Rhetorius of Egypt () was the last major classical astrologer from whom we have any excerpts. He lived in the sixth or early seventh century, in the early

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

era. He wrote an extensive compendium in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

of the techniques of the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

astrologers who preceded him, and is one of our best sources for the work of Antiochus of Athens. Although no intact original manuscript survives of his work, we do have several late Byzantine versions of it. Rhetorius provides important confirmation of the survival of the more obscure astrological techniques of

Vettius Valens Vettius Valens (120 – c. 175) was a 2nd-century Hellenistic astrologer, a somewhat younger contemporary of Claudius Ptolemy. Valens' major work is the ''Anthology'' (), ten volumes in Greek written roughly within the period 150 to 175. The ''A ...

, the practicing astrologer whose tradition is somewhat at variance with the more well-known methods of

Claudius Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine, Islamic, and ...

; for example, in his treatment of the Lot of Fortune as a '' horoskopos'', much as Valens treated Lots, and in his use of

sect A sect is a subgroup of a religion, religious, politics, political, or philosophy, philosophical belief system, typically emerging as an offshoot of a larger organization. Originally, the term referred specifically to religious groups that had s ...

with lots. In addition, Rhetorius discusses the late-Roman systems of time lords, a topic which came to be heavily developed by the

Persians Persians ( ), or the Persian people (), are an Iranian ethnic group from West Asia that came from an earlier group called the Proto-Iranians, which likely split from the Indo-Iranians in 1800 BCE from either Afghanistan or Central Asia. They ...

Arabs Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of yea ...

and

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

Europeans. Rhetorius provides an informative link between the earlier Hellenistic tradition and the Arab and medieval practices that followed him.

Sources

* ''Rhetorius qui dictur: Compendium astrologicum: Libri Vi et VI'', edited by David Pingree, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2007. * Rhetorius the Egyptian, ''Astrological Compendium'' (Tempe, Az.: A.F.A., Inc., 2009.) translated by James Herschel Holden.
Robert Schmidt, Project Hindsight
*Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum (translation and commentary). Late Classical Astrology: Paulus Alexandrinus and Olympiodorus (with the Scholia of later Latin Commentators). ARHAT, 2001.
Rhetorius of Egypt on The Hellenistic Astrology website

External links

6th-century births 7th-century deaths Byzantine astrologers 6th-century Byzantine writers 7th-century Byzantine writers 6th-century astrologers 7th-century astrologers 6th-century Byzantine scientists 7th-century Byzantine scientists {{sci-hist-stub