668 JASTROW— HEPATOSCOPY AND ASTROLOGY [December 4, 



it is not until we reach the days of the Seleucidian and Arsacidian 

 dynasties that we find astronomical calculations of the movements 

 and of the position of the moon and planets in full swing. 



It can hardly be regarded as accidental that the flourishing period 

 of Babylonian astronomy should thus be coincident with the time 

 when, according to definite evidence, Babylonian astrology passed 

 over into Greece. " The conquest of Alexander," as Bouche-Leclercq 

 tersely puts it, " threw down the barriers hitherto separating races 

 and civilizations. "°^ To Berosus, the " Chaldaean " priest who wrote 

 in Greek a history of Babylonia and Assyria, the Greeks themselves 

 ascribe the introduction of astrology into their midst. Settling in the 

 island of Cos, the home of Hippocrates, Berosus himself taught the 

 Babylonian system to the students whom the fame of the great phys- 

 ician had attracted to that place.^^ The fragments preserved of the 

 writings of Berosus,^" few as they are, suffice to show that he 

 gathered his material direct from the sources, and there is therefore 

 no reason to question that he followed conscientiously the methods 

 laid down in the Babylonian collections of astrological omens. 

 While it is of course possible and indeed probable that through the 

 contact with the Persians the Greeks may have heard of the Baby- 

 lonian system of divining the future through the stars, it is certain 

 that astrology did not take a definite hold on the Greeks and become 

 part of their intellectual outfit until the days of Berosus, i. e., till 

 about the beginning of the third century B. C. A few centuries 

 sufficed to transform Babylonian asfrology under the influence of 

 the Greek spirit from the character of an "oriental religion " 

 which as Bouche-Leclercq''° recognized it had at the time of its 

 adoption, into the appearance of a science. Already advanced stu- 

 dents of astronomy, the Greek physicists combined astrology with 

 the principles and speculations of mathematics and brought it into 

 accord with the current systems of philosophy until it became a 

 genuine expression of the Greek spirit and an integral part of 

 Greek culture. A feature which the Greeks introduced and which 



""' L'Astrologic Grccque,'' p. 35. 



'"^ Vitruvius, de Architectura, IX., 6. See also Bouche-Leclercq, 0. c, 

 pp. 2 and 2>7- 



°° Cory, "Ancient I-'ragnu-nts," pp. 51-69. 

 °"o. c, p. I. 



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