As the thorny topic of house systems is ever-present and not going away, I thought I'd offer some thoughts on Manilius.

What is The Astronomica by Marcus Manilius

The Astronomica by Marcus Manilius, translated by G.P. Goold, is a first century CE Latin didactic poem, and considered the first intact work to record a house system.

The Astronomica is split into five books, which cover astronomical information required to understand the various astrological treatments. Didactic poems, such as this, were designed to inform or teach an imagined student, rather than merely tell a story, and although not exhaustive, were the norm for conveying technical information. Whilst today we may see poetry as chiefly an artistic device, not intending to instruct or teach, didactic poems such as the Astronomica were indeed meant to instruct or teach, and were not just an artistic device. As a comparison, Aratus’s astronomical text was likewise a didactic poem, and was ‘used as a school text’ right up to the Middle Ages, demonstrating that Manilius was following in a tradition where poetry was a vehicle for astronomical education, and should not be anachronistically contrasted with modern poetry as chiefly artistic.

Manilius gave most of the astronomical information required in Book I, and introduced his definition of the houses in Book II, and defined the four angles in both books.



References:
Manilius, Astronomica, pp.xi-cv
James Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, p.23
Katharina Volk, Manilius and His Intellectual Background, pp.174-214
Jim Tester, A History of Western Astrology (Boydell Press, 1987), p.30
Volk, Manilius and His Intellectual Background, p.179
Jim Tester, A History of Western Astrology, p.30

Manilius and Angles/Cardines

It has been argued that Manilius either must have used WSH, or likely used WSH because other authors must have been using it. Rather than assume a priori what Manilius was doing let’s actually look at how he defines the angles, which will be of prime importance in understanding whether a system of quadrant division is intended later on or not.

In Book II, Manilius defines all the four angles which he described as:
‘four in all, they have positions in the firmament permanently fixed and receive in succession the speeding signs’

In other words the four angles are fixed and receive the Zodiac as it passes through them, and so, importantly, the Zodiac is imagined as separate from the angles.

In Book I, Manilius defined the meridian as:
“starting from the northern pole, cuts the sky in the middle and divides the day into two, determines the sixth hour and beholds at equal distances sunrise and sunset???.

Notably the meridian here is described both spatially and temporally as the midpoint between sunrise and sunset, and this angle is demarcating the sixth seasonal hour, demonstrating that it was conceived of as a point, and not, say a Zodiac sign. Likewise, in Book II, Manilius described one of the angles with poetic, but astronomically accurate, descriptions, such as:
“The zenith of high heaven, where wearied Phoebus halts with panting steeds and rests the day and determines the mid-point of shadows???.

When the Sun (Phoebus), reaches the midheaven, it is considered high noon, which is the mid-point of shadows, and so the angle in question is clearly the astronomical midheaven, when the Sun is at the meridian.

Manilius’s use of ‘zenith’ here is not technically accurate, and I will explore this briefly later to examine what impact this may have.

Whilst both Manilius, and Goold’s translation, have been criticised for the loose usage of ‘zenith’ in this sentence, in both cases Manilius is clearly describing high noon and so the ‘angle’ here must by necessity be the midheaven degree, and not sign. Manliius says of the angles in Book II that they ‘receive the circle sign after sign in succession’, and the Zodiac ‘is totally held in position by them as by eternal supports’ demonstrating again that the angles are points, and not Zodiac signs, and that these points are separate from, and receive, the Zodiac, and so cannot be the relevant WSH houses. Manilius’s angles, therefore, are not part of the Zodiac, and the Midheaven in particular is imagined not as the 10th Zodiac sign, but derived from the meridian itself.


References:
Manilius, Astronomica, p.145
David Pingree, review of ‘Manilius Astronomica’ by G.P. Goold, and ‘Struttura Degli Astronomica di Manilio’ by Elisa Romano, Phoenix, Vol. 34. No.3, Classical Association of Canada, (1980), p.65.
A.E. Housman, M. Manilii, Astronomicon, Liber Secundus, ed. A E. Housman, London, 1912, p.xxvii.

Manilius and Quadrant Houses

Goold regularly translated the ‘loci’, or houses, as ‘temples’. Manilius introduced the houses saying that:
“In any geniture every sign is affected by the sky’s division into temples…each of the signs, as it revolves, receives the influences of heaven and to heaven imparts its own???.

This suggests that, like his description of the four angles earlier, the Zodiac signs also pass through the houses, which are imagined as stationary, with a given sign influencing a house, and the house likewise influencing the sign. That’s very important, because straight away we see that Manilius is not deriving or imagining his house system, whatever that may be, as being of the Zodiac, or on the Zodiac, but instead as a secondary layer which overlaps the Zodiac (or vice versa) where the house system is not moving, but the Zodiac instead moves through it. That automatically precludes WSH for which this description can never be true. Nevertheless, as we shall see, more and more compelling evidence will stack up against Manilius using WSH.

Manilius, after explaining that the house system is not of the Zodiac, then described the twelve houses, mostly in relation to one of the angles, which, as per his definitions, are not Zodiac signs, but astronomical points. His descriptions of the 9th and 10th Houses demonstrate this clearly. He defined the 9th house as:
“The stars that follow midday, where the height of heaven first slopes downward and bows from the summit???

The use of ‘midday’ again is reminiscent of high noon, which he introduced when describing the Midheaven degree. The 10th house is likewise described as being where:
“the downward slope makes its beginning, and the summit towers midway between orient and occident???.

This again making it clear that he is describing the meridian, evoking similar imagery as when he introduced that angle. Orient and occident may well be there ascendant and descendant degrees respectively, as per his definition of those angles/cardines, or just ‘east’ and ‘west’ broadly. Either way it is not a Zodiac sign. Indeed all the other houses follow similar logic, where Manilius in every instance of describing the houses does so in relation to the four angular points he had already described and defined, which were astronomical points. Not Zodiac signs.

Manilius is clearly describing a house system, and not some division meant, say, for measuring dynamic strength. It is clear these divisions are intended as house system as Manilius largely gives them the Latin equivalent of the house names familiar to Hellenistic astrologers, such as describing the 3rd house as “Goddess???. In cases where Manilius deviated from the Greek norm, Greenbaum has considered Manilius may be following Egyptian antecedents, though is clear that Manilius is nevertheless describing the 12 houses. Manilius concluded his treatment of houses describing them as he did the angles, with the Zodiac moving through them and co-influencing one another as they did. But clearly they houses are again described as stationary and separate from the Zodiac, and not therefore determined by the Zodiac:
“this is the system by which you must mark the powers of the temples: through them revolves the entire procession of the zodiac, which draws from them their laws and lends to them its own???

As these houses are explicitly and repeatedly defined from the angular points, and not Zodiacal signs Manilius cannot be describing a system of Whole Sign Houses here, but must be describing some quadrant form of house division derived from the angular degrees.

The earliest intact treatment of houses, therefore, is clearly describing a quadrant division, and, by definition, cannot be describing WSH, which may contradict Holden’s and Schmidt’s argument that WSH is the earliest system of houses. The earliest description of house systems that we have available to us, therefore, is unambiguously describing a form of quadrant house system.


References
Dorian Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology, pp.50-51, pp.56-61
Manilius, Astronomica, p.145, pp.151-159

Manilius, Signs and Houses

In Book III, Manilius returned to the topic of the houses, nearly always referring them again to angles, and not Zodiac signs. However, in one section Manilius described the 11th House as ‘the temple which is separated by one intervening sign from the first sign rising at the culminating point’, and this definition of the house by reference to a sign might be argued to indicate either WSH or EH. However, given that in the majority of cases, even in a quadrant division, each house would overlap a different sign, this may just have been a generalising comment by Manilius. This especially likely as he was still referencing the cardinal points first and foremost, and so WSH or EH would be astronomically precluded from such a description. It is also worth remembering that Manilius made explicit that the Zodiac signs were influenced by the angles and the houses which overlap them. He had concluded his section of house system division reminding us that “through them revolves the entire procession of the zodiac, which draws from them their laws and lends to them its own???. In other words, as a given sign would have the ‘laws’ or ‘powers’ of a given house lent to it, he may be generalising and referring to that sign and house interchangeable as they both have had their law and powers intermixed.

References
Manilius, Astronomica, pp.211-213

Manilius and ‘Zenith’

In Book II, Manilius described the Midheaven angle as ‘the zenith of high heaven’, which is not astronomically accurate. Brennan noted that this misuse of ‘zenith’ by Manilius ‘has important implications for understanding how Manilius describes the houses’, and so I will examine it briefly to demonstrate why it is arguable that he is incorrect in this assumption.

Pingree, in his review of Goold’s translation of Manilius, suggested that in Book I Goold mistranslated the North Pole as ‘the zenith’. Brennan picked up on this criticism by Pingree, and, considering also Goold’s loose translation of ‘temple’, concluded that:
“when one reads the actual Latin verses of Manilius carefully, the language that he uses to describe the places is consistent with the other Hellenistic astrologers, and he never outlines any specific method for trisecting the quadrants. As a result of this, it seems likely that he followed the same approach as the other early astrologers of his era in using the whole sign house system???

This comment about reading the actual Latin verses suggests that Brennan has examined and translated the Latin (nobody else is credited with this examination), and based on his more accurate translation than what Goold provided, concluded that Manilius wasn’t trisecting the quadrants, as per Goold’s description, and was instead using WSH. It is regrettable that Brennan never released or footnoted his superior translation of Manilius’s treatment of the houses from the Latin.

However, Pingree only singled out one instance of Goold translating a term as ‘zenith’ in Book I, which should not automatically suggest that every subsequent term which Goold translated as ‘zenith’ is incorrect, particularly where it comes to his subsequent description of houses in Book II. In fact, some of the confusion and overloading of terms may exist within Manilius’s work, not Goold’s translation, as A.E. Housman noted an
“inaccuracy is involved in the use of the terms medium caelum and imum caelum. These, in the plain sense of the words, should mean the zenith and the nadir, but they actually signify only the highest and lowest points of the zodiac, which never mount to the zenith nor sink to the nadir except between the tropics???.

Closer examination, at least of Goold’s translation, reveals that Manilius overloaded the use of the term zenith to signify any astronomical culmination or height, suggesting a slightly less technical usage than we might, anachronistically, project onto the text. For example, in Book III, Manilius imagined a thought experiment where one might walk ‘beneath the zenith of heaven, which the cold pole sustains with inflexible support’, and, thus, the ‘zenith’ imagined here was the north pole rather than either the Midheaven or the astronomical zenith. Indeed, other examples can be seen throughout Book I, where zenith is used to describe the culmination of various great circles. Although an inaccuracy by modern standards, from context it is clear that Manilius did not employ this term, at least as Goold translated it, to be the contemporary astronomical understanding of ‘zenith’. Whether a slippage in Goold’s translation, or a problem within Manilius’s text itself, what is clear is that in Book II when Manilius is describing houses, he is nevertheless clearly describing the meridian, consistent with his earlier definitions of that angle, and so Manilius’s house system must be a quadrant-division, and Brennan’s suggestion of WSH is unfounded, though his Latin translation would still be useful to compare and contrast.


References
Manilius, Astronomica, pp.27-49, p.191, pp.211-213
Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology, p.380-381.
David Pingree, review of ‘Manilius Astronomica’ by G.P. Goold, and ‘Struttura Degli Astronomica di Manilio’ by Elisa Romano, Phoenix, Vol. 34. No.3, Classical Association of Canada, (1980), p.265.
A.E. Housman, M. Manilii, Astronomicon, Liber Secundus, ed. A E. Housman, London, 1912, p.xxvii.

Conclusion: Manilius described a Quadrant House System

Prudence Jones noted that Manilius employed visual descriptions, which appear to describe a division of the prime vertical, reminiscent of Campanus houses. Campanus would indeed match this imagery of the stationary nature of the houses, in a way that EH, WSH or Porphyry do not. Manilius’s house system was imagined as fixed in position, framed by the angles, which the Zodiac passes through, and, in doing so, the signs and the houses co-mingle their influences. When Manilius, in Book III, referred to the house as a sign, it may be because of this co-mingling of ‘influence’ so that, for Manilius the house could be referred to as the sign, and vice versa. It is clear Manilius is referring to a house system, and not an overlay of strength, as he named and assigned topics to some of the houses accordingly, though perhaps employed an Egyptian as well as Greek set of antecedents when doing so. The fixed framework of houses, from which the Zodiac is separated, and Manilius’s repeated focus on the four angular points when describing the houses, precludes his system from being WSH or EH. As Manilius is the earliest example of an intact treatment of houses, it is arguable that if there was an original treatment of houses, it was a quadrant division, and not WSH, and if Jones is correct, then it may be Campanus. Whichever house system Manilius was intending to describe is unclear however, but what is clear is that he clearly imagined that division as being chiefly between the four astronomical angles, and not a division of the Zodiac. He was clearly describing, therefore, Quadrant Houses.

I know some will disagree and say, as Brennan did, that Manilius was ‘likely’ using WSH, or must be using them. But if we’re examining history with a clear mind free from expectation, assumption or anachronism, we can see clearly that there is little to no evidence of Manilius using WSH for the 12 houses derived from the ascendant. He may well be using it for derived houses from Lots which I am not getting into here.

It is my belief that Manilius has been systematically belittled or diminished in regards the examination of the early usage of astrological house systems.

Mostly these arguments suggest that Manilius was “just??? a poet, completing ignoring or not understanding that poetry was, de facto, the vehicle for learning astronomy for Latin audiences, such as with the celebrated Aratus. They also argue that Manilius may have been an aberration from the broad tradition of Hellenistic astrology, or a one off, or someone who did not understand the tradition of astrology they were arguing for. Whilst it’s probable that Manilius was not a specialist in astrology in the manner that, say, Valens was, there is no reason to suggest he wasn’t capturing the ethos and technical apparatus of the astrology of his time. Just as Aratus did with astronomy very successfully despite not being considered a specialist in astronomy himself.

One of the most eminent scholars on Manilius, however, is Katharina Volk, and so I will end this with her viewpoint of Manilius and his faithfulness in describing the tradition of Hellenistic astrology at that time.

Manilius, too, is likely to have been not an original scientist, but rather, just like Aratus, and Nicander, a poeta doctus, ‘learned poet’—that is, a writer well educated and well versed in the various fields of knowledge of his day, especially, of course, in the ones that had a bearing on his subject. Such a learned amateur can be expected to reflect the mainstream culture of his time rather more faithfully than a specialist intent on innovation, and I am therefore, on the whole, rather optimistic about the possibility of viewing the Astronomica, for all its idiosyncrasies, as representative of its time.

References

Prudence Jones, Celestial and Terrestrial Orientation: The Origins of House Division in Ancient Cosmology, in History and Astrology: Clio and Urania Confer, ed. by Annabella Kitson, (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1989), pp.27-43
Katharina Volk, Manilius and His Intellectual Background, p.11

Hi Paul,

I fully agree that Manilius is a much underestimated source of information, at least in English speaking astrology circles. However, in German, we have the extensive research of Wolfgang Hübner at our disposal, who wrote various scholarly books centred on Manilius.

I further agree that there's little in the Astronomica to suggest that its author would have been a proponent of WSH.

Manilius may very well have had a system of quadrant houses in mind when he wrote his book, as you have shown with reference to different passages. However, the latter do not come without certain ambiguities. For instance here:

Paul wrote:In Book II, Manilius defines all the four angles which he described as:
‘four in all, they have positions in the firmament permanently fixed and receive in succession the speeding signs’

In other words the four angles are fixed and receive the Zodiac as it passes through them, and so, importantly, the Zodiac is imagined as separate from the angles.

Yes, Manilius must have been thinking of the Wheel of Houses as a circle that is separate from the Zodiac and, in some manner, fixed in space. The problem is that the four angles ASC, DSC, MC, and IC do not provide a statically fixed framework together. While the MC and IC indeed stay in place for any given location, ASC and DSC are constantly shifting back and forth across Due East and Due West, respectively.

A truly fixed Wheel of Houses would have to be attached to the Zodiac itself - not necessarily being identical with the latter, but "overlaid" with it (as you put it yourself). And the only house system that qualifies in this regard is actually EH.

A framework founded on the ASC/DSC and the Nonagesimal/counter-Nonagesimal axes would indeed be fixed and static in relation to the Zodiac. Thus, the signs would be constantly running through the houses - just as Manilius demands.

In Book I, Manilius defined the meridian as:
“starting from the northern pole, cuts the sky in the middle and divides the day into two, determines the sixth hour and beholds at equal distances sunrise and sunset???.

Notably the meridian here is described both spatially and temporally as the midpoint between sunrise and sunset, and this angle is demarcating the sixth seasonal hour, demonstrating that it was conceived of as a point, and not, say a Zodiac sign.

Again, Manilius seems to be giving us mixed messages here.

While the Meridian indeed marks the midpoint between sunrise and sunset temporally, it generally does not do this spatially.

A series of sample charts (for which May 6 2022, Bern, Switzerland was randomly chosen) may serve to demonstrate this (and I will try and be explicit enough in explaining them for the general reader to understand what on Earth we are talking about):



In this first one, we see the Sun rising at 6:13 a.m. It should be noted that, although he is on the Eastern horizon of course, his position is not Due East!



In the second chart, we see the Sun reaching the Meridian (i.e., the MC) approximately 7 1/4 hours later. Note that he does not "behold at equal distances sunrise and sunset???! He is equally distant from Due East and Due West - but that's not where he is rising and setting, except when he is at the equinoxes.



Our third chart shows the Sun setting another 7 1/4 hours later, which now demonstrates the MC demarcating the temporal midpoint between sunrise and sunset (minor inaccuracies that are owed to a couple of reasons that we don't need to go into here are negligible).



However, as the fourth chart shows us, it is the Nonagesimal or tenth Equal House cusp that represents the Sun's spatial midpoint between the positions of his rising and setting.

Manilius' repeated, apparently vague references to the 'Zenith' should perhaps be reevaluated in this light, for the Nonagesimal is indeed where the Zodiac approximates the Zenith most closely at any given time.

Last but not least, Manilius' description of the 11th House as ‘the temple which is separated by one intervening sign from the first sign rising at the culminating point’ - quoted by you above - might actually be in reference to the EH system after all.

All that being said, it seems quite obvious that Manilius sometimes talks about what is properly called the MC as well. The confusion between the two could simply suggest that he didn't have his astronomy down pat. A more likely explanation though may be that he was just not terribly concerned about drawing a clear line between the two in his poem.

A similar ambiguity regarding this can even be seen in such a rationalistic scientist like Ptolemy. After all, at the places astrology as we know it originated the difference between the MC and the Nonagesimal is much smaller than at more extreme latitudes (for Alexandria roughly 18 degrees at most, I believe).

So in this regard too, Manilius is quite in line with his contemporaries!

We should generally keep in mind that the ancients' way of thinking was syncretistic rather than analytical. I think that much of the current confusion regarding their texts is due to our attempt to apply today's rigorous academic standards where they are just not applicable.

And to anyone who may feel frustrated that those old astrological texts leave so much leeway for interpretation, I would suggest to take a good look at the alchemical writings from the old days...

Cheers

Michael

Michael Sternbach wrote: I fully agree that Manilius is a much underestimated source of information, at least in English speaking astrology circles. However, in German, we have the extensive research of Wolfgang Hübner at our disposal, who wrote various scholarly books centred on Manilius.

Oh that's interesting to note! Unfortunately I do not speak any German, but I would be grateful if you could post any little nuggets you find interesting with a translation.

The problem is that the four angles ASC, DSC, MC, and IC do not provide a statically fixed framework together. While the MC and IC indeed stay in place for any given location, ASC and DSC are constantly shifting back and forth across Due East and Due West, respectively.

I think this is worth deep-diving into because you've highlighted a problem that I've noticed not just in Manilius but also in several ancient astrological works. But then I started to notice it in contemporary ones as well. I actually originally thought, at one point, that Manilius may be defining Equal Houses and his focus on the meridian etc. was actually just that Manilius was not astronomically literate enough to separate the meridian-midheaven from the nonagesimal. I can see some echoes of that thinking in your post too, so that's worth exploring more I think. But also some unpacking I think.

You say that the MC ad IC "stay in place for any given location" but that the "Asc and Dsc are constantly shifting back and forth". In one sense you're correct. In another it's not. And I think this is often the problem, it really depends on what we mean by moving and what is our fixed reference point. In truth nothing is static truly, and the whole sky moves around us (or rather the earth rotates and the sky appears to move obviously).

But let's take the Asc Desc axis, as you note, it shifts left and right along the horizon were you to look toward it - in other words they shift north and south along the horizon.

But then if we take the horizon as our vantage point, the MC-IC also shifts. It doesn't shift left and right (north or south) but instead it shifts 'up' and 'down' - as in closer to the horizon or further from it. So whilst the MERIDIAN doesn't shift, the MC does - it rises and falls in altitude.

But if we etrapolate that thinking to the Asc-Desc we might actually find the same kind of logic at play. Whilst the Asc-Desc points shift, the 'arc' of the ascendant and descendant does not shift - just as the meridian doesn't shift which is the arc of the MC.

I hope that makes sense.

Now actually this taken in isolation may seem astronomically inaccurate. But actually actually I think it's consistent with Manilius's imagining of the cosmos.

Just a reminder, this is how he defined the 4 angles (p.145):
"Come now, prepare an attentive mind for learn­ ing the cardinal points: four in all, they have positions in the firmament permanently fixed and receive in succession the speeding signs."


So something is imagined as fixed. Well if we accept that he means fixed in relation to their arc, then it's clear that the MC moves along its arc, but is otherwise fixed. And the Asc-Desc shifts along its arc, but is likewise otherwise fixed. It's fixed in relation to the planets and signs which actually rise and move over the horizon (one arc) and moves to the meridian (another arc) and so on. So it's a relative version of fixity.

What is undeniable is that if he means really truly fixed as in does not move along the horizon, then the only four points that this would relate to are the East Point, West Point, North Point and South Point. Or to put it another way, the intersections of the Prime Vertical and the Horizon, plus the intersections of the Meridian with the Horizon.

It's possible he means that, but when he tells us that the zodiac is received we can safely preclude such a strict variation of what he means.

By context then, it's clear he means the four angles - ascendant, descendant, MC, IC.

Michael Sternbach wrote:

In Book I, Manilius defined the meridian as:
“starting from the northern pole, cuts the sky in the middle and divides the day into two, determines the sixth hour and beholds at equal distances sunrise and sunset???.

Notably the meridian here is described both spatially and temporally as the midpoint between sunrise and sunset, and this angle is demarcating the sixth seasonal hour, demonstrating that it was conceived of as a point, and not, say a Zodiac sign.

Again, Manilius seems to be giving us mixed messages here.

While the Meridian indeed marks the midpoint between sunrise and sunset temporally, it generally does not do this spatially.

...

All that being said, it seems quite obvious that Manilius sometimes talks about what is properly called the MC as well. The confusion between the two could simply suggest that he didn't have his astronomy down pat. A more likely explanation though may be that he was just not terribly concerned about drawing a clear line between the two in his poem.

I actually think that perhaps we are projecting something here into the text that is not what Manilius himself says.

All he says is that the MC is the midpoint, spatially of sunrise and sunset. Notice what he's not saying: he's *not* saying about the ascendant and the descendant for a snapshot of time. He's clearly talking about therefore an imagined line drawn between sunrise and sunset, spatially.

Well that's the diurnal arc.

And he is indeed correct that the MC is the midpoint spatially of the diurnal arc. It's also of course the midpoint in terms of seasonal hours.

I don't think this is a problem of his poetry nor that his astronomy is weak (though it may well be), in this case I think he's saying only that the MC is the midpoint of sunrise and sunset - nothing more than that. And if so, then it's the diurnal arc and that would seem a fitting enough way to describe the MC imo.

What do you think?

Paul wrote:

Michael Sternbach wrote: I fully agree that Manilius is a much underestimated source of information, at least in English speaking astrology circles. However, in German, we have the extensive research of Wolfgang Hübner at our disposal, who wrote various scholarly books centred on Manilius.

Oh that's interesting to note! Unfortunately I do not speak any German, but I would be grateful if you could post any little nuggets you find interesting with a translation.

Sure! I will remember your request when I come across some particularly interesting passages in Hübner's extensive work the next time. (Some of his books are constantly lying on my desk for quick reference.)

The problem is that the four angles ASC, DSC, MC, and IC do not provide a statically fixed framework together. While the MC and IC indeed stay in place for any given location, ASC and DSC are constantly shifting back and forth across Due East and Due West, respectively.

I think this is worth deep-diving into because you've highlighted a problem that I've noticed not just in Manilius but also in several ancient astrological works. But then I started to notice it in contemporary ones as well. I actually originally thought, at one point, that Manilius may be defining Equal Houses and his focus on the meridian etc. was actually just that Manilius was not astronomically literate enough to separate the meridian-midheaven from the nonagesimal. I can see some echoes of that thinking in your post too, so that's worth exploring more I think. But also some unpacking I think.

Yes - and again, I would emphasize that from the places our astrology came into existence, the difference between the Nonagesimal and the Midheaven would be much less obvious than from most of the locations that we are typically calculating our charts for today. A fact that may well have contributed to the ancient writers making some rather sweeping statements regarding the two - not to mention any subtleties possibly lost later in translation.

You say that the MC ad IC "stay in place for any given location" but that the "Asc and Dsc are constantly shifting back and forth". In one sense you're correct. In another it's not. And I think this is often the problem, it really depends on what we mean by moving and what is our fixed reference point. In truth nothing is static truly, and the whole sky moves around us (or rather the earth rotates and the sky appears to move obviously).

But let's take the Asc Desc axis, as you note, it shifts left and right along the horizon were you to look toward it - in other words they shift north and south along the horizon.

But then if we take the horizon as our vantage point, the MC-IC also shifts. It doesn't shift left and right (north or south) but instead it shifts 'up' and 'down' - as in closer to the horizon or further from it. So whilst the MERIDIAN doesn't shift, the MC does - it rises and falls in altitude.

But if we etrapolate that thinking to the Asc-Desc we might actually find the same kind of logic at play. Whilst the Asc-Desc points shift, the 'arc' of the ascendant and descendant does not shift - just as the meridian doesn't shift which is the arc of the MC.

I hope that makes sense.

Yes, it is properly speaking the Meridian, not the MC, that stays fixed in place. However, the 'vertical mobility' of the MC/IC is of no direct consequence to our charts, whereas the 'horizontal mobility' of the ASC/DESC is.

Ironically, our graphical representation of the sky on a two-dimensional plane might give us the impression that it is MC and IC that are laterally moving, while ASC and DESC stay put!

Now actually this taken in isolation may seem astronomically inaccurate. But actually actually I think it's consistent with Manilius's imagining of the cosmos.

Just a reminder, this is how he defined the 4 angles (p.145):
"Come now, prepare an attentive mind for learn­ ing the cardinal points: four in all, they have positions in the firmament permanently fixed and receive in succession the speeding signs."


So something is imagined as fixed. Well if we accept that he means fixed in relation to their arc, then it's clear that the MC moves along its arc, but is otherwise fixed. And the Asc-Desc shifts along its arc, but is likewise otherwise fixed. It's fixed in relation to the planets and signs which actually rise and move over the horizon (one arc) and moves to the meridian (another arc) and so on. So it's a relative version of fixity.

Alright, I can see now what you mean.

What is undeniable is that if he means really truly fixed as in does not move along the horizon, then the only four points that this would relate to are the East Point, West Point, North Point and South Point. Or to put it another way, the intersections of the Prime Vertical and the Horizon, plus the intersections of the Meridian with the Horizon.

It's possible he means that, but when he tells us that the zodiac is received we can safely preclude such a strict variation of what he means.

By context then, it's clear he means the four angles - ascendant, descendant, MC, IC.

Provided that Manilius was actually talking about that kind of "mobile fixity", this surely makes sense. Yours is an interesting interpretation, at any rate.

Paul wrote:

Michael Sternbach wrote:

In Book I, Manilius defined the meridian as:
“starting from the northern pole, cuts the sky in the middle and divides the day into two, determines the sixth hour and beholds at equal distances sunrise and sunset???.

Notably the meridian here is described both spatially and temporally as the midpoint between sunrise and sunset, and this angle is demarcating the sixth seasonal hour, demonstrating that it was conceived of as a point, and not, say a Zodiac sign.

Again, Manilius seems to be giving us mixed messages here.

While the Meridian indeed marks the midpoint between sunrise and sunset temporally, it generally does not do this spatially.

...

All that being said, it seems quite obvious that Manilius sometimes talks about what is properly called the MC as well. The confusion between the two could simply suggest that he didn't have his astronomy down pat. A more likely explanation though may be that he was just not terribly concerned about drawing a clear line between the two in his poem.

I actually think that perhaps we are projecting something here into the text that is not what Manilius himself says.

All he says is that the MC is the midpoint, spatially of sunrise and sunset. Notice what he's not saying: he's *not* saying about the ascendant and the descendant for a snapshot of time. He's clearly talking about therefore an imagined line drawn between sunrise and sunset, spatially.

Well that's the diurnal arc.

And he is indeed correct that the MC is the midpoint spatially of the diurnal arc. It's also of course the midpoint in terms of seasonal hours.

I don't think this is a problem of his poetry nor that his astronomy is weak (though it may well be), in this case I think he's saying only that the MC is the midpoint of sunrise and sunset - nothing more than that. And if so, then it's the diurnal arc and that would seem a fitting enough way to describe the MC imo.

What do you think?

Yes, that makes perfect sense.

I was thinking of the ASC/DESC axis as it spatially presents itself when the Sun reaches the Meridian when I was writing my post, however, taking into account the way that axis shifts in the course of the day makes it quite obvious that what Manilius was referring to here is the Sun's diurnal circle.

As the image below should help to illustrate, the Sun indeed rises and sets at places that are equidistant from the MC, regardless of his declination on any given day (again, I'm including this for the sake of the general reader).

Prof. Hübner hat den Artikel von Assistant Professor Dr. Martin Gansten als philologisch sauber und argumentativ plausibel bewertet.

https://brill.com/view/journals/ijdp/4/ ... html-copy1

Meine ursprüngliche Arbeitshypothese: ""Es gibt kein einziges historisches Dokument aus der Antike, das die Verwendung von Ganzzeichenhäusern geschichtswissenschaftlich belegt, weshalb es vertretbar ist, von der Nichtexistenz von Ganzzeichenhäusern in der antiken astrologischen Praxis auszugehen" fand er zu apodiktisch.
Er verwies auf Heph.1,1,3 und W. Hübner: Körper und Kosmos. Zur Ikonographie der zodiakalen Melothesie, Wiesbaden 2013 (Gratia. Tübinger Schriften zur Renaissanceforschung und Kulturwissenschaft. 49, hrsg. Joachim Knape, Reinhold F. Glei, Ulrich Pfisterer).
sowie
W. Hübner: Disiecti membra poetae. Neue Spuren des astrologischen Lehrdichters Dorotheos von Sidon, Stuttgart 2021 (Palingenesia. 127), besonders 21f. mit Tabelle.
sowie
W. Hübner: Raum, Zeit und soziales Rollenspiel der vier Kardinalpunkte in der antiken Katarchenhorokopie, München 2003 (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde. 194).
und
E. Cassirer: Die Begriffsform im mythischen Denken, Leipzig-Berlin 1922 (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg. 1; Ndr. in: Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, erste Auflage Darmstadt 1956; achte Auflage Darmstadt 1994=1998).
Und
E. Cassirer: Philosophie der symbolischen Formen II: Das mythische Denken, Berlin 1925 (sechste Auflage Darmstadt 1973).

Angesichts seiner Publikationen

Hübner, Die Dodekatropos des Manilius (Manil. 2, 856 - 970) (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur: Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse)

Manilius, "Astronomica" Buch V: Einführung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Commentare (SWC))

gehe ich davon aus, daß er seine Maniliusarbeiten argumentativ herangezogen hätte, wenn es dort Anhaltspunkte für die Verwendung von Ganzzeichenhäusern durch Manilius gegeben hätte.

Seiner Kritik "zu apodiktisch" folgend vertrete ich ja seitdem:

„Es gibt kein einziges historisches Dokument aus der Antike, das die vorrangige und systematisch bevorzugte Verwendung von Ganzzeichenhäusern geschichtswissenschaftlich belegt oder die Annahme einer bevorzugten Verwendung eines diesbezüglichen Ganzzeichen-Häuser-System in der antiken astrologischen Praxis rechtfertigen würde“.

https://www.skyscript.co.uk/forums/view ... hp?t=11947