De astrologia

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 5. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.

They say, moreover, that Tiresias, a Boeotian man, whose fame as touching prophecie is greatly cried up, declared, unto the Greeks that of the errant stars some are masle, some female, and that they do not engender like effects; wherefore they fable that Tiresias himself was bisexous and amphibious, now masle, now female.[*](Here again we have “indepeniiont thought.” A widely variant explanation of the myth had previously been offered by Cephalio (cf. J. Malalas, Chron., p. 40, 1, in the Bonn ition), according to which Tiresias was a student of medicine who concerned himself with the mysteries of parturition. )

When Atreus and Thyestes contended for the throne of their fathers, even then, it is plain, the Greeks set great store by astrologie and celestial lore; and the commonwealth of Argos determined that which ever of them was more excellent than the other in this lore should bear rule. Thereupon Thyestes indicated and made manifest unto them the Ram in the heavens, in consequence whereof they fable that Thyestes had a golden lamb. But Atreus declared the doctrine of the sun and its risings, that the sun and the First Movable[*](The firmament, or orb, of the fixed stars. This was thought of as revolving from East to West. The sun particited, to be sure, in its motion, but had a contrary motion of is own, which was compared to that of an ant walking on the rim of a moving wheel in the direction contrary to the wheel’s motion. ) do not course in the same direction, but rowle contrariwise to one another

v.5.p.359

and that which now seemeth his setting, being a setting of the First Movable, is a rising of the sun. At his saying this, the men of Argos made him their king, and great renown for learning became his.[*](Previous authors left this topic to Lucian “incomplete.” That Atreus owed his kingship to his discovery of the retrograde motion of the sun was known not only to Polybius (XXXIV, beginning) but even to Sophocles and Euripides, according es enter on arate (Achilleus: Maass, Comm. in Arat., p. 28). It remained for Lucian to point out that Thyestes was an astronomer also, the discoverer of the constellation Aries, and to add a touch of paradox to the other doctrine with his suggestion that inasmuch as the sun’s proper motion is from West to East, he is really going upward, and therefore rising, when he sets, and downward, or setting, when he rises. )