Note 1 — BOOK IV DIVINERS AND MAGICIANS

This is the beginning of the Mt. Athos MS., the first pages having disappeared. With regard to the first chapter περὶ ἀστρολόγων, Cruice, following therein Miller, points out that nearly the whole of it has been taken from Book V with the same title of Sextus Empiricus’ work, Πρὸς Μαθηματικούς, and also that the copying is so faulty that to make sense it is necessary to restore the text in many places from that of Sextus. Sextus’ book begins, as did doubtless that of Hippolytus, with a description of the divisions of the zodiac, the cardinal points (Ascendant, Mid-heaven, Descendant, and Anti-Meridian), the cadent and succeedent houses, the use of the clepsydra or water-clock, the planets and their “dignities,” “exaltations” and “falls,” and finally, their “terms,” with a description of which our text begins. It is, perhaps, a pity that Miller did not restore the whole of the missing part from Sextus Empiricus; but the last-named author is not very clear, and the reader who wishes to go further into the matter and to acquire some knowledge of astrological jargon is recommended to consult also James Wilson’s Complete Dictionary of Astrology, reprinted at Boston, U.S.A., in 1885, or, if he prefers a more learned work, M. Bouché-Leclercq’s L’Astrologie Grecque, Paris, 1899. But it may be said here that the astrologers of the early centuries made their predictions from a “theme,” or geniture, which was in effect a map of the heavens at the moment of birth, and showed the ecliptic or sun’s path through the zodiacal signs divided into twelve “houses,” to each of which a certain significance was attached. The foundation of this was the horoscope or sign rising above the horizon at the birth, from which they were able to calculate the other three cardinal points given above, the cadent houses being those four which go just before the cardinal points and the four succeedents those which follow after them. The places of the planets, including in that term the sun and moon, in the ecliptic were then calculated and their symbols placed in the houses indicated. From this figure the judgment or prediction was made, but a great mass of absurd and contradictory tradition existed as to the influence of the planets on the life, fortune, and disposition of the native, which was supposed to depend largely on their places in the theme both in relation to the earth and to each other.