Description

This is the first commentary in any language on three of the books of ancient Greek astrological poetry ascribed to the Egyptian priest Manetho. Manetho, who became a figure for recondite wisdom, came to be credited with a series of didactic poems which list outcomes for planetary set-ups in a horoscope or birth chart. This book contends that we can learn a great deal from this material about the intellectual, cultural, social, and literary history of the world in which it was written--Hadrianic Egypt, and the second-century Roman Empire at large. Its descriptions of the kinds of person who are born under happy and unhappy configurations of stars speak to the lived realities, aspirations, and fears of the astrologer's clientele. Given astrology's enormous contemporary prestige, this means we are offered insights into the mental universe and values of the common man, l'homme moyen sensuel, that élite literature largely bypasses.

The volume addresses current work on the emotions and popular ethics. It also brings to the fore a neglected witness to a type of imperial didactic poetry--functional, technical in content, and yet sharing a degree of artistry
with better-known poets such as Dionysius the Periegete. The Manethonian poems are placed in the context of other ancient astrological literature--much of it very different in idiom, complexity, and method--but also in the wider one of other divinatory texts, philosophical writing, and the novel. There is a Greek text with English translation and an apparatus with parallel material to enable comparison with related works.