The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s2.159

c9.s2.159

But the real effect which Babylon produced upon Greeks, as upon every people with whom it came in contact, was through its astrology. Berossus' book had lived for Greeks not because of its history but because of its astrology and the school of astrology which he set up upon Cos (if indeed that story be true);⁵ Greeks who went to study in the Babylonian schools went partly for the sake of astrology (p. 43 and n. 5); a number of horoscopes have been found at Doura,⁶ and there was a Greek reading public for astrology in the East, as is shown by the book of the Babylonian Zachalias⁷ on the astral affinities of precious stones, and by the book of the 'Babylonian' Teucros,⁸ whose great influence lasted into the Middle Ages and who in place of the old constellations introduced a host of barbaric astrological figures which for long ruled the skies of Asia. In one sense the astrology which flooded the Greek lands was merely one of the half-worlds that have always attached themselves to science, and some Babylonian astronomers would not touch it;¹ in another sense it was a religious system, with its star-gods and its doctrine of correspondence between heaven and earth. But whatever way men took it, behind it loomed the gigantic and terrible figure of the Babylonian Fate, immutable and inexorable, neither loving nor hating, which ruled the Universe and before which gods and men were alike puppets playing their pre-determined parts, a figure which outraged the Greek sense of freedom till the history of Hellenistic religion might almost be summed up as a series of attempts to find a way of escape. It may be worth while, when we come to India, bearing in mind the difference for Greeks between the teaching of Babylon and the teaching of Buddha.