Theōn hemerai: astrology, the planetary week, and the cult of the seven planets in the Graeco-Roman world

This paper looks at the concurrent spread of astrology and the seven-day planetary week in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean from the last century BCE through Late Antiquity. During this period astrology became increasingly pervasive in all aspects of life and among members of all levels of society. Astrology was not only a system of divination claiming to predict the future by observing the stars: it implied a religious conception of the world, its starting point being the faith in celestial divinities that were thought to exert an influence on the world. The Sun, the Moon, the planets, and other astral phenomena were understood as divine powers affecting the life and fate of human beings. In the planetary week, each day was named after one of the seven non-fixed heavenly bodies of the universe, as it was known in antiquity: Saturn (Saturday), Sun (Sunday), Moon (Monday), Mars (Tuesday), Mercury (Wednesday), Jupiter (Thursday), and Venus (Friday). In turn, the five planets and the two luminaries (the Sun and the Moon) had been named after Greco-Roman gods and goddesses and were themselves regarded as celestial deities, following the near eastern tradition that identified the heavenly bodies with specific divinities. This chapter argues that the growing familiarity, from early imperial times onwards, with astrological concepts and practices along with the use of the seven-day planetary week as a means for measuring time, contributed to the diffusion of astral beliefs and the cult of the seven planets as week deities in the Graeco-Roman world during the imperial and late antique periods

New light on five Latin inscriptions of the later imperial period, with special reference to their dating formulae

This article consists of a series of comments, revisions, and new readings of five Latin epigraphic documents dating approximately from the third to the sixth century CE. Four inscriptions come from different areas of Italy (Rome, Ascoli Piceno, and Folloni di Montella, near Avellino) and one comes from Spain (Villadecanes, region of Léon). The common denominator between these assorted inscriptions (one votive inscription and four epitaphs) is the presence of a more or less articulated dating formula within their texts, on which my comments, revisions, and new readings primarily –although not exclusively– focus

Thursday (dies Iovis) in the Later Roman Empire

This paper discusses two scanty but complex groups of sources which seem to suggest that Thursday (dies Iovis, that is, Jupiter’s Day in the Roman planetary seven-day week) was a day of rest in honour of Jupiter during the later imperial period: a number of ecclesiastical texts from late antique Gaul and Galicia, and three documentary papyri from Oxyrhynchus. The former imply that an unofficial observance of Jupiter’s Day, as opposed to the Christian Lord’s Day (Sunday), persisted among the populace despite Church opposition to such deviant behaviour. The latter hint at Thursday being a non-working day for official bureaux during the third and early fourth centuries, before the formalisation of Sunday as an official day of rest by Constantine in 321. The paper concludes with reflections on the idea that during the later imperial period –as the use of the planetary week became increasingly popular– Thursday became the most important and sacred day in the Roman seven-day week by reason of being the day dedicated to the chief god of the Roman pantheon and, at the same time, the day associated to the astrologically favourable planet that had been named after Jupiter. If Thursday was ever a day of rest recurring on a hebdomadal basis during the later Roman Empire, it was presumably the Judeo-Christian tradition of the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day that provided pagans with the notion of a weekly feast day