Even the Greeks agreed prcession was bound up in myth:
(Egyptian Priest) O Solon, Solon There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth

so said Plato, in The Timæus Dialogues, 360 BC