Astrologers and Occultists in the Courts of Rome and Han

This paper is an attempt to comprehend the function and impact of occultism in the form of astrology on ancient society, specifically in terms of its relationship with political culture, by comparing the relationship between the ruling class and occultists in the Early to Middle Roman Empire (1st c. BCE – 3rd c. CE) and the Han Dynasty (3rd c. BCE – 3rd c. CE) from the beginning of each empire to its zenith. “Occultist,” as discussed in this paper, is an umbrella term for persons who worked with “supernatural” forces, such as diviners, astrologers, magicians, etc. On the Roman side, much has been done to evaluate the role of magic and the occult across their wider society and define terms of discourse (Dickie 2001; Horstmanshoff 2009; Meggitt 2013), and recently much has been done to examine the complex relationship of “magic” and religion (Wendt 2016). This paper expands on this earlier work and conducts a comparative analysis focused on astrologers in the Roman Empire and fangshi 方士 in the Han Dynasty, since these two groups had close ties to the ruling class in their respective political cultures, and much work has been done on the topic among Sinologists as well (DeWoskin 1985, Puett 2002; Cai 2014). Astrologers in the Roman Empire interpreted the physical connection between stars, planets, and other celestial bodies and divisions of the sky based on the theory that these relationships had significance for events on Earth (Campion, 2019). Fangshi of the Han Empire made similar claims of skill in celestial interpretation, but went further and claimed they could converse with spirits, brew elixirs of immortality, and read dreams and omens (Li 1995). By collecting and analyzing transmitted historical texts (including but not limited to Tacitus’ Annales for Thrasyllus of Mendes, Cicero’s Timaeus and Lucan’s Bellum Civile for Nigidius Figulus, and Sima Qian’s Shiji for Liu An 劉安 and Jiang Chong 江充), this paper identifies occultists and their role in the larger political structure and society. In studying the topic, this paper engages the issue of who should or should not be considered an “occultist.” By reexamining the modern understanding and discourse around occulists such Roman astrologers and Han fangshi, this paper seeks to determine the extent to which occultism was intertwined with these two distinctive political cultures, and the unique ways each culture handled that relationship. This paper also examines how the elite classes of the Roman and Han empires often overlapped with occultists in a fluid relationship, such that the two groups cannot be rigidly split into separated groups.