#heliodora

"The inscription is disposed in four lines, three of which were cut in the uncarved register left below the relief register, and the fourth, with one word, cut into what should have been the unfinished lower edge of the stele. It reads:

“Heliodora, astrologer, chaste, without reproach, virgin, brother-loving, about 52 years old. Be of good courage.”

So far as we are aware, this is the first known instance of a woman in the Greco Roman world being designated an astrologer. What does it imply for her knowledge and education? Whether woman or man, an astrologer needed three kinds of knowledge. The first kind had as its nucleus the fundamental facts recorded in a client’s horoscope—namely, the locations in the zodiac of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury on the client’s birthdate. Also required was the horoskopos or “ascendant,” the point of the zodiac that was rising at the moment of birth, and often the mesouranema or “midheaven,” the point that was crossing the meridian above the horizon.

Heliodora's funerary stele, found at Therenouthis, Egypt. Second to third century.

From this set of eight or nine indispensable astronomical facts were derived a larger set of astrological facts, which the astrologer could list in a written horoscopic document or display for the client using markers such as engraved gems on a board representing the zodiac and its subdivisions. One category of derived astrological data were kleroi, “lots,” which were points of the ecliptic calculated arithmetically from some combination of the astronomical data. The signs occupied by the Sun, Moon, and planets were also subdivided into smaller astrologically significant sections called “decans” and “terms” (horia), and into single degrees. Each of these subdivisions as well as the entire sign had one of the heavenly bodies as its astrological lord, which endows the relevant part of the zodiac with its own supposed powers. Lastly, situations were noted in which two or more heavenly bodies occupied a pair of signs at intervals corresponding to a diameter or to the sides of an equilateral triangle, square, or hexagon, called schemata,“aspects”.

The second kind of knowledge concerned the potential significances of each of these diverse facts and their combinations for those individuals whose horoscopes exhibited them. This was the main subject matter of astrological handbooks, and it constituted a vast repertoire of information, too big for most people to commit to memory, so a typical astrologer would have required at least a modest library. This, however, provided only the raw material for the third kind of knowledge: that of how to put together a coherent narrative of individualized diagnosis and interpretation to deliver to the client.

Heliodora demonstrates that it was possible for a woman in Roman Egypt to have this education; but in what circumstances and how readily we cannot tell. Among divinatory traditions, astrology claimed a particularly intellectual status, and we know of several female scholars who worked in the mathematical sciences and allied parts of philosophy. These include the Pythagorean Ptolemais of Cyrene (date uncertain, not later than the third century) who wrote on music theory, the mathematics teacher Pandrosion who was a contemporary of Pappus of Alexandria (c. 320), and of course Hypatia (died 415) who wrote commentaries on mathematical and astronomical works. The circumstance that Hypatia’s father Theon of Alexandria (c. 360) was a prolific commentator in precisely the same fields suggests the possibility that Heliodora could have belonged to a family of astrologers and studied with a parent-teacher. We are so ignorant, however, about the composition of the astrological community outside of the tiny elite named in historical sources that it would be rash to presume that this was the only path for a woman to become an astrologer, or indeed that a female astrologer was an extreme rarity."