The Week (Colson)/Chapter 4
In the second section it was shewn that the Jewish Sabbath had in the early years of our era obtained a curiously strong hold over a considerable portion of the population of the Empire and in particular that a belief had sprung up in some quarters that this Sabbath wasin reality a'Saturn's day,' in other words that the abstention from work practised thereon by the Jews was caused by their wish to avoid the influence of the dangerous planet Saturn. Two very different inferences might be plausibly drawn from these facts.
On the one hand it might be held that the popular reverence for the Sabbath was based entirely on this misconception and was nothing but a reverence for Saturn's day. The multitude, obsessed by the belief that the planets ruled on successive days, interpreted the Jewish observance in this sense, and called it Sabbath or Saturn's day very much at random. In this case the planetary feeling is the dominant factor and its coincidence with the Jewish observance is merely incidental.
On the other hand it may be suggested that the Jewish Sabbath is at the bottom of the whole thing. The Graeco-Roman world, it might be held, all agog for Oriental imported cults, seized upon Sabbath-keeping as one of especial note and having further somehow imbibed the belief that it was concerned with the planet Saturn, proceeded to build upon it a planetary system. Indeed it was fairly obvious that if a day consecrated to Saturn recurred every seventh day, the six intervening days would be assigned to the other six planets. Once constructed the theory would soon forget its Jewish origin and hold the world captive on its merits. This view, of course, assumes a comparatively late origin for the planetary week.
Neither of these views is to my mind satisfactory or on examination tenable, though both, particularly the second, may contain an element of truth.
My objection to the first rests on the fact that the allusions to the Sabbath, especially in the first century, are far more abundant than the allusions either to the planetary week as a whole or to Saturn's day in particular. The way in which Horace, Ovid, Seneca and later Juvenal and many other writers speak of the Jewish observance shews that in spite of certain misconceptions they thought of it as a definitely Jewish practice, not as a mere variation of a pagan superstition. Tibullus' words on one interpretation, as well as the other passages where the Sabbath is called Saturn's day with undoubted reference to the planetary week, can be set on the other side, but they are few in comparison. At the same time, there is, as I have said, a certain element of truth in this view. I have little doubt that the existence of the planetary week and the fact that the day on which the Jew abstained from work coincided with the day of the planet most adverse to enterprise promoted Sabbatarianism, and served to confirm many outsiders in the belief that it and Judaism in general deserved their respect and imitation.
The other view that the Jewish Sabbath was the parent of the planetary week cannot be set aside on merely chronological grounds, and it has this much on its side, that while the passages which bring the Sabbath and the planetary week into connexion with each other are a small proportion of those which speak of the Sabbath, they are a very large proportion of those which speak of the week. In fact, it may be said that, if we leave inscriptions and the like out of the question, a considerable majority of the literary allusions to the week are introduced by a mention of the Sabbath. This is the case with Tibullus (again adopting the usual interpretation of his words) and Frontinus[1]. It is the case with Justin, and I have already noted that with him the Sabbath or Saturn's day is the pivot of the week, and that from it the other days are measured. It is the case with the great passage in Dion Cassius. It may very possibly be also the case with Plutarch, for it is significant that his lost dialogue on the order of the planets in the week follows immediately on two others on 'Why the Jews refuse to eat pork,' and 'What is the God of the Jews?' We may fairly assume that, if planetary devotion, as I suggested above, often led to Sabbatarianism, it is still more true that the latter gave support or something more to the former. And I should be inclined to go further and suspect that among the more educated classes the Sabbath was for long a more familiar idea than the planetary week and that they regarded the latter as a semi-Jewish business. It is only by looking at that keystone of the whole subject, the order of the days, that we can assure ourselves that the planetary week had a quite independent origin. If it were nothing more than a pagan interpretation of the Jewish week, which assumed that the Sabbath was Saturn's day and then proceeded to fill up the other six, we should presumably find the planets in their normal order which, we should remember, was believed to be their real order. We should expect that the series would either adopt the Jewish view that Saturn ended the week and culminate with that planet or else ignoring this take Saturn's day as the first and work downwards. In the first case we should get a week running:
Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. In the second case the reverse of this. As we all know, we get something quite different from either, and here at last we must deal fully with this vital question, why the week-order of the planets is what it is.
The quotation from Dion Cassius, the first part of which was given on page 21, proceeds as follows:
I have heard two explanations given of the order…The first is as follows. Apply the harmony called Diapason which holds the supremagy in music to these stars among which the sphere of heaven is parted out, following the order in which they severally make their revolutions. Begin with the outermost circle which is ascribed to Saturn; pass over the two next and set down the name of the deity which presides over the fourth circle. Again pass over two more thus reaching the seventh: go in this same way round and round the circles and their presiding deities. Apply the names thus obtained to the days and you will find that on this musical principle they agree with the arrangement in which the heaven is ordered.
This explanation need not detain us. In fact, I doubt whether it is an explanation at all or anything more than a statement of the fact we have already noted that the week-order is obtained from the normal order of the planets by dropping two each time, with the addition that in this it follows the analogy of the Diapason. I pass on to his second explanation:
As it is all-important to grasp the meaning of this, I will risk incurring the charge of unnecessary repetition. If each hour in succession is assigned to a planet, taking them in the normal order, the 8th, the 15th and the 22nd will fall to the planet with which we begin. The 23rd will therefore belong to the 2nd planet on our list, the 24th to the 3rd, and the 1st of the next day to the 4th, so that, as we have seen is the case, to find the planet which begins the next day, we have always to drop two from that which began the day before. I append a diagram for two of the days.
| Saturday (hours) | |
| Saturn | 1st–8th–15th–22nd |
| Jupiter | 2nd–9th–16th–23rd |
| Mars | 3rd–10th–17th–24th |
| Sun | 4th–11th–18th |
| Venus | 5th-12th–19th |
| Mercury | 6th–13th–20th |
| Moon | 7th–14th–21st |
(Thus the 25th, i.e. the 1st of the next day, belongs to the Sun.)
| Sunday (hours) | |
| Saturn | 5th–12th–19th |
| Jupiter | 6th–13th–20th |
| Mars | 7th–14th–21st |
| Sun | 1st–8th–15th–22nd |
| Venus | 2nd–9th–16th–23rd |
| Mercury | 3rd–10th–17th–24th |
| Moon | 4th–11th–18th |
(Thus the 25th, i.e. the 1st of the next day, belongs to the Moon.)
Now I feel little or no doubt that this explanation is the right one, though it is true that earlier authorities have questioned it or suggested other explanations. Jensen[2], for instance, suggested that the week-order was determined by the metals and colours associated with the planets. Gold, he says, belonged to the Sun, silver to the Moon. These are the most valuable metals and come first. Of the colours red, the most highly esteemed, belongs to Mars, black, the least esteemed, to Saturn. This determined their place in the week-order. What the three intervening colours were he does not state. But Jensen does not seem to have known what to my mind is the overwhelming reason for accepting Dion's second explanation, namely, that it was on this theory that the astrological world based its practice. If we look through the seven volumes of Kroll's Catalogue of the Codices of Greek Astrologers, enumerating many hundreds of treatises, we shall find not unfrequently titles and occasionally more or less complete documents, which shew clearly that the week is mapped out in 168 hours, with different influences ascribed to them. The details, many of which are exceedingly fantastic, will be better left till we enquire what the week meant in fact for the general public, which so universally adopted it. But the general theory evidently is that while every hour is attributed to a planet, which is called its 'controller,'[3] the whole day is under the 'regent,'[4] which controls its first hour. These two influences modify each other. In the 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd hours of any given day the 'regent' and 'controller' are identical: in the others they are different. Thus to take 'Saturn's day' with which the series begins, in the four hours mentioned, the unlucky planet will be the sole influence and all our actions will be liable to misfortune. Jupiter and Venus, on the other hand, are beneficent, so these same hours on Thursday and Friday will be fortunate. But let us take the 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd on Saturday, or the 7th, 14th, 21st on Thursday. In the first case we have Saturn as 'regent' and Jupiter as 'controller': in the second case the reverse of this. The two planets will more or less neutralize each other, though, as the functions of 'regent' and 'controller' are not quite the same, the resultants will not be quite identical. In fact, in each day fate will have seven different possibilities for us, and as no day has the same regent as another, it follows that we shall have to master 49 different combinations of influences before we can regulate our weekly days with safety.
Of these astrologers the most valuable witness is one Vettius Valens, whose work has been edited in full by Kroll. His importance lies in the fact that he may most probably be dated as early as the middle of the second century A.D. This is to be inferred from the period within which he sets the dates which he takes as examples for astrological calculations. For instance, in his chapter on the week[5], he gives directions by which a person knowing the year and month and day of his birth may calculate on what day of the week it fell. The example he gives is what would be in our calendar 7th Feb. A.D. 119, and no date used in this way is later than 158[6]. Valens has exactly the same doctrine as described above about the 'regent' and the 'controller' of days and hours with an extension to the month and the year, which I shall have to discuss presently. Meanwhile it is worth noting that this hour-lore, though I do not believe it had any deep root in the popular imagination, lived on to the Middle Ages and was known to Chaucer. The scheme which regulates the hours and days of the week is given in detail in his Astrolabe. But its most striking appearance is in the Knight's Tale[7]. Palamon on Sunday night goes to pray in the temple of Venus 'at her hour,' which we are expressly told is two hours before sunrise, the day being still astrologically measured from sunrise to sunrise. In the third hour from this at sunrise Emily prays in the temple of Diana or the Moon, and Arcite visits Mars' temple at Mars' next hour from this. It will be easily seen that this quite agrees with the scheme. The 23rd hour of Sunday belongs to Venus; the first hour of the next day, Monday at sunrise, belongs to the Moon; and Arcite's hour of prayer was the fourth of Monday. It may be added that Palamon, who put himself under the guardianship of the beneficent Venus, is very appropriately victorious over the votary of the sinister Mars[8]. Valens as I said above extends this system of 'regent' and 'controller' to other measures of time. As the planet of the first hour determines the planet of the day, so that of the first hour (and therefore the first day) of the month determines that of the month and so again with the year. In 1926 we open with a Friday. Venus is therefore regent of the year and also of the months of January and October. In the 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd hours of the same and the 29th days of these months she is regent of hour, day, month and year, but only then. All through the rest of the year her sway is disputed by one, two or three planets. So Valens assures us, though he gives us no hints as to how we are to comport ourselves in the face of this plurality and indeed multitude of sovereigns. For there seems to be no reason why we should stop at the year and not provide a regent for the lustre, the decade, the century and the millennium. Even in the limited form in which Valens puts it, the thought is appalling; and it is no wonder that the popular imagination stopped short at the day and seems to have known little or nothing of regents of the month and year.
We now see the week in a somewhat different light. In the first place its unit is the hour not the day. In the second place, it is a link in a larger system of what are called 'chronocratories' or 'time sovereignties' of the planets. This extension of popular rather than scientific astrology deserves some consideration.
In scientific astrology—if I may be allowed to use such an epithet at all of such a pseudoscience—the influence of the planets is dependent on their relations to one another and the fixed stars. But the more popular view of astrology, having learnt to conceive of the Seven as the interpreters if not the lords of fate, naturally extended their powers to provinces with which their actual movements had nothing to do. Thus various countries were supposed to be under the domination of particular planets. So too with plants, animals and metals, and this last idea still survives in the name of Mercury given to quicksilver. When the idea is extended to time its most rational, or, at any rate, its least irrational application is to the stages of human life. That the seven ages of man should be thought to be each under the dominion of a planet was unavoidable. Thus we have Ptolemy's scheme (though it does not appear to be the only one) by which infancy is assigned to the Moon up to four years old, childhood to Mercury till 14, adolescence to Venus till 22, youth to the Sun till 41, full manhood to Mars till 56, early old age to Jupiter till 68, after which comes the reign of Saturn. This scheme, it will be observed, like our own chronocratory of the week in its original hour-form, follows the normal order of the planets, the only difference being that it goes up from the Moon to Saturn, instead of down from Saturn to the Moon.
When this idea of planet sovereignty is applied to time in general, it obviously labours under one difficulty from which the other varieties which I have mentioned are free. In the case of plants, animals or metals, when we have once made up our mind which belongs to which planet, our difficulties are at an end. Saturn presides over onions, donkeys and lead, we are told. Well and good! We know these objects when we see them and can act upon our knowledge. So too with the 'chronocratory' of human life. We all know when we reach the age of 68 and pass from the presidency of Jupiter to that of Saturn. But how are we to know what day or hour belongs to each planet? True, when the sequence is once under way, we can follow it automatically. Sunday follows Saturday and Monday Sunday to all eternity. But what starting-point had it, as the chronocratory of human life has the birth for its starting-point? On the assumption that the planetary week has come down unbroken from some remote or prehistoric antiquity, we could only answer that we cannot tell, an answer which in fact we must make with regard to the Jewish Sabbath. But on what is to my mind the more probable hypothesis, that the planetary week came into use a century or two before our era, we can see how a starting-point could be obtained. The astrologers who first conceived the idea of assigning hours in sequence to the planets had the Jewish precedent before them. On the theory that the Sabbath was really Saturn's day, it would be clear that the first hour of that day belonged to Saturn and the rest followed as a matter of course. There is also another possibility which I think should be mentioned, though I do not wish to lay much stress upon it. I have already said that Vettius Valens gives directions for finding the day of the week of any given day in any given year. I may now add that he takes as his basis the 'first year of Augustus,' and assumes that this began with a Sunday. Now we know from other sources that the reformed Egyptian calendar was dated from what is called the first year of Augustus, that is the year in which he entered Alexandria after his victory over Antony and Cleopatra. This entry actually took place on August 1st, 30 B.C., but as the Egyptian year begins with the month of Thoth, which almost coincides with our September, the Augustan era of Egypt was calculated from the 1st of Thoth 30 B.C. There has been some controversy as to whether this was August 30th or 31st. Mommsen (rightly, I believe) decided in favour of the latter, though he does not seem to have known the passage in Valens, which, I think, must decide the controversy finally. For any one who takes the trouble, and it is no more, to calculate[9], will find that August 31st in that year actually was what we call Sunday. Supposing then that the idea of the planetary week was first conceived in Egypt (and we have to remember that Dion says that it was) at a date later than 30 B.C., it would be natural that those who began the observance should take as their starting-point the first hour of their own era. They would still have to decide which planet should start it, and two answers might be given to this question. In one sense the natural starting-point of the week is either Saturn or the Moon, the two extremes of the series, and we have seen that in Dositheus' case and others it appears to be arranged from Saturn downwards. In another sense, however, the natural planet to lead is the Sun who, though his throne is situated in the middle of the Seven, is obviously king of them all. It is possible therefore that Egyptian astrologers may have assumed that their era began with the Sun and the rest would follow automatically. My objection to this solution, which I find in many ways tempting, is that it throws the origin of the week very late. It would be certainly impossible to square it with the ordinary interpretation of the passage in Tibullus, for it is inconceivable that a usage which began after 30 B.C. should in a very few years have obtained such a hold, that an Italian poet should not only know it, but utilize it in a poem which he intended to be understood by the general reader. But I have tried to shew that this ordinary interpretation 1s not the only possible one, and since if we rule it out we get no certain evidence of the week till a time approaching A.D. 79, I think this possibility of dating the week from Sunday, August 31st, 30 B.C. is just worth consideration[10]. It should, however, be remembered that, if it were accepted, we should still have to regard the coincidence of the Sabbath with the Saturn's day of the new 'chronocratory' as a confirmatory factor. If, on the other hand, we adopt my first suggestion that the precedent of the Sabbath was the one fact which gave the astrologers their starting-point, we could throw the date considerably earlier. In fact, so far as this goes, the planetary week might have originated at any time not earlier than the firm establishment of the Jewish Dispersion as a substantial factor in history, a point which in Egypt at any rate is as early as the fourth century B.C.
And here I may appropriately add what little I have to say about the further antiquity of the institution, a question, be it observed, distinct from that of the antiquity of the week in general, that is of a seven or eight-day cycle not governed by planetary associations. We find no trace of the planetary week earlier than Tibullus, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and I will not say that it is absolutely impossible that the sequence may have come down continuously from a remote age. But I believe that the supposition is improbable as well as unnecessary. In the first place there is nothing improbable in the view that the idea of a planetary chronocratory took shape not long before the time when we can first trace it. When we find a usage first coming to our knowledge in a certain period of history, we are justified in believing that it is a heritage from some remote past on two conditions. One is that we find a tradition that it comes from such earlier time. There is no trace of any such tradition in the case of the planetary week. On the contrary, the one statement which we have concerning its age, that of Dion Cassius, declares that it is recent. The other condition is that the usage shews signs of being a survival of ideas which have become obsolete. This condition is also wanting here. The planetary week clearly presupposes belief in astrology and in the planets in particular. But belief in the planets was not obsolete in the Roman Empire. On the contrary it was exceedingly vigorous, and there is not the slightest difficulty in supposing that the wave of astrological superstition which spread over the Mediterranean world, at a date which may be placed about 200 B.C., should have evolved the further idea that the planets presided in sequence over definite portions of time[11].
One misapprehension should be guarded against in this connexion. It is idle to deduce anything from the fact that reverence for or even worship of the planets is as old as the Babylonian records. That two of these, 'the greater light which rules the day, and the lesser light which rules the night,' should be the objects of awe and reverence to primitive man was inevitable, and when early observation discovered the fact that these moving bodies were not two but seven, the coincidence of this with the number of the stars in the Pleiades, the Great and Little Bear and other constellations may have done much, perhaps everything, to invest the number seven with special sanctity. But it does not in the least follow that because men recognize this they should proceed to map out time in perpetual sequences of planetary hours or days. Different nations have had their pantheons of it may be five or ten or any number of deities: they have not created weeks to represent them. Europe has for many centuries adored three Persons in the Godhead: it has not produced successive trinities of days. It has reverenced twelve apostles, but though the fact that there are twelve months in our calendar might easily have suggested the idea that each apostle should preside over each month in turn, this also has not been done. On the contrary, it seems to me that the instinct of men is towards intensiveness in these matters and that they feel they can best shew their reverence by concentrating it on special days which do not recur too frequently.
Hitherto we have been dealing with negative evidence, but there is one piece of positive evidence which goes far to shew that the observance of a planetary cycle is not a thing of immemorial antiquity. The hour sequence on which the day sequence of the week is founded, is, as we have seen, that of what we have called the normal order of the planets, running down from Saturn to the Moon with the Sun in the centre. The planetary week therefore both of day and hour can hardly be earlier than the date at which we find this order accepted. When was this? We have no clear evidence of it earlier than 200 or so B.C., but tradition in the first century A.D. ascribed the determination of this order to Pythagoras[12]. Even if this is correct, we still have no really ancient date, for Pythagoras belongs to the sixth century B.C. But we have to set against this tradition the fact that Plato who had strong sympathy with Pythagoras' teaching does not observe this order, as he places the Sun in the sixth and not the fourth place of the Seven. It is more important to observe that a different order is stated to be found in Babylonian and Egyptian records[13]. Here then we have something more than negative evidence: for it is difficult to believe that in Egypt and Chaldaea there were two theories current of the planetary order; one powerful enough to create a time-cycle, but leaving no impression that has survived in the monuments, the other recorded in the monuments, but evidently having no relation to the week. This is a very strong argument, and to my mind so far conclusive, that the theory of the later origin of the week must hold the field, unless or until some evidence to rebut it is discovered in the monuments of the far past.
If this view is accepted, the much discussed question whether the original home of the institution was Egypt or Chaldaea becomes almost meaningless. The week belongs to the international astrology of the world whose centre was Rome. It is Chaldaean in so far, but only so far, as all astrology was or was held to be Chaldaean, If indeed we could place its origin so late as the Augustan era of Egypt, we might call it Egyptian. But this view, though I have stated it for consideration, seems to me improbable. No one in fact knew in Dion Cassius' time, any more than anyone knows now, where the week began. It is the fruit of a movement not of a country. We may safely say that, so far as the Empire is concerned, it spread from east to west, not from west to east, but nothing more.
Before I leave this subject of the antiquity of the planetary week, I would repeat a little more fully of the planetary type what I said of the week in general—that the question of antiquity has little to do with the problem before us. That problem is how and why did the week diffuse itself through the Roman Empire in countries which had certainly for the most part known nothing of it. As I have said, the nature of the evidence which reveals its existence to us strongly suggests that it was a movement of the masses, and the masses when they embrace a novelty do not ask whether it is ancient, or at any rate genuinely ancient. If by any chance they want antiquity, it can easily be invented. In fact, the week time-cycle for our purpose was new, a new development if not a new creation.
I have necessarily had to make this considerable digression from the primary subject of this section, the relation of the Jewish to the other type of week, and to this I now return. The fact that the planetary type is properly one of hours rather than days and that it is part of a general system of time sovereignties makes it impossible to my mind to look on it as a mere variation of the Jewish or Sabbatical type. The ideas at the bottom of the two are radically different. Yet I have no doubt that they are closely intertwined. Apart from my suggestion that the Sabbath afforded a starting-point for the planetary series, it was natural that astrologers imbued with the idea that the Sabbath was Saturn's day should think of the Jewish week as a variation of their own. We have an incidental sign of this in Valens himself. He has two names for 'week day.' One is 'Hebdomad,' a word which can mean either 'seven' or the 'seventh' in a series; the other is Sabbatic-day. As I have already suggested Sabbatarianism and Planetism must have supported and reacted on each other, and not' only must we suppose that proselytes to Judaism entered with planetary associations of which they did not easily rid themselves, but it is possible that planetary conceptions of the week, which are certainly to be found in later Rabbinic literature, had already begun to influence the Jews themselves. Whether we can find any trace of the kind in the early Christian Church will be the subject of the sixth section.
- ↑ V. p. 16.
- ↑ V. Zeitschrift für Deutsche Wortforschung, 1901, p. 157. For full discussion of the earlier theories put forward notably by Scaliger (it is only right to add that this prince of scholars was well acquainted with Dion Cassius' explanations and rejected them) v. Hare in the article mentioned in the preface.
- ↑ διέπων.
- ↑ πολεύων.
- ↑ p. 26, Kroll's edition.
- ↑ On p. 33, there is an enumeration of the years of each Emperor down to Philippus, A.D. 248. But this passage is only found in one MS, and is regarded by Kroll as spurious (Pref. p. vi).
- ↑ Lines 2217, 2273, 2367.
- ↑ I have also come across the theory of the planetary hours in Roger Bacon's Computus (ch. II) (a century or so before Chaucer). I have no doubt that research would discover many links between them and the early astrologers.
- ↑ Those who have no access to chronological tables like those of Sir H. Nicholas or Mr J. J. Bond, and are unfamiliar with such calculations, may find the matter simplified by remembering that January 1st, A.D. 1 fell on Saturday, and also that in the Julian calendar the days of the week recur on the same days of the year after 28 years. Thus January 1st in 28 B.C. was Saturday, and as 29 B.C. was a leap-year January 1st in 30 B.C. was Wednesday. A few minutes' calculation, if a calendar is not at hand, will of course give the rest.
- ↑ It is an argument of some weight against this and indeed against Dion's theory of the Egyptian origin of the planetary week that the Alexandrian Jew Philo (c. 25 B.C.–A.D. 50) never mentions the planetary days or hours. This is not an ordinary case of negative evidence, for Philo several times and particularly in a special treatise on the number seven (de septenario) ransacks the universe for examples of the predominance of the sacred number. He certainly means to be exhaustive. But while of course he dwells both on the number of the planets and of the days of the week, he never brings the two into connexion. The fact is odd anyhow, but it would be odder still if the system was pre-eminently Egyptian.
- ↑ I should add that the evidence which Rawlinson adduced from the walls of Ecbatana, as described by Herodotus I, 98, and the existing ruins of the temple at Borsippa, is now generally discarded. The idea was that the order of the colours was that of the planets in week-order. The order at Ecbatana is definitely not week-order, and that at Borsippa is quite uncertain. V. Jensen in Zeitschrift für Deutsche Wortforschung, 1901, pp. 157, 158.
- ↑ Pliny, Naturalis Historia, II, 84.
- ↑ V. Boll on Hebdomad in Pauly-Wissowa, p. 2567; Cumont, Astrology and Religion, p. 163. I must remind the reader that this is a point on which I must accept the best authority I can get.