Semitic paganism, how it transformed Persian Mazdaism
and even subdued the arrogance of the Egyptian sacerdotal caste.[3] Certain
mystical treatises ascribed to the old Pharaoh Nechepso and his confidant,
the priest Petosiris, nebulous and abstruse works that became, one might
say, the Bible of the new belief in the power of the stars, were translated
into Greek, undoubtedly in Alexandria, about the year 150 before our
era.[4] About the same time the Chaldean genethlialogy began to spread in
Italy, with regard to which Berosus, a priest of the god Baal, who came to
Babylon from the island of Cos, had previously succeeded in arousing the
curiosity of the Greeks. In 139 a praetor expelled the "Chaldaei" from Rome,
together with the Jews. But all the adherents of the Syrian goddess, of
whom there was quite a number in the Occident, were patrons and defenders
of these Oriental {164} prophets, and police measures were no more
successful in stopping the diffusion of their doctrines, than in the case
of the Asiatic mysteries. In the time of Pompey, the senator Nigidius
Figulus, who was an ardent occultist, expounded the barbarian uranography
in Latin. But the scholar whose authority contributed most to the final
acceptance of sidereal divination was a Syrian philosopher of encyclopedic
knowledge, Posidonius of Apamea, the teacher of Cicero.[5] The works of
that erudite and religious writer influenced the development of the entire
Roman theology more than anything else.

Under the empire, while the Semitic Baals and Mithra were triumphing,
astrology manifested its power everywhere. During that period everybody
bowed to it. The Caesars became its fervent devotees, frequently at the
expense of the ancient cults. Tiberius neglected the gods because he
believed only in fatalism,[6] and Otho, blindly confiding in the Oriental
seer, marched against Vitellius in spite of the baneful presages that
affrighted his official clergy.[7] The most earnest scholars, Ptolemy under
the Antonines for instance, expounded the principles of that
pseudo-science, and the very best minds received them. In fact, scarcely
anybody made a distinction between astronomy and its illegitimate sister.
Literature took up this new and difficult subject, and, as early as the
time of Augustus or Tiberius, Manilius, inspired by the sidereal fatalism,
endeavored to make poetry of that dry "mathematics," as Lucretius, his
forerunner, had done with the Epicurean atomism.