The birthday of Rome (2)

Text
The Roman philosopher Tarutius used Chaldean methods in computing the birthday of Rome.

Plutarch, Romulus 12.3-5:
And in the times of Varro the philosopher, a Roman who was most deeply versed in history, there lived Tarutius, a companion of his, who, besides being a philosopher and a mathematician, had applied himself to the art of casting nativities, in order to indulge a speculative turn of mind, and was thought to excel in it. To this man Varro gave the problem of fixing the day and hour of the birth of Romulus, making his deductions from the conjunctions of events reported in the man’s life, just as the solutions of geometrical problems are derived; for the same science, he said, must be capable not only of foretelling a man’s life when the time of his birth is known, but also, from the given facts of his life, of hunting out the time of his birth. This task, then, Tarutius performed, and when he had taken a survey of the man’s experiences and achievements, and had brought together the time of his life, the manner of his death, and all such details, he very courageously and bravely declared that Romulus was conceived in his mother’s womb in the first year of the second Olympiad (= 772 BCE), in the month Choeac of the Egyptian calendar, on the twenty-third day, and in the third hour, when the sun was totally eclipsed; and that he was born in the month Thoth, on the twenty-first day, at sunrise; and that Rome was founded by him on the ninth day of the month Pharmuthi, between the second and third hour: for it is thought that a city’s fortune, as well as that of a man, has a decisive time, which may be known by the position of stars at its very origin.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Plutarch, Romulus 12.3-5

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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