The early Greek Philosophers sought an arche (first principle), the foremost element.
In the 6th century BCE Thales reasoned it to be water.

His student Anaximander progressed on to fire.
He came up with "to apeiron" (an indefinate thing) which was ungenerated, imperishable and infinite. Then something arose from apeiron which was capable of generating hot and cold. The universe began as a sphere of fire enclosing a cold, moist mass seperated by a layer of mist. The cold mass became the Earth the fire the light of the heavenly bodies and the mist the atmosphere.
Sounds very much a prototype big-bang theory.
His Earth was drum shaped, we live on the top of the drum with antipodean life on the other side. Of the cold stuff that the Earth was formed from the wet rose to the surface to become sea and the solid cold stuff went towards the centre creating the very ground.
The drum shaped Earth stays static in the universe due to their being no reason for it to go in any 1 direction therefore it stays where is it.

He also reasoned that human beings must have been generated in the sea.
If we had been generated on the Earth, we would have been gobbled up by other land animals during our long years of dependency in childhood whereas sea creatures are much more friendly.
A book of philosophical problems written by Anaximander was more famous than Aesop's fables.

His student in turn reverted back to the idea of a flat Earth is his philosophy.
This Earth was disc shaped and rested on a cushion of air.

In Plato's myth of Er the cosmos is represented by the "spindle of necessity" attended by sirens and the three fates who help to keep the rims of the spindle revolving.
He also mentions the belief in the "Harmony of the Spheres" (the chord that is struck by the vibrational movements of the planets). According to Lucretius it is always around us, but we have learned to filter it out and so do not hear it any more.
In "Timaeus" Plato wrote that humans and the cosmos were manufactured by a demi-urge from the same material, (also in Hesiod) thus our souls are made of the same stuff as the heavens, just as Anaximenes wrote that:

"As our soul which is air maintains us, so breath and air surround the whole cosmos"

Plato also wrote that we could break out of the cycle of metempsychosis to ascend to our native stars.

In the 3rd millennium BCE the Sumerians visualised the universe as a flat Earth topped by a tin vault of heaven with a swirling atmosphere between them. The planets, luminaries and stars were thought to be controlled by the manipulations of the gods. Heavenly bodies were thought to cluster in the wind above Earth and water, and both elements were thought to be governed by gods which were giants in human form. This myth was accepted, although modified, by the Egyptians and Babylonians for it's supernatural premise.

Thales reckoned the world to be round, but whereas Anaximenes wrote that the Earth was a flat disk floating on a cushion of air, the Pythagoreans taught that it was a three dimensional sphere and moved through space, but it was Plato that proved the Earth was round from the circular shadow cast on the moon during an eclipse and from the appearance of ships sinking below the horizon of the sea.
However in Plato's early cosmology the Earth was kept static in a geocentric universe, though he later included rotation on as axis.

The ancient Greeks were fond of explaining things in terms of circles and spheres and so before the discovery of the theory of gravity the planets and luminaries were kept from falling down by invisible concentric spheres which rotated at different speeds. The problems to these theories were caused by retrogradation of the planets and the fact that the orbits of the planets are elliptical rather than circular. Thus secondary spheres attached at varying angles to the primary ones were theorised. Eudoxus of Cnidus allocated as many as 27 spheres in his model of the mechanics behind the universe around 370 BCE.
They were also kept stationary in space because there was no particular reason why they should fall in any particular direction.

Hipparchus conceived a complicated system whereby the Earth was stationary at the centre of the universe while each of the planets circled around it's own point in space while simultaneously orbiting around the Earth. This system managed to explain retrograde motion.

Philolaos, a 5thC BCE Pythagorean, theorised that there must be a counter Earth for there to be the perfect number of ten, as opposed to only nine planets and fixed stars.

Eratosthenes estimated the size of the Earth with a high degree of accuracy especially considering the simplicity of the geometry applied. He calculated that the circumference of the Earth to be 250,000 stadia by comparing noon sightings of the sun at the summer solstice from points 500 miles apart.

Heraclides of Pontus reasoned the Earth's axis was the cause of the apparent movement of the heavenly bodies and that Venus and Mercury orbited about the sun rather than the Earth.

In 275 BCE Aristarchus of Samos argued for a heliocentric universe and also asserted that the sun was a larger body than the Earth and was severely censured for impiety.

1800 years later this claim was revived by Copernicus' "On the revolution of the heavenly bodies" which was put on the church's index of forbidden books from which it was not officially removed until 1757. His follower Gallileo was also silenced on this matter by the church and placed under permanent house arrest. Giordana Bruno, another follower of the heliocentric school of thought was burned at the stake by the inquisition for this belief.

Astrology for natal horoscopes drawn up at the time of birth grew from the practice of mundane astrology. The "signs" are denoted by the constellations in which planets appear to be in are analysed. One good textbook example of what information could be gleaned from the stars is set out by Firmicus.

"Venus in Capricorn with Saturn in opposition makes the natives hated by their wives in every way. Their bodies in heavy sweat give off an unpleasant goat-like odour...The Moon, Saturn and Venus in the seventh Place..make perverts with effeminate softness of body who dance on the stage and act in ancient fables."