History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.285.2

v6.c82.285.2

The Chaldeans held that the five planets specially controlled men's destinies and five Babylonian deities were identified with them As Bouchè-Leclercq observes (in 'L' Astrologie Grecque', p 572) 'Chaldean astrology had lived on a fund of naive ideas, it began at a time when the heavens were deemed to be nothing but a cover of the earth, when all the stars were ranged at small distances on the vault and the planets were supposed to move in the midst of stars like shepherds inspecting their flocks. Greek science having extended the world, the influence of stars moved back at enormous distances was not a postulate of common sense' (vide note 748 above). Herodotus⁸¹² (II. 82) refers to a peculiar practice of the Egyptians to regard each month and day as sacred to some deity, and says how from the day of a man's birth they determined his fortune, character and the manner of his death. But this has no reference to horoscopic Astrology. The Egyptians knew nothing about the Zodiac before the Alexandrian age There is no trace of astrology in early Greek astronomical writers and it appears that the Greeks got it from Babylon⁸¹³ after Alexander conquered Babylon, when teachers of astrology began to arrive in Greece. The Hellenistic mind was soon completely captivated by astrology.