Astrology came to the West through the influence of Babylon and Persia in the 4th century BC. Its arrival was accompanied by an increasingly fatalistic view of life. The world was viewed as a series of gears and cogs moved by the eternal procession of the stars. This feeling would become so entrenched in the late Roman Empire that it was said of the emperor Tiberius that he “stopped praying homage to the gods because everything was already written in the stars.” 1Pelikan 1971, 281
Astrology came to the West through the influence of Babylon and Persia in the 4th century BC. Its arrival was accompanied by an increasingly fatalistic view of life. The world was viewed as a series of gears and cogs moved by the eternal procession of the stars. This feeling would become so entrenched in the late Roman Empire that it was said of the emperor Tiberius that he “stopped praying homage to the gods because everything was already written in the stars.” 1Pelikan 1971, 281