertised for a marriageable woman whose horoscope should conform to his own, and found one in a Syrian, H. Julia Donna, who bore him two sons, one of whom was nicknamed Caracalla. Severus was unwise enough, when praetorian governor of Sicily, to be discovered once more consulting an astrologer about his ‘imperial destiny’, as Cassius Dio put it. But (because, the historian suggested, Commodus was so cordially detested) the local authorities did not prosecute him; indeed, they crucified the unfortunate man unwise enough to have betrayed him! After the death of Commodus and a short period of struggle for the throne, Severus occupied it, supported in his bid for power by the prognostications of several astrologers and by other miscellaneous divinations. Decorating his new imperial palace, he had his horoscope painted on the ceilings of the rooms in which he held court — although not in such detail as to give away to the casual observer the precise moment of his birth, so the horoscope could be used against him. Severus seems to have been almost manic in his acceptance of any astrological prediction made with sufficient assurance, although the stoical attitude of some of his predecessors was entirely absent in him, and he evidently believed that if he intervened with determination in the planetary plan, he could depend on some mitigation of astrological prophesy. For instance, he executed numerous people — including several of his friends — on the grounds that they had consulted astrologers to discover the best time at which to assassinate him. Severus is said to have left Rome for Britain in the knowledge that he would not survive the campaign there. Caracalla, having murdered his younger brother Geta, for safety’s sake, seems to have had the same total belief in astrology as his father. Astrologer after astrologer was summoned to advise him, and several of them — an Egyptian called Serapio, one called Ascletion, and Larginus Proculus-told the Emperor that he would not live long, and that his successor would be Macrinus, a prefect. Ascletion was executed, Larginus Proculus was promised execution immediately after the date on which he had said Caracalla would die, and Serapio was thrown to a lion (which simply licked his hand, so a more prosaic execution had to be arranged). Nevertheless, Caracalla was murdered, and for the next several decades astrology took a less prominent part in imperial manceuvrings. Neither Opellus Macrinus, who reigned only for a year, nor Elagabalus, a demented young man who took the name of his Sun god and was slaughtered when he was 18 by his praetorian guard, contributed anything to its history; and Severus Alexander, who reigned between 222 and 235, was said to be an astrologer but did not use the skill ostentatiously. What he did do was encourage professional astrologers to organize themselves into a body that could pass on knowledge in a proper manner, actually advertising themselves as teachers; and he seems to have seen to it that astrology was given precedence when the curriculum at the Athenaeum in Rome, founded by Hadrian, was reorganized. As the power and influence of Rome passed its apogee, Christianity began to increase its hold, and eventually under Constantine in 334 was to be proclaimed as the official state religion, thus doing astrology the enormous service of reducing it from the status of a religious and magical art to that of a science. What, during these first centuries AD, was the state of the theory and literature of the subject? The Tetrabiblos has already been mentioned as probably the most distinguished of astrological textbooks. The Anthologiae of Vettius Valens was enormously popular, perhaps because whereas Ptolemy wrote substantially for the educated layman and explored the subject scientifically, Valens was himself an astrologer, and intended his work for believers. We know little of the life of Vettius Valens, except that he never grew rich, was never involved in politics or fashion and so, avoiding execution for favouring this imperial candidate or that, remained relatively unknown. He seems to have bolstered his income by running, for a time, a school of astrology (he dedicated his book to one of his students, Marcus). It is impossible to reconstitute the Anthologiae, which was in nine books; but it was to be used by generations of astrologers up until the 8th century at least, when Theophilus was still quoting it. Some popular astrological writing was in verse: among the astrological versifiers were Astrampsychus, Dorotheus of Sidon, and Manetho. Astrampsychus left a hundred and one astrological aphorisms, printed in alphabetical order. Anubio, who may have been an Egyptian, left work which was to be used by Firmicus Magnus, Hephaestion, Palchrus and Rhetorius, over the next four centuries. Dorotheus, an Arab, left his Pentateuch, five books, dealing with births, eras of time, the Lords of the Horoscope, the computation of birth years, and ‘undertaking’ or the divination of events in a life. And to the professional astrologers must be added those who believed astrology to be an important part of their studies, like the physicians Antigonus of Nicaea and Galen. Medical astrology was already beginning to rationalize its beliefs. These were never fatalistic; after all, if fate determined whether or not a patient should recover from or succumb to an illness, what point would there be in treating him? Galen (130-c200) studied medicine at Pergamos, where he was born, then in Corinth and Alexandria, and finally in Rome (where he became physician to Marcus Aurelius, and later attended Commodus and Severus). He was careful always to note the precise time at which a patient had taken to bed with an illness; carefully considered the position of Sirius, the dog star, when medicine was being prepared or administered; insisted that the theriac, a medicine which he had developed, should be taken at the third hour of the first or fourth day of the Moon; and in one of his medical treatises devoted twelve chapters to the influence of the Moon in each of the zodiac signs, also dealing with the positions of the planets. Antigonus went further, publishing a collection of ‘medical horoscopes’ which doctors used for at least two centuries to help them in treating patients. Not a single writer, as far as can be discovered, argued that the planets could have no influence on human affairs, although there were many arguments about the degree to which they enabled a practitioner to predict events, or delineate character. The most distinguished of the ‘opponents’of astrology, or those who believed that astrologers’ powers of divination were extremely limited, was Plutarch (c 46-120), a journalist who wrote on philosophy, morals and, of course, biography. He never organized or even rationalized his objections to astrology, simply pointing out that man had a very generous capacity for accepting anything ‘magical’, and arguing strongly against the conception of an immutable fate. He had little effect on the faithful. In the 2nd century came a more considerable antagonist of fatalistic astrology, Favorinus of Arles, who seems to have had many an argument on the subject with the Emperor Hadrian, who was of course of a very different persuasion. Favorinus’ arguments were not always very well-founded: for instance, he believed that astrology was a new fad, and that astrologers had invented the so-called ancients who they claimed had founded the art. He then (and this argument is reiterated to this day) claimed that all astrological predictions were so general as to be meaningless; went on to say that anyway, man's time on earth was far too brief for him to be able to fathom such a complicated theory; asked how astrology could be used to forecast the weather when good and bad weather existed at the same time in different places; demanded to know why the time of birth under one constellation should be considered when the time of conception under another was ignored (a good point); doubted whether the precise moment of birth could ever be discovered; and — another appealing point — asked whether it was not ridiculous and unbearable to suggest that all our actions, down to deciding whether or not to take a bath, were predestined. Ptolemy disposes of most of these criticisms. But in any case opposition was not (any more than defence) on rational grounds. Someone who heard Favorinus give an anti-astrological lecture described how he summed up: Astrologers predict either adverse or propitious events. If they foretell prosperity and deceive you, you will be made wretched by vain expectations; if they foretell adversity, you will be made wretched by useless fears ... The anticipation of your hopes will wear you out with suspense. Therefore there is every reason why you should not resort to men of that kind who profess knowledge of the future. One of the ironies of Roman astrological history is that so many emperors who almost uncritically accepted the influence of the planets patronized scholars who argued against it. Favorinus had argued with Hadrian; Septimus Severus, almost fanatically attached to the most fatalistic aspects of astrology, appointed Alexander of Aphrodisias to the chair of the Peripatetic School at Athens, from where he issued his essay On Fate, in which he denied that the planets could affect human destiny — though even he agreed that they must influence non-human aspects of life on earth, such as the elements, ‘the creation, destruction, and in general all transformation of matter. They also determine all terrestrial motion.’ Astrology was included in the multifarious criticisms levelled at almost all human knowledge by Sextus Empiricus, the Greek physician and sceptic philosopher, who in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries attacked literature and philology, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic (‘number is nothing’), music, logic and physics. Even he excepted astrological meteorology from his general condemnation, but as for individual horoscopes — they were nonsense! He summarized astrological knowledge as it was known in his time, and then demolished each point in turn — or attempted to. Some of his criticisms are entirely valid (the difficulty of knowing the precise birth time, for instance); others were based on misunderstandings (which seem, sometimes, almost contrived); and others were simply vapid. He asks for instance why ‘someone born under Leo should be strong and brave just because that constellation is called Leo’, or why someone born under Virgo should be considered likely to be fair while an Ethiopian born under the same sign would undoubtedly be swarthy. Silly sooth. Sextus Empiricus’ only really rational criticism, and one for which there was much to be said, was that there was just not enough scientific data known to astrologers to enable them to present their science as a science. But nevertheless, his arguments against astrology were to appeal to a band of people whose attitude to the subject, if often confused, was to affect its history for a thousand years and more. The Greek satirist Lucian, whose own attack on astrology lacked muscle, lashed out in his abhorrence of the subject at a relatively new cult, a gang of simpleminded followers of a crucified sophist, one Jesus Christ. The ‘Christians’ approached astrology with almost superstitious caution.

Volume IV : The Imperial Planets

Towards the end of the 3rd century BC Greek drama and literature began to seriously interest the Romans. At first, astrology crept in at the lower end of the social scale: while the intelligentsia were enjoying Greek plays and poems, hoi polloi was fascinated by the crowds of fortune-tellers making their way — as quacks always will — towards a new source of easy money. But it was not long before, at first out of an interest in astronomy, intelligent Romans learned about the Greek preoccupation with the influence of the planets on humanity. By the 1st century BC, Cicero, always sceptical about astrology, took it seriously enough to summarize it without irony in his De divinatione: In the starry belt which the Greek calls the Zodiac there is a certain force of such a nature that every part of that belt affects and changes the heavens in a different way, according to the stars that are in this or in an adjoining locality at a given time ... They believe that it is not merely probable, but certain, that just as the temperature of the air is regulated by this celestial force, so also children at their birth are influenced in soul and body, and by this force their minds, manners, disposition, physical condition, career in life and destinies are determined. Cicero’s summary of how astrology worked shows how the intelligent Roman understood the subject: he emphasized that normally only the twelve signs and planets were considered; that it was the ascendant, the rising sign appearing over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth, that was the ‘natal sign’ (not the ‘Sun sign’, which was not to become strongly associated with simplistic astrology until the 20th century); that the astrologer drew his conclusions from the angles between the planets as they were placed in the twelve constellations, and in the ‘houses’, each of which showed an influence in one area of the life of the subject — house four was that of the parents, house five that of children, house ten of honours and house eleven of friends. We are not concerned here with the growth of the star cults among the Romans between 300 and 150 BC; but during those years various new divinities took up residence, among them Asclepius, Cybele, Bacchus, Isis and Mithras (to say nothing of Jehovah); they all, however, had to some extent astrological associations (even Jehovah), and contributed to a growth of serious interest in the subject. Mithras, especially, took that interest out into the Empire, making converts abroad: ‘modern’ astrology undoubtedly first reached Britain in the form of Zodiacal carvings at Mithraic shrines, while Asclepius became the patron saint of astrological medicine. As is usually the case when a country is invaded by a new culture, some reactionaries took great exception to the changing times. But the tide was against them. Scipio Africanus, for instance, the conqueror of Hannibal, whose scandalous interest in things Greek was said to have persuaded him to go about in public in Greek dress, was a great upholder of philhellenism; and even the sceptical and strong-minded Cato, towards the end of his life, was injected with the new spirit, and started to learn Greek. It was Cato who quite properly issued warnings about the innumerable quack astrologers and magicians coming to Rome in and around 200-150 BC. The poet Ennius, a southern Italian brought to Rome by Cato, attacked them too: Of little use are these Marsian quacks, Village-astrologers and fortune-tellers In crowded circuses, or priests of Isis, Pretend-interpreters of all your dreams. These lying conjurers have not the skill To read the future; just a pack of hypocrites Prompted by hunger, they don’t know themselves Let alone others; yet they’ll promise you Enormous fortunes — if you’ll share with them! But the influence of the quack astrologers was far outweighed by the influence of the knowledge accumulated by Greek astronomers, and the Romans were enormously impressed by scientific achievements. When Marcellus conquered Syracuse in 212 BC, and returned to Rome with a magnificent model of the celestial spheres which he had found in the house of Archimedes (killed when the city fell), it was greatly admired — and used. And since the two terms were still synonymous (astronomia is sometimes used where we, today, would expect to find astrologia, and vice versa — Plato uses only astronomia, Aristotle only astrologia) this meant there was at the least increased pressure on intelligent Romans to look at the theory that the planets affected human behaviour. A minority declined to be persuaded: Cicero, as we have seen, but also, a century earlier, the Greek sceptic philosopher Carneades. He was one of the heads of the Platonic Academy, and ambassador from Athens to Rome in 156.BC. He maintained that not only was it virtually impossible to make an accurate observation of the sky at the moment of birth (let alone conception), but that it was clear that astrology did not and could not work because people born at the same moment could have very different destinies, while others born at very different times and places died at precisely the same time; moreover, animals would have the same fate as human beings whose birth moment they shared, and people of different races, customs and creeds born at the same moment would obviously have different fates. He failed to see that his second and last objections cancelled each other out: most astrologers then as now made it quite clear that astrology was only one ingredient of a life, and environment and custom would certainly mitigate its effect. Carneades’ objections have been rehearsed many times since his first statement of them (among others, by St Augustine, who took them wholesale and used them as his own). They are on the whole not very convincing, although they had more significance at the time they were made, when some astrologers at least were highly fatalistic. And certainly they must have had an effect in Rome, where Carneades was sensationally successful as a lecturer — fashionable young Romans eager to keep up with Greek culture and fashion crowded the halls in which he spoke. It would be a mistake to assume, then, that astrology had a walk-over. In 139 BC, an edict was actually passed enabling Rome to expel any foreigner who gave trouble; the arguments of Carneades were used to support the claim that astrologers were simply exploiting the credulous poor, and many of them were thrown out. The attitude of authority — that astrology seemed likely to cause trouble — was borne out in 134-2 BC, when there was a sizeable slave revolt in Sicily, led by one Eunus, who either was or gave an inspired imitation of being an astrologer. He was obviously a very accomplihed charlatan (if we are to believe the historian Florus, who says that among his tricks was the concealment of a nut full of sulphur in his mouth, which flamed with fire and smoke as he spoke), and with the aid of tricks and oratory commanded the force of over 60,000 slaves. Even when the rebellion was crushed, the Romans were sufficiently impressed with Eunus as a seer to capture him alive. Less than thirty years later, Athenio, another astrologer (this time a serious one) led another slave revolt in Sicily; insisting that the planets had revealed that he was to be king of Sicily, he and his followers gave trouble until about 100 BC, when he was killed in a hand-to-hand fight with the consul Manius Aquillius. The first real Roman astrological expert was one Publius Nigidius Figulus — not a mere nobody, but someone who held public office, as an aedile and later as praetor, or magistrate. His reputation as an astrologer was considerable, and he was at the centre of what was virtually the earliest Roman astrological school, and among other books published several on prediction and meteorology, as well as on pure astronomy. Alas, Julius Caesar, when he came to power, was unsympathetic, and banished him (although probably for political rather than astrological reasons). The growth of public interest is illustrated in the work of M. Terentius Varro, a colleague of Nigidius Figulus — not himself an astrologer, but keenly interested in the subject as a means of clarifying history. He commissioned a horoscope of Rome itself and its founder, Romulus — the first example we have of astrology being used to reveal the past by examining the history of a person or place, and from this estimating the probable ‘birth time’. Cicero reports that Lucius Tarutius of Firmum, a mutual friend, calculated that Rome was ‘born’ when the Moon was in Libra, and ‘from that fact unhesitatingly prophesied our destiny’. Plutarch later reported Tarutius’ findings in greater detail, suggesting that ‘these and similar speculations will perhaps attract readers by their novelty and extravagance rather than offend them by their fabulous character.’ Varro, although not an astrologer, included a chapter on astrology in his De disciplinus which was so good and so economically expressed that it was used again and again by later writers. One of his friends seems to have been that C. Fonteius Capito who went’ with Antony to the East, and played an important part in reconciling him, briefly, with Octavianus before returning to Egypt to travel with Cleopatra to Syria. The sceptics were thinning out, and fighting a by no means successful rearguard action. Cicero remained unconvinced, even after a stay on Rhodes with the Greek Stoic Posidonius, and a close friendship with Nigidius Figulus. He seems to tolerate the idea of astrology in his On my consulate, but later unequivocally states his opinion that ‘the condition of the heavenly bodies may, if you will, influence some things, but it certainly will not influence everything.’ He was not silly enough to deny that the Sun influenced the growth of plants, or the Moon the tides, but was very doubtful about any effect the planets might have on human life. And still later, in his essay On divination, he pressed the attack, giving eight specific criticisms, including the old question of the birth of twins, the possibility of astrologers not being able properly to see the sky, and the effect of environment — also bringing in the fact that ‘the parental seed’ contributed to a person’s appearance, habits and outlook, and that the new advances in medicine meant that ‘natural defects’ with which a child might be born could be cured. On divination is perhaps the coolest example of early Roman scepticism; another occurs in Lucretius’ poem De rerum natura, in which he argues in favour of free will, and that the soul is as mortal as the body, and thus no celestial panacea is acceptable. Among the myths perpetuated by some astrological historians is that representing Julius Caesar as a proponent of astrology, or even himself an astrologer. On the contrary, he seems to have been almost entirely sceptical, although he accepted the obvious planetary effect on weather and plant growth. Otherwise, he not only rejected old-fashioned omens, but at least two horoscopes presented to him by celebrated astrologers promising him a happy and peaceful death at the height of years of success. Perhaps the legends of his interest in the subject arose because of his choice of the symbol of the Bull as his legionary standard (Taurus is ‘ruled’ by Venus, and Venus herself was said to be Caesar’s ancestress). Most likely, he chose this deliberately, pandering to the superstition of the ordinary soldiers. There seems to be no reason to reject the story that tells of his refusing to accept his wife Calpurnia’s warning dream of the night before his death; and it seems, too, to be a fact that an astrologer called Spurinna warned him to ‘beware the Ides of March’. He seems to have known Spurinna quite well; he mentions him in his letters. It is also likely that it was this astrologer who, in 46 BC, had advised Caesar against crossing to Africa until after the winter solstice — advice Caesar rejected, and without catastrophe. Cicero knew him well, too, and scorned his abilities. Well, he was accurate enough when he warned Caesar that he ‘should beware a danger which would not threaten him beyond the Ides of March’, as Plutarch reported it; and Cassius Dio, the Roman historian of AD c 150-235, pointed out that here was a good example of the fateful nature of a firm astrological prediction. At Caesar’s death, a splendidly showy comet appeared, to blaze through the night sky for seven consecutive evenings; clearly he had become immortal, and was on his way to shine among the stars. During his student days at Apollonia, when he was regarded as certain to be the next monarch, Octavianus Augustus had visited a well-known local astrologer, Theogenes, who, the moment he set eyes on Octavianus’ birth chart, threw himself at the young man’s feet. Unsurprisingly, Octavianus was extremely impressed, and (so Suetonius says) ‘from that time on had such faith in his destiny that he made his horoscope public and issued a silver coin stamped with the sign of the constellation Capricorn under which he was born.’ At all events, Octavianus saw in the public reaction to the appearance of Caesar’s comet in 44 BC the fact that astrology could be a fine implement of public relations. But only if it was on his side — and most of the astrologers in Rome at the time of Caesar’s death tended to favour the fortunes of Antony, whose identification with the East (and indeed with Cleopatra) appealed to them. Octavianus made Agrippa (a lifelong friend who had been with him on that visit to Theogenes) aedile, and instructed him to expel from the city all astrologers and sorcerers. He was no doubt right. By now, very few men at any level of intelligence or society contested the skills of the astrologers. Vitruvius, the great architect, reflected in his book the attitude of most people: everyone must, he said, accept the calculations of ‘the Chaldeans’, who could explain the past and future from astronomical calculations; He was completely assured that astrology worked, and as a science. Other authors of the time support this view: Horace, Virgil, Propertius, Ovid. And by now it appears that the Emperor Augustus (as Octavianus was proclaimed) shared it. In the first place, he sought the advice of astrologers about a possible marriage for his only child, Julia. His stepsons Tiberius and Drusus were in their teens, and Julia herself only 16; obviously the sooner she was safely married, the better. The astrologers recommended Marcellus, Julia’s first cousin. Consumptive and weakly, the boy died within two years of the wedding. The astrological advisers had better luck, of a sort, the second time. Advised by them, Augustus persuaded his friend Agrippa to divorce his wife and marry Julia. The marriage lasted eleven years and produced a clutch of possible heirs, although none of them in fact succeeded. In 12 BC, Augustus once more ordered measures against the astrologers who had crept back into Rome during the past twenty-five years or so. Many of them were publishing predictions about the succession, some worryingly hare-brained. The Emperor passed a law submitting all prophesies to censorship; most of them perished in the flames before they reached the public. Much of the astrological speculation hinged on a possible third marriage for the notoriously immoral Julia. Now, Augustus ordered his elder stepson Tiberius to divorce a much-loved wife and marry Julia. There was nothing Tiberius could do but comply — unless, of course, he chose suicide. A successful soldier, Tiberius managed to get away from Julia to go campaigning — gaining great honour. But when opportunities for this failed, and he could stand his new wife no longer, he asked Augustus’ permission to retire to Rhodes ‘to study’. The Emperor, who on principle disbelieved anything horrid he heard about his daughter, coldly agreed; so, in 6 BC, Tiberius went to Rhodes, and the general opinion was that, as a possible successor to the Emperor, he was finished. Rhodes was a lonely place for a man straight from the centre of the Empire. Tiberius occupied his time gloomily attending classes given by local scholars, and at one of them met the man who was to become, with him, one of the two most important men in Rome: Thrasyllus, an Alexandrian grammarian, editor of Plato and Democritus, and an astrologer. There are various legends about the manner of that first meeting: that, for instance, Tiberius sought out many astrologers for their opinion about his future, killing them immediately they had interpreted his horoscope. Thrasyllus was the only one to comment on his own danger, which impressed Tiberius so much that he spared him. This is probably nonsense. But that is not to say that Tiberius was not impressed by Thrasyllus’ first-rate mind, and it certainly seems true that he taught Tiberius how to set up and interpret a horoscope, and successfully predicted that he would soon be recalled to Rome and a bright future. When this happened — when Augustus sent for Tiberius in AD 4 and officially proclaimed him his heir — Thrasyllus travelled with him, and on reaching Rome received from his patron the valuable gift of Roman citizenship. Ten years later, after a decade during which Thrasyllus ingratiated himself not only with his Emperor but with Roman society, Augustus died — his death accompanied, if we are to believe Cassius Dio, by a total eclipse of the Sun, a display of fire and glowing embers falling from the sky, and a number of melancholy comets. Tiberius was now Emperor, and Thrasyllus the power behind the throne. Tiberius’ reign lasted for nine years, and during it Thrasyllus was never far from his side. It is clear that he not only advised him on day-to-day matters, but about his close friends and the members of his family. By now, the astrologer had consolidated his status in Rome. His wife, who seems to have been called Aka, and to have been a minor princess of Commagene, had also been awarded Roman citizenship, and he had managed to arrange a Roman marriage for his daughter Claudia. Her husband was a Roman knight, L. Ennius, and they eventually had a daughter, Ennia Thrasylla, who was herself to become famous if not notorious. Very few citizens of Rome during the reigns of the majority of Emperors were entirely free of fear, and Tiberius was by no means the least cruel or capricious. Thrasyllus was as safe as anyone; some other astrologers must have slept less comfortably. When in AD 16, Scribonius Libo, a slightly dense praetor, attempted to organize a coup against the Emperor, and took the advice of two astrologers — L. Pituanius and P. Marcius — they were arrested with him; the first was thrown from the Tarpeian rock, and the second stripped naked outside the Esquiline Gate, his head fixed in a forked stake, and beaten to death. Some other people suffered because of a mere interest in astrology. In AD 20, Aemilia Lepida, a woman of good family, once the fiancée of Augustus’ grandson, was exiled for consulting an astrologer (although also on suspicion of trying to poison a former husband). During the early years of Tiberius’ reign a complex situation arose which Thrasyllus succeeded in riding like a wave. This concerned the Emperor’s son Drusus, who seems (with reason) to have been jealous of Thrasyllus’ influence with his father. When in the early 20s the Emperor’s favourite, the praetor Sejanus, started a tempestuous affair with Drusus’ wife Livilla, the lovers seem to have consulted Thrasyllus about their actions. Whether or not he played any part in the subsequent poisoning of Drusus, we cannot know. But Thrasyllus was left with the problem whether to support Sejanus or betray him and Livilla to the Emperor. There seems no question that the astrologer played a vital part in Tiberius’ decision to leave Rome in 26, never to live there again; and this meant that Thrasyllus could maintain his influence with both Tiberius and Sejanus, supporting the latter in the battle for the succession which had arisen between him and Agrippina, Augustus’ granddaughter, who wanted the throne for her children. Sejanus, although rising higher and higher in Tiberius’ estimation, continually sought to destroy opposition that might stand between him and the succession. He organized the trial of Agrippina and her son Nero for high treason, banishing one to Pandataria and the other to Pontia. And Thrasyllus further consolidated his position by marrying his granddaughter Ennia to Naevius Sertorius Macro, gaining another Roman knight as a close relative by marriage. Whether Thrasyllus consulted the planets and was prompted by them to engineer a plot against Sejanus, or was simply consulting his own interests without astrological persuasion, he was certainly at the centre of such a plot; his son-in-law Macro not only carried the orders that destroyed Sejanus, but immediately took his place at the centre of Roman life, while Tiberius remained in self-imposed exile on Capri. There, with him, lived Agrippina’s younger son Caius; and it was this youth who now received Thrasyllus’ support as successor to the throne. We know that Tiberius time and time again talked with his astrologer about the succession, and the evidence is that time and time again Thrasyllus persuaded him that the planets revealed that Caius could never succeed — that ‘he had as much chance of becoming Emperor as he had of driving his racing chariot across the Bay of Baiae’. By this means he prevented the perverse Emperor from legally disqualifying Caius from the succession. What Caius felt about this is uncertain, except that we hear that he vowed that one of the first things he would do when he gained the throne would be to drive his chariot across the waters of Baiae. Thrasyllus’ relationship with the old, irritable and nervous Emperor was now extremely tricky. It is not easy to conjecture to what extent he honestly relied on his astrological knowledge, and to what extent concern for his own safety and that of his friends led him to equivocate. He did not hesitate to advise the Emperor to continue to trust the consul Servius Galba, for instance, although at his birth Thrasyllus had told Tiberius that Galba’s horoscope showed signs that he would reach the heights of commanding power. Now, he reassured the Emperor that Galba’s horoscope showed he would only become Emperor in old age — which meant Tiberius was probably safe from him. It is also clear that Thrasyllus could only advise the Emperor on the basis of genuine astrological calculations, for Tiberius himself was quite capable of these, and would have seen through any pretence. This presents the problem of Thrasyllus’ advice to Tiberius, given it seems in about AD 34, that he still had ten years of healthy life ahead of him. It has been taken for granted that Thrasyllus falsified the horoscope in some way, in order to prevent the ever-increasing number of judicial and non-judicial murders the Emperor was undertaking to protect himself against the ambitious. But Tiberius knew his own horoscope backwards; if Thrasyllus foresaw that he would in fact die within three years, he must have found some way of persuading his client otherwise. In fact, Thrasyllus was to predecease Tiberius — although not before one final concern, when he learned that his daughter Ennia, on a visit to Capri, had started an adulterous affair with Caius, now fairly clearly the main contender for the throne after Tiberius’ death. Macro, Ennia’s husband, may or may not have known about the affair; he was by this time almost as unpopular as Sejanus had been at the height of his power, and neither his position nor Ennia’s could have given Thrasyllus much comfort in the few months before his death — which he is said to have foretold to the hour. Ironically, even after his death, Thrasyllus preserved the life of one of the earth’s monsters, the Emperor Nero. Tiberius, continuing to ensure his own safety and juggle with the succession, had arranged several trials of alleged conspirators against the throne; and at the time of his death those a waiting trial included Domitius Ahenobarbus, the husband of Agrippina the Younger. When the Emperor died, Domitius was released from prison, and went home to his wife — who nine months later gave birth to the baby Nero. Had Thrasyllus not assured Tiberius that his life was safe for at least another decade, the trials would swiftly have been concluded, Domitius executed, and Nero would never have been born. (As it was, Suetonius says that the astrologer who calculated the baby’s horoscope almost fainted away on contemplating its horrendous nature!) Rome now had a new Emperor, Caius, who called himself Caligula. A considerable amount of carnage followed his accession, and among those who fled from Rome to avoid this was Thrasyllus’ alleged son, Tiberius Claudius Balbillus. (Jack Lindsay, in Origins of astrology, 1971, argues that Balbillus was no relation of Thrasyllus; but we know that the latter’s son was called ‘Tiberius Claudius’, and the relationship seems a likely one.) He settled in Alexandria, while his niece Ennia, whose lover was now on the throne, stayed to enjoy what seemed likely to be a position of considerable influence. Caligula is said to have given Ennia a written contract promising to marry her after becoming Emperor. If she relied on this, she was a less keen judge of human nature than her grandfather. Her husband Macro, who had done much to help Caligula to the throne, was killed on the Emperor’s orders, and she apparently committed suicide. Not long after hearing of her death, Caligula married Lollia Paulina, who eleven years later was herself executed for consulting astrologers, allegedly to organize a coup against the Emperor Claudius. Although Caligula continued to uphold the edict Augustus had laid down in AD 11, forbidding any astrologer to consult an Emperor’s horoscope, his death was foretold by an Egyptian called Apollonius, who was hauled off to Rome and (according to Cassius Dio) sentenced to die on the very day he had said would be the Emperor’s last. Foolishly, Caligula postponed the execution, the better to say ‘I told you so’; but the Emperor died at the foretold time, assassinated on 24 January in AD 41. Now Claudius became Emperor, and it was safe for Balbillus to return to Rome, for Claudius when a boy had been a constant visitor to Thrasyllus’ house, and with an interest in intellectual matters uncommon in his family, had enjoyed hearing about literature and astrology, and enjoyed too the company of Balbillus, who he now received with enthusiasm. When in 43 he went to help conquer Britain, Balbillus went too, as an officer in the 20th legion — not only to give astrological advice, but to help run the engineers’ corps. Claudius on his return to Rome was honoured with the title Britannicus; Balbillus received a crown of honour. He seems then to have split his time between Rome and Alexandria, for he was appointed high priest of the Temple of Hermes there, and also became head of the state university with its superb library (where he instituted an annual series of lectures in honour of Claudius, at which the Emperor’s own works were recited). Balbillus became, indeed, as respected a figure as his father — although he tried to keep clear of politics. The part he played in advising Claudius is obscure, but it is likely that he was behind at least one edict — that which announced, before the event, that there would be an eclipse of the Moon on one of the Emperor’s birthdays. Much superstition still attached to eclipses, and it was wise to allay in advance any public fears that this one might be a malevolent omen. Claudius was (no doubt encouraged by Balbillus) quite aware of the harm that could be done by intriguers who cared to use astrology to suggest good times at which to organize insurrection or even assassination. In 52, Furius Camillus Scribonianus was executed for alleged plotting against the Emperor; the evidence included a horoscope of Claudius found in his possession. Soon afterwards Claudius passed an edict, which, like the one in 16, banished all astrologers from the country. The very next year, one T. Statilius Taurus committed suicide after being accused of ‘divination’. Two years later Domitia Lepida was accused of using black magic against Agrippina; astrology was mentioned at her trial, too (as at most similar trials). Balbillus, like his father, found it impossible to avoid politics altogether, particularly the intrigues that now began to centre around the ambitions of two mothers — Agrippina the Younger, who wanted the throne for Nero, and Domitia, her sister-in-law, who wanted it for Claudius’ son Britannicus. Agrippina had been told by Balbillus in 41 that Nero would be Emperor, but would murder his mother. This did not dissuade her, and pursuing her ambition she managed to marry Claudius, becoming his fourth wife (his third, Messalina, having met an unpleasant end). Another astrologer now joined the court: Chaeremon, from Alexandria, known for his assertion that comets could presage joy as well as disaster. He was joined by the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, himself an adherent of astrology. The three were mainly responsible for the education of Nero. There seems little doubt that Balbillus took part in the extraordinary events after Claudius’ death when Agrippina personally prevented Britannicus from leaving his room until, at an auspicious moment proposed by astrologers, Nero could be, and was, proclaimed Emperor. Balbillus was rewarded by being appointed Prefect of Egypt, where he stayed until 59. Not long after his return, in 64, the fire that destroyed Rome while Nero allegedly played his fiddle spawned sufficient disCONTENT=to result in a plot to destroy the Emperor. When a spectacular comet appeared, Balbillus told Nero that it presaged disaster for him — unless he deflected its effects by executing some of the noblest men of Rome by way of sacrifice. In the following carnage Petronius, who had directed the entertainments at Nero’s court, Seneca and his brother, his nephew the poet Lucanus, and many others perished. Balbillus did not. His success, if that is what it was, also made him secure against that dangerous rival astrologer, Ptolemy, the favourite of the new Empress Poppaea. Nero disposed of the rival by killing his wife in a fit of drunken pique. Balbillus retired quietly from the scene, vanishing from sight during the years when Nero died and Galba, Otho and Vitellius acceded and fell in their turn. It was probably as well; it has always been said that among Nero’s many victims towards the end of his reign were a number of astrologers — and certainly several Romans who had somehow got hold of the Imperial horoscope, for Nero supposed that the only reason for its possession was an assassination plot. Galba, who succeeded Nero, had been told by Tiberius on the evidence of his horoscope that he would one day be Emperor, but he does not seem to have been uncommonly impressed by astrology. Otho is said by Tacitus to have plotted against Galba with the support of astrologers who ‘urged him to action, predicting from their observation of the heavens, revolutions and a year of glory’. Ptolemy Seleucus positively ordered Otho to seize the propitious moment, and was proved right: Galba was successfully killed, and Otho ascended the throne. However, the Roman legions in Germany had proclaimed Vitellius Emperor, in the face of whose determined assault Otho crumpled, and killed himself. Vitellius was not a follower of the planets, perhaps because the horoscope cast for him revealed that although he would become Emperor after a civil war, his reign would be brief. He continually said he did not believe this; and indeed it was a remarkable prediction to make, for there seemed little chance of its coming true. However, he did become Emperor (in 69), and although he expelled all astrologers by an edict passed a few days afterwards, and executed a number of them, he reigned only for three months. During that short reign, Ptolemy Seleucus, who had got safely out of Rome, threw in his lot with Vespasian, plotting an uprising against Vitellius. Despite the fact that a comet appeared and two eclipses took place (to say nothing of the fact that several people saw two suns in the sky at the same time) Vespasian succeeded in becoming Emperor. This was a good time for Balbillus to return from self-imposed exile, for he and Vespasian had been on good terms since they met at Nero’s court (where Vespasian endeared himself to posterity by falling asleep during one of Nero’s recitations, a comment that happily escaped the Emperor’s notice). Vespasian was as devoted to astrology as some of his predecessors. On the evidence of Cassius Dio, he ‘consulted all the best of them’, and not only showed special interest in what Balbillus had to say, but allowed games to be held at Ephesus in the astrologer’s honour — the Great Balbillean Games were held until well into the 3rd century. He trusted Balbillus, and indeed Ptolemy Seleucus, so implicitly that when it was discovered that Mettius Pompusianus, an ambitious Roman, had been putting it about that he was destined to be Emperor, Vespasian actually had him appointed to the consulate, so sure was he that his own astrologers were right when they said that Mettius had been wrongly advised. Balbillus may have died at about the same time as Vespasian; had he survived there is no reason why the new Emperor, Vespasian’s son Titus, could not have retained him, but his name vanished from record. Titus reigned for only two years, and in 81 was succeeded by his younger brother Domitian, who himself was so convinced by an astrologer’s prediction that he would die by iron that he refused the senate’s offer of a guard of honour to escort him with spears. For safety’s sake, he appears to have believed all astrological predictions on principle. He executed Mettius Pompusianus, believing the prophesy that he would one day be Emperor, and Suetonius says that ‘he had not failed to take careful note of the days and hours when the foremost men had been born, and as a result was destroying in advance not a few who did not feel the least hope of gaining power.’ At least two astrologers seem to have predicted the hour of Domitian’s death, and Suetonius says that as the stated hour approached the Emperor became more and more nervous. On 17 September 96, he told his servants to set aside some truffles for him until next day — in case he was around to eat them, for his death had been foretold for the 18th, when ‘the Moon in Aquarius will be stained with blood’. He summoned the astrologer Ascletarius-Asclation and asked him if he could foresee his own death. The astrologer replied that he would be torn to pieces by dogs. Domitian had him executed immediately; but as the body was awaiting cremation, a sudden rainstorm put out the fire, the undertaker took shelter, and a pack of dogs destroyed the corpse. Early next morning the second astrologer, Larginus Proculus, was brought before Domitian in chains. Domitian ordered his execution, too, but following Caligula’s example postponed this for twenty-four hours, in order that Larginus should see how wrong he had been. It was at the fifth hour that the two astrologers had said Domitian would die. Nervously, Domitian again and again sent to know the time. Finally his bored servants assured him that the hour had passed, and the Emperor; much relieved, decided to bathe. A conspirator, Stephanus, asked if he could read to him for a while in the bath. Domitian agreed. Whereupon Stephanus produced a dagger and stabbed him, a number of other conspirators rushing in to join the execution.