Virolleaud, Ch. L’Astrologie chaldéenne, Paris, 1905-; to be completed in eight parts, texts and translations.

Winckler, Himmels-und Weltenbild der Babylonier als Grundlage der Weltanschauung und Mythologie aller Völker, in Der alte Orient, III, 2-3.

BOOK I. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Foreword.
Chapter 2.Pliny’s Natural History.
I.Its place in the history of science.
II.Its experimental tendency.
III.Pliny’s account of magic.
IV.The science of the Magi.
V.Pliny’s magical science.
Chapter 3.Seneca and Ptolemy: Natural Divination and Astrology.
Chapter 4.Galen.
I.The man and his times.
II.His medicine and experimental science.
III.His attitude toward magic.
Chapter 5.Ancient Applied Science and Magic.
Chapter 6.Plutarch’s Essays.
Chapter 7.Apuleius of Madaura.
Chapter 8.Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana.
Chapter 9.Literary and Philosophical Attacks upon Superstition.
Chapter 10.The Spurious Mystic Writings of Hermes, Orpheus, and Zoroaster.
Chapter 11.Neo-Platonism and its Relations to Astrology and Theurgy.
Chapter 12.Aelian, Solinus, and Horapollo.

BOOK I. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

FOREWORD

A trio of great names.

A trio of great names, Pliny, Galen, and Ptolemy, stand out above all others in the history of science under the Roman Empire. In the use or criticism which they make of earlier writers and investigators they are also our chief sources for the science of the preceding Hellenistic period. By their voluminousness, their generous scope in ground covered, and their broad, liberal, personal outlooks, they have painted, in colors for the most part imperishable, extensive canvasses of the scientific spirit and acquisitions of their own time. Pliny pursued politics and literature as well as natural science; Ptolemy was at once mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and geographer; Galen knew philosophy as well as medicine. The two latter men, moreover, made original contributions of their own of the very first order to scientific knowledge and method. It is characteristic of the homogeneous and widespread culture of the Roman Empire that these three representatives of different, although overlapping, fields of science were natives of the three continents that enclose the Mediterranean Sea. Pliny was born at Como where Italy verges on transalpine lands; Ptolemy, born somewhere in Egypt, did his work at Alexandria; Galen came from Pergamum in Asia Minor. Finally, these men were, after Aristotle, the three ancient scientists who directly or indirectly most powerfully influenced the middle ages. Thus they illuminate past, present, and future.

Plan of this section.

We shall therefore open the present section of our investigation by considering in turn chronologically, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Galen, coupling, however, with our consideration of Ptolemy the work of Seneca on Natural Questions which shows the same combination of natural science and natural divination. Next we shall consider some representatives of ancient applied science and its relations to magic, and the more miscellaneous writings of Plutarch, Apuleius, and Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana. From the hospitable attitude toward magic and occult science displayed by these last writers we shall then turn back again to consider some examples of literary and philosophical attacks upon superstition, before proceeding lastly to spurious mystic writings of the Roman Empire, Neo-Platonism and its relations to astrology and theurgy, and the works of Aelian, Solinus, and Horapollo.