Message #48721

[Bianca]

Some popular astrological writing was in verse: among the astrological versifiers were Astrampsychus, Dorotheus of Sidon, and Manetho. Astrampsychus left a hundred and one astrological aphorisms, printed in alphabetical order. Anubio, who may have been an Egyptian, left work which was to be used by Firmicus Magnus, Hephaestion, Palchrus and Rhetorius, over the next four centuries. Dorotheus, an Arab, left his Pentateuch, five books, dealing with births, eras of time, the Lords of the Horoscope, the computation of birth years, and 'undertaking' or the divination of events in a life. And to the professional astrologers must be added those who believed astrology to be an important part of their studies, like the physicians Antigonus of Nicaea and Galen.

Medical astrology was already beginning to rationalize its beliefs. These were never fatalistic; after all, if fate determined whether or not a patient should recover from or succumb to an illness, what point would there be in treating him? Galen (130-c200) studied medicine at Pergamos, where he was born, then in Corinth and Alexandria, and finally in Rome (where he became physician to Marcus Aurelius, and later attended Commodus and Severus). He was careful always to note the precise time at which a patient had taken to bed with an illness; carefully considered the position of Sirius, the dog star, when medicine was being prepared or administered; insisted that the theriac, a medicine which he had developed, should be taken at the third hour of the first or fourth day of the Moon; and in one of his medical treatises devoted twelve chapters to the influence of the Moon in each of the zodiac signs, also dealing with the positions of the planets. Antigonus went further, publishing a collection of 'medical horoscopes' which doctors used for at least two centuries to help them in treating patients.