Firmicus Maternus

fir-MIK-us mah-TER-nus

Definition

Julius Firmicus Maternus (active around 334–337 CE) was a Sicilian-born Roman senator and astrologer of the late imperial period. His eight-book Latin treatise *Matheseos Libri Octo* ("Eight Books on the Mathesis," usually just *Mathesis*) is the most extensive surviving Latin work of classical Hellenistic astrology. He later wrote a Christian polemic, *De errore profanarum religionum* (c. 346 CE), generally regarded as a separate work written after his conversion.

In Tradition

Both the Hellenistic-Latin and traditional-revival communities treat Firmicus as the chief Latin systematiser of the Greek astrological inheritance. His *Mathesis* preserves doctrines from Nechepso, Petosiris, Hermes, Abram, and Dorotheus that are now lost or only fragmentary in the surviving Greek tradition. Brennan, Holden, Crane, and Greenbaum all draw on the *Mathesis* as a primary source for late-Hellenistic Latin practice. The medieval Latin tradition rarely cited him by name, but inherited many of the doctrines he passed on.

In Practice

You can turn to Firmicus for several things. Books III–V give the longest surviving Latin treatment of birth-chart interpretation — how each planet reads in a house, and how aspects between planets combine. Book II carries the Latin version of the twelve houses, the dodekatropos, with their full Hellenistic meanings, and the surviving Latin account of antiscia and contra-antiscia (degree-points that mirror a planet across the solstice axis). Book IV handles the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit, two calculated chart points. Book VIII covers myriogenesis (meaning attached to single degrees) and the Sphaera Barbarica, the non-zodiacal constellations. The Latin original (public-domain) and the English translations by Bram (1975, copyrighted) and Holden (2011, copyrighted) are the standard working editions.

Historical Origin

Firmicus dates himself, in the *Mathesis* Preface and first book, to the consulships of Optatus and Paulinus (334 CE) and of Felicianus and Titianus (337 CE). The Latin *Mathesis* is public-domain. The standard English critical edition is Jean Rhys Bram's *Ancient Astrology Theory and Practice* (Noyes Press, 1975); James Holden published a competing AFA translation in 2011. Firmicus is identified as a man of Sidon by his own dedication and by Michael Italicus, and as Sicilian by Holden and Bram on the basis of internal evidence. The originals are public-domain; the modern translations are copyrighted.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading