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Concept of The Ages Before The Twentieth Century

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Bianca
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« on: September 26, 2007, 11:37:06 am »








Concepts of Ages before the 20th Century...
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Definition: [Astrological Ages] There were a number of concepts of Ages before the twentieth century. It is only when we reach the end of the nineteenth century that for the first time a concept of an Age based on the Precession of the Equinoxes appears, i.e. what we would now call an Astrological Age.






A Brief History of the Ages before the 20th Century:




c 700 BC: The Five Ages of Man

  In his Works and Days [c 700 BC] the Greek poet Hesiod gives us the story of the Five Ages of Man. These are in no way astrological but refer to races of men: gold, silver, bronze, noble, and finally our own, "race of iron" who, "never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them."



 
c 360 BC: Perfect Number

 Writing in The Republic, [paragraph 546, Timarchy] [c 360 BC], Plato [c 427 - 347 BC] mentions that for "the divine creature, there is a period defined by a perfect number." Some commentators have considered this to be a reference to the Great Year, but in fact it's much more likely that the perfect number is 28, a reference to the number of days taken for the Moon to go through its changes of phase, the Lunar Month
 



c 360 BC: Complete Year

 Writing in Timaeus, [paragraph 39c-d] [c 360 BC], Plato [c 427 - 347 BC] mentions the concept of a "Complete Year." This is the time period when "when all the eight circuits, with their relative speeds, finish together and come to a head, when measured by the revolution of the Same and Similarly-moving." This obscure-sounding sentence is a reference to the period of time it takes for all the planets to return to their original positions, but unfortunately Plato never tells us what he thinks these original positions were. This is not the same as a 'Platonic' Year, or Great Year, as the 'Complete Year' would be hundreds of thousands of years in length, even considering just the planets that would have been known to Plato [i.e. not including Uranus, Neptune and Pluto].
 



 
c 1778 AD: Great Year

 In c 1778 Voltaire [1694 - 1778 AD] publishes Lettres Philosophiques, in which he looks back to the earlier work of Isaac Newton. He notes that, "hence it is that the ancients, who were doubly deceived, made their great year of the world, that is, the revolution of the whole heavens, to consist of thirty-six thousand years," which seems to be the first reference to the concept of a Great Year. Voltaire also describes a 'Platonic' Month concept, though he does not give it that name.
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« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2007, 11:39:41 am »








The Five Ages of Men [c 700 BC]
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Definition: [Astrological Ages] In the Ancient Greek creation story there were five ages of man. These five ages ares sometimes confused with the Astrological Age or "Platonic" Month concepts, but they are not the same thing.

Are the Ages of Men the same as 'Platonic' Months? The Ages of Man have now come to be confused with the concept of the 'Platonic' Months.  This is because Plato in The Republic after giving the numerology of child birth, in his description of the Perfect Number then goes on, in paragraph 547, to discuss how society would function if this numerology is forgotten. Once this happens, Plato states that the Guardians - the rulers of society - will no longer be able to distinguish between the various classes of men, the gold, silver, bronze and iron men, who make up society. This will bring about strife. Plato notes that his four classes of men are like Hesiod's [see below], but it is fairly clear from the text that Plato has moved on to a new subject - strife between classes in society - and did not intend any connection to be made between his numerology and the classes of men.

The Races of Men and the Ancient Greek Creation Story: The Ages of Men concept is not Plato's, belonging instead to the Ancient Greek creation story.   It comes down to us in its oldest form in the Works and Days of Hesiod [c 700 BC].
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« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2007, 11:40:50 am »








Excerpts from Works and Days of Hesiod [c 700 BC].





(ll. 109-120) First of all the deathless gods who dwell on
Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of
Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods
without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief:
miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never
failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all
evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with
sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth
unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They
dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things,
rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.




(ll. 121-139) But after earth had covered this generation -- they
are called pure spirits dwelling on the earth, and are kindly,
delivering from harm, and guardians of mortal men; for they roam
everywhere over the earth, clothed in mist and keep watch on
judgements and cruel deeds, givers of wealth; for this royal
right also they received; -- then they who dwell on Olympus made
a second generation which was of silver and less noble by far.
It was like the golden race neither in body nor in spirit. A
child was brought up at his good mother's side an hundred years,
an utter simpleton, playing childishly in his own home. But when
they were full grown and were come to the full measure of their
prime, they lived only a little time in sorrow because of their
foolishness, for they could not keep from sinning and from
wronging one another, nor would they serve the immortals, nor
sacrifice on the holy altars of the blessed ones as it is right
for men to do wherever they dwell. Then Zeus the son of Cronos
was angry and put them away, because they would not give honour
to the blessed gods who live on Olympus.
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« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2007, 11:41:59 am »








ll. 156-169b) But when earth had covered this generation also,
Zeus the son of Cronos made yet another, the fourth, upon the
fruitful earth, which was nobler and more righteous, a god-like
race of hero-men who are called demi-gods, the race before our
own, throughout the boundless earth. Grim war and dread battle
destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-
gated Thebe when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some,
when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy
for rich-haired Helen's sake: there death's end enshrouded a part
of them. But to the others father Zeus the son of Cronos gave a
living and an abode apart from men, and made them dwell at the
ends of earth. And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands
of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling Ocean, happy
heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit
flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and
Cronos rules over them; for the father of men and gods
released him from his bonds. And these last equally have honour
and glory.

(ll. 169c-169d) And again far-seeing Zeus made yet another
generation, the fifth, of men who are upon the bounteous earth.

(ll. 170-201) Thereafter, would that I were not among the men of
the fifth generation, but either had died before or been born
afterwards. For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest
from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and
the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them. But, notwithstanding,
even these shall have some good mingled with their evils. And
Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men also when they come to
have grey hair on the temples at their birth. The father
will not agree with his children, nor the children with their
father, nor guest with his host, nor comrade with comrade; nor
will brother be dear to brother as aforetime. Men will dishonour
their parents as they grow quickly old, and will carp at them,
chiding them with bitter words, hard-hearted they, not knowing
the fear of the gods. They will not repay their aged parents the
cost their nurture, for might shall be their right: and one man
will sack another's city. There will be no favour for the man
who keeps his oath or for the just or for the good; but rather
men will praise the evil-doer and his violent dealing. Strength
will be right and reverence will cease to be; and the wicked will
hurt the worthy man, speaking false words against him, and will
swear an oath upon them. Envy, foul-mouthed, delighting in evil,
with scowling face, will go along with wretched men one and all.
And then Aidos and Nemesis, with their sweet forms wrapped in
white robes, will go from the wide-pathed earth and forsake
mankind to join the company of the deathless gods: and bitter
sorrows will be left for mortal men, and there will be no help
against evil.
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« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2007, 11:43:19 am »








Plato's Perfect Number of the Divine Creature [c 360 BC]
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Definition: [Astrological Ages] Some commentators, notably Jung, argue that in paragraph 546 of Plato's The Republic he was discussing the Great Year. This would be some two hundred years before Hipparchus [c 190 - 120 BC].

Plato's Perfect Number of the Divine Creature: Plato writes the following in the section of The Republic called Timarchy [Timarchy is rule by a militaristic class, Sparta being the best example known to Plato.]:

... Not only for plants that grow in the earth, but for animals that live on it, there are seasons when mind and body are productive, seasons which come when a certain period is completed, of longer duration for the long-lived, shorter for the short-lived. And though the rulers of your city are wise, reason and perception will not always enable them to hit on the right and wrong times for breeding, some time they will miss them and then children will be begotten amiss. For the divine creature, there is a period defined by a perfect number; for the human creature the number is the first in which root and square multiplications (comprising three dimensions and four limits) of basic numbers, which make like and unlike, and which increase and decrease, produce a final result in complete commensurate terms; of these basic numbers four and three coupled with five, yield two harmonies when raised to the power of four, of which one is a square with a multiple of one hundred, the other a rectangle of which one side is one hundred squares of diameters of a square of side five each diminished by one if the diameters are irrational, or by two if the diameters are rational, the other side of one hundred cubes of three.
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« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2007, 11:44:50 am »








The Argument that Plato knew of the Great Year and Therefore Precession: The above is not an easy paragraph to interpret. However, in the twentieth century a number of commentators looked at paragraph 546 and decided that in the mathematics of the latter part of that paragraph Plato was thinking of the number 36 000. Therefore, they argued, Plato knew of the rate of precession and, hence, must have known of the Great Year.

This genesis of this idea seems to go back to the Adam's edition of Plato's Republic [Cambridge University Press, 1926], in which a calculation indicating that Plato meant 36 000 years in paragraph 546 is presented. The steps of the argument then appear to be as follows:

1: Ptolemy [c 130 - 170 AD], in Al Magest, tells us that two centuries after Plato, Hipparchos [c 190 to 120 BC] defined the precessional rate as one degree per hundred years.

2: Hence 36 000 years [100 x 360] would be the Greek view of the length of a Great Year [if indeed they had such a concept.]

3: Plato's mathematics in paragraph 456 also gives 36 000 years.

4: Hence, Plato must have been aware of the length of the Great Year and the movement of the Equinoxes two centuries before Ptolemy.

5: Some commentators have taken the thesis another step: they argue that as Plato had knowledge of the Great Year, he must have understood the concept of precession, and that perhaps this knowledge even pre-dated Plato.

6: The argument for the knowledge pre-dating Plato is that Greek observational astronomy in Plato's time probably was not yet accurate enough to measure the rate of precession. Hence, it is argued, the knowledge must have come from elsewhere. [And the Babylonians, whilst the originators of much else in astrology, do not appear to have possessed the concept.] As Plato was the first to mention Atlantis in the written record, some commentators have argued that perhaps the knowledge came from there.
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« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2007, 11:45:56 am »








The Counter-Argument: Plato Knew Nothing of Precession: If Plato - perhaps the most famous of philosophers - knew of the rate of precession, it is perhaps strange that Ptolemy never mentions this: a reference to the works of Plato never did any harm to the reputation of a Classical philosopher.

The best counter-argument is paragraph 456 itself. Reading it, it is very difficult to see why anyone would think the text has any connection with the movements of anything in the heavens. It mostly seems to be concerned with child birth and the best times at which people should conceive, in order to avoid births going amiss. All the math in the second part of the paragraph relates to the numerology of human child birth. [The Greeks didn't have Algebra; they did math by doing trigonometry, hence the references to squares.] The only possible reference to something celestial are the mysterious words divine creature. This may - and then again may not - be referring to something in the heavens. However, Plato very clearly states that the breeding of the divine creature - is controlled by a perfect number.

The Greek definition of a perfect number [which is also the definition that we still use today] is an integer which is the sum of its positive proper divisors. For example, 6 can be divided properly [that is, the result is a whole number, e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.] by the numbers 1, 2 and 3, but 6 can also be obtained by adding the numbers 1, 2 and 3. The Greeks knew the first three numbers in the series of perfect numbers, 6, 28 and 248 and perhaps they also were aware of the fourth number, 8 128, but the fifth was only discovered in modern times. It is 33 550 336, not 36 000. [Sorry about all the math!]

As the Greeks - as did most ancient cultures - saw a very strong connection between conception and the period of the Moon, the simplest explanation is that Plato - if he was thinking of the heavens at all - was referring to the perfect number 28, the approximate number of days in a Lunar month, as that of the period of the divine creature.

Which ever perfect number he was thinking of, he can not have been thinking of 36 000. Really, there is no evidence at all in that paragraph, or elsewhere in his works, that Plato knew of precession. We astrologers might be better using the expression "Hipparchos" months instead.
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« Reply #7 on: September 26, 2007, 11:47:04 am »







Plato's Spindle of Necessity:


Plato does write in The Republic, paragraph 617 - 618, of something called a Spindle of Necessity, a shaft of light running straight through heaven and Earth like a pillar, the tie-rod of heaven, but this seems to be the extent of his astrology in that work.  In Plato's concept the Earth was the centre of the Universe and unmoving, the planets and fixed stars revolved around it in rings, with the Spindle as the axis of revolution.  There are few further details given, but equinoxes and constellations do not come into the text, which is more concerned with the Fates than with the movement of heavenly bodies. The Spindle seems to be a fairly clear allusion to the celestial axis and the circumpolar revolution of the stars. This concept was very familiar to the ancients, because they saw it with their own eyes night after night in the heavens - the rotation of constellations around the still point of Polaris as the night went on. Had Plato been aware of the Great Year - and hence the movement of this axis relative to the stars - this would have been the logical place to have mentioned it, but he does not.


http://www.geocities.com/astrologyages/platosperfectnumber.htm
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« Reply #8 on: September 26, 2007, 11:49:55 am »







Plato's Complete Year [c 360 BC]
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Definition: [Astrological Ages] The time it takes for all the seven planets, known to Classical astrologers, and the stars in the night sky, as seen from Earth, to return to their origin point. This is sometimes confused with the Great Year or 'Platonic' Year, but in reality it would take a much greater period of time, several hundred thousand years, for all these planet's places in the heavens to come back to a particular starting point.





Plato's Complete Year:



Plato writes of the Complete Year in Timaeus - the work in which Plato introduces Atlantis. In paragraph 39c-d, he writes:

In this wise and for these reasons were generated Night and Day, which are the revolution of the one and most intelligent circuit; and Month, every time that the Moon having completed her own orbit overtakes the Sun; and Year, as often as the Sun has completed his own orbit. Of the other stars the revolutions have not been discovered by men (save for a few out of the many); wherefore they have no names for them, nor do they compute and compare their relative measurements, so that they are not aware, as a rule, that the “wanderings“ of these bodies, which are hard to calculate and of wondrous complexity, constitute Time. Nevertheless, it is still quite possible to perceive that the complete number of Time fulfils the Complete Year when all the eight circuits, with their relative speeds, finish together and come to a head, when measured by the revolution of the Same and Similarly-moving. In this wise and for these reasons were generated all those stars which turn themselves about as they travel through Heaven, to the end that this Universe might be as similar as possible to the perfect and intelligible Living Creature in respect of its imitation of the Eternal.

Various commentators consider that Plato is referring above to precession and the Movement of the Ages. Indeed you can find footnotes to this effect in various printed and web versions of Timaeus, which generally then refer you on to the quotation on the Perfect Number of the Divine Creature from The Republic.

That this is not the case becomes clearer when the Classical Greek view of the heavens is taken into account. Firstly, the stars Plato is referring to above, the ones which wander, or turn themselves about as they travel through Heaven, are what we now call the planets. Hence, when Plato refers to the eight revolutions he refers to the revolutions of the five planets known at the time, from Mercury through to Saturn, plus the Sun and the Moon [he actually states this earlier in the work in paragraph 38c of Timaeus] and finally, one more rather mysterious-sounding revolution.

Is this last revolution, then something to do with precession? No. The eighth revolution is simply that of the "fixed stars" of the constellations around the Earth: the sight that the Greeks saw each night in the night sky. This is what Plato means by the again rather mysterious sounding revolution of the Same, [see Timaeus paragraph 39b]. In the Greeks' model of the universe, the stars rotated around the Earth on a great Celestial Sphere. They had yet to discover that the Earth was spinning on its axis, and that the revolution of the stars through the night sky is an optical illusion.

Hence Platos' Complete Year refers to when all the seven planets, and the stars in the night sky, as seen from Earth, return to their origin point. How long this might be is very difficult to say, as it all depends on when Plato took their starting point from. This, he doesn't tell us. However, modern astrologers' computer calculations show it would be in the range of several hundreds of thousands of years, not 36 000, nor 25 770 years.  However long it is, it has absolutely nothing to do with a Great Year and no connection at all with precession. It has a lot to do with our wish to read into the works of ancient writers concepts that we now possess, and they did not. Sometimes, we really do know more than they did.


http://www.geocities.com/astrologyages/platoscompleteyear.htm
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« Reply #9 on: September 26, 2007, 11:53:18 am »








Voltaire's Great Year [c 1778 AD]
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Definition: [Astrological Ages] The Great Year is the amount of time for one complete Precession of the Earth's Axis, and hence one complete Precession of the Equinoxes around the Ecliptic. During a Great Year the Vernal Equinox Point will move through all thirteen constellations of the Real Solar Zodiac.

The length of a Great Year year equals 25 925 years. [2002 AD] This assumes that the rate of Precession of the Earths' Axis was the same in the past, and will be the same in the future, as it is now. The Great Year is also frequently known as the 'Platonic' Year.



Voltaire, Newton and the Great Year:

One of the earliest mentions we have of the concept of a Great Year occurs in the writings of Voltaire [1694 - 1778 AD], looking back to the earlier work of Isaac Newton [1643 - 1727 AD]. Voltaire also mentions the concept of what we would now call the 'Platonic' Month, though as yet it does not possess that name.





Voltaire [Francois Marie Arouet],



Lettres Philosophiques, c. 1778:

You know that the earth, besides its annual motion which carries it round the sun from west to east in the space of a year, has also a singular revolution which was quite unknown till within these late years. Its poles have a very slow retrograde motion from east to west, whence it happens that their position every day does not correspond exactly with the same point of the heavens. This difference which is so insensible in a year, becomes pretty considerable in time; and in threescore and twelve years the difference is found to be of one degree, that is to say, the three hundred and sixtieth part of the circumference of the whole heaven.

Thus after seventy-two years the colure of the vernal equinox which passed through a fixed star, corresponds with another fixed star. Hence it is that the sun, instead of being in that part of the heavens in which the Ram was situated in the time of Hipparchus, is found to correspond with that part of the heavens in which the Bull was situated; and the Twins are placed where the Bull then stood. All the signs have changed their situation, and yet we still retain the same manner of speaking as the ancients did. In this age we say that the sun is in the Ram in the spring, from the principle of condescension that we say that the sun turns round
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« Reply #10 on: September 26, 2007, 11:54:33 am »








Hipparchus was the first among the Greeks who observed some change in the constellations with regard to the equinoxes, or rather who learnt it from the Egyptians. Philosophers ascribed this motion to the stars; for in those ages people were far from imagining such a revolution in the earth, which was supposed to be immovable in every respect. They therefore created a heaven in which they fixed the several stars, and gave this heaven a particular motion by which it was carried towards the east, whilst that all the stars seemed to perform their diurnal revolution from east to west. To this error they added a second of much greater consequence, by imagining that the pretended heaven of the fixed stars advanced one degree eastward every hundred years. In this manner they were no less mistaken in their astronomical calculation than in their system of natural philosophy. As for instance, an astronomer in that age would have said that the vernal equinox was in the time of such and such an observation, in such a sign, and in such a star. It has advanced two degrees of each since the time that observation was made to the present.

Now two degrees are equivalent to two hundred years; consequently the astronomer who made that observation lived just so many years before me. It is certain that an astronomer who had argued in this manner would have mistook just fifty-four years; hence it is that the ancients, who were doubly deceived, made their great year of the world, that is, the revolution of the whole heavens, to consist of thirty-six thousand years. But the moderns are sensible that this imaginary revolution of the heaven of the stars is nothing else than the revolution of the poles of the earth, which is performed in twenty-five thousand nine hundred years. It may be proper to observe transiently in this place, that Sir Isaac, by determining the figure of the earth, has very happily explained the cause of this revolution.
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« Reply #11 on: September 26, 2007, 11:55:48 am »








All this being laid down, the only thing remaining to settle chronology is to see through what star the colure of the equinoxes passes, and where it intersects at this time the ecliptic in the spring; and to discover whether some ancient writer does not tell us in what point the ecliptic was intersected in his time, by the same colure of the equinoxes.

Clemens Alexandrinus informs us, that Chiron, who went with the Argonauts, observed the constellations at the time of that famous expedition, and fixed the vernal equinox to the middle of the Ram; the autumnal equinox to the middle of Libra; our summer solstice to the middle of Cancer, and our winter solstice to the middle of Capricorn.

A long time after the expedition of the Argonauts, and a year before the Peloponnesian war, Methon observed that the point of the summer solstice passed through the eighth degree of Cancer.
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« Reply #12 on: September 26, 2007, 11:57:35 am »








Now every sign of the zodiac contains thirty degrees. In Chiron's time, the solstice was arrived at the middle of the sign, that is to say to the fifteenth degree.

A year before the Peloponnesian war it was at the eighth, and therefore it had retarded seven degrees. A degree is equivalent to seventy-two years; consequently, from the beginning of the Peloponnesian war to the expedition of the Argonauts, there is no more than an interval of seven times seventy-two years, which make five hundred and four years, and not seven hundred years, as the Greeks computed.

Thus in comparing the position of the heavens at this time with their position in that age, we find that the expedition of the Argonauts ought to be placed about nine hundred years before Christ, and not about fourteen hundred; and consequently that the world is not so old by five hundred years as it was generally supposed to be.


By this calculation all the eras are drawn nearer, and the several events are found to have happened later than is computed. I don't know whether this ingenious system will be favorably received; and whether these notions will prevail so far with the learned, as to prompt them to reform the chronology of the world.

Perhaps these gentlemen would think it too great a condescension to allow one and the same man the glory of having improved natural philosophy, geometry, and history. This would be a kind of universal monarchy, with which the principle of self-love that is in man will scarce suffer him to indulge his fellow-creature; and, indeed, at the same time that some very great philosophers attacked Sir Isaac Newton's attractive principle, others fell upon his chronological system. Time, that should discover to which of these the victory is due, may perhaps only leave the dispute still more undetermined.


 

[As can be seen above, over two centuries ago, Voltaire was already confusing the position of the Vernal Equinox Point against the Constellations with that against Tropical Zodiac signs possessing 30° of length each. In contrast Newton does not: talking of Constellations, and not mentioning a Great Year.]
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« Reply #13 on: September 26, 2007, 12:00:35 pm »








                                                 Isaac Newton,




The Introduction. Of the Chronology of the First Ages

[a draft manuscript of Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, 1728 AD],
p 101 - 102:



The first month of the Lunisolar year began sometimes a week or fortnight before the Equinox & sometimes as much after it. And this gave occasion to the first Astronomers who formed the Asterisms to place the Equinox & Solstices in themiddle of the Constellations of Aries Cancer Chelæ & Capricorn.

Achilles Tatius tells us that some anciently placed the Solstice in the beginning of Cancer, others in the eighth degree of Cancer others about the twelft degree & others about the 15th degree. This variety of opinions proceeded from the præcession of the Equinox then not known to the Greeks. When the sphere was first formed the Equinox was in the 15th degree or middle of the constellation of Cancer. Then it came into the 12th 8th &1st degree successively.

Eudoxus in describing the sphere of the ancients placed the Solstices & Equinoxes in the middle of the Constellations of Aries Chelæ Cancer & Capricorn as is affirmed by Hipparchus Bithynus, & appears also by the description of the Equinoctial & Tropical circles in Aratus who copied after Eudoxus, & by the positions of the Colures of the Equinoxes & Solstices which in the sphere of Eudoxus described by Hipparchus went through the middle of those Constellations.

Now Chiron the Master of Iason the Argonaut delineated οχέματα ’ολύμπου the Asterisms as the ancient author of Gigantomachia cited by Clemens Alexandrinus informs us. And Musæus the master of Orpheus & one of the Argonauts made a sphere & is reputed the first among the Greeks who made one. And the sphære it self shews that it was designed in the time of the Argonautic Expedition. for that expedition is delineated in the Asterisms with several other ancienter histories of the Greeks: but nothing later then that expedition is delineated there. It seems therefore to have
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« Reply #14 on: September 26, 2007, 12:02:25 pm »







been formed by Chiron & Musæus for the use of the Argonauts. For the ship Argo was the first long ship built by the Greeks. Hitherto they had kept to the shore in round vessels of burden with out sails & now upon an Embassy [to the Princes subject to Egypt] they were to sail with expedition through the deep & guide their ship by the stars.

The people of the Island Corcyra attributed the invention of the sphere to Nausicae the daughter of Alcinous king of the Pheaces in that Island & its most probable that she had it from the Argonauts who in their return home sailed to that Island & made some stay there with her father. At that time therefore the solstice was reputed in the fifteenth degree of the constellation of Cancer. Afterwards when Pherecides the Astronomer observed the Solstice in the Island Cyrus & his disciple Thales wrote a book of the Tropicks & Equinoxes it was found in the 12th degree of that signe.

And at length in order to publish the Lunar Cycle of 19 years Meton & Euctemon observed the solstice in the year of Nabonassar 316, & Columella tells us that they placed it in the eighth degree of Cancer which is seven degrees backwarder then at first. Now the Equinox goes backward one degree in 72 years & seven degrees in 504 years. Subduct those years from the 316th year of Nabonassar, & the Argonautic Expedition will fall upon the 45th year after the death of Solomon, or thereabouts.

And the Trojan war was one generation later, several captains of the Greeks in that war being sons of the Argonauts. And the ancient Greeks recconed Memnon or Amenophis to be contemporary to that war feigning him to be the son of Tithonus the elder brother of Priam.

Amenophis was therefore of the same age with the elder children of Priam In the last year of the Trojan war he was with his army at Susa according to the ancient Greeks. After that he might return into Egypt & adorn it with Buildings Obelisks & Statues & dye there about 90 or 100 years after the death of Solomon, when he had determined & setled the length of the Egyptian year of 365 days so as to deserve the monument above mentioned in memory thereof


http://www.geocities.com/astrologyages/voltairesgreatyear.htm
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