Tag: Astrological texts

More on Antiochus of Athens

Posted on by Roger Pearse

With Antiochus we are indeed at the edge of knowledge, or so I infer from the article in the Realencyclopadie, which is meagre indeed:

68) Aus Athen (Hephaistion Theb. II 1 bei Engelbrecht Hephaest. von Theb. 36), Astrolog. von dessen Büchern manches handschriftlich erhalten ist (vgl. Englebrecht a.a.O Fabricius Bibl. Gr. 1 III c. 20).

68) From Athens (Hephaistio Theb. II 1 in Engelbrecht Hephaest. of  Thebes 36), astrologer. Some of his books are preserved in manuscript (cf.  Englebrecht ibid, Fabricius Bibl Gr. 1 III c. 20).

Even the reference to “Engelbrecht” seems obscure.  Fortunately there is an explanation and a download online at the same scholarly astrology site we mentioned earlier, here.

A critical edition of the early 4th century astrologer Hephaistio of Thebes’ Apotelesmatics was published by Engelbrecht in 1887. This edition was superceded by David Pingree’s critical edition of the same text in the mid-1970’s, although since Engelbrecht’s edition is in the public domain we provide it below courtesy of Google Books: Hephaistio of Thebes – Engelbrecht edition

The Pingree edition is a Teubner, Hephaestionis Thebani Apotelesmaticorum libri tres: Apotelesmaticorum epitomae quattuor (1974).  There is a wiki page for Hephaestio of Thebes, which tells us:

The first two volumes of the Apotelesmatics have been translated into English (by Robert Schmidt of Project Hindsight); the third volume … is in preparation.

The Project Hindsight page is here, although how to get hold of the translations is not indicated, and these include extracts by Antiochus of Athens). A table of contents is here for Hephaestio. Schmidt’s translations are unknown to the British research system, which indicates not a single copy of any of them is held in any library in the UK.

Looking at Engelbrecht, p.36 quotes the opening of Hephaisto, book 2, which does indeed discuss Antiochus of Athens.  After an extract (untranslated — why let the peasants read it?) he continues that there was indeed an astrologer named Antiochus of Athens, as the mss. Laurentiani plutei 28, 7 and 28, 34 contain an extract of The Thesaurus of Antiochus.  The Vienna ms. phil. gr. 179 contains something “from Antiochus the Astronomer”; and Vienna phil. gr. 108 folio 342v contains another reference.

All this is all very well… but I wish I could get my hands on Boll’s edition of his calendar!

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Manuscripts of Greek astrological works

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Looking at the calendar of Antiochus of Athens, as I was yesterday, led me to a corpus which was unfamiliar, the Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum.  Seven volumes of this are on Google books.

What was this series, the CCAG?  I find a splendid blog piece here by Chris Brennan on the Rediscovery of Hellenistic astrology in the modern period.  He also has a collection of PDF’s of these texts online.

The most important efforts in this area were initiated by a group of scholars in Europe towards the end of the 19th century who set out on a mission to collect, catalogue and edit all of the existing manuscripts on astrology that were written in ancient Greek during the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods.  This project, which was led by a Belgian scholar named Franz Cumont, took over fifty years to complete, and it entailed scouring the world’s libraries and private collections for ancient texts and manuscripts that had been copied and preserved over the long centuries since their original composition.  This project culminated in the publication of a massive twelve volume compendium called the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (Catalogue of the Codices of the Greek Astrologers), more commonly known simply by its acronym as the CCAG. …

This massive compendium, which was published in 12 volumes between 1898 and 1953, consists of critical editions of dozens of astrological texts and fragments which had been carefully sifted through, examined, and edited by diligent linguists and paleographers in order to produce published volumes of all of the extant Greek astrological texts from antiquity. 

This explains why the CCAG, despite its name, is more than this and contains material by Antiochus of Athens.

I can’t say that I am at all interested in astrology, ancient or modern.  But someone has to edit all this material.  It may be junk, but it is part of the literary heritage from antiquity.  It is a reminder that, as in every age, most of what is written is rubbish.

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The calendar of Antiochus and the new birth of the sun

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Roger Beck, The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun, Oxford University Press, 2006, makes the following interesting remark on p.209-10:

… the nominal solstice on 25 December, becomes the Sun’s birthday, the ‘Natalis Invicti’, as the Calendar of Filocalus famously notes—to which phrase in Greek (heliou genethlion) the less well-known Calendar of Antiochus appends ‘light increases’ (auxei phos).[16]  According to Macrobius (Sat. 1.18.10), not only was the Sun’s birthday celebrated at the winter solstice but he was also displayed as a baby on that day: 

These diverences in age [in the representations of various gods] relate to the Sun, who is made to appear very small (parvulus) at the winter solstice. In this form the Egyptians bring him forth from the shrine on the set date to appear like a tiny infant (veluti parvus et infans) on the shortest day of the year.

16. Calendar of Filocalus, Salzman 1990: 149–53; Calendar of Antiochus, Boll 1910: 16, 40–4.

…

Boll, F. 1910. Griechische Kalender: 1. Das Kalendarium des Antiochos, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, philos.-hist. Klasse, Jahrgang 1910, 16. Abhandlung (Heidelberg). 

The “Calendar of Filocalus” is our familiar Chronography of 354, part 6, which I placed online long ago here.  As we all know, for 25 Dec. it has “Natalis Invicti” against the day.  But the Calendar of Antiochus is not known to me.  I wonder if it is online?  Beck also tells us that this is Antiochus of Athens, an astrologer, whose works must exist — Beck references them as CCAG 4, etc, which turns out to be Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum.  The CCAG turns out to be an old work, and some of it is online at Archive.org.

The only real reference to the calendar that I could find online was in D.M.Murdock (Acharya S), Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus connection, p.89, online in preview here (and I know we all wince at the standards of this source, but this new book is much better referenced).  This tells me that the calendar was published indeed by Boll in 1910; that it records the solstice on 22nd December, and dates to ca. 200 AD.

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Extant literary texts from AD 30 to AD 100

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I sometimes hear people of limited education argue that because no “secular first century historians” (sic) mention Jesus, this proves he never existed (!).  I usually respond by asking who specifically these historians are, whereupon I get only silence.

But, religious issues aside, wouldn’t it be really interesting to have a list of all the extant texts written by non-Christian writers between 30 and 100AD?  Indeed wouldn’t such lists be almost an education in ancient literature and the classical heritage, listing one century at a time?

I’m not sure that I have the resources to investigate this, but I thought that I would start to compile a few authors.  Corrections and contributions welcome!

  • Aristonicus of Alexandria (? reign of Tiberius), On critical signs in the Iliad and the Odyssey; On ungrammatical works. (Fragments)
  • Antiochus of Athens (uncertain, might be in our period), Thesaurus (astrological work, extant in epitome and fragments)
  • Ps.Chion of Heraclea (uncertain, might be in our period), Letters (an epistolary novel).
  • Apollonius of Tyana (d.120), Letters (doubtful), Apoltelemata (extant in Syriac, doubtful magical text).  All this material may be 2nd century, or indeed much later.
  • Musonius Rufus (fl. reign of Nero), Discourses (extracts)
  • Anonymus Londiniensis, (papyrus P. Lond. gr. inv. 137 of medical text based on Aristotle)
  • Erotianus (reign of Nero, 60’s AD), Sayings of Hippocrates (medical work)
  • Various recensions of the Life of Aesop are probably first century.
  • Longinus, On the sublime.  Philosophical work, perhaps 1st century.
  • Severus the Iatrosophist, (a medical work)
  • Heraclitus the grammarian, Homeric problems (ca. 100AD)
  • Philo (d. ca. AD 50), [philosophical works]
  • Celsus Medicus (d. ca. AD 50), On medicine.
  • Scribonius Largus, Compositions (ca. AD 47).  A medical work.
  • Dioscorides (d. ca. AD 90), On medical materials, a handbook of herbs.
  • Seneca the Younger (d. AD 65), 12 Philosophical essays, 9 tragedies, Apocolocyntosis, 124 Letters.
  • Cornutus (fl. ca. 60 AD), stoic philosopher, Compendium of Greek theology. On enunciation and orthography (fragment).
  • Teucer of Babylon in Egypt (uncertain but quoted in c.2), On the 12 signs of the zodiac; other astrological fragments.
  • Phaedrus (d. AD 54), Fables
  • Persius (d. AD 62), Satires (poems)
  • Lucan (d. AD 65), Pharsalia (history of Caesar-Pompey civil war), Praise of Piso (panegyric).
  • Petronius (d. AD 66), Satyricon (fragmentary)
  • Hero of Alexandria (d. AD 70), Metrica (on trigonometry); Pneumatica (on machines).  Mid first century?
  • Pliny the Elder (d. AD 79), Natural History
  • Quintillian, Rhetorical works (ca. 93 AD)
  • Statius (d. AD 96), Silvae, other poems.
  • Martial (d. AD 104), Epigrams (mainly the reign of Domitian, plus a little later)
  • Juvenal, Satires.
  • Josephus, Jewish War, Antiquities (AD 93), Life, Against Apion.
  • Plutarch (d. 120 AD), Moralia (80-odd essays), Parallel Lives.  Probably all written in retirement; but the Lives are just too late, being written between 100-120AD.  The Moralia come in our period, just.
  • Cleomedes the astronomer (uncertain, may be later), On the circular motion of the celestial bodies.
  • Tacitus (d. AD 117), Agricola, Germania (both AD 98).  The Dialogus, Annals and Histories were composed from 100 AD on.
  • Philippus of Thessalonica (1st c.), epigrams (72 of them in the Greek Anthology).
  • Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe (mid 1st c. or later), a novel.
  • Onasander, Strategikos.  On the duties of a general.  Later than 49 AD.
  • Hyginus Gromaticus (reign of Trajan, started 98 AD; surveyor), fragments of a work on legal boundaries.
  • Frontinus (d. AD 103), On aqueducts, (ca. 95 AD).  On strategems (military tactics).
  • Caesius Bassus (reign of Nero), On poetic metres (fragments only).
  • Valerius Flaccus (d. AD 90), Argonautica (ca. AD 80?), poem on the argonauts.
  • M. Valerius Probus (reign of Nero), grammarian.  On abbreviations (fragment).
  • Silius Italicus (d. AD 101), epic poet.  Punica, written under Domitian.
  • Velleius Paterculus (d. AD 30 or 31), History, of Tiberius’ German wars.
  • Rufus of Ephesus, On kidney disease , close to 100 AD (medical writer; other works also)

Any more?  This is mostly Romans, so we need more Greeks. 

Updates: Epictetus died ca. 135, and his notes were published by his pupil Arrian after his death, so he doesn’t count.  Plutarch seems to squeeze in, if that date is right.  I’ve culled this from Wikipedia mostly (yuk!) as the source most readily available.  I need to rearrange the list by decade, tho.

Update: Of course one can search the online TLG canon of authors by date, which I am now doing.  122 results come back, but nearly all are tiny fragments, found in the Greek Anthology or collected from Byzantine collections.  Strabo is too early (d. 24 AD).  Thessalus of Tralles, On the powers of herbs, was addressed to Claudius so again too early.  Comarius On the philosopher’s stone would appear to be earlier.  Thallus is only fragmentary and of uncertain date.

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