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(IV.) HISTORY - The Imperial Planets

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Bianca
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« on: August 17, 2007, 03:14:47 pm »










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.
                                           
                                                TIBERIUS

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.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2007, 09:24:10 am by Bianca2001 » Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.


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