The astronomer Claudius Ptolemy lived from roughly one hundred-one hundred seventy CE. Very little is thought of him, including where he was born. Claudius means citizen of Rome, whereas Ptolemy means resident of Egypt. Some sources indicate that he was a citizen of Rome, others that he lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
He was additionally a mathematician, geographer and astrologer. In a approach, he was to his era what Leonardo da Vinci was to the Renaissance. While a lot of Claudius Ptolemy’s work has been refuted, his treatises on astronomy, astrology, geography and music had been the foundations from which subsequent scientists built their theories.
The Ptolemaic system of the universe grew to become the dominant cosmological model for centuries thereafter, and was not displaced until the seventeenth century by Kepler and Copernicus.
Modern astrologers think about Ptolemy because the author of one of many oldest complete manuals of astrology, - the Tetrabiblos (Greek) that means Four Books. Though we all know Ptolemy did not invent his methods of astrology we recognize his contribution as being one in all orchestrating the mass of Jap star lore into an organized and reasoned exposition. The Tetrabiblos provided a detailed rationalization of the philosophical framework of astrology, enabling its practitioners to reply critics on scientific as well as non secular grounds.
As a leading intellectual of his day, Ptolemy's patronage and approval of astrology added to its academic respectability. By preserving its credibility as a science as well as an art, he safeguarded its practice in the course of the medieval period when many other occult studies had been persecuted on non secular grounds. He spoke of astrology with authority and lucidity, establishing the Tetrabiblos because the definitive reference for astrological students. It was used extensively by Arabic scholars, who regarded Ptolemy as the final phrase on the subject, and later by European ones when it was translated back into Latin within the twelfth century.
