Dorotheus of Sidon

Dorotheus of Sidon wrote in Greek verse in the first century CE. The poem is conventionally called the Carmen Astrologicum, and it is the most practical of the surviving Hellenistic handbooks: it tells an astrologer what to do, at length, where the Tetrabiblos argues about what astrology is ¹.

Twenty entries on this site lean on him, more than on any other single author. He has an entry for the same reason William Lilly does: the site was citing him constantly and had never said who he was.

The ranking of the twelve places, assembled

Dorotheus ranks the twelve places by strength. Each of this site’s twelve house entries cites that ranking for its own place, which means the ordering exists here twelve times and has never once been shown as an ordering. It is short:

1. The ascendant, first of all, ahead of the midheaven and every other place
2. The tenth, the midheaven
3. The eleventh, described as the opposite of the fifth
4. The fifth, the house of the child
5. The seventh, the sign of marriage, counterpart of the ascendant
6. The fourth, the cardine of the earth
7. The ninth, the last of those he counts as good

Below those, three places grouped as “not recognized as good”: the second, the third, which he calls the place of the joy of the Moon, and the eighth, the sign of death. Below those again, and worst of all twelve, the sixth and the twelfth ^{2 bk. I}.

Two things are visible only when the list is whole.

The four angles do not sweep the top. The ascendant and the midheaven take the first two positions, but the eleventh and the fifth come next, and the seventh and the fourth follow them: two non-angular places rank above two of the four angles. Any account of Hellenistic house doctrine that leads with the angles as the strong places has already lost this. See House Division.

The bottom of the list is a three-way distinction. Seven places are ranked individually, three are grouped as not good, and two are named worst. That is a coarser instrument at the bottom than at the top, and this site reports it that way.

Why so much of this site rests on a text whose Greek is lost

The Greek original does not survive. What survives is an Arabic rendering of a lost Middle Persian rendering of it, and the modern reader reaches it through a translation of that Arabic ². The chain is long enough that a natural first reaction is to trust it less than a text preserved in Greek.

The opposite is closer to right, for the specific use this site makes of it.

Eighth House is the sharpest instance: an ancient Greek technical text and this Arabic-transmitted one, not otherwise in contact, name the same place the place of death. Twelfth House is the same agreement about which place is weakest. Neither would carry any weight if both descended from the same copy.

The cost is equally real and is stated wherever it bites: a word in the Dykes translation is a translator’s choice about an Arabic word that renders a Middle Persian word that rendered a Greek word nobody has. This entry does not resolve that, and the frontmatter records it as open.

Where else he turns up

The Essential Dignity tables carry him in two places: the triplicity scheme with a participating ruler alongside the day and night lords, and the Egyptian-derived bounds he shares with the vulgate that reaches Lilly ^{2 bk. I}. Whole sign houses are the system his handbook assumes, which is one of the reasons this site’s chart tool defaults to it; see House Division. The distinction between day and night births that organises his whole treatment is at Sect.

He also travelled further east than any other author on this site. A work whose title is generally taken to render his name was translated into Chinese between 785 and 805, and the surviving comparison finds a text aligned with the Carmen rather than with Ptolemy. That story is told in full, with its uncertainties, at Eastward Transmission of Hellenistic Astral Material ^{3 pp. 105-08}.