Dorotheus of Sidon was a 1st-century Greek astrologer and astrological poet, who, during the Hellenistic Period, wrote a didactic poem on horoscopic astrology in Greek, known as the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch, which was a textbook on Hellenistic astrology, has come down to us mainly from an Arabic translation dating from around 800 AD carried out by Omar Tiberiades. The text, 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 late 1st century, a time when Dorotheus is believed to have flourished, was a period of intense astrological development, following two millennia of accumulated tradition.
