Ptolemy’s “Last of the River” was taken by his Arab and other
commentators to be the first-magnitude star which consequently they
named Achernar, but this was too far south to be visible at Alexandria,
though possibly he heard of it or saw it himself at Syene, where it
rose over the horizon in his times. Delambre thinks it is the same as
Fomalhaut, which already belongs to two other constellations in the
star catalogue; Brown suggests it was Theta Eridani, which may have
been brighter sixteen centuries ago. Perhaps it was the star we now
call Alpha in the Phoenix, for this lies between the last bend of the
River and the Water of Aquarius, and its magnitude is between first and
second. The stars of the Southern Cross are included by Ptolemy in the
stars about the hind feet of the Centaur, though it is difficult to
identify each one with certainty: the positions are not very accurately
given.
Ptolemy wrote also on Astrology, or as it was then called Judicial
Astronomy, and his work on the subject, which is in four books,
received the name of the _Tetrabiblios_. It seems that astrology was
not very much believed in by the Greeks, for he protests that the
influences of the stars are real, and can be known and predicted, but
allows that this part of astronomy is much more difficult than the
mathematical part, with which he had dealt in the _Syntax_, and that
it has not yet been perfected, and therefore it is sometimes slandered
as untrue. Astrologers sometimes make mistakes, like doctors, yet both
astrology and medicine are useful arts. He mentions especially the
Egyptians as practising it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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