Skip to main content

This paper presents a brief comparative analysis of the zodiacal melothesia which appears in Manilius’ epic Latin astrological poem Astronomica (20-40 CE) and in the Yavana Jātaka (transl. “Greek Horoscopy”) of Sphujidhvaja, the first Sanskrit horoscopy text (2nd-4th cent. CE). Melothesia refers to the arrangement of the 12-sign Babylonian zodiac on 12 regions of the human body which they govern. Earlier commentaries on the Astronomica, such as those by Bouché-LeClerq (1899) and Housman (1972), have characterized the melothesia as either a later interpolation into Manilius’ original text or as pedantic fluff included by Manilius without clear connection to the poem’s astrological content. Pingree’s Yavana Jātaka (YJ) commentary listed the many occurrences of melothesia in Classical texts, showing that the concept was widespread in antiquity, but did not explain its importance within astrology.

In this paper I show how Romans and Indians employed the same zodiacal melothesia for different purposes reflective of their own intellectual and cultural contexts. I suggest an interpretation that connects Manilius’ melothesia to Roman imperial ideology, and Sphujidhvaja’s to his Brahminical religious and philosophical setting. Manilius carefully incorporates the melothesia into his astronomical treatise by connecting it to the imagery and language of Augustan Rome. He uses melothesia to transform Hellenistic astrology into a uniquely Imperial Roman science that connected the cosmos with both the biological body of the emperor and the geographical expanse of the empire itself. Manilius’ claims that zodiacal influence over specific geographical regions accounts for physiological variations in people throughout the Roman Empire places melothesia in conversation with earlier Hippocratic and Vitruvian ideas of environmental determinism. This alludes to the development of astro-medicine.

I then briefly examine melothesia in the Yavana Jātaka. Pingree, the text’s first commentator and translator, originally suggested that it was a Sanskrit translation of a lost Alexandrian Greek text, but closer analysis suggests that it was a syncretic work by a poet knowledgeable in both Hellenistic and Sanskrit astral science (jyotiṣa), which itself was in use from the early 1st millennium BCE. In the opening stanzas of the YJ, the poet applies melothesia not to an emperor’s body, but rather to the body of the anthropomorphic Vedic creator god, Prajāpati, who was of prime importance in Indian sacrificial religion and metaphysics. The melothesia and zodiac governs all aspects of Indic life, from social status (varṇa) to physical health as outlined by Indian medical science (Ayurveda). Besides the melothesia and the zodiac themselves, few other Hellenistic features are included in the YJ.

Through this comparative study of the first known uses of melothesia in Rome and India, I show that even a seemingly straightforward case of intercultural intellectual exchange was a complex process. The existence of a Sanskrit text called the “Greek Horoscopy” does not prove direct, unaltered importation of intellectual traditions from the West to the East. Instead, it shows that Mediterranean and Indian scientific exchange was a complex syncretic process that required careful selection of foreign ideas, followed by their reconciliation with earlier scientific, religious, and cultural frameworks.