O Micro-Zodíaco e a Interculturalidade da Tradição Astrológica Antiga: Exemplo Textual

Monroe, M. Willis, 2016, "The Micro-Zodiac in Babylon and Uruk: Seleucid Zodiacal Astrology" in The Circulation of Astronomical knowledge in the Ancient World, 121.

Looking at the various fragments of the micro-zodiac both from Uruk and Babylon one can begin to see how such a descriptive text was compiled and used. An analysis of texts over time and space allows for the creation of a model of textual transmission specific to the extant texts but applicable to a wider tradition. Martin Worthington in his book on Akkadian textual criticism has noted that the study of variants in texts can inform us of the “geography of textual transmission in antiquity.” While Worthington is primarily concerned with “reconstructing the original wording of a composition” (what he terms textual or lower criticism), many of his methods still apply when working with larger aspects of text, revealing historical and geographical traces of transmission. Collecting these divergent patterns or traditions reveal patterns in the way texts were worked with and recopied in new contexts. In the case of the micro-zodiac the evidence is sparse at best, but two distinct geographical locations allow for some recognition of textual traditions. In this case, the difference between texts from Babylon and those from Uruk. At the same time the different formats of the micro-zodiac including a tabular layout, as well as other unique formats give hints at the production and conception of the text in its scholarly context. The unknown question with all of this late material in Mesopotamia is to what degree Hellenistic theoretical thought influenced the work of Babylonian scholars. Certainly many of the ideas that the scribes working with the micro-zodiac used quickly found currency in Greek astrology: the zodiac, triplicities, and hypsomata among other concepts. In regards to the new texts written during this period and their associated novel concepts and formats, Koch attributes some of this creativity to the development of mathematical astronomy during this period. Certainly, more accurate predicative methods allowed for the creation of horoscopes and other texts.

 

Monroe, M. Willis, 2016, "The Micro-Zodiac in Babylon and Uruk: Seleucid Zodiacal Astrology" in The Circulation of Astronomical knowledge in the Ancient World, ed. J. M. Steele, . Leiden/ Boston: Brill.

Kepler, a Astrologia e a Natureza dos Aspectos: Exemplo Textual

 
Boner, P. J., 2013, Kepler's Cosmological Synthesis: Astrology, Mechanism and the Soul, 159-60.

Kepler described the aspects and consonances as “different peoples, as it were,” who came from “the same country of Geometry.” Essentially, they originated from the same set of principles in different ways. In the case of the consonances, the section of the circumference of a circle corresponding to the side of an inscribed polygon was extended in a straight line and compared in length with the remaining part of the circumference. Kepler compared this departure from the circle to the foundation of a new colony, where the consonances, “living by their own laws,” had established a certain distance from their circular origins. The aspects, on the other hand, were thought to rely completely on the circle for their determination. While the length of a line measured by the side of an inscribed polygon lay at the heart of every consonance, no such feature could be found in the geometrical formulation of an aspect. An aspect was determined entirely by the inscription of congruent and constructible polygons in a circle. “The aspects, remaining within their own country, the circle,” Kepler wrote, “make use of no other laws than those which the roundness of the circle prescribes to them.” These figures had been found among the regular plane figures, Kepler wrote, and were “congruent and inscribed in a circle.”

Despite their different origins, the aspects and consonances relied similarly on the soul for their recognition. Kepler defined an aspect as “a thing of reason” whose influence could not be conveyed immediately, “as if rain and similar things came down from the heavens themselves,” but objectively by an animate faculty. “If there were no soul in the earth,” Kepler wrote, the sun, moon, and planets would have no astrological influence, “either on their own or through any suitable aspect.” And while the harmonies he identified among the motions of those celestial bodies were not audible, they were thought to resonate with a higher faculty of the soul. In fact, the celestial harmonies involved some of the same relations the soul made instinctually when it enjoyed a musical melody. Kepler claimed that the consonances were not simply created by the fluctuation of the air but consisted more fundamentally in harmonic proportions produced by the human voice as well as the motions of the planets. For the perception of these proportions, Kepler referred to the ability of the soul to identify and appreciate their archetypal essence. In the same way the motions of the planets expressed the archetypal principles of the consonances, Kepler argued, the configuration of the heavens exemplified similar principles that found their resonance in the soul of the earth. “It suffices that there is a soul,” Kepler wrote, “which perceives those proportions when they exist and is stirred up by them.”

Boner, P. J., 2013, Kepler's Cosmological Synthesis: Astrology, Mechanism and the Soul. Leiden/ Boston: Brill.

A Origem do Zodíaco - Circulação e Transmissão Cultural: Exemplo Textual

Stevens, K., 2019, Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective, 39-41.

As Aristotle’s claim about Egyptian and Babylonian observations implies, Greeks were engaging with the celestial scholarship of their eastern neighbours well before the Macedonian conquest. Some Mesopotamian constellation and star names were borrowed in the late second or early first millennium and are attested in fragmentary Greek astronomical poems from the eighth to the sixth centuries BC. If reliable, Pliny’s claim that the astronomer Cleostratus of Tenedos introduced the signa in the zodiac suggests that zodiacal constellations were known in the Greek world by the late sixth or fifth century, although not the uniform zodiac of twelve 30-degree signs, which was not invented in Babylonia until around 400 BC. Nor could the uniform zodiac have been known to Meton of Athens or his near-contemporary Euctemon around 430 BC: apart from questions of chronology, Daryn Lehoux has effectively demolished the thesis of Albert Rehm and Bartel Van der Waerden that Meton and Euctemon used zodiacal months to construct their parapegmata (lists of dates of solstices, equinoxes and annual risings and settings of fixed stars, combined with weather predictions). Meton did, however, draw on Babylonian celestial scholarship in another way. The Metonic Cycle attributed to him (the period of almost nineteen years where the solar year and lunar month coincide, which enabled the development of consistent intercalation schemes) is almost certainly derived from Babylonia, where a similar cycle had been in use since around 500 BC.

Secure evidence for Greek knowledge of the zodiacal constellations, although still not necessarily the uniform zodiac, comes in the fourth century with the Phenomena of Eudoxos of Knidos (ca. 390–340 BC), known today via a commentary by Hipparchus of Nicaea and Aratus’ versification of its contents in his Phenomena. Aratus’ statement that each night six ‘twelfth-parts (duodekades) of the (zodiacal) circle’ set and six rise could refer to the zodiac signs, but he makes no explicit mention of the 360-degree zodiacal circle, and Hipparchus’ criticism of Aratus for conflating the zodiacal constellations with the signs implies that neither he nor Eudoxos made this distinction. If De Caelo predates Alexander’s campaigns, Aristotle’s claims about planetary movements reported by the ‘Chaldaeans’ indicates that Greeks were also using Babylonian observational data before the Hellenistic period.

While these examples attest to cross-cultural contact, they are relatively isolated and self-contained; there is no evidence for detailed Greek knowledge of Babylonian astronomical or astrological scholarship before the third century BC. Unsurprisingly, then, the crucial period of cross-cultural exchange seems to have been that which brought the inhabitants of Greece and Mesopotamia into closer contact than ever before. We will examine the results of that contact across three areas of celestial enquiry: data and terms relating to celestial observation; methods of predicting celestial phenomena; and the concepts and techniques used to interpret the significance of these phenomena for events on Earth.

Stevens, K., 2019, Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A Resposta de Ptolomeu aos Críticos da Astrologia: Exemplo Textual

Pedersen, O., 2011, A Survey of the Almagest, 401-3.

Ptolemy first refers to the obvious fact that the Sun regulates the seasons, thus influencing all forms of life on the Earth, and that the Moon governs the tides. This is obviously true; but now the principle of the uniformity of nature leads Ptolemy astray. He maintains that also the water in rivers increases and diminishes with the light of the Moon, and that plants and animals are sympathetic to it because of their

moist nature. Now the Sun and Moon are only two representatives of the heavenly bodies, and all the rest must be supposed to cause similar effects. Even the fixed stars are assumed to have a direct influence on meteo'rological conditions. These many influences can mutually interfere, so that their total effect on a particular phenomenon is determined by. the positions of the heavenly bodies relative to each' other, i.e. by their various aspects. The argument continues by stating that the influence of the Sun is felt even by animals, and that farmers and herdsmen are able to make predictions from the stars based ,upon repeated everyday observations. The same is the case with sailors. On the other hand, the more intricate predictions are possible only for people able to observe and describe the aspects of the heaven in greater detail, i.e for professional astronomers.

Having thus established a positive basis for astrology, Ptolemy t,ries to refute some of the criticisms, levelled 'against it. That charlatans and impostors have been unable to make true predictions proves nothing but that they are uninstructed and take too few of the relevant circumstances into account. No science is discredited because ignoramuses misuse it. Admittedly astrology is a difficult science, but if the astrologer does not promise too much, and if he has a solid astronomical background, one should not deny the possibility of making plausible predictions, just as we do not dismiss the whole science of navigation because pilots sometimes err. 

Besides being possible, astrology is also beneficial. Again Ptolemy begins with a number of positive reasons. First he points to the general pleasure and satisfaction connected with any true insight into things, both human and divine. (The inference is that, everything considered, Ptolemy attaches more importance to delight in knowledge as such than to, its practical utility.) But astrology is particularly useful as a means of knowing what is harmful or good for both body and soul, ,enabling us to predict not only occasional diseases or the length of life, but also external· circumstances which have a direct and natural connection with the original gifts of nature, such as property and marriage in the case of the body, and honour and dignity in the case of the soul.

Among the objections to the usefulness of astrology is that it does not help people to become rich or famous, but only reveals their unavoidable fate, which were better if it remair:ed hidcen. To the first part of this rather materialistic objection Ptolemy remarks that the sarr:e is true of all philosophy, since knowledge as such does not lead to material gains.. To the latter part he replies as a true Stoic philosopher that the foreknowledge of the unavoidable is useful to the soul, which can thus rejoice in future pleasures or compose itself to meet future pains with calm and steadiness. 

This defense of astrology is an intelligent piece of reasoning which shows that Ptolemy was no uncritical adherent of a doctrine which to later times appears as mere superstition. On the one hand he tried to find a rational basis making the possibility of predictions acceptable. On the other hand he was completely aware that the empirical foundation of astrology was much weaker than that of astronomy, resting as it did upon everyday experiences in contrast to the precise observations of the Almagest, and upon correlations of a not too satisfactory character. He thus had to place astrology at a lower scientific level than astronomy, and it is worth noticing that astrology found no place whatever in the Almagest (cf. Kattsoff, 1947, p. 18). To Ptolemy the precise mathematical theories of the Almagest not only represent the highest level astronomy was able to attain, but also the very summit of human knowledge. Not all his followers retained this order; many Arab and Mediaeval astronomers considered planetary theory as a simple introduction to the art of prediction, thus separating Ptolemy's results from the spirit in which they had been achieved.

Pedersen, O., 2011, A Survey of the Almagest, with Annotation and New Commentary by A. Jones. Nova Iorque: Springer Science+Business Media.

A Construção Antiga de um Sentido para o Termo "Astrologia": Exemplo Textual

 Pérez-Jiménez, A., 2015, "La Astrología, Un Método Científico de Adivinación" in Adivinación y Astrología en el Mundo Antiguo, 49-50.

Pues bien, durante casi toda la Antigüedad los términos ἀστρονομία y ἀστρολογία, lat. astronomia y astrologia, designaban nuestra ciencia “astronomía”, no la “astrología”. De hecho, el único nombre atestiguado antes de Platón para la “astronomía” era ἀστρολογία; después de él se utiliza uno u otro indistintamente, aunque por lo general el de ἀστρονομία queda vinculado a la filosofía platónica. Y, si bien ya en los primeros siglos de nuestra Era se percibe cierta diferenciación entre los dos términos latinos, habrá que esperar hasta el siglo IV (san Jerónimo) para encontrar una distinción más tajante; el primer autor que define claramente astronomia como “astronomía” y astrologia como “astrología” es san Isidoro de Sevilla. En cuanto a los términos griegos, Sexto Empírico conserva el nombre de ἀστρολογία para la “astronomía” y la “astrología” y reserva el de ἀστρονομία para la “astrometeorología ”. Hasta Simplicio y Olimpiodoro, en el siglo VI, no encontraremos una oposición en sentido moderno. Pero, si esto era así, ¿cómo se referían los griegos y romanos a los astrólogos y su doctrina?

En todas las épocas, cuando quería designarse la astrología, frente a la astronomía, se añadía a los términos anteriores el adjetivo γενεθλιακή (de γενέθλη = “nacimiento”) o ἀποτελεσματική (de ἀποτέλεσμα = “efecto”, por la creencia en que los astros producían efectos determinados sobre el mundo sublunar) o bien se empleaban estos adjetivos solos con el artículo o con el sustantivo τέχνη. A partir de ellos se formó el sustantivo γενεθλιαλογία o γενεθλιολογία, genethliologia. En relación con tales nombres, a los astrólogos se los llamaba ἀποτελεσματικοί, γενεθλιακοί, genethliaci. Como es obvio, estos términos tienen que ver con el ámbito de actuación principal de la astrología (la fijación del horóscopo en el momento del nacimiento) y con la esencia misma de este arte, el cumplimiento en la tierra de los efectos que producen las configuraciones planetarias y/o zodiacales.

Otra forma para referirse a la astrología fue el uso restringido de los términos μαθηματική τέχνη, mathematica y μάθησις, mathesis, para la profesión y μαθηματικοί, mathematici, para los astrólogos, que tienen que ver con el prestigio adquirido en determinada época por estas prácticas o con su relación inicial, fundamentos y método compartido con la astronomía, una ciencia matemática cuya base es la aritmética, la geometría y, luego, la trigonometría.

Por último, el nombre más popular a partir del siglo III a.C. en que, según la tradición recogida por Vitrubio, la astrología fue divulgada en Grecia por Beroso y sus discípulos Antípater y Aquinápolo, fue el de χαλδαική o Χαλδαίων τέχνη, ars o doctrina Chaldaeorum, de forma que, a partir de este momento, χαλδαῖος, Chaldaeus, pierde casi por completo su sentido étnico para designar al profesional de este arte, al astrólogo.

Pérez-Jiménez, A., 2015, "La Astrología, Un Método Científico de Adivinación" in Adivinación y Astrología en el Mundo Antiguo, ed. J. A. D. Delgado & A. Pérez-Jiménez, 45-76. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Fundación Mapfre Guanarteme.

A Alma do Mundo, o Todo e as Partes: Exemplo Textual

Jean-Baptiste Gourinat, J.-B., 2020, "Apospasma: The World Soul and its individual parts in Stoicism" in World Soul - Anima Mundi: On the Origins and Fortunes of a Fundamental Idea, ed. C. Helmig, 167-8

According to various Stoic texts and sources, our souls are parts of the World Soul; they are merê or apospasmata of the World Soul. What does this mean exactly? Not only does this have consequences regarding the relationship between the World Soul and the individual souls, but it also has consequences concerning the nature of both souls. A meros seems to designate a part belonging to a whole. This would mean that the World Soul is divided between the individual souls it is composed of, so that, in a way, the World Soul is composed or constituted of the individual souls. Therefore, the perceptions, reasonings, and will of the World Soul would be the sum or the result of the perceptions, reasonings, and wills of the individual souls. There would be no difference or conflict between them. This, however, hardly seems to be a consequence that the Stoics are willing to endorse. On the other hand, an apospasma seems to be a detached portion of the World Soul. In that case, the individual souls are autonomous parts of the World Soul. This is the most likely version of the relationship between the individual souls and the World soul, and this seems to be the version endorsed, at the end of the history of Stoicism, by Marcus Aurelius when he said that each individual human being’s soul is a ‘fragment’ (ἀπόσπασμα) of himself, which ‘Zeus has given to each man to guard and guide him’ (5.27). However, this version of the relationship appears syncretic, since Marcus described this guardian soul as a daimôn, a ‘god-like entity’, and this appears to be a notion borrowed, among others, from Plato’s Republic by the Stoics. Such a conception of the soul as a god-like entity seems to pertain mainly to the ‘divine’ part of the soul, not to the animal soul which, in the Stoic tradition, appears at birth by the transformation of a physical plant-like breath to an ensouled breath: in this version, the soul does not come from God from the outside, it is nothing else than the transformation of the qualities and properties of the breath, and it is not detached from God and does not supervene from the outside. In that case, the World Soul and the individual souls are simply analogous. Again, this is clearly not what the Stoics have in mind: the relationship between the World Soul and the individual souls is not an analogy, it rather seems to be a whole-parts relationship. Moreover, the Stoics seem to maintain both that the individual souls are generated by a transformation of the inner plant-like breath of the embryo and that it results from an exhalation of the Word Soul. They combine a medical theory of soul-formation with a cosmological, Heraclitean-like view of the formation of the individual souls from the World Soul, in a rather puzzling manner. To put it in a nutshell: the Stoics seem to endorse the cosmological view that the individual souls are parts and emanations of the World Soul, but this seems to conflict with their more medical description of the process of soul-formation, and, in addition, this creates difficulties concerning the kind of relationship between the parts and the whole. In order to address these issues, the present paper will first describe the Stoic conception of the World Soul and then proceed to the different accounts of the formation of the individual souls and their relation to the whole. 

Jean-Baptiste Gourinat, J.-B., 2020, "Apospasma: The World Soul and its individual parts in Stoicism" in World Soul - Anima Mundi: On the Origins and Fortunes of a Fundamental Idea, ed. C. Helmig, 167-87. Berlim/ Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

Liz Greene: Do Ano Platónico ao Aion de Aquário: Exemplo Textual

Greene, L., 2018, Jung's Studies in Astrology: Prophecy, Magic, and the Qualities of Time, 161.

The so-called Platonic Year of 26,000 years was never described by Plato, as precession had not been discovered in his time. Plato defined the ‘perfect year’ as the return of the celestial bodies and the diurnal rotation of the fixed stars to their original positions at the moment of creation. The Roman astrologer Julius Firmicus Maternus, echoing Plato, discussed a great cycle of 300,000 years, after which the heavenly bodies will return to those positions that they held when the world was first created. Firmicus seems to have combined Plato’s ‘perfect year’ with the Stoic belief that the world undergoes successive conflagrations of fire and water, after which it is regenerated. But the Stoics did not describe any transformations of consciousness, as Jung did – only a precise replication of what had gone before. Various other authors of antiquity offered various other lengths for the Great Year, ranging from 15,000 years to 2,484 years. But none of these speculations was based on the movement of the vernal equinoctial point through the constellations. It was in modern astrological, Theosophical, and occult literature that Jung found inspiration for his own highly individual interpretation of the Aquarian Aion.

Greene, L., 2018, Jung's Studies in Astrology: Prophecy, Magic, and the Qualities of Time. Londres/ Nova Iorque: Routledge.

Saturno, a Saturnália e o Tempo de Excepção: Exemplo Textual

Versnel, H. S., Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, vol. II: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual, 155-6.

Among the many ways of visualising a reversal, none is so obvious, unequivocal and popular as the reversal in attire. The most easy and effective way to turn reality upside down is to change your clothes for the garment of the opposite sex or of social antipodes, or for distinguishing marks of animals or gods. Circumstantial information has been presented on these forms of disguise and their function in the first chapter of this book. By thus inverting normality the new situation is marked as exceptional and abnormal. It is noteworthy that among the signs that mark Greek sacrifices as exceptional or extraordinary-such as the absence of wine or the presence of milk-one is that the sacrificers do not wear the wreaths that are normally one of the most characteristic signs of sacrificial ceremonies. This provides a perfect parallel for the reversal of the Saturnian sacrifice. During the festival everything is out of order, above all clothing regulations. Moreover, Saturn himself is the marker of abnormality par excellence. His veiled head-irrespective whether this is an originally Roman element or a Greek heritagestamps him as 'different' and exceptional. Another way of expressing a reversal of ordinary life is by imitating odd customs of foreign nations. Romans could and did give expression to abnormality by allusions to 'the Greek way of life'. In the (Roman) fabula togata it was not allowed to stage slaves that outwitted their masters, whereas this was accepted in the fabula palliata, the pallium conveniently evoking a Greek atmosphere. In Greece, as any decent Roman knew, odd things happened that were quite incompatible with Roman customs. Graeculi just had a habit of mixing up the normal order. Viewed in this light, it is very well possible and in my view becomes very likely that sacrificing ritu Graeco was just another reference to the eccentric nature of the total ritual. This supposition is supported by a tiny piece of evidence on Saturn himself which has remained unnoticed so far. Apart from the covering of his head there is another trait that sets him apart. The ivory statue in his temple was clothed with a purple-coloured cloak, as Tertullian, Testim. anim. 2, 137, 12, testifies. His exact words are: pallio Saturni coccinato. It is true that in the course of time pallium has become the term for any kind of garment. In this case, however, a positively un-Roman pallium is meant - the extrinsecus habitus sharply censured by the same Tertullian, De pallio 4, 9: Galatici ruboriss uperiectio (a wrap of Galatian red). Now, the pallium never quite lost the negative connotations of its Greek or, more generally, foreign flavour. It characterized (Greek) philosophers, especially the Cynics and other dubious specimens, and prostitutes; in short, those marginals who refused to subject themselves to the norms and codes of civilized society. A fortiori a purple pallium was the very opposite of what could be regarded as normal Roman custom.

Versnel, H.S., 1993, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, vol. II: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual. Leiden, Nova Iorque, Köln: E. J. Brill.

O Cosmos como Espaço Sagrado e os Atributos Solares de Apolo: Exemplo Textual

Boutsikas , E., 2020,The Cosmos in Ancient Greek Religious Experience: Sacred Space, Memory, and Cognition,71-2.

   Apollo’s strong solar and calendric attributes make him a particularly suitable deity for an investigation concerning astronomical links in religious spaces. This relationship, which continues well into the Roman period, appears in a number of texts from the fifth century BCE. Many of Apollo’s epikleses associate him with the sun: Phoebus, Lykeios, Aigletes (god of light or sun, with a temple on the Aegean island of Anafi), and Apollo Eos (of the Dawn). In literature, the identification of Apollo as Helios (Sun) is widely attested, as are a number of cults linking the two divinities, such as Apollo Helios in Rhodes and Athens and the Boeotian Daphnephoria. We will explore in this chapter how a number of Apollo’s other cults employed solar associations for timekeeping purposes and for shaping the cognitive ecology of the cults, triggering the senses within the religious experience. The sun’s fundamental importance in human existence stands as testimony to Apollo’s cosmic significance. His importance in the Greek pantheon is well known, but the god’s cosmic role is, in addition, palpable in his position as the god of music, which also carried cosmological significance through the sixth-century-BCE Pythagorean ideas of the music of the spheres. Plato, in particular, explains how Apollo directs celestial and musical harmony. Of particular relevance to this study is a third association of Apollo with the cosmos, his relationship with the land of the Hyperboreans, the people of the far north: a place associated, at least in the late sources, with eternal spring and light, where days were of extreme length and nights very short – an ideal ambiance for the god of light.

   In the Homeric Hymn, Apollo, disguised as a dolphin, guides the Cretan ship first to Krissa and then to Delphi, where he founds his cult. This narrative offers an additional layer to Apollo’s cosmic significance. The sea is the primary element from which all gods sprang in the main Greek cosmogonies (Homeric, Hesiodic, and Orphic). The Delphic oracle of Apollo, as the centre of the world, matches the god’s cosmic connotations; a new world order is established by Apollo upon founding the oracle and taking over from the old primeval, chthonic, and destructive powers of the previous occupier. The cosmic significance of Delphi is confirmed in the characteristics of its two divine occupiers (Apollo and Dionysos), according to Plutarch: Dionysos’ presence in Delphi was seen as symbolic of the division of the cosmos into elements, with each god representing different expressions of the ever-changing cosmos. In Plutarch’s analysis, the elements, characteristics, and attributes of the two gods contain cosmic referents. In the example of Delphi, we revisit the idea that places of cosmic significance act as effective carriers of memory. Delphi, as the centre of the world – a notion made explicit in myth but also in the display of the omphalos (navel) – was a focal place of the ancient Greek cosmic structure. 

Boutsikas , E., 2020,The Cosmos in Ancient Greek Religious Experience: Sacred Space, Memory, and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

A Construção das Doze Casas Astrológicas, os Raios Celestiais e as Variações de Radiação: Exemplo Textual

Quinlan-McGrath, M., Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance, 36-7.

   The intersections of the horizon circle and the meridian circle divide the heavens into four quadrants relative to the location on the Earth that is to be studied. A third circle, the ecliptic, the belt of the zodiacal constellations against which the planets appear to move, intersects the meridian and horizon circles relative to that earthly point as well. Over the course of the year, this ecliptic circle gradually seems to ascend and descend relative to the merid-ian at that place on the Earth. Owing to this continual shining of the heavens during the course of a year, we might visualize the quadrants as seasonally expanding and contracting.

   Within the quadrants, the cusps or divisions between these twelve houses are measured and marked along the 360 degrees of that ecliptic circle. There were slightly different ways to apportion the 360 degrees that were divided among the twelve houses, depending on the house system chosen by the astrologer. But, whatever the house system chosen, the four cardines or cusps of the quadrants - marked by the Ascendant (the point at which the ecliptic crosses the eastern horizon), the Midheaven (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the meridian circle above the horizon), the Descendant (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the western horizon), and the Lower Midheaven (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the meridian circle below the horizon) - are usually the same in all house systems.

   The degree of the ecliptic circle that intersects the eastern horizon at the time in question becomes the Ascendant degree. The rest of the ecliptic circle follows counterclockwise from this point, and all the subsequent cusps in the horoscope diagram are determined from it. The “moving” sky is continually passing through this Ascendant point - ascending in the east with the passage of the twenty-four-hour day. This is means that each of the 360 degrees takes roughly four minutes of clock time to rise or set. Moment by moment, the stars and planets, traveling at diff ering speeds, some of the planets occasion-ally retrograde, move through this framework of the horoscope chart. Moment by moment, the angles of the celestial rays, hitting a unique point on the Earth, are changing. This is ever-changing complexity of radiation was, we will see, understood to influence the great variety of earthly entities as these were all in the process of coming into existence or fading out of it.

Quinlan-McGrath, M., 2013, Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago/ Londres: The University of Chicago Press.

A Lua, a Deusa Selene, os Carros Celestes, a Fertilidade e os Casamentos: Exemplo Textual

Ní Mheallaigh, K., 2020, The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy, 13-5.

The image of the celestial deities Helios and Selene traversing the sky either on horseback (usually Selene) or driving a horse-drawn chariot (usually Helios) was ubiquitous in ancient visual culture. Their mobility –they are always in transit– emphasized their inseparable connection withthe passage of time. The most conspicuous of the images that survive, arguably, are Pheidias’ sculptures of the birth of Athena on the eastern pediment of the Parthenon in Athens (428BC–432BC), which showed Helios’ chariot springing up over the eastern horizon, while on the otherside Selene’s tired horses sank over the west. This traditional imagery also infiltrated private spaces on cups and jars, objects whose circular shape androtation could re-enact the motions of the celestial deities, as Squire has argued for Tabula 4N. Although never regarded as one of the major Greek gods, Selene was identified with other goddesses such as Artemis and Hecate and Aphrodite of the Heavens. She was also worshipped in more intimate, domestic settings, on which level her importance was probably pervasive.

The Moon’s phases were critical markers for religious worship of many different sorts. Religious festivals tended to cluster around the full Moon, no doubt in order to avail of the light it offered for nocturnal celebrations; in the eighteenth century, similarly, the learned society of the ‘Lunar Men’would hold their monthly meetings on the same evening in order to take advantage of precisely these conditions. It is for this reason that a Greek epigrammatist hails the Moon as‘Selene, friend of all-night festivals’, and a fragment of Sappho’s poetry describes women gathering around an altar at full Moon (‘the Moon appeared full,/ and they stood around an altar...’). As we shall shortly see, this was likely to have been the occasion for the ritual that was celebrated in one of Alcman’s enigmatic Spartan songs as well. The new Moon was also important for a variety of purposes, e.g. the collection of debts, while both new and full Moon were considered propitious for weddings: in the case of the full Moon, probably because of the implications of fertility, while the new Moon was significant for marking the transition from an old cycle to the new. These associations conspired to make the‘old and new Moon’in theOdyssey a particularly ominous time for the return of Odysseus to his household, bringing with him the exaction of debts, the transition from the old regimeto the new and the reunion of husband and wife.

Ní Mheallaigh, K., 2020, The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cardano, a Dignidade e Influência Astrológica e o Espírito Crítico: Exemplo Textual

Ernst, G. 2001, “ ‘Veritatis amor dulcissimus’: Aspects of Cardano’s Astrology” in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, 48-9.

  Cardano felt compelled to admit that the situation was genuinely difficult and that the critics of astrology had it all too easy. The discipline had in fact been discredited and corrupted, and by its own practitioners. Cardano condemned not the art, but the artisans: they were the ones who failed to bring to its study the attention, effort, and mental profundity a discipline of its nobility and difficulty required. Moved either by greed or by ambition, they claimed to possess knowledge that they did not have and promised to give answers that an astrologer could not provide. They continually invented new expedients, taking shameless advantage of the ambiguous and profitable area of “elections and interrogations.” One particularly greedy and ignorant astrologer, for example, had forced Ludovico Sforza to follow minute rules, even making him and his courtiers ride horseback in rain and mud. 

   Astrology, Cardano admitted, was not an “absolutely precise” form of knowledge, endowed with absolute certainty and rigor. But that did not mean that it was “a superstition, a form of prophecy, magic, vanity, an oracle or a presage.” It was a natural, conjectural art that set out to formulate probable judgments about future events. There was no reason to deny the legitimacy of doing so, especially when it was granted to doctors, sailors, farmers, and miners. 

   The one basic presupposition on which astrology rested was the reality of the influence that the celestial bodies exercised on the sublunary world.These influences, obvious in the case of the sun and the moon, which werethe supreme rulers of the life of the universe, undeniably also belonged by extension to the planets and the stars, which had the same basic nature. Cardano discussed the question of these influences at length. He tried bothto prove their existence, with a plethora of examples, and to identify the paths by which they were propagated and the ways in which they affected the sublunary world. Only repeated observations could provide the basis for a body of theory as elaborate as that of Ptolemy, which could be confirmed, enlarged, and corrected in its turn by the observation of further facts.

Ernst, G. 2001, “ ‘Veritatis amor dulcissimus’: Aspects of Cardano’s Astrology” in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, ed. W. R. Newman & A. Grafton, 39-68. Cambridge, MA/ Londres: The MIT Press.

Saturno e a Melancolia - A Origem das Qualidades Saturninas: Exemplo Textual

 

Klibansky, R., E. Panofsky & F. Saxl, 1979, Saturn and Melancholy,137-8.

The Greeks at first developed the planetary doctrine transmitted to them in classical times in a purely scientific direction. In this, an astrophysical viewpoint seems from the beginning to have been adopted simultaneously with the purely astronomical. 

Epigenes of Byzantium, who is thought to have lived in early Alexandrian times and therefore to have been one of the oldest mediators between Babylon and Hellas, classified Saturn as "cold and windy". The epithet "cold", according both with the planet's great distance from the sun and with the god's great age adhered to Saturn throughout the years and was never questioned. The property of dryness, implied by "windy", on the other hand, came into conflict with the fact that Pythagorean and Orphic texts described the mythical Kronos as just the opposite, namely, as the god of rain or of the sea; and this accounts for the fact that in later, especially in astrological literature, we so often encounter the singular definition "natura frigida et sicca, sed accidentaliter humida", or something of the sort - a contradiction which can only be explained, if at all, with the help of laborious argumentation. 

Whether it was really Posidonius who reduced the elemental qualities of the planets to an orderly system, we would not venture to decide, but it would be safe to say that it was, within the framework of the Stoic system that the doctrine was efldowed with its full meaning. Not till the formation of a cosmological system in which the opposites heat and cold determined the basic structure of the universe, did the qualities hitherto more or less arbitrarily tributed to the stars reveal a general and universally applicable law of nature, valid for both heavenly and earthly things and therefore establishing for the first time a rationally comprehensible connexion between the one set and the other. To Saturn, which was cold because of its distance from the sun (whether the Stoics thought it moist or dry we do not know), everything cold on earth was first related and finally subordinated ; and it is clear that this embodying of planetary qualities in a universal framework of natural laws must have brought the basic tenet of astrology, namely, the dependence of all earthly things and events upon the "influence" of the heavenly bodies, considerably nearer to Greek thought. 

Klibansky, R., E. Panofsky & F. Saxl, 1979, Saturn and Melancholy. Nendeln/ Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint.

A Roma Imperial de Augusto e a Ascensão do Signo de Capricórnio: Exemplo Textual

Barton, T. S., 1994, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Medicine and Physiognomies under the Roman Empire, 40-1.

Astrology was firmly constructed as a legitimator with Augustus’s establishment of the principate. The Iulium sidus belonged to the realm of traditional omens, but the princeps’s publication of his birth sign on coins to be seen all over the empire accorded astrology a new, superior status. Suetonius says that Augustus made his horoscope (thema) public and issued a silver coin with Capricorn, his birth sign, on it. He attributes Octavian’s confidence to a consultation with the astrologer Theogenes in 44 b.c. and sets the publication of the horoscope some unspecified time soon afterward. As Libra was Augustus’ Sun sign, there has long been some debate about the role of Capricorn: both signs are given prominence by the poets. Bouchd-Leclerq and others argue that it was the “chronocrator” of the month of conception (the sign designated as presiding over that month), despite Suetonius’ specification that it was his birth sign. Meanwhile, Riess (1896) and others argue that, as the sign in which the Moon was at the hour of the birth, it was the determining “birth sign.” Gundel (1926) argues that it was the sign in which Augustus’s “Lot of Fortune” was to be found as well as where the Moon was, which would help explain the cases in which Capricorn is to be found portrayed with the attributes of Fortune and Manilius’ use offelix of Capricorn. 

Whatever Capricorn’s precise relation to Augustus’s birth, it is probably significant that it was seen as the birth sign of the Sun, in that the winter solstice takes place in Capricorn. According to Suetonius, he was bom just before the sun rose. As Dwyer (1976) points out, a clever astrologer could have suggested to the young Octavian that Capricorn was an auspicious sign for this reason. Given the associations the princeps cultivated with the sun and Apollo in the early years, it fits well Dwyer himself suggests that, on the basis of Nigidius Figulus’ commentary on the sign of Capricorn, it is to be associated with Pan and his role in restoring the rule of the gods, saving the world from the tyranny of the Titans. He goes further and suggests that, before Actium, the theme of the righteous revenge of the son is implied by the myth narrated by Nigidius. Thus, Capricorn may have first of all symbolized Octavian’s just revenge on the killers of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, and, only after Actium, liberation from tyranny. Capricorn is also associated with rule over the West in the poets. Dwyer connects Capricorn’s rule over the West with Aeneas’ westward journey. In addition to all this speculation, it is worth noting that Augustus’s principate was inaugurated under Capricorn.

Kraft (1967), who provides photographs of several examples, argues that the appearance of Capricorn on coins from at least 41 /40 B.C. onward is to be linked in another way with Octavian’s careful self-presentation. He claims that the sign was used first of all against Mark Antony. The first surviving coin with the sign of Capricorn may have been minted by Q. Oppius, the praefectus classis (prefect of the fleet) based at Cyrene in 41/40, a partisan of Octavian, who set Capricorn by the head of the Venus of the Julian family, sometimes with the half-moon.Glass pastes and cameos with Capricorn on them, mainly Italian, were also produced before Actium. Examples show Capricorn with a bearded Octavian; or a young Octavian’s head over a ring (Caesar’s signet ring, pointing to his heirship), with Capricorn, com ears and a poppy; or with a child riding on its back over the waves, identified as Octavian and dated to the 40s. Hölscher even identifies one depiction of Capricorn on a glass paste as dating from the period of reconciliation with Antony, as Octavian’s head is placed above the intertwined signs of Capricorn and Leo, Antony’s conception sign. But the sign only played a small role in the public presentation of Octavian before Actium. The first appearance of Capricorn on Augustus’s own coins in 28 B.C. was on the obverse of a denarius (silver coin) from the Eastern mint, together with Augustus’s head, with the crocodile of Egypt and the legend Aegypto capta (Egypt taken), referring to the victory over Antony. Aurei (gold coins) and denarii of the same type followed, while from 27-20 b.c. tetradrachms (coins worth three denarii) from Asia showed Capricorn with a cornucopia on its back.

Barton, T. S., 1994, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Medicine and Physiognomies under the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Seleuco e a Prova da Antiguidade do Heliocentrismo: Exemplo Textual

Russo, L., 2004, The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn, 311-2.

   Seleucus of Babylon, already encountered on page 88 in connection with the infnity of the universe, was an astronomer from the second century B.C. about whom not much else is known. But Plutarch offers a very interesting testimonium, whose import appears to have been neglected by historians of science: 

Was [Timaeus] giving the earth motion . . . , and should the earth . . . be understood to have been designed not as confned and fixed but as turning and revolving about, in the way expounded later by Aristarchus and Seleucus, the former assuming this as a hypothesis and the latter proving it?

The passage refers to two types of terrestrial motion, rotation and revolution. The verb ἀποφαίνομαι appearing at the end of the passage allows different possibilities for what Seleucus actually did, but the contrast with "as a hypothesis" clearly implies that he found new arguments in support of these motions.

   To state, as Seleucus did, that the sun really is fixed and the earth is moving is equivalent to stating that planetary stations and retrogressions don't just disappear under the assumption that the sun is stationary, as Aristarchus said, but that they really don't exist. That retrogressions and stations are merely apparent is repeated by pre-Ptolemaic Latin sources, including Pliny and Seneca, suggesting that the notion of heliocentrism as a physical reality, far from being exceptional, was well-known. Thus we might hope to find traces of Seleucus' proof in the literature.

   One argument in favor of heliocentrism is what we reconstructed in Section 10.7 based on a passage of Seneca. With the sun as the reference, the planets' motion admits a simple dynamical description, where centrifugal force balances attraction. In a geocentric model this is not so easy to do: if the planets are attracted by the earth, why wouldn't they fall when they stop in the sky? And if not attracted by the earth, why don't they go off forever? One is tempted to deduce that only the motion around the sun is real. Since classical literature contains no other arguments in favor of heliocentrism, it is reasonable to conjecture that the proof that Plutarch attributes to Seleucus is based on the argument just given, which is reported by Seneca.

Russo, L., 2004, The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn. Berlim/ Heidelberg/ Nova Iorque: Springer Verlag)

A Procedência dos Decanos (Decanatos) e as Origens Egípcias do Horóscopo (Ascendente): Exemplo Textual

 

Greenbaum, D. G. & M. T. Ross, 2010, “The Role of Egypt in the Development of the Horoscope” in Egypt in Transition, 153-4.

Although no ascendant appears in the corpus of extant Babylonian horoscopes, this lack does not negate the cuneiform birth charts as examples of natal astrology. The earliest evidence connects Egypt to the introduction of the ascendant in astrological practice. Balbillus, whose antecedents were probably Egyptian, provides the earliest non-Babylonian literary charts containing cardines in Greek. Balbillus wrote in the first century CE, but his charts were cast for 72 BCE and 43 BCE. The earliest documentary chart containing cardines, Ashmolean D.O. 633, appears in a Demotic context and astronomically corresponds to 38 BCE. The date of composition was probably some time after this date. Barring lacunae, however, subsequent Demotic charts generally contain at least an ascendant. Greek charts follow this standard of composition. In pOxyrhynchus 235, the diagram for a chart dated between 15 and 22 CE contains perpendicular horizontal and vertical lines which divide the circular form of the diagram into quadrants. The author clearly labelled the ascendant, midheaven and lower midheaven angles; though the horizontal line indicates the setting cardine, there is no label for it.

Because of Balbillus’s probable origins, the Demotic context of Ashmolean D.O. 633 and the Egyptian provenance of pOxyrhynchus 235, the cardines display an early and strong connection to Egypt. In fact, the cardines – specifically the most important cardines, the ascendant and midheaven – relate to known Egyptian astronomical practices. A first century CE chart which equates the decans with “36 bright horoscopes” (λ̅ϛ̅ λάμπροι ὡροσκόποι) hints at the practices which may have prompted astrological interest in these positions.45 Before discussing this chart, along with other texts which call decans “horoscopes”, a brief overview of the decan system in Egypt, in particular the origin of rising and transit decans which correlate best with the astrological chart, will be useful.

Greenbaum, D. G. & M. T. Ross, 2010, “The Role of Egypt in the Development of the Horoscope” in Egypt in Transition: Social and Religious Development of Egypt in the First Millennium BCE, ed. L. Bareš, F. Coppens & K. Smolarikova, 146-82. Praga: Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.

Abu Ma'shar, Al-Kindi, a Grande Conjunção e o Conhecimento por Revelação: Exemplo Textual

 

North, J. D., 1989, Stars, Minds and Fate: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Cosmology, 63-4.

  Abu Ma'shar's work on conjunctions seems to have been much influenced by his teacher al-Kindi, the first great philosopher to have written in the Greek tradition in Arabic. Al-Kindi firmly believed that knowledge through revelation and prophecy is superior to the truths of unaided reason. He wrote on astrology, and, in a letter which is still extant, attempted to predict the duration of the empire of the Arabs on the basis of planetary conjunctions. Broadly speaking, the rarer the conjunction affecting political and religious events, the more potent its force. This is the doctrine central to my survey, and al-Kindi's editor, O. Loth, thought it began with him.

   In order of the slowness with which they traverse the zodiac, Saturn comes first (29.5 years), followed by Jupiter (11.9 years) and then Mars (1.88 years). Roughly speaking, Saturn and Jupiter meet every twenty years, while Mars meets with Jupiter about every two years and with Saturn marginally more often. Although it is impossible to be very precise without being inordinately tedious, we can say that the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter which are separated by a triple period, that is, about sixty years, will occur rather less than ten degrees apart. They can therefore occur within a single sign (30°) of the zodiac, if the first of the trio is close enough to the beginning of the sign. The character of the sign in which the conjunction occurred was thought to be important, but for the moment we need not go into details. Since the three signs in which successive conjunctions occur are likely to be equally spaced, comprising what is called a triplicity, three suitably chosen conjunctions in a series will be associated with one triplicity - which like the signs themselves was thought to have characteristic properties (fiery, earthy, aery, or watery, and so on). he successive conjunctions, occurring every 20 years, are simply the 'great conjunctions' of the title of Albumasar's book. There was also defined a coniunctio maior, which took place every 240 years, and a coniunctio maxima, which occurred every 960 years. The definitions of these were frequently misunderstood. Bacon, for example, gives a very hazy account in his Opus maius, and leaves us with the impression that he was paraphrasing Albumasar very carelessly. I will explain the periods of 240 and 960 years briefly, and those whose sympathies are with Bacon may omit the next paragraph. 

   Albumasar opens his Great Conjunctions with a detailed and rather precise account of the mean movements of Jupiter and Saturn, which we can summarize by saying that the conjunctions marked '0' and '3' in the series on the accompanying diagram will be thrice times 2°25'17"10'"6'v apart, or about 7 1/4º.11 We begin as near as possible to the beginning of Aries, in the fiery triplicity. Conjunction number 13, however, will fall into a new triplicity. If we reckon 20 years between great conjunctions, then the 'greater conjunction', when we pass from one triplicity to the next, should happen after 260 years; or, as Albumasar has it, the conjunctions may stay within a triplicity for about 240 years. They will then, by a loose extension of the argument, be in other triplicities for three similar periods, making 960 years in all, after which they will return to the original triplicity. Coniunctio maxima is that conjunction which marks the return to Aries. By virtue of the retrogradations of the planets in practice, and the fact that the figures quoted for the angles are not convenient sub-multiples of 360°, the argument is not precise and not worth discussing in any greater detail.12 What matters is that henceforth those who wished to find patterns in history had three convenient historical periods to conjure with, namely periods of 20, 240, and 960 years.

North, J. D., 1989, Stars, Minds and Fate: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Cosmology. Londres/ Ronceverte: The Hambledon Press.

Kleper, a Astrologia e os seus 1.170 Horóscopos

 

Rublack, U., 2015, The Astronomer & the Witch: Johannes Kepler's Fight for his Mother,135.

In the late sixteenth century, people usually explained personalities through astrology. Astrology formed a routine part of elite education, and was part of many universities’ curricula. Kepler, too, had learnt to cast horoscopes and predict the weather in Tübingen as part of studying mathematics, which in turn was integral to studying theology and the arts. During his career, he went on to compile a vast collection of more than 1.170 horoscopes for over 850 individuals. Although commissions from clients near and far provided him with welcome additional income, Kepler also collected horoscopes and data from a broad range of other practitioners in order to study them. When news reached him of an illness or the death of a particular person, he updated his records in order to verify his predictions. Horoscopes of famous, or ordinary, ill-fated people, such as a woman executed in Tübingen for infanticide, were closely scrutinized for patterns and causes. This immersed him in contemplating many different biographies. It made him curious about others. Anything but a distant academic dissociated from ordinary lives, he mined this information as a tool of empirical observation, so as to understand human nature through the movements of the stars.

Rublack, U., 2015, The Astronomer & the Witch: Johannes Kepler's Fight for his Mother. Oxford/ Nova Iorque: Oxford University Press.

A Relação Saturno/Lua a partir da Leitura de Liz Greene do Liber Novus de Jung: Exemplo Textual

Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus, Elijah and Salome.

Greene, L., 2018, The Astrological World of Jung's Liber Novus: Daimons, Gods and the Planetary Journey,75.

Like Elijah, the Scholar lives in isolation with his daughter, far from the world with its extraverted, banal life. Unlike Elijah, he is neither a prophet nor a magus; he is a grief-stricken recluse, echoing Ficino’s association of Saturn with grief as well as solitude. In the ‘small, old castle’, the hall is lined with ‘black chests and wardrobes’ – a colour Jung associated directly with Saturn – while the Old Scholar’s study reveals ‘bookshelves on all four walls and a large writing desk, at which an old man sits wearing a long black robe’. The sheets in the tiny chamber in which Jung is offered a bed are ‘uncommonly rough’, and the pillow is hard. Associations of the colour black with Saturn abound in antiquity as well as throughout the medieval and early modern periods, and today the association still lingers in the present-day attribution of black gemstones such as jet, obsidian, and black onyx to this planetary god.

The air in the room is heavy, and the Old Scholar seems ‘careworn’. He has given himself tirelessly ‘to the material of science and research, anxiously and equably appraising, as if he personally had to represent the working out of scientific truth’. In this description Jung seems to be recreating the portrayal of Saturn given by a long list of astrological authors over many centuries, but in an extreme and highly personalised form. Jung at first believes the Old Scholar leads ‘an ideal though solitary existence’. Although no image of him appears in Liber Novus – only his stone castle – his description mirrors Waite’s image of The Hermit in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, standing alone in a barren, mountainous landscape with a lantern and a staff. 

But the Scholar, although he belongs to the same chain of senex images as Elijah, is a sad and self-destructive figure. His personality is lopsided, and he seems to personify what Jung experienced as his own rigidity of intellect – the same rigidity that ‘poisoned’ the giant Izdubar. The Scholar is ‘petrified in his books, protecting a costly treasure and enviously hiding it from all the world’. The old man keeps his daughter imprisoned, fearful of allowing her to confront the dangers of worldly life. (...)

Greene, L., 2018, The Astrological World of Jung's Liber Novus: Daimons, Gods and the Planetary Journey. Londres/ Nova Iorque: Routledge.

Os Eclipses e as Observações de Gregos e Babilónios: Exemplo Textual

Steele, J. M., 2000, Observations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by Early Astronomers, 95-6. 

There has been much debate over the years concerning the source for the Babylonian observations in he Almagest. As I have suggested above, Ptolemy probably obtained them from Hipparchus. But how did Hipparchus come to possess them? Did he travel to Babylon himself and persuade a Babylonian astronomer to translate the records for him, as has been suggested by Toomer (1988: 359)? Or was knowledge of Babylonian astronomy widespread among Greco-Roman astronomers? Certainly, Babylonian mathematical astronomy must have been known fairly widely. The Oxyrhynchus papyri show that astrologers both used and understood Babylonian ACT methods, and there is nothing to suggest that the Oxyrhynchus material would differ from that which would have been found in any other medium size city had the conditions for survival of papyri been as good. But the transmission of actual observations is a different matter. To be of any value in determining, say, some parameter of a lunar theory, not just any lunar observation will do. Eclipses, of course, are the most useful, but even then what one really needs are eclipses fulfilling tions. Furthermore, these conditions certain condiare in part dependent upon the theory that one is developing. Thus, a Greek astronomer wanting to use Babylonian eclipse observations would probably have to obtain a long run of records, from which he could select certain ones at a later date. 

The Babylonian records described by Ptolemy range in date from 721 BC to 382 Be. Even if these represent the earliest and latest reports available to him, Ptolemy must have had access to records covering a period about 350 years. Furthermore, this list of eclipses must have been fairly complete. It has generally been supposed that the original source for these records was the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries. However, there are good reasons for doubting that this was the direct source from which Hipparchus made his compilation. A typical Diary covers a period of six months, during which there will be one, or occasionally two, lunar eclipse possibilities (i.e., observations or predictions). In compiling a collection spanning 350 years, therefore, one would have to consult about 700 tablets. It seems unlikely that a Babylonian astronomer would read through all of these tablets, even if they were all preserved, and then explain them at the request of a visiting Greek. There is, however, another ready-made source which would have been of much greater use to Hipparchus: the large compilation of eclipse records, preserved in part on LBAT * 1414, LBAT 1415 + 1416 + 1417, and LBAT *1419.

Steele, J. M., 2000, Observations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by Early Astronomers. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media.