Hellenistic Astronomy
This chapter focuses on four texts in Hellenistic astrologia, which covers both astrology and astronomy. Its guiding thesis is that understanding ancient astrologia should not be restricted to the mathematics deployed but should include its contexts, such as its relations to other intellectual disciplines and to broader philosophical and cultural concerns about how to live one’s life. The texts studied are Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca 1–2 (ca 50 bce), Vitruvius, De architectura 9 (ca 25 bce), Geminus, Introductio astronomiae (ca 50 bce), and Pliny, Naturalis historia 2 (77 ce). What each includes is found to depend on the readers addressed and how its author sought to persuade or inform them. Hellenistic astrologia is a work in progress during the two centuries about the millennium, with different writers urging in different contexts divergent views of what astrologia should be and why it is important.