Vettius Valens

VET-ee-uhs VAY-lenz

Definition

Vettius Valens of Antioch (born 120 CE, working c. 145–175 CE) was a Greek-speaking astrologer who practised and taught in Alexandria. The book he left behind, the *Anthologiae* (the *Anthology*), is a nine-book handbook of astrological technique. Its standard Greek critical edition is David Pingree's 1986 Leipzig Teubner text. His name in Greek is Οὐέττιος Οὐάλης.

In Tradition

Valens stands, with Ptolemy, as one of the two fullest surviving voices of Greek astrology — and where Ptolemy keeps things spare, Valens is the one who hands down a large share of the period's working technique. Much of what astrologers know about how Hellenistic practice actually ran, they know because Valens wrote it down.

In Practice

Astrologers in the Hellenistic revival lean on Valens for techniques that survive nowhere else as clearly: profections (advancing the chart one sign a year) and the Lord of the Year they hand you, and zodiacal releasing — a timing method — starting from the Lot of Spirit or the Lot of Fortune. He also worked through real charts: over a hundred birth charts survive in the *Anthology*, and the one that recurs most is probably his own. Valens matters, too, whenever a technique's origin is disputed, since he records material — such as the quadrant house system later named for Porphyry — that he himself credits to earlier writers.

Historical Origin

Valens' own dates can be worked out from the chart examples inside the *Anthology*. The book was translated into Middle Persian in the third century and then into Arabic, joining the Perso-Arabic line of transmission. It came back into European view through nineteenth- and twentieth-century classical scholarship (Kroll, Weidmann 1908; Pingree, Teubner 1986), before becoming central to the late-twentieth-century Hellenistic revival.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading