New in ISAW Papers: The Logic of Planetary Combination in Vettius Valens

ISAW Papers 24 (2023)
The Logic of Planetary Combination in Vettius Valens
Claire Hall, All Souls College, Oxford University and Liam P. Shaw, Oxford University
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/2333.1/m0cfz267

This article is available at the URI http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-papers/24/ as part of the NYU Library's Ancient World Digital Library in partnership with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW). More information about ISAW Papers is available on the ISAW website.

©2023 Claire Hall & Liam P. Shaw; distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) license.
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Abstract: The Anthologies of the second-century astrologer Vettius Valens (120-c.175 CE) is the most extensive surviving practical astrological text from the period. Despite this, the theoretical underpinnings of the Anthologies have been understudied; in general, the work has been overshadowed by Ptolemy’s contemporaneous Tetrabiblos. While the Tetrabiblos explicitly aims to present a systematic account of astrology, Valens’ work is often characterised as a miscellaneous collection, of interest to historians only for the evidence it preserves about the practical methods used in casting horoscopes. In this article, we argue that the Anthologies is also an invaluable resource for engagement with the conceptual basis of astrology. As a case study, we take a section of Anthologies Book 1 which lists the possible astrological effects of planets, both alone and in ‘combinations’ of two and three. We demonstrate that analysing Valens’ descriptions quantitatively with textual analysis reveals a consistent internal logic of planetary combination. By classifying descriptive terms as positive or negative, we show that the resulting ‘sentiment’ of planetary combinations is well-correlated with their component parts. Furthermore, we find that the sentiment of three-planet combinations is more strongly correlated with the average sentiment of their three possible component pairs than with the average sentiment of individual planets, suggesting an iterative combinatorial logic. Recognition of this feature of astrological practice has been neglected compared to the mathematical methods for calculating horoscopes. We argue that this analysis not only provides evidence that the astrological lore detailed in Valens is more consistent than is often assumed, but is also indicative of a wider methodological technique in practical astrology: combinatorial reasoning from existing astrological lore.1
Library of Congress Subjects: Vettius Valens ; Astronomy, Greek.
Table of Contents

    Introduction
    Planetary Combination
    Sentiment Analysis
    Conclusion
    References
    Notes
    Supplementary Tables
    Appendix

1. Introduction

The Anthologies of Vettius Valens is the most extensive practical astrological text which survives from Greek antiquity.2 The Anthologies consists of nine books, which include a huge quantity of information on astrological methods as well as catalogues of predictions. In total, the Anthologies contains around 130 partial or complete horoscopes ranging from 37-188 CE, some of which are used multiple times.3 These horoscopes suggest that the majority of the work was written between 152 and 162 CE, and the Anthologies has been in almost constant use since.4 As a resource for ‘literary’ horoscopes (i.e. those not from an original text, such as papyri) it is unparalleled: Neugebauer and Van Hoesen noted there would only be five other extant literary horoscopes dating from before 380 CE if the Anthologies had not survived. 5 Although we have little external biographical information about Vettius Valens, one of these horoscopes was suggested by Pingree to be that of Valens himself.6 From this horoscope and the associated details Valens provides, we can infer that he was born on 8 February 120 CE in Antioch, travelled widely, including to Egypt, and spent the majority of his working life as an astrologer in Alexandria.7

Valens is often contrasted with his near-contemporary Ptolemy (c.100–c.170 CE), also associated with Alexandria. Although both wrote on astrology, their styles are markedly different. In particular, Valens’ work is often characterised as practical, in opposition to the more theoretical work of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos. According to Neugebauer, the Anthologies and the Tetrabiblos were written almost simultaneously but exhibit a strong difference in style and purpose: Valens’ work seeks to ‘confirm and refine growing [astrological] doctrine’, whereas Ptolemy’s seeks to form a ‘consistent theory of… a universal science of life.’ (Neugebauer 1954, p. 67). Riley makes a similar case, characterising Ptolemy’s work as ‘axiomatic’ in its method: Ptolemy ‘lays down principles that are universally true, then he applies them in individual cases’; whereas Valens is ‘quasi-exhaustive’, constructing ‘listings of configurations’ that go on ‘at great length’ (Riley 1987, p. 249).

Given this contrast, if Ptolemy is a systematic philosophical thinker it may be tempting to treat Valens as his opposite: a miscellanist, churning out regurgitated screeds of astrological lore. This picture may also be influenced by our knowledge of Ptolemy’s wide variety of other interests, primarily in astronomy but also in geography, harmonics, and optics (the latter two in lost works).8 Indeed, even within the Tetrabiblos Ptolemy considers wide areas of astrological inquiry which are absent from the Anthologies, devoting large sections to ‘general’ astrology, which pertains to predictions that affect ‘whole races, countries, and cities’9 and including geographical material and predictions of the weather. By contrast, the Anthologies is presented by Valens himself as a handbook for practical astrology.

Scholars have not been impressed by Valens as a thinker: Cumont (1937) called him ‘narrow-minded and devoid of originality’ (p. 18)10 and Riley (1987) notes that when Valens attempts ‘empirical’ proofs of his craft, these are little more than the retrofitting of observed events to his own previously cast horoscopes (p. 248).11 It is certainly true that Valens does not attempt—or seem to show any interest in—either a detailed philosophical account of the physics of the heavens or a wider investigation of the implications of astrology. This broad contrast between practical and theoretical often carries a (sometimes explicit) value judgement in Ptolemy’s favour (Riley 1987, p. 236). Nevertheless, it does not follow from this contrast in method and aims that Valens’ work was free of conceptual underpinnings. Nor does it follow that it was unsystematic or unscientific – a suggestion implicit in Riley and others.12 In this article we make the case that Valens’ lists of planetary combinations show a greater degree of cohesion than has been previously noted. We analyse the descriptions quantitatively to show that they are not merely miscellaneous assortments of associations, but exhibit a strong internal logic. Despite the divergent methods and aims on display on the textual surface of Ptolemy and Valens, Valens’ general understanding of the underlying structure of astrology may be closer to Ptolemy than usually assumed.