Rest Days; A Sociological Study 1 1 1 



the planets on human affairs goes back to Babylonia, the mother-land of 

 astrology. During the Hellenistic era the mingling of East and West in 

 such a cosmopolitan center as Alexandria made possible that strange 

 mixture of Babylonian astrology with the cosmical conceptions derived 

 from Pythagoras and his successors which gave rise to the astrological 

 week with the planetary names. 



The succession of the planets in the cuneiform inscriptions is vacillating. 

 The most common order — Moon, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Alercury, 

 Mars — does not throw much light on the well known grouping which gives 

 the planets in the order of their distance from the earth — Moon, Mercury, 

 Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn ; or, commencing with the highest planet 

 and descending to the lowest — Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, 

 Moon. This arrangement has been traced back to Pythagoras and his 

 school, though it is questionable whether it dates from an earlier period 

 than the second or third century before our era. It is not until a much 

 later period that we find any evidence in Occidental lands for a naming of 

 the week days after the seven planets and hence for the planetary or 

 astrological week. According to the well known principle, if the day be 

 divided into twenty-four hours and each hour of the seven-day week be 

 assigned to the several planets in turn, then Saturn will preside over the 

 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22d hours, the 23d hour will fall to Jupiter, and the 24th to 

 Mars. The 25th hour, or the first hour of the second day, will belong to the 

 Sun, the first hour of the third day to the Moon, and so on for the remain- 

 ing week days. An inscription found at Pompeii gives the planetary names 

 for the days of the week in the order still in use, except for the accidental 

 omission of Wednesday.'* In the second century Dio Cassius refers to 

 the planetary week as well known to his time."^ In spite of this fact the 

 use of the planetary week did not become general in pagan antiquity; it is 

 only in the 4th and 5th centuries, after the triumph of Christianity that 

 the Latin Church which had formerly adopted the Jewish seven-day week, 

 took over the planetary names for the week-days and so combined two 

 institutions which previously had run in different though parallel paths. 

 It is not improbable that we may see in this acceptance of the planetary 

 order evidence for the growing influence of astrological superstitions 

 introduced by Christian converts from paganism. The old beliefs in the 

 power of the stars over human destinies lived on in the Christian com- 

 munities ; the heavenly bodies, though no longer deities, were still demons 

 capable of affecting the fate of man. The Greek Church, however, never 



~ Saturni, Soils, Lunae, Martis, Jovis, Veneris. Cf. infra for the change 

 from Saturday to Sunday as the first day of the planetary week. 

 ■' Dio Cassius, xxxvii. 18. 



Ill 



