The Anthology

About this book

Vettius Valens was an astrologer who lived in Alexandria, Egypt in the middle of the second century. His Anthology is a collection of instructional texts on astrology that he wrote for his students in Greek. The Anthology is the single most important surviving source for understanding what the practice of astrology was like in ancient times, because Valens included more than one hundred examples in order to demonstrate how birth charts were interpreted in antiquity. This publication marks the first time that the entirety of the Anthology has ever been translated into English. Mark T. Riley is a retired Classics professor who taught at California State University, in Sacramento. He spent a period of his career studying the surviving works of Greco-Roman astrologers, and authored several academic papers on Claudius Ptolemy and Vettius Valens. This book includes a full translation of all 9 surviving books of the Anthology, along with diagrams inserted into the text to help visualize each of Valens' chart examples. The book also includes an extensive survey by Mark Riley of what is known about Valens' life and work, as well as a foreword by Chris Brennan.