Welcome & Postion Statement from Moderator

[Robert_Schmidt]

I apologize for being so late in formally welcoming you both to the Hellenistic forum, Ms. Metsovouri and Ms. George. A long weekend workshop prevented me from doing so earlier. I am just catching up on your postings and interchanges and have been reading them with interest. Thank you both for your participation.

Robert Schmidt

[Ken_Gillman]

Mr Schmidt,

In your interesting welcome & position statement you write as follows:

Fifthly, I do not think that Hellenistic Astrology was intended to be a divinatory art by its founders, if by divination we mean a way of understanding the will of the gods (as the Babylonians evidently understood their astrology). One of the reasons I hold this opinion is the lack of anything like horary astrology in our surviving sources, horary being arguably a divinatory application of astrology. I maintain instead that it was developed as a discipline for rendering human life intelligible (and meaningful) in the manner of a Classical Greek epistēmē—that is, a way of coming to knowledge about a given human life as a whole.

In saying there is a lack of anything like horary astrology in surviving sources, you have I believe forgotten the fifth book of Dorotheus:

V 35, the 138 verses deal with whether the owner will recover what was lost or stolen;
V 36, 80 verses which deal with repossession of a runaway.

There are also katarches from Palchus at the following places in CCAG:

1 p. 100-101: rulership of the prefect Theodoros;
1 p. 102: a voyage by ship;
1 p. 103: concerning fear of a journey to Athens;
1 p. 103/104: fear about the late arrival of a ship from Alexandria;
6 p. 63-64: receipt of distressing letters;
6 p. 64-65: concerning the lost linen of a slave girl;
6 p. 65-66: whether a small lion will be tamed;
6 p. 66-67: coronation of Leontius.

I believe both Dorotheus and Palchus are considered within Classical Greek Astrology. Dorotheus certainly predates both Ptolemy and Valens.

[Robert_Schmidt]

Mr. Gillman,

Pingree has demonstrated rather conclusively--in my opionion, at least--that the examples of horary in the Arabic version of Dorotheus are interpolations from the Arabian period. There are also several conspicuous Arab interpolations elsewhere in Dorotheus (bringing the planets associated with the decanates into the scheme of dignities, for instance). Furthermore, in the third book of Hephaistio, which contains a large amount of material from the fifth book of Dorotheus in Greek paraphrase or verbatim quotations, and includes most of the passages you cite, there is only one passage that even remotely suggests horary, and there are manuscript problems with that passage. Finallly, Hephaistio in that same book has a lengthy introduction to the subject of katarchic astrology, and never mentions casting a horary chart.

Through similar manuscript study, PIngree has argued persuasively that "Palchus" was a pen-name of a Byzantine astrologer of rather late date who was already under the influence of Medieval and Indian astrology.

Robert Schmidt

[Ken_Gillman]

Thank you for clearing up this matter, Mr Schmidt.

It would appear that Jim Holden has fallen into the same error that I did, for on page 41of his A History of Horoscopic Astrology he writes,

Dorotheus's Book 5 is the oldest treatise on horary and electional astrology that has come down to us.

I note that in your 1998 Translator's Preface to the second book of Hephaistio you mention that several passages in the Arabian version of Dorotheus cannot be correlated with the Dorothean passages repeated in Hephaistio. I assume this is the basis for Pingree's argument for the interpolation you describe.

You refer to Book III of Hephaistio's Apotelesmatics. I had thought I had copies of all of the Project Hindsight translations but do not appear to possess that one. Is this translation still available?

[Ken_Gillman]

Mr Schmidt;

I have now read “The Katarche of Horary” by Chris Brennan, which explains in detail Pingree’s reasoning that Book Five of Dorotheus and the work of Palchus on Horary were the work of later Byzentiums.

I do however have one question, which you may be able to answer. In their “Greek Horoscopes” Neugenbauer & Van Hoesen state that “Palchus” had collected the horoscopes associated with him that they reproduced . Presumably this means they were horoscopes that had been cast in the past by now-unknown persons. I can see that each of these, with one exception, could have originally been inception charts that Palchus later restated as having been interrogations. It is the exception that intrigues me.

The exception is CCAG 6, p. 64-65, reproduced in “Greek Horoscopes” as L.478, “Concerning the lost linen of a (slave) girl”. The nature of this happening does not appear to have been such that it could have been an inception later reformulated as an interrogation. It also seems unlikely that the timing—4th hour of night on August 29, 478—would still have been known 900 years later in the 14th century (the date now argued for the pseudo-Palchus) unless it had been recorded earlier as an interrogation.

On the face of it, these lost linens would seem to have been a true horary, originally posed in the fifth century.

Do I misunderstand something?