Centiloquium

Definition

The *Centiloquium* ("Hundred Sayings"; also titled *Liber Fructus*, "Book of Fruit," and in Arabic *Kitāb al-Tamara*) is a collection of one hundred short astrological aphorisms. It was long attributed to Claudius Ptolemy and passed down in medieval Latin and Arabic manuscripts as a companion to his *Tetrabiblos*. Modern scholarship instead assigns the work to the early-10th-century Egyptian author Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf ibn Ibrāhīm; Plato of Tivoli translated it into Latin in 1136 CE.

In Tradition

The medieval Latin, Arabic, and modern traditional-revival communities all treat the *Centiloquium* as pseudo-Ptolemaic — not actually by Ptolemy — yet historically very influential. Bonatti, Sahl, and the wider medieval-Latin horary and electional tradition cite individual aphorisms as authoritative, naming them "verbum primum," "verbum decimum," and so on. Modern Hellenistic-revival scholarship treats the work as a 10th-century Arabic composition wearing Ptolemy's name, and reads it within the Arabic-medieval layer of transmission rather than the original Greek-Hellenistic one.

In Practice

You will most often meet the *Centiloquium* through its citations in Bonatti's *Liber Astronomiae*, Lilly's *Christian Astrology*, and the broader medieval-horary tradition. Particular aphorisms back well-established working rules: Verbum 5 on the Moon's leading role in answering a horary question; Verbum 38 on significators applying to or separating from each other — that is, moving toward or away from an exact aspect; and Verbum 100 on the limits of what astrology can predict. If you consult a modern edition, keep the false attribution in mind: the work's authority in the medieval tradition rested on its Ptolemaic name, while its actual content reflects later Arabic systematising.

Historical Origin

The Arabic original, *Kitāb al-Tamara*, dates to the early 10th century CE; Plato of Tivoli's Latin translation appeared in 1136. Both the Arabic and Latin originals are public-domain. The standard scholarly attribution of the work to Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf can be traced through Pingree and through Bonatti's own citations, as preserved in the lean-corpus extractions of *Liber Astronomiae*. James Holden's *A History of Horoscopic Astrology* (AFA, 2006, copyrighted-modern) and David Pingree's scholarship cover the transmission history.

Further Reading

• James H. Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology
• Guido Bonatti (trans. Robert Zoller / Robert Hand), Liber Astronomiae (Book of Astronomy, Project Hindsight)
• Nicholas Campion, A History of Western Astrology