Pseudo-Manetho is the name given to the author, or rather the authors, of the Effects, an astrological poem in hexameters transmitted under the name of Manetho. Nothing is known of these poets as persons. The ascription rests on a literary frame within the poem itself: one proem addresses a King Ptolemy and presents the teaching as drawn from the sacred writings of the Egyptian temples, borrowing the authority of Manetho of Sebennytos, the Egyptian priest who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek under the early Ptolemies. That Manetho is a different man, and the poem is not his.
The language and doctrine of the poem, and the evidence within it, place it in the Roman imperial period. It is a composite work by more than one hand, written at different times; one layer appears to contain the poet's own nativity, generally taken to point to the late first century CE, while other parts are thought to be later. The number of poets and the dating of each part remain debated.
The Effects is one of the few substantial Greek astrological poems to survive. Its six books set out what the planets bring about in human lives, and its detailed catalogues of trades, illnesses, misfortunes and fortunes make it a source for the social history of the Roman world as well as for the history of astrology.
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