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There were certain profound affinities between Stoicism and the Chaldean doctrines. Whether these did or did not contribute to the development of the ideas of Zeno of Cition (ca. 300 BCE), the founder of the Stoic movement, they offer a singular analogy to his pantheism, which represented ethereal Fire as the primordial principle and regarded the stars as the purest manifestation of its power. Stoicism conceived the world as a great organism, the “sympathetic” forces of which acted and reacted necessarily upon one another, and was bound in consequence to attribute a predominating influence to the celestial bodies, the greatest and the most powerful of all in nature and its Destiny (Heimarmenē), connected with the infinite succession of causes, readily agreed also with the determinism of the Chaldeans, founded upon the regularity of the sidereal movements.
The masters of the Stoic school were for the most part Orientals. Diogenes (ca. 240-150 BCE) and his follower Apollodorus ‘from the Tigris’ emerged from ‘Babylon’ or Seleukeia before any known philosophical school was founded there; and their successor Archedemus (second century BCE) set up a Stoic school in Babylonia. Chrysippus was from Tarsus in Cilicia, Antipater from Tyre and Posidonius (135-151 BCE) was from Apamea-on-Orontes, where the cult and oracle of Babylonian Bel flourished in the Roman period. We know too little of their theories to determine what place was held in them by the beliefs of the country of their origin or of their adoption. But given the fact that it was always the first care of this school to reconcile itself with established cults, it is a priori certain that Oriental star-worship did not remain foreign to its system. We only perceive the result of this movement of ideas which led to the entry of astrology and star-worship into the philosophy of Zeno. It is remarkable that the great astronomer Hipparchus, whose scientific theories are directly influenced by Chaldean learning, was also a convinced supporter of one of the leading doctrines of stellar religion. Pliny says (NH 2.24 (26)): “Hipparchus will never receive all the praise he deserves, since no one has better established the relationship between man and the stars, or shown more clearly that our souls are particles of heavenly fire.” In this passage we see affirmed as early as the second century before our era a conception, the development of which we can follow in the sidereal mysticism of the Roman period.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Pliny the Elder, Naturalia Historia, 2.24 (26)
Bibliography
| Cumont 1912, 69-71, 81-82 | Cumont, Franz. Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans. American Lectures on the History of Religions 8. New York, London: G. P. Putnam's Sons 1912. |
| Dalley 1998, 46 | Dalley, Stephanie. “Occasions and Opportunities.” In: S. Dalley (ed.). The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, 9-55. |
Amar Annus
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