igoS.I IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 669 



of itself served to change the aspect of the Babylonian system was 

 the perfection of a method whereby the fate of the individual was 

 brought into connection with the stars. The science of genethli- 

 alogy**^ or the casting of the individual horoscope from the position 

 of the stars at the time of an individual's birth is a distinctly Greek 

 contribution. The insignificant role that the individual plays in all 

 phases of divination, except in the case of the accidents and unusual 

 incidents that happen to him and which were therefore looked upon 

 as signs sent by the gods to the individual as such, prevented the 

 rise of the thought that the activity of the gods as shown in the 

 heavens had any bearing on the fate of the individual. As we have 

 seen, astrology, just as hepatoscopy, concerned itself in Babylonia 

 and Assyria with the general welfare and the public state. There 

 was no place in either of the two great systems of divination for the 

 individual and we may go a step farther and assert that it was con- 

 trary to the entire spirit of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion to sup- 

 pose that the gods concerned themselves with the individual suffi- 

 ciently to give him as such, through the stars or through the liver of 

 a sacrificial animal, an indication of what they purposed doing.*^- It 

 was difit'erent in Greece where long before the time that Babylonian 

 astrology was assimilated to Greek culture, the individual had as- 

 serted himself to an extent undreamed of in the Eviphrates \'alley. 

 Instead of an intellectual oligarchy with all learning confined to 

 priestly circles, corresponding to the concentration of all political 

 power in the hands of a few privileged families, we have in Greece 

 a republic of letters with an independence of thought only surpassed 

 by the strength of individualism in the political sphere. Religion had 

 long ceased to be the controlling factor or at least the predominant 



^^ Bouche Leclercq, /. c, p. 49, while noting that there is no trace of the 

 application of the astrology to the individual horoscope in cuneiform texts, is 

 disposed to attribute this to the dearth of material. Since he wrote his great 

 work that material has largely increased, and it is perfectly safe to conclude 

 that this phase of astrology never existed in the Euphrates Valley. 



"^If in a few very late texts (cf. Bouche-Leclercq, /. c. p. 50) we find 

 entries of the birth of a child with the mention of the aspect of the moon, 

 planets and constellations, this is to be ascribed to Greek influence as Bouche- 

 Leclercq himself suggests. Some Greek astrologers even went so far, accord- 

 ing to Vitruvius (/. c), as to cast the horoscope of an individual from the 

 time of conception. 



