Introduction: Horoscopes and History

Chapters in this book

1. i-iv i
2. Acknowledgements v
3. Contents vii
4. Introduction: Horoscopes and History 1
5. Part I: Horoscopes and the Public Sphere in Antiquity
6. Sulla’s Horoscope? (Firm. math. 6,31,1) 13
7. What Was Agrippina Waiting For? (Tacitus, Ann. XII, 68-69) 37
8. The Emperor Hadrian in the Horoscopes of Antigonus of Nicaea 49
9. The Possible Survival of Babylonian Astrology in the Fifth Century CE: A Discussion of Historical Sources 69
10. Part II: Medieval Astrology: Muslim and Jewish Discourse
11. Māshā’allāh’s Zoroastrian Historical Astrology 95
12. Circular Motions: Private Pleasure and Public Prognostication in the Nativities of the Mughal Emperor Akbar 101
13. The Horoscope of Iskandar Sultan as a Cosmological Vision in the Islamic World 115
14. Historical Horoscopes of Israel: Abraham bar Ḥiyya, Abraham ibn Ezra, and Yosef ben Eliezer 145
15. Part III: The Use of Horoscopes in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe
16. Various Uses of Horoscopes: Astrological Practices in Early Modern Europe 167
17. Reading Health in the Stars: Politics and Medical Astrology in Renaissance Milan 183
18. Evidence and Conjecture in Cardano’s Horoscope Collections 207
19. The Function of Horoscopes in Biographical Narrative: Cardano and After 225
20. J. W. A. Pfaff and the Rediscovery of Astrology in the Age of Romanticism 241
21. Epilogue
22. The Historiography of Astrology: A Diagnosis and a Prescription 261
23. Contributors 275
24. Index 279