Dorotheus of Sidon

Dorotheus of Sidon (c. 75 CE) was a first-century Hellenistic astrologer who wrote a didactic poem on horoscopic astrology known in Greek as the Pentateuch (five books), or in Latin as the Carmen Astrologicum (Song of Astrology).

The Pentateuch, which was a textbook on Hellenistic astrology, has come down to us mainly from an Arabic translation dating from around 800 AD (itself a translation of a 6th century Middle Persian translation from the original Greek, which was done by the Persian astrologer Omar Tiberiades and has been lost.)

The text, already fragmentary at times, is therefore not entirely reliable, and is further corrupted by interpolations by the later Persian translators. Nevertheless, it remains one of our best sources for the practice of Hellenistic astrology, and it was a work of great influence on later Christian, Persian, Arab and medieval astrologers. The middle of the first century, a time when Dorotheus is believed to have flourished, was a period of intense astrological development, following two millennia of accumulated tradition.

Very little is known about Dorotheus himself. Dorotheus most likely lived and worked in Alexandria, in Egypt, which, in addition to being the most important scholastic center in the Hellenistic world, was also the main location where the oldest Mesopotamian, Greek and Egyptian astrological techniques were synthesized together in order to create horoscopic astrology.