Talk:Vettius Valens

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Vettius Valens birthplace, place of residence[edit]

A close reading of Mark Riley's translation of Vettius Valens Anthologies, with the assumption that the chart of February 9, 120 AD (which appears numerous times in the book) is that of Valens himself, then in Book 7, under shipwreck sailor no. 2, Valens gives his klima as 7, which is the north shore of the Black Sea, presumably in one of the Greek colonies. Where the "Antioch" tag came from is a mystery, as Antioch is on the southern coast of Turkey, near Syria.

In the same book (7) he gives the chart data, including ascendant, for an infant born February 4, 173, who lived 13 days. The klima was 6, which amounts to Sebastopol. At the time, Valens was just short of his 53rd birthday. As astrologers normally work with locals, a Greek colony in the area (klima 6), such as Hermonassa, is likely to have been his actual place of residence.

So it would appear that after years of travel, Valens eventually returned to his own back yard, so to speak. This makes it unlikely he associated with Ptolemy, or much of anyone else in Alexandria. Since he started out in the Black Sea, we may wonder if he ever made it into the Mediterranean.

I am presently preparing the Riley translation for publication. It will include all of Valens' charts.

Dave of Maryland (talk) 18:21, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am now studying Greek Horoscopes, the 1959 book by Neugebauer and van Hosen. Based on Systems A (Alexandria) and B (Babylon), they give a 7 klima system that starts with Alexandria (31 N) and ends at 44N30-ish. (Aside from Alexandria and Rome, the two authors do not give explicit degrees for their system.) Which only covers the Mediterranean. Using this limited klima system, the 13 day infant is born in Rome, since Rome seems to be the only significant city at klima 6 (42N), then or now. As there are a number of charts explicitly set at klima 6, using the Neugebauer-van Hosen system, I would presume the bulk of them to have been set in Rome and Valens himself to have lived there. But it is clearly not possible for the Greek Valens to have lived in Rome and not to have been well-known locally, nor does this explain his interest in Nero, who was reviled in Rome but loved elsewhere in the Empire. Antioch, which for some reason is associated with Valens, was, in this klima system, at 3.5. If Valens was a sailor in his youth and associated with sailors throughout his life (which seems likely), then at some point or other he will associate both with Crimean Greeks as well as those who sailed the Red Sea. Which would seem to confirm his use of the "Ptolemaic" klima system.

It seems simple to me to set up a water clock for the longest day of the year and actually measure its length for Valens' actual place of residence, wherever it was. (Are water clocks accurate? They are if you use three and average.) It also seems simple to speculate that he was in contact with other astrologers who could do the same in their town, but this does not tell us why errors went uncorrected. We know the Valens' rising times to have been wrong (wrong even for the narrow 14 degree klima band), but if we also consider that over the decades of his practice he would have come in contact with many people from beyond the Mediterranean who would not fit his klimas and rising times, then we have a double problem: Rising times that do not work, and people born from beyond the ends of the earth. Including well-known Greek colonies. Dave of Maryland (talk) 17:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]