My dissertation titled “Melothesia in Rome and India: ancient intercultural conversations in religion, technical science, and medicine” explores the interactions between ancient Mediterranean (i.e., Greek and Roman) and Indian astral and medical sciences to better understand the movement of scientific ideas throughout the ancient world. Through this work I hope to present a more nuanced discussion of ancient scientific exchange between these cultures. I attempt to do this by examining the melothesia theory, a Greek term referring to the arrangement (thesis) of the 12 Zodiac signs on limbs (melos) of the human body. According to this theory, Aries governs the head down to Pisces which governs the feet. There are numerous associations made between the characteristics and qualities attributed to these signs such as the peoples, places, and objects they govern in the heavens and on Earth. This particular systematic organization of the micro- and macrocosm first appeared in two ancient texts that I am examining and remained part of Western medical practices well into the Victorian era (19th century CE).

The melothesia first appears in the Astronomica, an astrological treatise and epic poem written around 20 CE by the Imperial Roman poet Manilius. Over the past century, most scholarly commentaries on the Astronomica have dismissed the melothesia as peripheral to the poem’s main content since it does not directly aid in calculating a horoscope birth chart. However, by contextualizing the two melothesia passages within the larger text of the Astronomica, I find that it was not included on an erudite whim, but rather that it served a function in Manilius’ conceptualization of astrology as a science that provided a narrative of cosmic unity to the recently formed, expansive, and ethnically diverse Roman Empire.

Astrology had been part of Greek and Roman culture since the 4th century BCE, but only in the end of the 1st century BCE did it become part of mainstream Roman Imperial propaganda. Manilius’ poem is the first comprehensive literary treatment of the subject in the Classical world. Earlier scholarship on Manilius emphasized the first Roman Emperor Augustus’ use of astrology as political propaganda to bolster his claims of being a cosmically-ordained ruler. I focus instead on how we might connect Manilius’ use of melothesia to the concept of a larger “body of empire” referring both to the Roman Emperor’s physical body and the bodies of land under Roman imperial rule. Manilius relates geographical regions to each zodiac sign, opening his poem for analysis alongside ancient ethnographic and medical texts that engage with the theory of Environmental Determinism. This theory states that one’s geographical origin determines their physiology and psychology. Manilius seems to suggest that the zodiac ultimately determines both geographical and biological characteristics due to the influences of the 12 signs. Though Manilius does not directly address melothesia’s medical applications, a century later, the Roman doctor Galen’s works show that astral-medicine competed with empirical medical care.

What makes the melothesia even more interesting, however, is that it appears approximately two centuries later in a Sanskrit astral science treatise, the Yavana Jātaka (YJ) often translated “Greek Horoscopy.” The author, Sphujidhvaja, begins this text by applying the melothesia to the body of the ancient cosmic creator deity Prajāpati who played a central role in Indian religion from the Vedic period (~1500 BCE) onward. It is his body that is famously ritually sacrificed in the Rig Veda to give rise to the four social classes of ancient Indian society. The YJ is the first Sanskrit text to incorporate the 12 Babylonian zodiacal signs into the Indian astral sciences (which date back to 650 BCE) and they remained important afterwards. Sphujidhvaja contextualizes this Mediterranean idea into the Indian scientific, religious, legal, social, medical, and soteriological frameworks of his time. My reading of this text contradicts the previous scholarship that claimed Sphujidhvaja visited ancient Alexandria and translated a lost, Greek original text. My analysis shows that he did not - and could not - simply take a foreign idea and insert it into the highly complex Indian scientific system. As a result, I show the importance of recognizing that technical scientific knowledge often underwent linguistic and cultural translation to interface and integrate with other systems of knowledge.

My dissertation engages with melothesia as an analytical nexus for both an intercultural comparative study and a detailed analysis of the first use of melothesia within these traditions. To do this, I explore melothesia from three broad thematic categories: medicine, religion, and astral science. Within the analytical category of medicine, I undertake a comparative study of the body in Greco-Roman and Sanskritic textual traditions by drawing on both modern embodiment theory and ancient medical conceptualizations of the body according to Greek Hippocratic and Indian Ayurvedic medicine. I explore the body as a locus of Time and Temporality in both traditions and also discuss issues of race, ethnicity, and social class.

Second, under the category of Religion, I take up religious metaphysics, meaning the study of the complex networks of connections between celestial and Earthly entities and phenomena that were established early on by religious traditions and upon which astrological science developed in both Rome and India. These were haruspicy, augury, and omens in ancient Rome and the performance of the yajña fire rituals in ancient India. I also discuss philosophical frameworks (e.g. Sāṃkhya philosophy) which were gaining importance and competing with other religious groups like the Buddhists and Jains. This section also examines the use of astrological amulets and gemstones, which were used for both healing and protective purposes that were related to these systems of religious practices.

Finally, I look at the significance of melothesia as a particular instance of intercultural exchange within the broader histories of the astral sciences in the ancient Mediterranean and India. I take up a discussion of the development of astral sciences in antiquity and the role of intercultural exchange in their development. This also involves examining ancient astrology’s development in relation to other scientific fields like geography, cartography, and architecture. Then, shifting to the modern discourse on the history of this science, I re-evaluate claims made in 19th and 20th century scholarship on the history of intellectual exchange between ancient India and the Classical Mediterranean to de-Orientalize and de-Colonize the academic discourse on the ancient sciences. Many scholarly narratives suggest a unidirectional flow of scientific knowledge and methods from the Hellenistic West to the East. This mischaracterizes Indian scientific traditions as being incapable of understanding complexities of science simply because they differed in their investigative methodologies and motives for studying the natural world. That non-Classical cultures perceived and understood the world in non-Classical ways is to be expected and acknowledged. The enduring nature of melothesia is evidenced by its popularity in medieval Arabic literature which adopted and conveyed scientific ideas from India to Europe where they flourished in the Renaissance, appearing in beautifully illuminated manuscripts.