Astrological Periods

I doubt that there is any point in my trying to name these – they seem to be changing on an annual basis – so for my purposes here I will delineate them as Early (Greeks, etc.), Middle (Arabs, etc.) and Late (Renaissance, etc.), where “etc.” means “any other descriptive term”. It seems reasonable to suggest that all advocates of whatever period agree that a line is drawn at around 1700 AD, at least regarding the UK, for reasons that I won’t enter into here.

We have packaged astrology into three distinct periods and I’m not sure why other than for reasons of convenience. History overruns unnatural barriers, the river of time flows on. Still, it is sometimes useful to section off lumps of time and call them ‘ages’ or ‘periods’, nevertheless an overview of the continuing flow of ideas and developments should be maintained. So, when does an Early astrologer become a Middle astrologer, or a Middle astrologer become a Late astrologer? A fallacious question really, since it is more likely to depend on which author or authors one is studying and the period to which he or they belong.

The questions for me are: what is that we are trying to do in this regard? Is this merely a subjective choice; settling on a period that suits the individual astrologer? These are genuine, if simplistic, questions to which I would greatly appreciate information from others.