rus is said to have founded chairs of astrology salaried by the state and with provision for scholarships for students.[1] Occasional persecution perhaps made the mathematici more highly valued, and the jibes of the satirists against astrologers and their followers attest rather than disprove the popularity of the art. Pliny the Elder and Tacitus asserted its great currency.[2]
The best science of the Empire reflected to a considerable extent these superstitions sanctioned by public opinion, as our discussion of Seneca and Ptolemy will indicate in some detail. For the present we may observe how the great Galen—whose authority reduced to a single school the many quarreling medical sects of his day, was later implicitly accepted by the Arabs, and then dominated European medicine to the time of Paracelsus—was not above astrological medicine or the use of fantastical remedies. He displayed trust in amulets and believed that such things as the ashes of frogs or "hippocampi" have remedial power.[3] He held that the critical days of disease are largely influenced by the moon, and affirmed that we receive "the force of all the stars above."[4] It should be noted moreover that in one passage,
- ↑ Revue Hist., vol. lxv, p. 252.
- ↑ Nat. Hist., bk. xxx, ch. 1, and Tacitus, Annals, bk. vi, ch. 22 (28 in some editions).
- ↑ Carolus Gottlob Kuhn. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia. (Lipsiae, 1821, 19 vols.), vol. xii, p. 362. De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus.
- ↑ De diebus decretoriis, ibid., vol. ix, pp. 901 et seq. πάντων μὲν τῶν ἄνωθεν ἄστρων ἀπολαύομεν τῆς δυνάμεως.
Tiberius was a devotee of astrology; Caligula was warned of his death by the stars; Nero, among other acts dictated by his trust in the art, ordered a number of executions in order to avoid the evils threatened by a comet; Galba, the three Flavians and Vespasian all had their astrologers; Titus was himself an adept in the art; Domitian, when disposing of persons whom the stars designated as dangerous, made the fatal error of sparing Nerva because the constellations allowed him but a brief additional term of life; etc.
