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In the eyes of Chaldean astronomers the planets and the fixed stars were the authors of all the phenomena of the universe, and nothing on earth is produced save in virtue of their combined activities. Sun, which rules the complicated play of their revolutions and aspects, will be the arbiter of destiny, the master of all nature. Placed at the centre of the great cosmic organism, it animates the whole of it, and both in scientific treatises and in mystic hymns men delighted to term it “the heart of the world” (kardia tou kosmou). Thus the bright star of day, set in the midst of the celestial spheres, by the power of its heat vivifies the immense macrocosm through which its fires radiate. Henceforth the sun will become the conductor of the cosmic harmony, the master of the four elements and the four seasons, the heavenly power which by the invariable changes of its annual course produces, nourishes, and destroys animals and plants, and by the alternation of day and night warms and cools, dries or moistens the earth and the atmosphere. The supreme regulator of the movements of the stars is the soverign divinity in sidereal religions which governs nature, as Pliny says, principale naturae regimen et numen (NH 2.4 (5)). The sun, which directs the harmonious movements of the cosmic organism, will then be a fire endowed with reason, an intelligent light (phōs noeron). It was regarded by theologians as the reason which controls the world, mens mundi et temperatio. The reason of the world will become the creator of the particular reason which directs the human microcosm and to whom is attributed the formation of the souls. Its glowing disk constantly sents particles of fire into the bodies which it called the life, and after death it caused them to re-ascend to it. This scientific theology provided both a foundation and a justification for Roman Sun-worship.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Pliny the Elder, Naturalia Historia 2.4 (5)
Bibliography
| Cumont 1912, 130-132 | 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. |
Amar Annus
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