Sudines

Sudines (or Soudines) (Greek: Σουδινες) (fl. c. 240 BC): Babylonian sage. He is mentioned as one of the famous Chaldean mathematicians and astronomer-astrologers by later Roman writers like Strabo (Geografia 16:1–6).

Like his predecessor Berossos, he moved from Babylonia and established himself among the Greeks; he was an advisor to King Attalus I (Attalos Soter) of Pergamon. He is said (e.g. by Roman astronomer/astrologer Vettius Valens) to have published tables to compute the motion of the Moon; said to have been used by the Greeks, until superseded by the work of Hipparchus and later by Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaios). Soudines may have been important in transmitting the astronomical knowledge of the Babylonians to the Greeks, but little is known about his work and nothing about his life. He is also said to have been one of the first to assign astrological meaning to gemstones.

References

• F Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (1912), esp. p. 63.
• F X Kugler, Die Babylonische Mondrechnung ("Babylonian lunar computation"), (Freiburg- im-Breisgau, 1900).
• A Pannekoek, A History of Astronomy (Amsterdam 1951, New York 1961), esp. p. 81.