Translating the Heavens: Aratus, Germanicus, and the Poetics of Latin Translation 9780820469393, 0820469394

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Translating the Heavens

LANG Classical Studies

Daniel H. Garrison

General Editor Vol. 14

E PETER LANG New York * Washington, D.C Baltimore + Bern Frankfurt am Main * Berlin * Brussels + Vienna * Oxford

D. Mark Possanza

Translating the Heavens Aratus, Germanicus, and the Poetics of Latin Translation

E PETER LANG

New York * Washington, D.C/Baltimore * Bern Frankfurt am Main 9 Berlin * Brussels * Vienna * Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Possanza, D. Mark.

Translating the heavens: Aratus, Germanicus, and the poetics of Latin translation / D. Mark Possanza.

p. em. — (Lang classical studies; vol. 14) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Germanicus Caesar, 15 B.C.-19 A.D.

Phaenomena.

2. Germanicus

Caesar, 15 B.C.-19 A.D.—Knowledge—Language and languages. 3. Didactic poetry, Greek— Translations into Latin—History and criticism. 4. Didactic poetry, Latin—History and criticism.

5. Greek

language—Translating into Latin. 6. Translating and interpreting— Rome. 7. Aratus, Solensis. Phaenomena. 8. Astronomy, Ancient, in literature. 9. Planets in literature. I. Title. II. Series.

PA6392.G3P536 871’.01—de22 2003019572 ISBN 0-8204-6939-4 ISSN 0891-4087

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity ofthe Council of Library Resources.

© 2004 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 275 Seventh Avenue, 28th Floor, New York, NY 10001

www.peterlangusa.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in Germany

In memory of Scevola Mariotti and

Sebastiano Timpanaro

Contents

AcknNOWLledQMENES...........cccccccssssncccccssenssnsccceesesssnnesccssssesssessececeesesessessenecs ix List of Abbreviations ..............:::ccccccccccecceseneesesssssnscnansssanscecessuseeeeeaeeesaeees xi

Introduction

A New Phenomenon .................cccccssssccessecccssscssccesseseessecs 1

Chapter 1

Intertraffique of the Minde: A Critical Description of Poetic Translation in Latin ............................... eese 21

Chapter 2

The Cosmographical Glass: Aratus’s Phaenomena........ 79

Chapter 3

A Second Original ...............................

Chapter 4

Doctus Poeta ................. esee eee eee nnne 169

Appendix A: Authorship and Date ..................

eese

eese

105

219

Appendix B: A Disputed Reading: Parta or tanta?.............................. 245 Bibliography....................

esee

eene eene eee eene eene eene enne eese n entente reete senno 249

Index of Passages... eee eene eene nennen nennt nennen nna 263 Index of Subjects.................

eee

essent nen nennen 275

Acknowledgments

This book owes its origin to Professor Edwin L. Brown of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who once suggested that I have a look at Germanicus Caesar’s translation of Aratus’s Phaenomena. That suggestion resulted in my dissertation, Studies in the Aratea of Germanicus Caesar (1987), which is largely concerned with the questions of authorship and date of composition. The results of that investigation have been condensed into what is now Appendix A. In that novice work there is also some discussion of Germanicus’s methods of translation and his Ovidian approach to the Phaenomena, but overall the discussion is inadequate to the level of sophistication exemplified by the translation and fails to take full account of Germanicus’s engagement with Vergilian and Ovidian texts. It is my hope that this new work will make good the deficiencies and errors of my first attempt at understanding Germanicus’s poem and the poetics of Latin translation. I want to thank the following individuals who read the entire manuscript and contributed to its improvement with their suggestions, criticisms, and corrections: Paul Coppock, Edward Courtney, Joseph Farrell, Daniel H. Garrison, editor of Lang Classical Studies, Mary Louise Gill, Dennis O. Looney, D. J. Mastronarde, Andrew M. Miller, and Richard F. Thomas. The manuscript has also benefited from the diligent and constructive labors of several anonymous readers; one in particular subjected the book to a thoroughgoing and unsparing critique. May they find some recompense in these pages for their time and effort. In recalling those who have helped me over the course of this work I feel conscious of a special debt of gratitude to Dennis O. Looney, Joseph Farrell, and Ralph M. Rosen. My wife displayed remarkable patience and fortitude in supporting my celestial musings as they followed their long and sometimes retrograde orbit. Without her help and encouragement I would have failed of my

purpose.

Χ

Translating the Heavens

The current chair of the Classics Department Edwin D. Floyd and former chairs Mae J. Smethurst and Mary Louise Gill contributed in various ways to the successful completion of the project. Jana L. Adamitis provided expert and indefatigable editorial assistance in proofreading the manuscript, in preparing the camera-ready copy for the publisher, in checking references, and in helping with the indexes. D. A. Kidd’s translation of the Phaenomena is reprinted with the permission of the Cambridge University Press. Material quoted from D. P. Kubiak’s Harvard dissertation Cicero, Catullus, and the Art of Neoteric Translation (1979) is reprinted with the permission of the author.

Publication of this book was made possible by the generous support of the Richard D. and Mary Jane Edwards Endowed Publication Fund and by the Classics Department at the University of Pittsburgh. I alone am responsible for the judgments and conclusions here expressed. The faults that remain, as you might have guessed, lie not in the stars but in me. Mark Possanza

Pittsburgh, PA 1 August 2003

Abbreviations

ANRW

Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Eds. H. Temporini and W. Haase. Berlin & New York 1972-

Baehrens

"Germanici Arateorum Quae Supersunt." Ed. E. Baehrens. In Poetae Latini Minores. vol. 1. Leipzig 1879: 142-200.

Blünsdorf

Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum. Ed. 1. Blänsdorf. Stuttgart & Leipzig 1995.

Bómer, Fast.

P. Ovidius Naso. Die Fasten. Ed. F. Bömer. vols. Heidelberg 1957-1958.

Bómer, Met.

P. Ovidius Naso. Metamorphosen. Bömer. 7 vols. Heidelberg 1969-1986.

Breysig (1867)

Germanici Caesaris Aratea cum Scholiis. Ed. A.

Ed.

2 F.

Breysig. Berlin 1867. Breysig (1899)

Germanici Caesaris Aratea. mata. Leipzig 1899.

Buescu

Cicéron.

Les

Aratea.

Ed.

V.

Accedunt

Epigram-

Buescu.

Bucharest

1941, repr. Hildesheim 1966. Cat.

Eratosthenis Catasterismorum Reliquiae. Ed. C. Robert. Berlin 1878, repr. 1963. (Cited by page number.)

xii

Translating the Heavens

Courtney

The Fragmentary Latin Poets. Ed. with commentary by E. Courtney. Oxford 1993.

Gain

The Aratus Ascribed to Germanicus

with translation and commentary London

Caesar.

Ed.

by D. B. Gain.

1976.

Hyginus

Hygin. 1983.

Jocelyn

The Tragedies of Ennius. Ed. with an introduction and commentary by H. D. Jocelyn. Cambridge 1969.

Kidd, Com.

Aratus: Phaenomena. Edited translation, and commentary Cambridge 1997.

Le Boeuffle

Germanicus.

L'Astronomie. Ed. A. Le Boeuffle.

Le Phénoménes

Paris

with introduction, by D. A. Kidd. d'Aratos. Ed. A. Le

Boeuffle. Paris 1975.

LS?

A Greek-English Lexicon. Eds. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. Stuart Jones. 9th ed. Oxford 1940. With a revised supplement, 1996.

Martin, Com.

Aratos. Phénoménes. Texte établi, traduit et commenté par Jean Martin. 2 vols. Paris 1998.

Maurach

Germanicus und sein Arat. Eine vergleichende Auslegung von V. 1-327 der Phaenomena. Ed. G. Maurach. Heidelberg 1978.

OCD

The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Eds. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth. Oxford 19963.

OLD

Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford 1968—1982.

Orelli

Phaedri

Fabulae.

Accedunt

Ed.

P. G. Caesaris

Aratea. Ed. J. C. Orelli. Zurich 1832.

W.

Glare.

Germanici

List of Abbreviations

xiii

ΚΕ

Paulys Realencyclopüdie der classischen tumswissenschaft. Stuttgart 1893-1978.

Ribbeck

Scaenicae Romanae Poesis Fragmenta. Ed. O. Ribbeck. 2 vols. Leipzig 18712, repr. Hildesheim 1962.

Roscher’s

Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie. Ed. W. H. Roscher. Leipzig & Berlin 1924-1937.

Lexikon

Alter-

ZiAratus (Scholia to Aratus)

Scholia in Aratum Vetera. Ed. J. Martin. Stuttgart 1974. (Cited by page and line number.)

2 Ger. (Scholia to Germanicus)

Germanici

Breysig.

Sk.

The Annals

Caesaris Aratea

Berlin

1867.

cum

Scholiis. Ed.

(Cited by

page

and

A.

line

number.) of Q. Ennius. Ed.

with introduction

and commentary by O. Skutsch. Oxford 1985. Soubiran

Cicéron. Aratea, fragments Soubiran. Paris 19932.

"Sternbilder"

F. Boll and W. Gundel, “Sternbilder, und

Sternsymbolik

poétiques.

bei Griechen

und

Ed.

J.

Sternglaube Römern.”

In Roscher's Lexikon (above), 6.867—1071.

TLL

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Leipzig 1900—

The text and translation of Aratus's Phaenomena are quoted from Kidd; the text of Germanicus's Aratea is quoted from Gain, the text of Cicero's from Soubiran. Divergences from these texts are explained in the notes. The translations of Germanicus's and Cicero's Aratea are my own, though they have benefited from the translations in the editions just mentioned, as well as those in the editions of Buescu and Le Boeuffle. I am also responsible for any unattributed translations. Readers of the Phaenomena, who were formerly starved for guidance and information, can now fatten on the rich stores in the commentaries of Kidd and Martin. Students of Hellenistic and Latin poetry are greatly in their debt.

xiv

Translating the Heavens

For astronomical and mythological information about the constellations I have relied on Boll-Gundel's indispensable article “Sternbilder” in Roscher's Lexikon and on the valuable articles in RE; A. Le Boeuffle's Les noms latins d'astres et de constellations (Paris 1977), though

handier

to consult, is less informative. Readers will find an excellent introductory account of the starry heavens in G. J. Toomer's OCD article “constellations and named stars." Dates and abbreviations of authors’ works are those given in the OCD. With regard to the spelling of the name Avienus / Avienius, Cameron (1967, 1995) has demonstrated, in my judgment, that Avienius is the correct form. I refrain from reviewing the question for fear of provoking another Dunciad. The study of translation requires extensive quotation, even at the risk of irritating repetition, because quotation is the only means of reviving the dialogue that takes place between the source text and translation. In order to follow the course of that dialogue and see how the translator's own aesthetic intentions and values are realized, readers will want both texts before their eyes. Translation is an intensely textual activity and the Muse of translation is a bookish one. In this study the image of the poet as a maker of song inspired by a Pierian bolt from the blue must be replaced by the image of the translator-poet as a studious reader construing and interpreting the source text and calling upon a variety of other texts in order to create a "second original." The manuscript was completed in June 2000. References to relevant works published since then, most notably Emma Gee’s valuable monograph, Ovid, Aratus and Augustus (2000), are made in the notes and bibliography.

Introduction A New Phenomenon

The Latin translation of Greek poetic texts, in the period from the beginning of Latin literature in 240 BC to the death of Ovid in AD 17, is possibly unique as a form of literary composition. The reason is that Latin poetry itself evolved out of the artistic translation and adaptation of Greek poetic texts. The Latin translation of a Greek poem is like a grafted plant: it takes its sustenance from the very same stock as the source text, while at the same time retaining those linguistic and cultural characteristics that naturally belong to it. When the translator-poet Livius Andronicus began the arduous process of developing a hellenized literature at Rome in 240 BC with the translation and production of a Greek play, or possibly two plays, there existed no body of poetic texts in Latin, recognizable as literary compositions comparable in form and style to the Greek, which was strong enough to assert its own identity as a “native” poetry against the studied adaptation and imitation of Greek poetry; even the native saturnian meter, which Livius and Naevius used for their epic poems, was made obsolete for purposes of literary composition when Ennius introduced the Greek hexameter in his Annales. The artistic translation of Greek poetry into Latin not only revealed the tremendous potential of the Latin language for poetic composition, it also demonstrated how Latin poetry was to be written in accordance with the requirements of the established forms and styles of Greek poetry: Rome’s first poets, with their translations of Greek tragedy, comedy, and epic, grafted the Latin language onto the stock of Greek poetry and thus put Latin poetry on a course of development that would continue to draw life from Greek roots. As a result, the Latin translations of Greek poetry are by nature an outgrowth of that same tradition which gave birth to the Greek source texts themselves. Unlike the situation confronted by the modern translator who

2

Translating the Heavens

is bringing the source text into the foreign literary environment of the established forms, styles, and diction found in the receiving language, the Latin translator is transplanting the Greek text into a literary environment which was created by the Greek poets themselves of the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods. This astonishing symbiosis of the Latin shoot implanted in the rich growth of Greek literature is brilliantly captured in Horace’s pregnant phrase Graiae Camenae “Grecian Camenae” (Carm. 2.16.38); in this phrase native Latin goddesses of prophecy, the Camenae, whom Livius Andronicus had invoked at the beginning of his translation of the Odyssey as the equivalent of the Greek Muses, are explicitly recognized as having a dual identity of which the poet himself, as their protégé, naturally partakes. Since Greek literary culture, both in its primary forms, i.e., the poetic texts themselves, and in its secondary forms, i.e., reception and exegesis, lay at the foundation of Latin literature, it follows from this cross-cultural phenomenon that the translator-poet was able to utilize fully the resources of the Greek literary tradition when he translated Greek texts into Latin. As I will illustrate below, when Germanicus translated Aratus’s Phaenomena, he was able to use the poetry of Homer and Hesiod, just as Aratus

himself

had

done,

and

actually

rewrote

passages

of

the

Phaenomena through the texts of Aratus’s two great epic models; he also made use of Hellenistic poets, Callimachus and Nicander, and of course his own predecessors in Latin poetry, most especially Vergil and Ovid. This amazing continuity, which stems from the shared literary values and ideals of a common tradition, provided a unique bridge over the divide of linguistic and cultural difference and made possible the development of a sophisticated translation practice which does not isolate, through a literalist approach, the source text as a specimen of a foreign literature, but rather integrates it through rewriting into the new currents of the tradition such as they are at the time when the translation is made. The modern image of the translator as a writer engaged in a one-on-one lexical battle with the wording of the source text in order to produce a true and literal copy of its meaning does not apply to Latin translator-poets who work not only with the source text but also with the texts which influenced it and were influenced by it. For these translators the source text is not an isolated linguistic artifact but part of a complex system of texts whose nature is not static but dynamic. And as the following examples will, I hope, show, the understanding that the source text is not forever fixed within the confines of a static, literal meaning, or within the confines of a

A New Phenomenon

3

literary-historical context that determines meaning, opens up the possibility for something to be gained in translation.’ Two examples from Germanicus’s Aratea will illustrate how the source text is integrated through the poetics of Latin translation into the literary tradition as it has evolved since the source text itself was composed. (It is assumed here and in the following pages, on the basis of arguments presented in Appendix A on the date of the Aratea, that Germanicus was familiar with Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti, and that in matters of poetic influence Germanicus is the debtor not only in diction and style but also in his conception of his role as an astronomical poet and in his treatment of the material.) In the first example Germanicus rewrites Aratus’s description of the constellation Centaur (Phaen. 436-442) by adding the following lines: hic erit ille pius Chiron, iustissimus omnis inter nubigenas et magni doctor Achillis. (421—422) (This will be Chiron the dutiful, most just of all the cloud-born ones [Centaurs] and the teacher of great Achilles.)

The motive for the addition of these lines is a purely literary one. At Iliad 11.832 we read: [Αχιλλῆος] ὃν

Χείρων

ἐδίδαξε,

δικαιότατος

Κενταύρων

([Achilles] whom Chiron taught, most just of the Centaurs).

Germanicus's Chiron, the teacher of Achilles and most just of Centaurs, is derived from Homer:’ whether directly or indirectly, we will see in a moment. In rewriting Aratus's description, Germanicus incorporates material from another text, but not just any text. Homer exercised a profound influence on the poet of the Phaenomena. In his description of Centaur Germanicus has taken that influence one step further by using Homer's text to give the constellation Centaur its epic identity as Chiron, the teacher of Achilles and the most just of Centaurs. In addition he has refined Homer's language by substituting the allusive description, omnis inter nubigenas, for the simple identification, Κενταύρων.

There is, however, another dimension to this rewriting, one which takes the reader from Greek epic into Latin astronomical poetry. In the Fasti, a poem in which Aratus makes his presence felt, Ovid tells the catasterism myth which explains the origin of the constellation Centaur: Chiron, while

4

Translating the Heavens

handling

one

of Hercules’

poison-tipped

wounded himself in the left foot; the wound

arrows,

dropped

one

and

was fatal (5.379—414). Near

the end of the story, the narrator addresses Chiron in a way that unmistakably echoes Homer’s phrase δικαιότατος Κενταύρων, but modifies it by putting it in the affective vocative, iustissime Chiron (5.413); and a few lines earlier in 410 Ovid refers to Chiron as doctor. Both of these details, "Chiron the most just" and "Chiron the teacher" of Achilles, explain why the Centaur is rewarded (praemia 410) with catasterism. Because Germanicus has a much greater interest in these catasterism myths than Aratus and uses them to expand the theme of aetiological explanation in the Phaenomena, it is very likely that he is here echoing, with the epithet iustissimus and the phrase magni doctor Achillis, the Ovidian account of Chiron's catasterism. And finally, there is nubigenas, an elevated compound epithet belonging to Latin epic diction. The literary associations of the "cloudborn Centaurs" lead the reader back to Vergil's Aeneid, where the epithet is first attested, and to Ovid's Metamorphoses. These two poets, as we will see, are major influences on our poet as he translates the Phaenomena in accordance with Augustan poetics. By adding the compound epithet nubigenas, Germanicus has modified Homer’s phrase δικαιότατος Kevταύρων in a way that links Homer's description of Chiron with Vergil's and Ovid's allusive references to the Centaurs as "the cloud-born ones," i.e., the offspring of Ixion and Nephele. And thus all three epic predecessors are integrated into the rewriting of Aratus.‘ The second example, the naming

of the Pleiades (Phaen.

262-263),

points to the Latin poet's use of Aratus's other great epic model, Hesiod. Electra Alcyoneque Celaenoque Meropeque

Asteropeque et Taygete et Maia parente caelifero genitae (si uere sustinet Atlas regna Iouis superosque atque ipso pondere gaudet). (262-265) (Electra and Alcyone and Celaeno and Merope and Asterope and Taygete and Maia, born of a father who bears the sky (if in truth Atlas shoulders

Jupiter's kingdom and the gods above, and rejoices in the weight itself.)

In 262-263 Germanicus follows Aratus's text and names the seven sisters of the constellation Pleiades. He then goes on, however, to make an important addition when he identifies them in 263—264 as the daughters of Atlas with an elevated patronymic phrase consisting of participle, compound epithet, and noun: parente caelifero genitae "born of a father who supports the sky." This phrase, following immediately after the naming

A New Phenomenon

5

of the sisters, corresponds to a relative clause, which also follows the naming of the sisters, in a fragment usually attributed to Hesiod: τὰς Yyelvaro φαίδιμος "Atlas "[the Pleiades] whom mighty Atlas fathered.’ Moreover, in the Works and Days the Pleiades are named with a patronymic, Πληιάδων ᾿Ατλαγενέων “Pleiades daughters of Atlas” (383); and in the Theogony Hesiod gives the earliest depiction of Atlas as the pillar of the sky: "Ἄτλας 8' οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχει "Atlas holds broad heaven” (517). Again Germanicus

has rewritten Aratus's description of a constel-

lation, the Pleiades, through the text of another of Aratus's predecessors, Hesiod, who in his Works and Days provided the structural and thematic model for the Phaenomena. At the same time, however, there are reflexes of the Hesiodic Atlas in the poetry of Vergil and Ovid. The compound epithet caelifer is first attested at Aeneid 6.796 and turns up again in Fasti 5.83.* The occurrence of caelifer in the Fasti is especially important for our analysis because this passage is unique in combining Atlas's role as father of the Pleiades with his role as the god who holds up the heavens: hinc sata Pleione cum caelifero Atlante

iungitur, ut fama est, Pleiadasque parit. (83—84) Their daughter Pleione was joined, the story goes, with Atlas,

heaven's upholder, and she bore the Pleiades.’

Germanicus has likewise combined Atlas caelifer with Atlas as father of the Pleiades in the phrase parente caelifero genitae. And, as we will soon see, this combination of roles has a special purpose. Immediately after the patronymic phrase parente caelifero genitae Germanicus adds a conditional clause in 264—265: si uere sustinet Atlas regna Iouis superosque atque ipso pondere gaudet. (if in truth Atlas shoulders Jupiter's kingdom and the gods above, and rejoices in the weight itself.)

The conditional form is intended merely to indicate that the poet is relating a tradition. In the phrase sustinet Atlas, which also occurs at Aeneid 8.136-137

and Metamorphoses

2.296—297,

the verb sustinere

‘to

sup-

port’, ‘to endure’ can be read as an etymological gloss on the name "ATÀas derived from the verb τλῆναι ‘to endure’: Atlas lasts as upholder

of the heavens.' The adverb uere may then be read as a pointer to the

6

Translating the Heavens

etymological connection, suggesting that Atlas is true to his name in enduring the weight of heaven. Here the poet has taken Aratus’s practice of including etymologies, a practice also favored by Hellenistic and Augustan poetics,’ and applied it to his own addition to the Phaenomena. The description of Atlas ends on a witty note. Germanicus writes that the god rejoices in the weight of his burden, though according to tradition, shouldering the sky was anything but an enjoyable task. What accounts for the obvious contradiction of the received tradition? The answer lies in the combination, mentioned above, of Atlas’s two roles as father of the Pleiades and bearer of the heavens: he is the proud father of seven daughters whom he supports, quite literally, on his shoulders; and the daughters are the Pleiades, famous in the heavens as the sign of the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter, a special honor for a constellation, as Germanicus notes, (praecipuo...honore 267). When seen as the proud father of a well recognized constellation rather than as a laboring Titan, Atlas can be said to be glad of his burden.' This playfulness, however, is not without consequence. To make room for Atlas as father of the Pleiades and supporter of heaven, Germanicus omitted Aratus’s programmatic reference to Zeus as the cause (Ζεὺς δ᾽ αἴτιος 265) of the Pleiades’ dual significance as a sign of the seasons. The omission of this reference to Zeus’s providential arrangement of the heavens for the benefit of humankind is, within the limits of this introductory analysis, a first hint at the Latin poet’s reinterpretation of the Phaenomena. Germanicus’s descriptions of the constellations Centaur and Pleiades, which add new material drawn from Homer, Hesiod, Vergil, and Ovid to Aratus’s text, reveal the workings of a very sophisticated translation strategy that works not only with the wording of the source text but also with the complex of relations that exist between it and other texts, both Greek and Latin; and out of that complex of relations it creates what may truly be called a “second original,” a translation that has a claim to being a unique text in its own right and, as I hope I have shown, worthy of close analysis not only in relation to the source text but to others as well. In the discussion of even these brief passages we discover a synthetic form of composition that is similar to what we are familiar with in the composition of “original” works, but which we do not expect to find in a translation. The tame virtues of the “faithful translator” have little to recommend themselves in this highly innovative, subjective method of translation; innovative in the sense that the translator-poet does not feel bound to follow the wording of the source text and incorporates new material into it; subjective in the sense that the translator-poet is working out his own aesthetic

A New Phenomenon

7

intentions and that as a result of the changes made to achieve those intentions a new individuality is imposed on the source text: an Augustan poet inhabits this Aratea and his vision of the starry heavens is something quite different from Aratus’s. More on this topic will follow in Chapter 1. However, before we proceed further with the investigation, it will be worthwhile now to provide an overview of the Aratea and to compare

its

structure and content with that of the Phaenomena. The Aratea of Germanicus

Caesar

(15

BC-AD

19)

is a hexameter

poem of 948 verses: verses 1-725, which form a distinct unit corresponding to lines 1-732 of Aratus’s Phaenomena, describe the constellations and the celestial sphere; the remaining 223 verses comprise six fragments, varying in length from 163 to one and a half lines, which treat

the meteorological characteristics and influences of the stars and the planets." Although

Germanicus

has engaged

in extensive

rewriting

of his

source text in accordance with the poetics of Latin translation, making additions and deletions, compressing and expanding passages, and correcting some of Aratus's observational errors, nevertheless in general he follows Aratus in both structure and content, going so far as to stay close, despite his own additions, to the number of lines in the "Phaenomena" section (Phaen. 1-732) of the original." The fragments, usually referred to as "Prognostica," are not in any sense a translation of Aratus's *Weather

Signs"

(733-1154):

the only connection

obviously an important one) is their common

between the two (and

subject, meteorology.

The

subject of the fragments is specifically astrometeorology, the influence of celestial phenomena on atmospheric conditions." Germanicus's treatment is informed by the notion that there is a cause and effect relationship between the two: each planet or constellation, or the planets and constellations acting in conjunction with one another, actually cause certain types of weather.'* Aratus, on the other hand, treats both celestial, excluding the planetary, and terrestrial phenomena as a means of forecasting the weather: the rising of a certain constellation or the flight of birds or the

behavior of a lamp flame each serves as a weather indicator. Furthermore, in Aratus's view, the prevalent one in antiquity, these phenomena are presages, not causes, of changes

in atmospheric

conditions:

there is no

cause and effect relationship between the weather sign and the weather itself."

8

Translating the Heavens

Structure of Poem

Aratea (1-725) = Phaenomena (1-732) The “Phaenomena” section of both poems gives a description of the constellations and the celestial sphere: constellations of the northern and southern hemispheres, the planets and the circles (tropics, ecliptic, and equator), and also instruction in determining the hours of the night by observation of the paranatellons, i.e., constellations that rise simultaneously with the zodiacal constellations.’ A comparative table of contents for the Aratea and the Phaenomena is given below.

Aratea

Proem Axis Northern

Hemisphere

Phaenomena

1-16

1-18

17-23

19-26

24-323

26-318

Ursae Draco

24-47 48-64

26-44 45-62

Engonasin

65-69

63-70

Corona Borealis

70-72

71-73

Ophiuchus

73-87

74-87

Chelae (Libra) Bootes Virgo Stars near Ursa Major Cancer, Gemini, Leo Auriga, Haedi, Capra Taurus, Hyades Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda

88-89 90-95 96-139 140-146 147-156 157-173 174-183 184-206

88-90 91-95 96-136 137-146 147-155 156-166 167-178 179-204

Equus (Pegasus)

207-223

205-224

Aries Deltoton Pisces Perseus Pleiades Lyra

224-233 234-240 241-247 248-254 255-269 270-274

225-232 233-238 239-247 248-253 254-267 268-274

Cycnus

275-283

275-281

Aquarius, Capricorn Sagittarius Sagitta, Aquila Delphin

284—305 306-314 315-320 321-323

282-299 300-310 311-315 316-318

A New Phenomenon

9

Southern Hemisphere Transition to southern hemisphere

324-433 324—327

319-450 319-321

Orion Sirius Lepus Argo Cetus Eridanus Stars that form no recognizable shape Piscis Australis Anonymous stars Aqua and Corona Australis Altar Centaur

328-332 333-340 341-343 344—355 356-361 362-371 371-378 379-381 382-386 387-392 393-413 414-425

322-325 326-337 338-341 342-352 353-358 359-366 367-385 386-388 389-391 391-401 402-430 431-442

Hydra, Crater, Corvus, Canis Minor

426-433

443-450

Constancy of the constellations

434-436

451-453

Planets and Circles Planets Celestial Circles Milky Way Tropic of Cancer Tropic of Capricorn Equator Ecliptic

437-572 437-445 446-454 455-458 459-484 485-495 496-514 515-530

454-558 454-461 462-468 469-479 480-500 501-510 511-524 525-540

Zodiacal constellations

531-564

545-552

Divisions and movement of the zodiac

565-572

541-544 553-558

573-725 573-588

559-732 559-568

Cancer’s rising Leo’s rising

589-603 604-611

569-589 590-595

Virgo’s rising Chelae’s rising Scorpio’s rising Sagittarius’s rising Capricorn’s rising

612-622 623-643 644-673 674-685 686-692

596-606 607-633 634-668 669-682 683-692

Risings and Settings Paranatellons and hours of night

Aquarius’s rising

693-698

693-698

Pisces’ rising Aries' rising

699—705 706—707

699—709 709-711

Taurus's rising

708-718

712-723

Gemini’s rising

719-725

724-732

Even a cursory examination of the comparative table will reveal the close structural parallelism between the two texts, although, as was men-

10

Translating the Heavens

tioned earlier, Germanicus rewrites the contents of the original. Germanicus’s proem, for example, dispenses with the Zeus of Aratus’s opening hymn and substitutes the Roman emperor; and his excursus on the zodiacal constellations mentions the aetiological myths associated with each of them, while Aratus only lists their names. In both of these examples Germanicus incorporated new material while at the same time following the structural pattern of the Phaenomena. This structural parallelism allows us to be certain that Germanicus's version of the “Phaenomena,” with the exception of several small lacunae posited by the editors, survives intact. In accordance with the ancient division of Aratus’s poem into “Phaenomena”

(1-732)

and “Weather

Signs”

(733-1154),

the end

of

Germanicus’s “Phaenomena,” as we have it, coincides exactly with the end of Aratus's "Phaenomena."" Germanicus’s Aratea is an important work not only because it is the most extensive poetic translation extant in classical Latin literature that can be compared with its Greek source text, but also because it is an Augustan poem that comes closer to the stylistic qualities of the Phaenomena than Cicero's version does. This is due in part to historical accident. Writing near the end of Augustus's principate, Germanicus had the considerable advantage of working with a fully developed poetics which had grown out of those same literary values which Aratus himself and his admirer Callimachus, the doyen of Hellenistic poets, applied to the writing of their own poetry: chief among these values were painstaking craftsmanship in composition to produce highly polished works, and the artful deployment of an erudition that was conversant with the full range of the received literary tradition. Because these values had been fully assimilated into Latin poetry when Germanicus was writing, his Aratea, unlike Cicero's, achieves an admirable stylistic concord with the Phaenomena. What may be called the stylistic dissonance of Cicero's version results from his fondness for the epico-tragic diction of early Latin poetry, which, when compared to the "refined style" of Aratus's poem, oftentimes exerts an affective and acoustic force that overpowers the subtler effects of the source text. To take one example, when Aratus narrates the episode of Orion's encounter with the scorpion sent by Artemis, he says that Artemis split the hills of Chios down the middle to call forth the scorpion: ἡ δέ οἱ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἐπετείλατο θηρίον ἄλλο, νήσον ἀναρρήξασα μέσας ἑκάτερθε κολώνας, σκορπίον... (641--643)

A New

Phenomenon

11

(But she immediately summoned up against him another creature, break-

ing open the center of the island’s hills to left and to right, a scorpion...)

Cicero amplifies the action with details of how the earth gaped open; he also amplifies the sound through pronounced alliteration and assonance:" At uero, pedibus subito percussa Dianae,

insula discessit, disiectaque saxa reuellens perculit, et caecas lustrauit luce lacunas. E quibus ingenti existit cum corpore prae se scorpios infestus praeportans flebile acumen. (426—430) (But now

the island, suddenly struck by Diana’s feet, split

open,

and

driven asunder, it tore away boulders, knocked them down, and illumed with light the dark lower depths, from which emerged a scorpion of enormous size, ready to strike, brandishing before itself the tearful sting.)'*

The action which Aratus expresses in a single participle (ἀναρρήξασα) becomes in Cicero's version an elaborate construction of three participles (percussa, disiecta, reuellens) and three finite verbs (discessit, perculit, lustrauit) in a sequence which describes the progressively widening gap in

the earth. In Cicero's version the island, rather than Diana, becomes the focus of attention. The scene is a highly dramatic prelude to the appearance of the scorpion, which emerges in full epic grandeur brandishing its weapon. Very different is Germanicus's idiom: haud patiens sedenim Phoebi germana repente numinis ultorem media tellure reuulsa scorpion ingenti maiorem contulit hostem. (653—655)

(But hardly enduring this, the sister of Phoebus suddenly split the earth in two and matched the avenger of her divine majesty, a scorpion, a mightier foe, against hulking [Orion].)

His version is more concise (note the deft handling of the Greek participial phrase in media tellure reuulsa as compared with Cicero's three-line elaboration); it is, in general, closer to being a literal version, though Germanicus develops its epic potential in subtle ways: the periphrasis for Diana, Phoebi germana; the reference to the scorpion as an avenger, numinis ultorem, and a foe, hostem; and the expressive collocation, ingenti maiorem. These three verses show clear signs of the craftsmanship, refinement, and elegance characteristic of Augustan hexameter poetry. Be-

12

Translating the Heavens

cause Germanicus’s Augustan poetics differed so significantly from Cicero’s poetics, which had been formed by Ennian epic and Republican tragedy, it was possible for Germanicus to produce a Phaenomena in a new idiom to meet the expectations of an audience whose tastes had been formed by Vergil and Ovid. Although the poetics of Latin poetry had undergone revolutionary changes in the interval between Cicero and Germanicus, the poetics of Latin translation remained essentially the same. Both Cicero and Germanicus employ the subjective, innovative approach that Livius Andronicus employed when he transformed Homer’s Odyssey into Latin saturnians; and, like Livius, they freely assimilate the Phaenomena to the Roman universe of discourse. However, behind their numerous alterations and additions to the original it is possible to discern in each case a guiding principle behind the rewriting, i.e., the translator's own particular reading and interpretation of the Phaenomena. Abandoning the strict economy of a poem whose every line is intended to be part of an observational and discursive proof that the universe is a teleological and organic whole under the providential care of a divinity, these Latin translator-poets elaborate a particular aspect of the work. Though this was done at the expense of the overall balance and unity of the source text as a whole, these translators still succeeded in making uniquely Latin poems out of the Phaenomena. Cicero fastened on the poem’s didacticism as its most important feature and to a large extent his rewriting of the Phaenomena is controlled by his desire to enhance the didactic ethos of the narrative voice in the poem. In fact, his version is instructive on two levels: the reader of the fragments of Cicero’s version learns not only about the constellations and celestial sphere, but also about the process of constructing an equivalent sphere in the Latin language, for he makes repeated references to the Latin equivalents of the Greek names for the constellations. Germanicus takes the Phaenomena in an altogether different direction and presents in his version a reinterpretation of the Phaenomena which, as we will see, actually subverts its meaning through opportunistic exploitation of descriptive and narrative possibilities latent in the source text. The Greek poem’s severe economy in language and treatment of the celestial sphere becomes the Latin translator’s greatest asset, allowing him numerous opportunities to elaborate, to fill in, so to speak, what Aratus, in the judgment of a Latin poet who was a younger contemporary of Ovid, had left out. This process of elaboration, however, is not a random one; rather itis one which is carried out in accordance with a deliberate program of

A New Phenomenon

13

alteration which is effected both through the poetics of Latin translation, a topic to be discussed in detail in Chapter 1, and through the poetics of Latin poetry dominant at the time of composition, specifically the Augustan poetics of Vergil and Ovid, the two most important Latin poetic influences on Germanicus. In the following chapters the reader will see how Germanicus transforms a Hellenistic astronomical Phaenomena, into a Latin poem of the Augustan age.

poem,

the

The complex nature of Latin poetic translation and the sophistication of its techniques, although a complete understanding of them is made impossible by the loss of important texts in both languages, nonetheless invite and repay careful investigation. I offer the following chapters as a contribution to the study of Latin poetic translation in general and to the study of Germanicus Caesar’s translation of Aratus’s Phaenomena in particular. The present work is intended primarily as a case-study of the Aratea but also attempts to locate the individual case within the broader literary-historical context of Latin poetic translations in order to show that there is a continuity in translation practice from Livius Andronicus down to the time of Germanicus. Germanicus’s Aratea affords a unique op-

portunity for comparative analysis because there is such a wealth of material. Aratus’s Phaenomena and Germanicus’s translation of lines 1-732 survive intact. In addition, there is a detailed astronomical commentary

on

the Phaenomena by the great Hellenistic astronomer Hipparchus, who flourished in the second half of the second century BC, and there is also a very large collection of exegetical scholia. This ancient Aratus-literature makes it possible for us to determine whether Germanicus translated with the help of these sources and whether he sometimes incorporated their observations into the translation. And finally, there are the fragments of Cicero’s translation, one of which is a continuous

fragment of 480 lines.

Two translations of the same source text, written in very different periods in the history of Latin literature, the young Cicero writing in the early 80s BC” and Germanicus late in the age of Augustus, ca. AD 4-7, bring into sharp focus the major changes that took place in styles, standards, and tastes. We have, in short, an abundance of material which allows us to observe Closely the translator-poet

at work and

to reconstruct

the ways in

which he transformed the source text into a Latin hexameter poem.” Moreover, this material provides a solid foundation for understanding the poetics of Latin translation, a poetics which remained unchanged in its essentials from the time of Livius Andronicus

down

through

the age of

Augustus and shaped the transformation of Greek poetic texts in ways that will certainly startle modern readers, but which can be explained as

14

Translating the Heavens

part of a well established translation strategy. The Aratea, and Latin poetic translations in general, cannot be disregarded as the artless despoiling or mechanical copying of masterpieces. Chapter 1 presents a critical description of the poetics of translating Greek poetry into Latin. The description is based on the methodology employed in Translation Studies, a discipline which has revolutionized the study of translation by demonstrating that it is no mere secondary activity of mechanical reproduction. Translation Studies advocates a descriptive approach that concentrates on what translators actually do rather than a prescriptive approach which dictates what translators ought to do and judges their efforts according to the generally accepted criterion of literal fidelity. If critics employ a descriptive approach to translation, it then follows that they will not be prejudiced by the notion that there is one correct method of translation or a universally valid criterion of judgment to determine the success of a translation. Instead, they will be open to the creative possibilities. (F. Leo, in his history of Latin literature and

in his

work on Plautus and Roman tragedy, employed such a descriptive approach to translation with impressive results.) When judged by modern standards of literal fidelity, Latin translations of Greek poetic texts are often regarded as miserable failures because, as detailed comparison of the translations with their originals repeatedly demonstrates, Latin translators feel free to rewrite their source texts as part of the translation process and show few if any scruples about projecting their own authorial presence into their source texts. Since the Roman poet’s concept of translation is markedly different from the generally accepted notion of what makes a good translation, the descriptive approach advocated by Translation Studies provides the most useful and productive method for discerning the characteristic features of Latin poetic translation and for discovering the literary-historical conditions that fostered such a sophisticated and highly innovative translation practice. Chapter 2 is an introduction to the structure, content, and basic themes of Aratus’s Phaenomena, which is a descendant of the oral catalogue poem. The chapter also contains a brief survey of the two main strands of the reception of the poem as a masterpiece of the “refined style” and as an astronomical guide. Because a literary work cannot be abstracted from the process of its transmission and reception and read as a pristine artifact without a history, it is important to understand, for the purpose of analyzing translations, that its status as a literary work and the ways in which it was read and interpreted will affect the translator’s approach to it. The translator is not immune to the history of the source text’s reception, and

A New Phenomenon

15

critics ought not to assume that the translator is somehow able to come into unmediated contact with the source text to produce a translation which is unencumbered by preconceptions and judgments about the value, quality, and meaning of a work. In Chapter 3 I examine Germanicus’s methods of translation by comparative analysis of selected passages illustrating the forms of composition found in lines 1-732 of the Phaenomena: hymnic proem, astronomical description, and catasterism narratives. Germanicus rewrites the source text through different modes of translation, and edits its content in order to make it conform to his own reinterpretation of the poem: the Latin poet follows no one method of translation consistently throughout. I also attempt to show how Germanicus translates the Phaenomena under the influence of Vergil and Ovid, who were themselves both translators of portions of the Phaenomena. In the fourth and final chapter I discuss how Germanicus’s translation strategy was controlled by a reinterpretation of the Phaenomena which actually subverts its meaning: he abandons the poem’s main theme of celestial and meteorological phenomena as signs of the organic, teleological organization of the universe controlled by a providential and beneficent deity, and replaces it with aetiological and erotic themes, the treatment of which betrays strong Ovidian influence. Although amor and the explanation of origins are not entirely lacking in Aratus’s poem, they play a subordinate role to the theme of Zeus’s well ordered cosmos. Both the authorship and the date of the Aratea have been disputed. My discussion of the poem is based on my conclusion that Germanicus Caesar, son of Drusus and adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, is the author of the poem and that it was written, as was Cicero’s Aratea, in the period of the poet’s apprenticeship. In Germanicus’s case this period can be delimited, with the help of evidence found in the poem, between AD 4, the year in which he was adopted by Tiberius, who himself was adopted in that same year by the emperor Augustus, and AD 7, the year in which he entered into his political and military responsibilities as a member of the imperial house. During that period he was between 18 and 21 years old.” The year AD 4 is chosen as the terminus post quem because the poem is dedicated to the reigning Augustus, and there is a reference in the proem

to his son (natus), which I take to mean Tiberius, who was adopted by Augustus in that same year, though, I must point out, the dedicatee and the person referred to by natus have also been much disputed. The terminus ante quem AD 7

is based on a consideration of two factors: first, the

end of the poet’s student days (translating the Phaenomena seems to have

16

Translating the Heavens

belonged to that phase of a poet’s education) and the beginning of his military and political career; and second, the banishment of Ovid by Augustus in the following year, AD 8, an event which, it seems to me, must have occurred after Germanicus translated the Phaenomena into an Ovidian poem which exploits erotic elements in the catasterism myths, and dedicated it to Augustus.” It seems very unlikely that obvious imitation of Ovid’s erotic touch in the treatment of myth would have retained its appeal after his relegation to Tomis, especially in a poem dedicated to the emperor who had banished him. All of these problems are discussed in Appendix A, where the arguments in support of my conclusions are given. Appendix B is a discussion of a textual problem whose solution helps to confirm the identification of the poem’s dedicatee as Augustus.

m

»-

Notes A full discussion of the poetics of Latin translation follows in Chapter 1. See Bömer, Fast. 5.379 and Maurach (1977*) 135. To avoid confusion, I have translated the Greek and Latin epithets as “most just” since δικαιότατος and iustissimus

are more or less equivalent; it would, however, Greek as “most civilized.”

be more accurate to translate

the

3.

On the Phaenomena’s influence on the Fasti see now the important study of Gee (2000), especially 193-204, “Aratean Echoes in the Fasti.” The Chiron-episode is analyzed by Brookes (1994).

4.

See

Aen.

7.674

and

8.293,

with

Norden’s

(19505)

comments,

p.

177;

and Met.

12.211 and 541, with Bómer, Met. 12.211. Unless Germanicus is using nubigena as a generic term for Centaur, he has made a mythological slip: Chiron is the son of Cronos and Philyra and does not belong in the brutish family of Centaurs fathered

anau

by Ixion, the true nubigenae. The epithet is inappropriate in the same context with iustissimus and doctor. Merkelbach and West (1967) fr. 169.

See Norden (19504) on Aen. 6.796. All translations of the Fasti are quoted from Nagle (1995).

No such etymology is noted in the commentaries. It is, however, no less plausible than the etymological gloss durus recognized at Aen. 4.247, on which see O'Hara (1996) 154. Cf. also Cicero, Tusc. 5.8, Atlans sustinere caelum. At Aen. 4.481—482 and Met. 6.174-175 there is perhaps a sound play in the words maximus Atlas

axem. There is another example of etymologizing word-play on Atlas's name in Aeschylus, fr. 312 Radt (1985) = fr. 312 Nauck (18892), where the Pleiades are said to lament Atlas’s mighty task of bearing up the heavens, ἴλτλαντος... μέγιστον ἄθλον obpavocreyfj. The play on "ArAavros and ἄθλον suggests that Atlas is etymologically the "toiler." Thus in Ovid's Atlans.:. laborat (Met. 2.296) laborat may also be regarded as an etymological gloss on Atlans, while the name itself is suggestive of ἄθλον: see now Michalopoulos (2001) 38—39. Hardie (1983) provides an inter-

A New Phenomenon

10.

17

esting study of the poetic and scientific aspects of descriptions of Atlas’s uplifting posture. See O’Hara (1996) 21-102. There may be an etymological play in Fast. 5.83-84; the paranomasia in Pleione...Pleiadas suggests that the Pleiades are etymologically ‘daughters of Pleione.’ There may be another reason, from the Roman perspective, for Atlas’s joy: his daughter Electra, one of the Pleiades, and Jupiter were the parents of Dardanus, founder of the Trojan royal house; see Aen. 8.134-141. At Fast. 4.169-170 Ovid wittily treats the setting of the Pleiades as a lightening of their father's burden: Pliades incipient umeros releuare paternos.

11.

The following works provide good introductions to the poem and its bibliography: Kroll (1919); Leuthold (1942), the most comprehensive survey; Steinmetz (1966) Ξ

Steinmetz (2000) 308-340; Aratea see Montanari

Santini

(1977);

Traglia (1984).

Caldini (1973) and (1976). (1978)

covers

only

in the

The most important contribution

in English, which details Germanicus's Augustan poetics, Maurach's useful commentary

On astrology

lines

is Hinds (1987) 1-327

3-21.

of the poem.

The

pages of Bómer's commentaries on the Fasti and Metamorphoses provide the most help: the game of sortes Ovidianae seldom fails to turn up useful information. 12.

As Kroll observed (1919)

460,

there is precedent for the partial

translation

of the

Phaenomena in Vergil'S treatment of the “Weather Signs" (G. 1.351-463); in Ovid's abbreviated translation of the “Phaenomena” section which ended at line 453 of the Greek (Courtney 308-309); and in Varro's Ephemeris, apparently based on the “Weather Signs"

(Courtney

244-246).

The manuscript

evidence

and testimonia

indicate that Phaenomena was the title proper given to Latin translations

of Aratus.

However, the phrase Aratea (carmina), used by Cicero and Lactantius, meaning "Aratus poem" with the implication that it is a Latin version,

is a handy way to distin-

guish the Latin translations from the Greek original. In this study Aratea is so used for the translations by Cicero and Germanicus, and Phaenomena is used exclusively as the title of Aratus's poem. Since Germanicus translated only lines 1-732 of the Phaenomena, 1 sometimes use "Phaenomena" to refer to the purely astronomical

portion of Aratus's poem (1—732) in order to distinguish it from the following section, "Weather Signs" (733-1154). For further details see Appendix A, n. 6.

13.

14. 15. 16.

Informative accounts of astrometeorology will be found in Pfeiffer (1916); "Sternbilder” 1055-1058; Gundel (1950) 136-142; Böker (1962) 1627-1637 and 1640-1642; and Rohr (1928). Montanari Caldini (1973) 156-157. See Pliny the Elder, HN 2.105-106, together with the commentary of Beaujeu (1950). Goold (1977) xvii-xxxv, with star charts, gives an excellent illustrated account of

the ancient celestial sphere. Readers who wish to consult star charts with illustrations of the constellation figures will find them, in addition to Goold (1977), in the following works: Mair (1921); Gain; Schott and Böker (1958); Le Boeuffle (1977)

and his edition of Hyginus (1983). The classic study of the representation of the constellation figures in Greco-Roman antiquity is Thiele (1898). On the sumptuously illustrated Leiden codex of Germanicus’s Aratea see, in addition (1898), Verkerk (1980); Stückelberger (1990); and Haffner (1997).

17.

to Thiele

For an account of the ancient division of the Phaenomena see Martin (1956) xxi-xxiv; Martin, Com., in the app. crit. on 732; and Kidd, Com., on 733-757.

18 18.

19.

Translating the Heavens Particularly striking is line 428, perculit, et caecas lustrauit luce lacunas, with its alliteration of c and / and the chiastic arrangement of the syllables cu ἐμ lu cu. Note also the placement of lustrauit luce in between caecas lacunas. Disiecta in 427 is usually taken as modifying saxa but disiecta saxa, whether

disiecta is taken as a participle or an adjective, does not fit the sequence of events indicated by reuellens perculit; it must modify insula. In 429-430 I follow Baehrens in retaining the transmitted text, cum corpore, and in adopting infestus, which ap-

pears to be a humanist conjecture, for infesta of the manuscripts, which lacks a substantive. The emphasis on the size of the scorpion is essential in light of Phaen. 644, mAetórepos

προφανείς; cf. 84, μέγα

θηρίον;

Scorpio

is a large constella-

tion. Infestus is easily defended by Cicero's practice of freely adding epithets to the names of constellations. It contributes, moreover, to the emotional

intensity

episode which portrays Orion first as a savage hunter who provokes

of the

the goddess's

anger and then as a pitiable victim who is no match for the huge, venomous creature. The scorpion is a formidable instrument of divine retribution (ingenti cum corpore, infestus); at the same time, however, its deadly sting is characterized by an adjective, flebile, that evokes pity for the victim and perhaps even calls into question the severity of the punishment. For other views on the text of 429—430 see the notes in

Buescu (pp. 135-136) and Soubiran. Buescu conjectured ui corpori' for cum corpore, which allows him to retain infesta, and took both ingenti and infesta as modifying ui. Soubiran, who accepts Buescu's conjecture but rejects his interpretation, understands ingenti as a dative referring to Orion on the basis of a supposed parallel with Germanicus, Aratea 655, ingenti maiorem contulit hostem, where the dative ingenti

does refer to Orion, but maiorem hostem makes all the difference. Goodyear's proposal (1978) 32-33 = (1992) 56 to retain Buescu's conjecture and to emend infesta to infeste seems to me the least satisfactory solution.

20. 21.

See Soubiran 9-16; he dates Cicero's translation to 90-89 BC. Avienius's version of the Phaenomena, written around the middie of the fourth century AD, seems to me to be of a character altogether different from the versions of Cicero and Germanicus: it is a baroque composition

stellations the fullest possible

poetic treatment,

which strives to give the con-

and, to a great extent,

has lost

touch with the Greek source text. The most obvious sign of the distance between the

two is that Avienius's poem is more than seven hundred lines

longer

than

the

Phaenomena. In taking Aratus as his guide, Avienius may well have been the last to make an artful attempt at asserting the primacy of the Greco-Roman firmament over

that chaste heaven of the Christians, and at restoring Jupiter to his celestial throne. 22.

23.

In dating the composition of Germanicus's Aratea earlier than is generally accepted, I am in agreement with E. Fantham (1986) 254 who writes, "Germanicus is far more likely to have begun work in his "student phase" before his campaigns and Ovid's exile in 8 AD." There is general agreement among scholars that Ovid had completed the Metamorphoses and the six extant books of the Fasti at the time of his relegation to Tomis

on the Black Sea in AD 8. However, the question of the chronological

relationship

between the two works remains open. There is insufficient evidence to determine whether the two works were composed simultaneously, or whether one work pre-

ceded the other, or whether one work interrupted the composition

of the other,

in

which case it would be the Fasti which was put aside for work on the Metamorphoses. For a recent survey of the question see Bómer (1988). For additional bibli-

A New Phenomenon

19

ography see Myers (1994) 63 n. 10. As my discussion of the Aratea will show, Germanicus, even with the earlier date of composition for his Aratea, was familiar with both of Ovid's poems.

Chapter 1 Intertraffique of the Minde: A Critical Description of Poetic Translation in Latin

Aratus’s treatment of the constellation Perseus will serve as an example to illustrate his method of astronomical description; it will also give the reader a first impression of the kind of poetry with which his Latin translators worked. Inevitably one discovers upon careful reading of the Phaenomena that beneath the routine of astronomical description and the veneer of plainness and simplicity the Phaenomena is a complex literary cosmos that mirrors its lofty subject, Zeus’s cosmos. The analysis of Aratus’s description of Perseus will be followed by two translations, first Cicero’s and then Germanicus’s; these will introduce the reader to the major issues raised by the poetics of Latin translation in general and by our case-study of Germanicus’s translation of the Phaenomena in particular. We begin with Aratus, Phaenomena 248-253: ἀμφότεροι δὲ πόδες γαμβροῦ ἐπισημαίνοιεν Περσέος, οἵ ῥά οἱ αἰὲν ἐπωμάδιοι φορέονται. αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν βορέω φέρεται περιμήκετος ἄλλων. καί οἱ δεξιτερὴ μὲν ἐπὶ κλισμὸν τετάνυσται πενθερίου δίφροιο τὰ δ᾽ ἐν ποσὶν οἷα διώκων ἴχνια μηκύνει κεκονιμένος ἐν Διὶ πατρί.

250

(The two feet [of Andromeda] will be pointers to her bridegroom Perseus, as they move for ever above his shoulders. He moves higher in the north than the other figures' and his right hand is stretched out toward his bride’s mother’s chair-seat, and like one pursuing on foot he, covered in

dust, lengthens his strides in father Zeus.)?

22

Translating the Heavens

This passage illustrates the way in which Aratus artfully combines the details of astronomical description with references to the mythological origin of the constellation. To map this piece of celestial topography the poet begins by using the feet of the constellation Andromeda, which has already been described and used to locate several constellations, as a guide for finding Perseus. The observer, says the poet, will find Perseus in the vicinity of Andromeda’s

feet (248-249).

He then

instructs the ob-

server to look in a northerly direction (ἐν βορέω... περιμήκετος 250) because the next detail that is mentioned, the right hand, lies on the Arctic Circle. There follows in 251-253 a description of the constellation figure itself, which includes additional information about its position relative to another constellation, Cassiopeia: Perseus’s right hand is extended in the direction of the seated Cassiopeia and his legs are set apart as if he were a runner in mid-stride. The anatomical features of the imaginary figure are the primary means of helping the reader to visualize the constellation and its position relative to other constellations. There is, however, more to this description than the delineation of spatial relationships; there is also a familial relationship which reinforces the reader’s visualization of these constellations as a group. At the very beginning of the passage Perseus is identified as Andromeda’s “bridegroom” (γαμβροῦ) in 248, and then later in 252 Cassiopeia is referred to as his “mother-in-law”

(πενθερίου), references

which

link

the

Perseus

passage to the previous description of Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and their daughter Andromeda in 179-204. There Aratus sketched the tragic history of Cepheus’s family by means of a very selective presentation of significant details which portray father, mother, and daughter caught in the reenactment of Andromeda’s punishment for her mother’s insult to the beauty of the Nereids. When the reader first encounters Cepheus, he is introduced in the company of his “wretched family" (uoyepdv γένος 179); his wife, the unfortunate (δαιμονίη 188) Cassiopeia, has her arms outstretched as if grieving for their daughter Andromeda (195-196); and the daughter, a figure that inspires awe (alvóv ἄγαλμα 197), lies chained to a rock, waiting to be devoured by a sea monster. The passage ends on a poignant note when the poet remarks that Andromeda’s confinement on the rock is unending (πάντ᾽ tata 204). Yet, that sad conclusion, which fits the pictorial representation of the astronomical phenomena, must be revised when, after a delay of 42 lines in which several other constellations are described,

the rescuer of the

mythological

Andromeda

arrives, the

hero Perseus, who will free her from her bonds and become her husband. Aratus does not narrate the rescue of Andromeda and its outcome but

Intertraffique of the Minde

23

merely adumbrates the whole series of events in the words γαμβρός “bridegroom” and πενθέριος “mother-in-law.” This rather understated treatment of the happy ending allows the poet to avoid, on the one hand, an explicit contradiction between Andromeda’s unending punishment mentioned in 240 and her deliverance by Perseus which is assumed in 248 and 252; and, on the other, to complete the family portrait of Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Perseus on the happy note of imminent rescue and marriage. Andromeda has not been forsaken; she has a bright future. One more family connection remains to be noted. The description of the constellation Perseus ends with the image of the hero running “in father Zeus” (Ev

Διὶ

πατρί 253), a phrase which can mean either “in

the

sky” as elsewhere in the poem, or “in his father, Zeus,” Zeus and Danae being the parents of Perseus. This particular connection, among the other family relationships mentioned in the passage, touches on the poem’s central theme of Zeus’s providential care and control of an ordered cosmos: Perseus, the deliverer of Andromeda, is the son of that universal and beneficent “father” in whom he now resides. How do Aratus’s Latin translators handle the passage? Here is Cicero’s version (20-26): E pedibus natum summo Ioue Persea uises,

20

quos umeris retinet defixo corpore Perseus, quem summa ab regione Aquilonis flamina pulsant. Hic dextram ad sedes intendit Cassiepiae, diuersosque pedes, uinctos talaribus aptis, puluerulentus uti de terra elapsu’ repente

25

in caelum uictor magno sub culmine portat.* (You will see Perseus, born of highest Jupiter, at the feet [of Andromeda]

which Perseus with fixed body supports on his shoulders. Gusts of the North Wind from the uppermost region strike him. He stretches his right

hand to the throne of Cassiopeia and, as if suddenly having glided, covered with dust, from the earth into heaven, he in victory sets his feet apart under the sky's great summit, shod in winged sandals fastened on.)

Aratus's lines have undergone a remarkable transformation. Cicero does retain the basic features of the description, the general location of the constellation in the north, and the relative positions of the various anatomical details: Andromeda's feet, Perseus's shoulders, his outstretched right hand, and his feet set apart in the posture of a runner. But there the similarity ends. Through a deliberate program of rewriting, Cicero devel-

24

Translating the Heavens

ops the heroic aspect of the mythological Perseus: he is introduced as the son of Jupiter with a solemn patronymic phrase, natum summo loue (20); his name is sonorously repeated, Persea (20) and Perseus (21), neither corresponding syntactically to the genitive Περσέος ; Aratus's comparison of him to a dust-covered runner in pursuit is elaborated into a dramatic scene of the victorious hero's ascent on winged sandals into the heavens (the winged sandals are absent from the Phaenomena); and the participial phrase de terra elapsu' repente (25) gives immediacy to the scene and suggests the actual catasterism of the hero. One other noteworthy change is the addition of the second person singular verb uises (20) "you will see";

Cicero is fond of these instructional addresses to the reader

which

enhance the didactic ethos of the poet's voice. These important additions are matched by equally important deletions: Cicero dropped the kinship terms, omitting γαμβρός entirely and replacing the reference to Cassiopeia in πενθέριος with the name itself. As a result, Aratus's integration of Perseus, through those kinship terms, into the stellar and human family of Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and Cepheus, and his proleptic reference to the outcome of Perseus's rescue of Andromeda are ignored in order to develop the heroic potential of the constellation Perseus and to capture the triumphant moment of the hero's ascent into the heavens. Another result of Cicero's editing is that it is not clear what heroic exploit he had in mind when he called Perseus a uictor (26). Since

Cicero abandoned Aratus's representation of Perseus as Andromeda's future husband, it is possible that he was thinking of Perseus's killing of Medusa. Germanicus's translation (248-254) brings a very different Perseus into view: Subter utrumque pedem deuotae uirginis ales Perseos effigies, seruatae grata puellae. moles ipsa uiri satis est testata parentem: tantus ubique micat, tantum occupat ab Ioue caeli. dextera sublatae similis prope Cassiepiam sublimis fulget: pedibus properare uidetur et uelle aligeris purum aethera findere plantis.

250

(Below both feet of the Maiden doomed to destruction lies the winged

form of Perseus, pleasing to the girl he saved. The man's vast size itself bears witness to his father: so great does he shine everywhere, so much

of

the sky does Jupiter's son cover. His right hand, like one upraised, gleams

high overhead near Cassiopeia; he seems to be hastening on his feet and to be about to cleave the clear ether with his winged soles.)

Intertraffique of the Minde

25

Germanicus, like Cicero, follows Aratus’s description with regard to the location and relative position of the constellation, giving prominence to those same anatomical features which guide the observer’s eye: feet, right hand, and feet set in a runner’s stride.‘ Out of these similarities, however, a new Perseus emerges. Germanicus uses the description of Perseus as an opportunity to innovate by developing the erotic element in the myth: Andromeda is in one line a tragic uirgo and in the next an elegiac puella; Perseus is her heroic savior and lover. The treatment is reminiscent of a couplet in Propertius (2.28.21-22), in which Andromeda starts out as doomed victim and ends up as lucky bride, though Germanicus avoids the highly respectable and unemotive word uxor. Andromede monstris fuerat deuota marinis: haec eadem Persei nobilis uxor erat.

(Andromeda had been doomed as a sacrifice to a sea-dragon: this same woman became the renowned wife of Perseus.)

Andromeda's punishment, which Germanicus described at 205-206 (Ξ Phaen. 202-204), and Perseus's rescue are here condensed into two participial phrases, both referring to Andromeda; deuotae uirginis conjures up all the high drama and pathos of a tragic spectacle, the helpless maiden doomed to suffer a horrible fate because of her mother's insult to divinity; the second participial phrase, seruatae puellae, changes the mood completely from impending tragedy to erotic passion. The location and shape of the constellation figure merely set the scene for something much more important, the encounter between the puella and her pleasing (grata) lover whose divine parentage, evident in his impressive size (moles), makes him an even more attractive match (uir). Germanicus

has

transported the reader momentarily from Perseus as a constellation to Perseus as a Zeus-born lover. Apparently taking Aratus's phrase περιμήκετος ἄλλων in the sense "taller than the others," the Latin poet develops the idea of Perseus's heroic stature into two lines which relate the size of the constellation to his divine parentage: the repetition of tantus in 251 enhances both his stature and his status. The prepositional phrase ab loue, which functions as the equivalent of the patronymic phrase ab loue natus, makes explicit the hint at Perseus's parentage in the Greek ἐν Διὶ πατρί; at the same time the suggestive collocation ab Ioue caeli, which associates Jupiter the skygod with his primary manifestation, the caelum, may be intended to bring out the other meaning of ἐν Διὶ πατρί which identifies ‘Zeus the father’

26

Translating the Heavens

and ‘sky’. In effect the poet seems to say that the son of the sky-god (ab loue) occupies a conspicuous place in his father the sky (caeli).'^ Sublimis in 253, modifying dextera «manus», appears to be a second interpretation of περιμήκετος, now understood to refer to the latitude rather than to the actual size of the constellation, although here Germanicus uses it specifically of the right hand, and not of the whole constellation, to indicate that Perseus's right hand, which touches the arctic circle, is the northernmost part of the constellation. In this instance Germanicus appears to have clarified the meaning of περιμήκετος by applying sublimis to the northernmost, i.e., highest, part of the constellation. Like Cicero, Germanicus adds the pictorial detail of Perseus's winged sandals, ales...effigies (248-249) and aligeris...plantis (254), though he avoids his

predecessor's wording, pedes uinctos talaribus aptis (24). The detail is found as early as the Hesiodic Shield: ἀμφὶ δὲ ποσσὶν ἔχεν πτερόεντα πέδιλα, "on his feet he had winged sandals" (220). The epic tradition in which Aratus himself was working becomes the source of material for rewriting the Phaenomena, as we saw earlier in the discussion of Germanicus's treatment of Chiron and the Pleiades. However, the language of 254, velle aligeris purum aethera findere plantis, combines Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.667, liquidum motis talaribus aéra findit, said of Perseus as he flies into Cepheus's territory, with Vergil’s Aeneid 4.259: ut primum alatis tetigit magalia plantis, said of Mercury's arrival in Carthage." Germanicus echoes his great predecessors in epic, Vergil and Ovid, as Aratus echoes Homer and Hesiod." In addition to exploiting the erotic potential of the catasterism myth, the Latin poet also includes a mildly humorous comment on his source text. Aratus concludes his description with the observation that Perseus, "covered with dust (kexovipévos), lengthens his steps in father Zeus." As a scholiast pointed out (ZAratus 201.5-7), the most likely explanation of this peculiar epithet for a hero who can fly and is enstarred in the heavens is that κεκονιμένος was inspired by the fact that Perseus's feet are located in the Milky Way Galaxy; the cloud-like appearance of the star clusters in the Milky Way suggests the image of a dust-covered Perseus, an image which neatly combines the condition of the terrestrial runner to whom he is compared with that of the celestial phenomenon." Cicero duly translated κεκονιμένος 85 puluerulentus but seems to have been bothered by the idea that the constellation Perseus was "dust-covered." Accordingly, he attempts to smooth over the perceived difficulty by rewriting the source text in a way which will explain the apparent contradiction. He replaces Aratus's comparison of Perseus to someone pursuing with a com-

Intertraffique of the Minde

27

parison in which he is likened to someone who has glided off the earth into the sky; and the earth provides the obvious source of Perseus’s dusty condition. The proximity of puluerulentus to de terra strengthens the suggestion that the puluis must be of terrestrial origin. Germanicus likewise felt that there was an interpretive problem raised by a dusty constellation, but he hit upon a more sophisticated solution than Cicero’s to resolve it. Germanicus rejects the epithet κεκονιμένος and some such phrase as in caelo as a rendering of ἐν Διὶ πατρί. In his version Perseus is said to cleave “the clear ether” (purum aethera). No doubt there is a play on the meaning of purus in this context, i.e., the "clean" ether, free from dust, and the "clear" ether, free from clouds and mist. The Latin poet has rewritten his source text in order to comment on what was perhaps felt to be a lapse in taste on Aratus’s part when he used the epithet κεκονιμένος οὗ a constellation. Moreover, the phrase purum aethera is authorized, if it is permissible to speak of authority for re-

writing another's text, by epic tradition, both Greek and Latin, according to which the aether is clear and cloudless.'* Here the textual relationship between the Latin translation and the Greek source text is a highly complex one in which an interpretive problem in the Phaenomena becomes the starting point for a rewriting that is both a critical comment on and a witty reply to what Aratus wrote. Aratus's description of the constellation Perseus, a six-line passage written in simple language, provoked remarkably different translations from Cicero and Germanicus. Each of the Latin poets created a Perseus distinct from the one in the Phaenomena. Aratus's Perseus belongs to a family of constellations which includes Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Andromeda. By cleverly utilizing the coincidence of the familial and spatial relationship that unites these star-figures, Aratus is able to underscore the main theme of his poem, namely that celestial phenomena are signs (σήματα) of Zeus’s well-ordered cosmos:

it is a son of Zeus who rescues

the condemned maiden and gains heaven. Cicero portrays Perseus as a figure of heroic grandeur, a uictor who ascends from earth into the vault of heaven. And

finally Germanicus, developing

the erotic element in the

Perseus-Andromeda story, gives the reader a Perseus as lover. In both cases the Latin translators rewrite the source text in ways which reveal their subjective intervention as readers and interpreters of the Phaenomena and their creativity as poets who are assimilating the Greek poem to the tastes and standards of the Latin literary culture of their day. In the foregoing analysis I have concentrated primarily on differences in semantic content between the source text and its translations to show

28

Translating the Heavens

how the translators have imposed their own literary designs on the source text. It would also be possible to enlarge the scope of investigation and study the Latin versions more intensively on the stylistic level in relation to the poetics dominant at the time of writing, as I did in the Introduction with their treatments of a brief passage from the Orion-Scorpio catasterism. Cicero, for example, employs a fullness and weightiness of expression which is characteristic of the republican epic and tragic poets he so admired. He expands the prepositional phrase ἐν βορέω (“in the north”) into an entire line, quem summa ab regione Aquilonis flamina pulsant (“gusts of the North Wind from the uppermost region strike him"), in order to give the simple compass direction. In the three-line sentence which describes Perseus as a runner, the accumulation of detail steadily builds to an impressive picture not only of the heroic figure with his various attributes (pedes uinctos talaribus aptis, puluerulentus, uictor), but also of his celestial abode

(im caelum, magno

sub culmine).^

However,

when Germanicus came to translate the Phaenomena sometime between AD 4-7, that fullness and weightiness of expression had been disciplined and reduced by a strict regimen of Hellenistic poetics which had been adopted and mediated into Latin poetry by the Neoterics and Augustans. As a result, Germanicus was able to translate the Phaenomena in a poetic style which Aratus himself had helped to create along with his great contemporary, Callimachus. Consider the lightness of touch with which Germanicus handles the Perseus-Andromeda story as an aition with an erotic motif through the use of two participial phrases, deuotae uirginis and seruatae puellae, which cast Andromeda in the role of both tragic uirgo and elegiac puella. There is the clever placement of the phrase purum aethera in the same metrical position as the word which it both replaces and comments on in a mild literary controversy over the interpretation of Aratus's κεκονιμένος. And as we will see later on, there are other evidences of our poet's learning and craftsmanship. Differences in poetic styles, as well as differences in reading and interpretation of the source text, are lines of investigation that the student of translation must follow. But despite these differences, the two translators share the same conception of the activity of translation: they rewrite their source text. The present discussion is sufficient to illustrate how Cicero and Germanicus rewrite the Phaenomena and how that rewriting requires the reader to approach their translations as "independent" texts embodying literary intentions and values which are not constrained by the necessity of producing a faithful copy of the source text.

Intertraffique of the Minde

29

How do we explain a poetics of translation that results in translations which depart so radically from their source text, especially when we are accustomed to think that literal fidelity, or, at the least, a close adherence to the meaning of the source text, is the primary virtue of the translator? The Latin passages are, on the one hand, recognizable as versions of Phaenomena 248-253 because they retain the substance of Aratus’s astronomical description; there is a basic core of semantic equivalence consisting of the constellations themselves, their anatomical features, and their spatial relationship to one another: yet, around that core the translator builds a new structure through a deliberate program of rewriting, a structure which stands on its own, independent of the source text. In order to understand

why

Cicero and

Germanicus

translated the

Phaenomena

in

this way, it is necessary to consider the nature of literary translation, and specifically Latin poetic translation. It is to these topics that we must now turn.

Literary Translation Reconsidered Literary translation, the transformation of a literary text written in one language into an “equivalent” literary text written in another language, is a creative process and the products of literary translation, when executed by competent hands, are unique creations in their new linguistic and cultural environment.'* The translator-poet creates, not by inventing what is recognized as new and original in the world of literary texts but by recreating, in another language and another culture, the semantic content, the formal features, and the aesthetic qualities of the source text. What distinguishes literary translation from other types of translation is the goal of achieving an aesthetic effect comparable to that of the source text. That goal guides translator-poets as they work to recreate the affective power of the source text in a radically different linguistic and cultural context and make the difficult choices forced upon them by their inability to give equal treatment to all aspects of the source text (lexical, semantic, acoustic, syntactic, structural, stylistic, allusive). Dryden's translation of Vergil's phrase at Aeneid 1.7, altae moenia Romae, "the long glories of majestic Rome," although it departs from the semantic content, syntax, and meter of the source text, transforms Vergil's phrase into good English poetry that contains a pleasing acoustic echo of the Latin, majestic Rome/moenia Romae. To take an example of

Greek into Latin, here is a line of Euripides’ Erectheus: ὡς ἄδ]ακρύς ms

30 ὠμόφρων

Translating the Heavens ὃς

κακοῖς

dis

ob

στένει

(“how

[?] cruel-hearted

is the

tearless person who does not groan at my troubles”) and Ennius’s translation of it (140 Jocelyn = 139 Vahlen): lapideo sunt corde multi quos

non miseret neminis ("stone-hearted are the many who have no pity for anyone"): a new metaphor, pronounced alliteration, and an emphatic double negative effect a profound transformation of the Greek that results in a moving verse of Latin poetry." Ennius's version certainly could not be translated back into the Greek to reproduce the words of the source; yet the textual relationship between the Latin and the Greek can be identified as that of translation and source text. Both of these examples illustrate what is most exciting as well as most problematic about poetic translation for those who can read both source text and translation: the wording of the source text governs—and that loosely—but does not determine the wording of a good poetic translation because the requirements of the receiving language on the stylistic and rhetorical levels take precedence over the requirements of the reproduction of semantic content and syntax. The words "transformation" and "re-creation," which have just been used to define translation, were deliberately chosen because translation does involve changes at all or nearly all levels of composition, and the translator must create anew the source text through reading and interpretation; nothing comes ready-made for the translator to assemble into a translation. This view challenges the still generally accepted notion that translation is the mechanical activity of converting a text written in one language into another language and that the primary goal of all translation is to produce an accurate version of the source text to the extent that the receiving language will allow. And although fairly literal translation may be practiced at a high level of sophistication which combines a close adherence to the wording of the source text with a stylistic grace that escapes the treadmill diction of translationese, as for example in Lattimore's version of the /liad, nevertheless the touchstone of success and approval remains a uniform

accuracy of translation that guarantees

the reader

an

index of the original; departures from the original are judged to be “errors” and the artistic achievement of the translator is a secondary consideration and is valued to the extent that it achieves a self-effacement which allows the orignal to “shine through.” But even trustworthy literalness, which strives to bring the reader as close as possible to the source text, can backfire, when taken to extremes, and become a parody of the source text, as illustrated by A. E. Housman’s tragic translation:

Intertraffique of the Minde

31

Chorus: O, suitably-attired-in-leather boots Head of a traveler, wherefore, seeking whom Whence by what way how purposed art thou come To this well-nightingaled vicinity? My object in inquiring is to know. But if you happen to be deaf and dumb And do not understand a word I say, Then wave your hand to signify as much."

Housman’s verses cleverly expose the paradox of excessive fidelity which is true to the letter but false to the spirit of the original, although in this case the original is an imaginary one. If literalness, in its varying degrees of sophistication, creates the illusion of being in direct contact with the source text because the literal version itself seems to preserve the “foreignness” of the original through oddities of diction, phrasing, and syntax, it must be acknowledged that even a literal translation is the product of a process of mediation not only through the language and culture of the receiving language, but also through the individuality of the translator. And even that process of literal mediation, though operating under the constraints of fidelity to the original, still holds the promise of “transformation” and “re-creation.” Examples of the literal translation of Greek poetry can be found in Latin. To take an extreme case, according to a scholiast’s note on Persius, Satire 1.4, the Labeo mentioned by the satirist was a Roman poet named Attius Labeo who produced a translation of Homer’s Iliad; the scholiast quotes what is the sole extant line of the translation in order to ridicule Labeo’s literal method of translation. The Greek text is Iliad 4.35: ὠμὸν

βεβρώθοις

Πρίαμον

Πριάμοιό

τε

Priam and the children οὗ Priam’’),

παῖδας ("[if]...you

should

eat up

which Labeo translates, crudum man-

duces Priamum Priamique pisinnos" ("Raw you'd munch both Priam himself and Priam's papooses" in the memorable version of Basil Gildersleeve).^ Labeo’s literalism extends not only to word-for-word equivalence, including the enclitics -que and Te, but also to word order and syntax, and even to the alliterative pattern of the Greek found in the succession of three p-sounds in the second half of the line: the Latin replicates the Greek like a strand of DNA. The price of such literalism is high: manduces and pisinnos are intolerable offenses against the lofty decorum of Latin epic diction. Whatever advantage is obtained through faithfulness to the wording of the source text is immediately undermined by this breach in decorum. Labeo's literalism does reproduce semantic content and word order, but at the expense of epic grandeur. No doubt the line

32

Translating the Heavens

was chosen from Labeo’s Iliad precisely because it exhibits a hyperliteralism in translation and may not be representative of the translation as a whole, though the scholiast’s characterization of it as uerbum de uerbo, “word for word,” is probably a fair one, given Persius’s scorn for Labeo’s talent. Labeo’s method of literal translation or something near to it is probably what Terence, at a much earlier date, 161 BC, was responding to when he answered a hostile critic in the prologue to the Eunuchus, saying that by “translating well” (i.e., "literally," bene uortendo 7) the critic wrote badly in Latin (scribendo male 7), and that by translating literally he has turned good Greek plays into bad Latin ones (ex Graecis bonis Latinas fecit non bonas 8).' Here Terence nicely articulates the paradox of the "faithful" translator: close adherence to the wording of the source texts produces bad writing in the receiving language and, as a result, betrays the aesthetic quality of the source texts. To make good Latin plays out of Greek plays, the translator must, as Terence's words imply, give priority to the linguistic and stylistic resources of the receiving language, to the literary values embodied in the dominant poetics, and to the tastes and expectations of the intended audience of the translation. Examples of literal translation in Latin are easy to find when the analysis is confined to small units of translation such as the phrase, the line of verse, and the short sentence. Plautus's version of Menander's aphorism ὃν

à

θεὰ

φιλοῦσιν

ἀποθνίύσκει

νέος ("[he]

whom

the gods love dies

young,” Δὶς ἐξαπατῶν fr. 111 Körte) neatly preserves the aphoristic quality of the Greek as well as the semantic content: quem di diligunt / adulescens

moritur

(Bacch.

816-817).

But

this

is

one

line

out

of

Plautus's translation of an entire play, which formerly was represented by only a few fragments of one or two lines.? This situation changed dramatically with the discovery of continuous portions of text from Menander's Δὶς

ἐξαπατῶν. As Handley's

fundamental

discussion of the

discovery reveals, Plautus radically rewrites Menander's text: the transformation is breathtaking and certainly discomfits the modern notion that the primary virtue of translation is literal fidelity to the wording of the source text.? And this rewriting is not an isolated phenomenon due solely to the requirements of live performance on a Roman stage. If we turn to a text not written for performance, Cicero's translation of a passage from Homer's Iliad, we will see at work a process of rewriting similar in kind, though different in degree from Plautus's rewriting of Menander's

Δὶς

ἐξαπατῶν. In his translation of /liad 2.299—330,

where

Odysseus explains the meaning of the portent of the snake that devoured the nestlings and their mother, Cicero introduces numerous alterations: he

Intertraffique of the Minde

33

adds, changes, or deletes epithets; he compresses or omits portions of the Greek text; he also expands it, especially when he sees the opportunity to elaborate the frightening aspect of the snake (immani specie tortuque 11; ferus 16), and to create a dramatic, vivid picture of the snake devouring the mother and her chicks, (immani laniauit uiscera morsu

16; auis taetro

mactatas dente 26). A Roman coloring is added when the Greek seer Calchas is referred to as an augur (2).? These changes produce effective Latin epic poetry, but they do not correspond to anything in Homer's text. There are of course literal correspondences, some of them very close: terribilem (12), for example, accurately translates Homer's oyepδαλεός (309) and is located in the same position in the line and contains the same number of syllables. The examples of literal translation, however, are embedded in a mosaic of rewriting whose pattern is neither all

Homer nor all Cicero but the product of a collaborative effort between the two.

As the translations by Plautus and Cicero demonstrate, if we move beyond the comparative analysis of isolated phrases and lines when there is sufficient continuous text for extended comparison, and if we do not employ the familiar typology of the literal and the free as an end in itself, we discover that in most cases Latin translation of Greek poetry involves a rewriting of the source text which includes various modes of translation as well as the incorporation of new material not found in the original. Some may feel the need to quantify the number of changes necessary in order to determine what constitutes a rewriting. But it is the nature and not the number of the changes made which gives the source text its new identity as the product of a collaborative effort. Once a breach has been made in the integrity of the source text, even minor changes can have a profound impact on the reader's understanding of the source text in its new linguistic and cultural setting. Catullus's addition of the vocative Lesbia into his translation (51) of Sappho's ode completely transforms it by giving it a whole new context in the cycle of Lesbia poems: the reader is transported from the world of archaic Greek lyric into the world of Catullus's emotional and literary life. The vocative Lesbia not only disguises the name of the woman who is the source of the poet's passion but also identifies her with the source of the words that express that passion, Sappho, the poet of Lesbos: Catullus is simultaneously addressing his beloved and the author of the poem that he is translating. As both poem and translation addressed to a Lesbia, Catullus’s words take on an entirely new meaning in relation to the Greek source text and to other "Lesbia" poems in the corpus. Whenever it is possible to compare Latin poetic

34

Translating the Heavens

translations with their Greek source texts for more than two or three lines, the phenomenon of rewriting the source text comes into view. Even the meager fragments of one of the earliest works of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus’s translation of the Odyssey, which will be discussed later in this chapter, reveal the process of rewriting at work. Since a close adherence to the semantic content of the source text is but one method of translation, a method which serves a particular purpose and the needs of a particular audience, it cannot be used as a general prescription for the writing of translations or as a universal criterion for the criticism of translations. In fact, the literal and the free methods of translation are different aspects of the same phenomenon, “the interpretation of one set of linguistic signs by means of some other language,” to use Jakobson’s definition.” And the outcome of that activity will be determined largely by the function of the translation, the intended audience, and the linguistic ability and artistic talent of the translator. Because the literary translator aims at an aesthetic rather than a utilitarian end, the critic cannot approach a literary translation with a prescriptivist mentality that dictates terms to the translator. Since it has long been customary for critics to judge the quality of translations according to the standard of semantic correspondence between source text and translation, they have paid insufficient attention to a consideration of what artistic contributions translators make in expressing their own literary values and intentions; moreover, it has been all too easy to brand the translator’s own contributions as “inaccuracies” or “misunderstandings” of the source text. Although it may sound strange to say it, the artistry of the translator ought to be considered along with the artistry of the author of the source text. Therefore, if we are to avoid the mistake of employing the wrong critical tools in the present study, it will be necessary to reconsider our understanding of poetic translation in Latin before we can take up the specific task of analyzing how Germanicus Caesar translated Aratus’s Phaenomena. Fortunately for students of Latin poetry the discipline of Translation Studies has revolutionized attitudes towards translation and has opened up new perspectives for the literary criticism of translation." As a result of this revolution the polarization of translation-thinking into the literal and literary/free has been neutralized: the protean nature of translating can accommodate

different methods

and strategies. As Bassnett-McGuire has

written in her excellent introduction to the field, “there is certainly no single proscriptive [sic] model for translators to follow.’” To think that there is such a model undermines the study of translation (both the proc-

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ess and the product) by restricting analysis and evaluation to categorization by type: this is a literal translation and therefore is good; this is a free translation and therefore is bad; or vice versa. It follows, then, that the primary tasks of the critic must be to describe, rather than prescribe, how translators translate their source texts, and to understand their methods in the context of the literary-historical situation in which they are writing, in particular the poetics dominant at the time of writing and the ideology that governs their conception of what translation is and their conception of their role as translators. As A. Lefevere has written in his valuable study Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame:” Two factors basically determine the image of a work of literature as projected by a translation. Those two factors are, in order of importance, the translator’s ideology (whether he/she willingly embraces it, or whether it is imposed on him/her as a constraint or by some form of patronage) and the poetics dominant in the receiving literature at the time the translation is made. The ideology dictates the basic strategy the translator is going to

use and therefore also dictates solutions to problems concerned with both the universe of discourse expressed in the original (objects, concepts, customs belonging to the world that was familiar to the writer of the original) and the language the original itself is expressed in.

A basic component in the ideology of a poet who is translating the Phaenomena will be the literary status of the source text as codified in the history of its reception. The Phaenomena was esteemed a classic and became a canonical text which served as an exemplar of a particular poetic style, the leptos, or “refined style,” whose hallmarks were verbal elegance, formal precision, variety in subject matter and tone, sophistication of treatment, and refinement of taste, all achieved through the learned command and manipulation of the received literary tradition." In short, the “refined style” studiously cultivates tradition in order to be nontraditional. The Phaenomena’s status as an exemplar greatly complicates the task of the translator who wants to reproduce the stylistic and aesthetic qualities which made Aratus’s poem a masterpiece, because the translator will then have to develop a strategy for using the dominant poetics in the receiving language to achieve that end. In Cicero’s case stylistic equivalence was especially difficult: what Cicero read and admired as Latin epic poetry (and epic is the genre to which the Phaenomena belongs), the robust, resonant hexameters of Ennius, was something very different from the refinement and subtlety of Aratus's verse." Moreover, the translator has to have an interpretation of the poem, a basic understanding of the

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work’s major themes and purpose, which will guide the overall strategy of translation. Here too the reception of the work, or a particular strand of it, which the translator accepts or reacts against, will have a profound influence on the translation. Cicero interprets the Phaenomena, as the fragments of his translation reveal, as primarily a didactic text, a star guide, that describes the constellations and the celestial sphere. But other interpretations are possible. Germanicus’s reading of the poem is completely different from Cicero’s. As is made clear by the first sixteen lines of Germanicus’s translation, the political ideology of the Augustan Age exerted a powerful influence on the way in which he read and interpreted the Phaenomena. Aratus’s hymn extolling Zeus’s providential care and immanence in nature becomes in Germanicus’s hands a paean to the power of the emperor Augustus and a justification of dynastic succession; for, as the poet prays, the son of the emperor who has established worldwide peace will ensure the continuation of that peace. Germanicus’s rewriting of the proem marks the beginning of a radical reinterpretation of the Phaenomena which has very little in common with Aratus’s meditation on an organic, teleological universe overseen by Zeus. With regard to the poetics dominant at the time of writing, it will at once become obvious that Germanicus, a younger contemporary of Ovid, employed a poetic style very different from Cicero’s, a style formed by Vergil and Ovid, which assimilated the Phaenomena to the literary culture of the Augustan Age.” This is not the place to take up in detail the complex issues of ideology and poetics; they will be discussed in the following chapters in connection with the reception and translation of the Phaenomena. At this stage of the discussion it is sufficient to observe, as Lefevere has rightly insisted, that translation takes place not only on the lexical level but on the levels of ideology and poetics as well, and that the study of translation cannot be limited only to what happens on the lexical level. The work done by translation scholars makes it impossible now to view the translator as little more than an interlingual scribe who reads something in one language and then reproduces it in another. The significance of their work for the understanding of the Latin translation of Greek poetry is immense. First and foremost, the findings of Translation Studies force us to realize that our analysis and evaluation of translations produced by Roman poets cannot be based on our own assumptions about the correct way to translate. Nor is there much of critical value to be learned from the Roman aphoristic tradition about methods of translating: the Ciceronian injunction to translate the spirit rather than the letter of the

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source text and Horace’s animadversion on the fidus interpres reveal only the predilection of the Roman for stylistic elegance as a primary value in literary translation; to follow the source text verbatim at whatever cost to the lexicon and syntax of the receiving language would be viewed, from the perspective of Greco-Roman literary culture, as a confession of literary incapacity and verbal indigence. Translation Studies leads us away from prescriptions and prejudices and takes us to the poetic translations themselves to understand how they were made. The best translators have long been aware that translation involves recreating a literary work rather than merely reproducing a set of linguistic signs. If we look back to the very beginnings of poetic translation in Latin, Livius Andronicus’s version of the Odyssey, we realize, as Mariotti pointed out,” that Livius's primary motive could not have been to write a “crib” or substitute for the Odyssey, a motive unthinkable in the context of Homer’s preeminence as “the poet” in the Greek literary culture to which Andronicus belonged, but rather to create a unique, and in this instance, highly innovative poem, being the first work of its kind in Latin, which assimilated the Homeric Odyssey to the stylistic media of the Latin language and to the cultural world of Rome in the second half of the third century BC. Thus Latin readers who already knew the Odyssey in the original had a new experience of reading it naturalized in Latin and possessed, thanks to Livius’s efforts, an exemplar of the epic genre in their native tongue which would stimulate further literary production as well as national pride in their nascent literature. The words of another of Homer’s translators, Madame Dacier, capture the spirit of Livius’s approach to the Odyssey: “The second type of translation, on the other hand, which tries above all to save the spirit, does not fail to keep the letter, even where it takes the greatest liberties. With its daring features, which remain true always, it becomes not just the faithful copy of its original, but a second original in its own right. It can only be the work of a writer of genius: solid, noble, and productive." “A second original" is not, I think, an extravagant claim.” Literary history bears this out: some translations that aspire to literary status, like some original texts that aspire to the same, win recognition and acceptance into the system of approved texts and become important contributions to language and culture. In his essay, “Translators of Greek: Early Translators of Homer,” Ezra Pound singled out the following translations as achieving their own “originality”: "Golding's Metamorphoses; Gavine Douglas's Aeneids; Marlowe's Eclogues from Ovid, in each of which books a great poet has compensa-

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ted, by his own skill, any loss in transition; a new beauty has in each case been created." If a good poetic translation can achieve the status of a "second original" as a result of its being unfaithful to the letter of the source text, then the concept of equivalence in translation as a tool of analysis becomes problematic. Indeed, a linguist would argue that for any mode of translation, including the literal, equivalence is an impossibility because there is no synonymy between languages. Accordingly, some translation scholars want to abandon the concept altogether because it restricts the study of translation to the investigation of lexical concord between source text and translation and assumes the aesthetic inferiority of the translation as a text which tries to reproduce an original but is doomed to failure. If equivalence is thought of as an absolute, a state of complete concord between source text and translation, then of course it is a useless concept for the study of translation because that state of complete concord will always elude the translator. There is, however, another way to understand equivalence in translation which allows the concept to be of use to the critic. Since the impetus to translate a text begins with the intention to reproduce the source text in a way that will make it comprehensible to readers in another language, there must exist a core equivalence, a basic, demonstrable correspondence which defines the relationship between two texts as that of source text and translation.” We saw an example of core equivalence at the beginning of this chapter: Cicero and Germanicus retain the substance or messagecontent of Aratus's description of the constellation Perseus, and, in spite of the numerous changes which they made, the wording of their texts is controlled, though not determined, by the text of the Phaenomena. If the concept of equivalence is abandoned altogether, then the activity of translating cannot be differentiated from other forms of composition. This core equivalence is not quantifiable, something to be determined on a score card of lexical and semantic correspondences,

but is rather a very

specialized form of intertextual relation in which the distinguishing feature of a text is its demonstrable relatedness, on the lexical and semantic levels, to a source text in another language. Cicero's and Germanicus's Aratea, despite numerous, significant changes, are demonstrably translations of Aratus's Phaenomena: both Latin poets work with a core equivalence in the form, structure, and content of the Phaenomena, which is proof of their close engagement with the Greek text and their attempts to reproduce it in Latin. However, both poets move beyond that core equivalence and rewrite the source text in ways which develop latent po-

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tentials for elaboration in its new linguistic and cultural setting. It is this combination of core equivalence and rewriting that makes the translation a unique creation, a “second original.” Rewriting centered on a core of equivalence is, I think, a useful model for understanding how Latin translator-poets work because the defining characteristic of their translation technique is that it is variable in mode: the relation between translation and source text is constantly changing and this dynamic relation between the two, which is accessible, of course, only to the bilingual reader, gives the impression of a collaborative effort. Hence the most profitable approach to the study of Latin poetic translation or poetic translation in general is to grant the translator flexibility in responding to the myriad challenges of transposing the source text into a new environment and to discern, if possible, the motive behind the various innovations introduced into the translation. There are numerous places in Cicero’s translation of the Phaenomena in which he achieves a high level of semantic equivalence. Here is one example: Cicero’s version of Phaenomena 66, in which Aratus provides an etymology for the name of the constellation Engonasin, renders the source text almost word-for-word, a literalism made possible by the fact that the Latin genu is cognate with the Greek γόνυ. ἀλλά μιν αὕτως

ἐν

γόνασιν

ὀκλάζοντι

καλέουσι'

τὸ δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἐν

γούνασι

κάμνον

ἔοικεν. (65--67)

(but they just call him the man on his knees; again laboring on its knees, the figure looks like a man crouching.) Engonasin uocitant, genibus quia nixa feratur. (fr. XII) (they call him the man on his knees because he is born along resting on

his knees.)” Yet in another context, Phaenomena 313-315, the description of Aquila, Cicero cannot reproduce exactly Aratus's implied etymology of 'Anrós (Eagle) from the verb ἄηται (a form of the verb ‘blow’); instead he very cleverly substitutes a Latin etymology, Aquilo (North Wind) from Aquila (Eagle) in 86-87, an etymology which retains the basic point of the Greek by suggesting a phonetic connection between the word for eagle and the word for the movement of the wind. In the Latin etymology, however, the relationship is reversed: it is the wind Aquilo that is named after the eagle aquila, as is noted by Festus (Paul.-Fest. p. 20L), *Aquilo is a wind named for its very vigorous flight like an eagle" (Aquilo uentus

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a uehentissimo uolatu ad instar aquilae appellatur.) Cicero shrewdly capitalized on the fact that Aquilo, the translation of fopéas in Phaenomena 313, created the opportunity for etymologizing word-play on the Latin name of the constellation Aquila.” In another passage the Greek poet maps out the location of three constellations, Gemini, Cancer, and Leo, with respect to Ursa Major, which is divided into three reference points, head, middle, and feet, each reference point serving as a guide to its corresponding constellation (147-148). Κρατὶ ποσσὶ

δέ ol Δίδυμοι, μέσσῃ δ᾽ ὕπο Kapkivos ἐστί, δ᾽ ὀπισθοτέροισι Λέων ὕπο καλὰ φαείνει.

(Beneath the Bear’s head are the Twins, beneath her belly the Crab; and under her hind legs the Lion shines brightly.)

In verse structure, word order, and syntax the celestial topography is very neatly articulated. There are three clauses which increase in length, the first goes as far as the penthemimeral caesura, the second is punctuated by line-end, the third fills a whole line. In each clause the same pattern of word order and the same syntactic arrangement are used: the relevant part

of Ursa Major is given in a dative governed by the preposition ὑπό in anastrophe (the preposition as well as the verb ἐστίν are shared by the first and second clauses Κρατὶ.. μέσσῃ 8' ὕπο, ποσσί.. ὕπο); and the preposition appears in the same metrical position in both lines. Each part of Ursa Major is followed by the name of the constellation located under it: Κρατὶ .. Δίδυμοι, μέσσῃ .. Καρκίνος, ποσσὶ ...Aéwy. The compactness and symmetry of the lines produce a highly effective word diagram of the relative positions of these constellations to one another. Cicero, elaborating the simplicity and brevity of the Greek for a Roman audience, creates a more expansive version out of the source text: Et natos Geminos inuises sub caput Arcti;

subiectus mediaest Cancer, pedibusque tenetur magnu' Leo tremulam quatiens e corpore flammam. (fr. XXII) (And you will see the Twins under the head of the Bear; placed beneath its

middle is the Crab, at its feet is held the great Lion shaking from its body a flickering light.)

Clearly Cicero felt that to make good poetry in Latin more was wanted than what he found in the Greek. So he retains the key feature of Aratus's structural arrangement, the three parts of Ursa Major: Kpati-caput,

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péooy—mediae, voool-pedibus; and he repeats sub twice, once as the preposition and once as a verbal prefix, corresponding loosely to Aratus’s use of ὑπό. At the same time, however, he breaks down Aratus’s compact structure in order to introduce greater variety of expression: he adds an epithet for Leo, magnus; he adds a phrase describing the radiation of light, tremulam quatiens e corpore flammam, which is more picturesque than the simple καλὰ φαείνει, transferring the activity of a lion’s shaking its mane to the constellation’s radiation of light; and finally he uses three different verbs, inuises, subiectus est, and tenetur, among which inuises stands out as a didactic address to the reader. Cicero chooses his words to create a colorful picture; Aratus chooses and arranges his words to create a syntactic design that is a word-map of the celestial order.

The analysis of these passages taken from Cicero’s Aratea reveals how the poet varies his mode of translation. It ranges from the literal equivalence of the Engonasin etymology to the clever substitution of the Aq-

uila-Aquilo etymology for the Alntés-dntat etymology to a rewriting of the source text that is legitimized by the translator’s perception that the wording of the source text needs to be elaborated in order to meet the expectations of its new audience. In rewriting Aratus’s description of the location of Gemini, Cancer, and Leo relative to Ursa Major, Cicero gives expression to his own understanding of what astronomical description ought to be in Latin hexameter poetry. At the same time, these three passages give clear indication that the translator has studied the wording of the source text very carefully. The purpose of the foregoing discussion of equivalence has been to show that it can be retained as a useful category for the analysis of translation as long as it is not thought of as a state of complete concord between the two texts or as the primary goal of the translation process. It is rather that core of shared meaning which is achieved through the communicative exchange which takes place between the source text and the translator as reader-interpreter-author, and which can be defined by the various lexical, semantic, and syntactic relationships which are formed through the translator’s close engagement with the source text. As I have tried to show in the examples discussed in this chapter, the source text and its translation share a core of equivalent meaning which determines the basic nature of the translation as a text written primarily to reproduce the meaning of another text." Around that core, however, translator-poets may weave the threads of their own invention. Because the translation strategy of Latin translators is variable in mode, various forms of equiva-

lence will be found in the same text along with rewriting as a result of the

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meaning negotiated between source text and translator at any given point in the translation. There is no set of rules which can control how a translator responds to the source text or prescribe how the translator ought to read and interpret each line of text and each word in the line in order to produce a correct translation. In the case of Latin poets, a translation strategy that combines a variety of methods from the literal rendering to the complete rewriting of the source text opens up the possibility for something to be “gained” in translation. Cicero’s Perseus and Germanicus’s Perseus are demonstrably translations of Aratus’s Perseus; yet at the same time Cicero and Germanicus rewrite Aratus’s text in order to realize their own aesthetic intentions. The notion that equivalence in translation is an ideal form of correspondence between source text and translation, the target at which translators must always take aim but which they must inevitably miss, subverts the understanding of translation as a creative process because it wrongly suggests that the translator can distill from a text an objective meaning that can then be converted into the vocabulary and syntax of another language, provided that the translator chooses the right words and syntactic constructions. This mechanistic model of equivalence in translation is refuted by the nature of language and communication. The poet’s understanding of how best to implement that translation strategy will be conditioned by poetic styles dominant or influential at the time of writing. Cicero and Germanicus, writing at different periods in the history of Latin poetry, produced very different versions of the Phaenomena. However, it is necessary at this point to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the poetics of translation in the receiving language, i.e., the collected lore of theory and practice through which translators are initiated into their art and develop an understanding of what their task is and how best to achieve it, and, on the other hand, the poetics of writing verse in the receiving language, i.e., the forms, diction, and styles regularly used by poets when they compose their poems. Obviously when one is translating poetry, the poetics of writing verse dominant at the time will exert a powerful influence on the poetics of translation, but that influence will be largely in the areas of forms, styles, and diction; the poetics of writing verse does not really help the translator in determining how to transform the source text into a poem that has a comparable aes-

thetic effect on the reader. This is the province of the poetics of translation. In the case of Latin poetry, the distinction between the two is an important one because although there were significant changes in the way Latin poetry was written from Livius Andronicus to Germanicus Caesar, the poetics of translation in Latin remains essentially the same: whether

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one is reading the fragments of Livius Andronicus’s translation of the Odyssey, the fragments of Ennius’s translation of the Medea, or Catullus’s translation of Sappho’s famous ode, these authors’ treatment of their source texts is strikingly similar in the freedom they allow themselves to transform Greek poetry into Latin. The point is well illustrated by the following example of three translations of the same passage from Aratus’s Phaenomena written in different poetic styles by poets who nonetheless practice the same poetics of translation. In Phaenomena 954-955 Aratus describes the behavior of oxen as a sign of oncoming rain: Kal βόες ἤδη τοι πάρος ὕδατος ἐνδίοιο οὐρανὸν εἰσανιδόντες dm’ αἰθέρος ὀσφρήσαντο. (Now also before rain from heaven cattle, gazing up at the sky, sniff the air.)

First, Cicero’s translation written in the early 80s BC: mollipedesque boues, spectantes lumina caeli, naribus umiferum duxere ex aere sucum. (Prog., fr. IV.10-11)

(The slow-footed oxen, watching the lights of the sky, have drawn in from the air the moisture-bearing juice with their nostrils.)

Cicero introduces several surprising innovations into what is, in Aratus, a simple agricultural scene. The use of compound epithets, mollipedes “slow-footed” and umiferum “moisture-bearing,” which is characteristic of the epico-tragic diction of early Republican poetry, the picturesque detail of naribus "with their nostrils," and the poetic reference to the stars in lumina caeli "the lights of the sky" correspond to nothing in Aratus's lines. On a purely literal level the only true correspondences are Bócs—boues, obpavöv-caeli (in semantic content but not syntax) and ἀπ᾽ αἰθέρος —ex aere. The poetic expression umiferum duxere...sucum (“they draw in the moisture-bearing juice"*) achieves a more elevated level of diction than Aratus's ὀσφρήσαντο and gives to this picture of sniffing cattle an epic sonority." However, Cicero's efforts at rewriting the passage are undercut by inaccuracies, the most serious of which occurs in the phrase spectantes lumina caeli. As G. Williams observes: "The poetic diction of lumina caeli is out of place here, for the cattle have no visual interest in the light of the sky, while the essential motion of upwards is

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omitted—the cattle only appear to look upwards, really they are elevating their nostrils to the breezes.' It is surprising that Cicero did not notice that he was presenting these cattle not as weather signs but apparently as stargazers. Moreover, Cicero’s translation suggests that he wrongly construed the genitive ὕδατος ἐνδίοιο with the verb ὀσφρήσαντο rather than as a genitive dependent on πάρος, and interpreted it to mean that the cattle sniff moisture in the air. He may have been led to that interpretation by a commentary, for the extant scholia try to explain the atmospheric condition that stimulates the cattle’s behavior: they sense a change in the density of the air; and Cicero’s phrase umiferum sucum does convey the notion that the air has become heavier with moisture. Varro of Atax, writing roughly forty years after Cicero’s translation of Aratus, composed a poem entitled Ephemeris (“Weather Forecast") in which we find the following version of Phaenomena 954—955:*5 et bos suspiciens caelum (mirabile uisu)

naribus aerium patulis decerpsit odorem. (And the ox, looking up at the sky [a wonder to see], culls with nostrils

outspread the airborne scent.)

Varro eschews the compound epithets, mollipedes and umiferum, of Cicero’s elevated diction but retains Cicero’s naribus and adds patulis for greater pictorial effect." His two verses are neater, more compact. Suspiciens caelum is an accurate rendering, unlike Cicero’s spectantes lumina caeli, of οὐρανὸν εἰσανιδόντες. The parenthetical phrase mirabile uisu is a new addition, but is supported by good epic precedent, θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι, which calls attention to the unusual behavior of the ox. Varro also introduces a striking metaphor decerpere odorem ‘to pluck/cull a scent’ in place of Aratus's non-figurative óo$paí(veo0at; decerpere, which would normally be used to describe the action of grazing, is transferred to the action of scenting something in the air. On the whole, Varro's translation is closer to the letter and spirit of Aratus's text. In the first Georgic Vergil has composed a highly sophisticated translation, adaptation, and reinterpretation of Aratus’s “Weather Signs." Corresponding to Aratus’s description of the oxen are these lines (1.375—376): bucula caelum suspiciens patulis captauit naribus auras.

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(The heifer, looking up at the sky, catches at the breezes with nostrils outspread.)

If we accept the verdict of Servius auctus that in this passage Vergil was following Varro, then caelum suspiciens and patulis...naribus are obviously borrowings. Vergil’s own contribution does not amount to much: the quaintly specific bucula ‘heifer’, substituted for Aratus’s oxen, is a piece of preciosity that may give greater definition to the picture but un-

dermines the conspicuousness of the weather sign that alerts the observer to oncoming rain: oxen (at least more than one) looking up at the sky. Varro too uses the singular bos ‘ox’,

but that singular may be explained

on the ground that it is being used as a collective, an explanation which will not work for bucula. Captauit...auras is yet another attempt to rewrite what was apparently regarded as the unacceptably prosy ὀσφρήσαντο. In striving to find poetical expressions for “they sniff the air,” both Vergil and Varro reveal that they are more interested in a vivid pictorialism than in the prognostic function of the sign." Cicero's version, on the other hand, despite its faults, does attempt to explain with

umiferum sucum the behavior of the oxen and its significance for the observer. Three poets, translating the same words into the same metrical form of

the Greek source text with a full awareness of the stylistic decorum appropriate to epic poetry, produce three very different translations. Not one of the poets attempts what we would call a literal version. Instead, they innovate to a surprising degree to create equivalent versions that answer to the expectations of Roman taste and are consonant with the poetics dominant at the time of writing. Cicero, Varro, and Vergil are all fundamentally alike in their subjective, innovative approach to the translation of

Aratus's text. Cicero, however, differs significantly from both Varro and Vergil in composing in an idiom that belongs to the epico-tragic tradition

of early republican poetry; the two quadrasyllabic compound epithets and the elevated periphrasis for bovine olfaction are foreign to the verbal refinement not only of the Phaenomena itself, but also of the versions by Varro and Vergil, who are writing in accordance with the Hellenistic poetics which Aratus himself had helped to shape. And in the case of Varro and Vergil it may be observed that verbal refinement took precedence over the accurate description of the weather sign."

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Livius Andronicus and the Poetics of Latin Translation The Latin poets whose translations have been discussed in this chapter employed a poetics of translation not of their own devising. Their techniques for turning Greek poems into Latin poems can be traced back to the founder of poetic translation in Latin, Livius Andronicus. Livius, a Greek by birth, probably from the city of Tarentum, was brought to Rome as a slave and was later manumitted by a Livius, thus taking the name of his former owner and becoming a freedman in his household. It is generally accepted that in the year 240 BC, the year after Rome’s victory in the First Punic War, he became the first to produce a play, translated from the Greek, at Rome." Although there is no evidence to indicate exactly when he produced his translation of the Odyssey into the native Saturnian meter, Leo’s conjecture, accepted by Mariotti, that he worked on it later in life after his period of dramatic production—the epic requiring sustained effort and application which the demands of annual dramatic production would not allow—seems most likely.? Despite his position as the initiator of Latin literature, Andronicus's dramatic and epic poetry survives only in meager fragments: the genuine fragments of his Odusia add up to thirty-three in a standard collection, all of them, with two exceptions, consisting of a single line or less; the number of dramatic fragments is much smaller. Even so, out of these shards F. Leo was able to piece together a fascinating picture of Livius's translation practice. In two works of fundamental importance for our understanding of the development of Latin literature in the historical context of Greco-Roman literary culture, Plautinische Forschungen: zur Kritik und Geschichte der Komódie and Geschichte der rómischen Literatur: die archaische Literatur, Leo recognized in Livius Andronicus not only the founder of Latin literature, i.e., a literature that defined itself as a continuation of Greek literature through adaptation and imitation of its forms, styles, and subjects, but also the “inventor of the art of translation” or, in Mariotti’s more precise formulation, the art of literary translation which serves aesthetic rather than practical ends.? Leo's great contribution to the study of the Latin translation of Greek poetry lay in his sympathetic outlook on Livius's work and in his skillful analysis of the fragments of the Odusia. That analysis revealed the originality and resourcefulness of a poet who, in confronting the manifold problems of bringing Greek poetry to the Romans, an enterprise, as Leo noted, for which Livius had neither predecessor nor precedent, set himself the ambitious goal of reproducing ἃ monumental epic poem in a comparable form in the Latin language."

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The design, from the perspective of contemporary Roman literary culture, was an astonishingly bold one because the category “literature” was defined by and consisted of Greek texts, and what the Greeks had accomplished far exceeded in scope, complexity, and sophistication the more modest attainments of the Latin language in religion, law, and oratory in the third century BC. Here then was an opportunity for cultural enrichment through translation on a grand scale. The execution of the design was to have far reaching consequences for the history of Latin translation. Livius’s Odusia marked the beginning not only of epic poetry in Latin but also of a highly sophisticated translation strategy whose guiding principle was the assimilation of the source text, often through the use of bold innovations, to the tastes, sensibility, and cultural environment of the new audience. And although this principle of innovative assimilation to the native, rather than conservative preservation of the foreign, in translation, was to undergo modification in degree as Greek literary culture established its complete dominance at Rome and Roman literary tastes and practices were formed by Greek poetics, nevertheless in essence it remained unchanged for generations of Latin translators who created genuinely Latin poems out of Greek originals. In analyzing the fragments of Livius’s translations, Leo employed a descriptive approach, as now advocated by Translation Studies, in order to discover Livius’s methods as a translator. And when he finished his analysis of this translator whose work was to serve as the paradigm for the Latin translation of Greek poetry, Leo concluded that readers must break free from the modern conception of translation as faithful reproduction.“ Because Livius's work gave birth to the poetics of translation in Latin poetry, it is essential to an informed understanding of Germanicus’s translation of the Phaenomena, and of Latin poetic translation in general, that we review the fragments of Livius's translation of the Odyssey as they were analyzed by Leo and other scholars who have followed his approach. There is nothing new in the summary of observations and conclusions which follows. My purpose in presenting them is to show that there is a continuity of translation practice that begins with the work of its founder, Livius Andronicus, and that right from the inception of the activity Livius set a very high standard for the artistic translation of Greek

poetry. As the work of Leo, Fraenkel, Mariotti, and Waszink has shown, Livius romanized the Odyssey on all levels of composition: expression, style, and form. The names of Greek divinities are replaced with their Latin counterparts.

Thus we find Camena (1) for Μοῦσα (1.1); Saturnus

48

Translating the Heavens

(2) for Κρόνος in the patronymic (3.238);

Mercurius

(19)

for

Κρονίδη

Ἑρμείας

(1.45); Morta (23) for μᾶρα

(8.323);

and

Moneta

(21)

for

Μνημοσύνη, the goddess mother of the Muses whose name does not in fact appear in the Odyssey or the Iliad but was interpolated by Livius into the translation as Moneta to create a solemn patronymic for Camena: nam diua Monetas filia docuit (21) corresponding to Moto’ ἐδίδαξε (8.481). Although the identification of Greek with Latin divinities had already taken place before Livius wrote—in the case of Camena and Morta Livius may have been the innovator—the translator still had to decide whether he wanted to use the native or the foreign name. And his decision to use the native name was a momentous one because the substitution can be seen as part of an overall translation strategy which brings the source text closer to the linguistic and cultural world of the translator’s audience. If such a procedure seems unthinkable now, when Homer’s modern translators are so scrupulous in the transliteration or phonetic transcription of Greek proper names, it is well to remember that in the translations of Chapman and Pope Homer’s gods bear Latin names. Even the hero’s name Vlixes (30) is not the canonical epic form found

in Homer but is a transliteration of the name used by the Greeks of south-

ern Italy and Sicily, Οὐλίξης.** This change too is, in a sense, an example of romanization because the epic form Ὀδύσσευς is rejected in favor of the Italic-Greek form, the form closer to home, in order to accommodate

the poem to the Roman perspective. The lands in which the name Οὐλίξης was spoken, Southern Italy and Sicily, were now under Rome's political control. Noteworthy too in this connection is the blatant anachronism of substituting Graecia (11), the Latin name for a national entity that came into being long after the events of the Odyssey, for the homeland of the Achaeans. With that word the political geography of the expanding Imperium Romanum and a Romanocentric view are imposed on the heroic past of the Homeric epic, a situation which suggests that the literary appropriation of the text through translation was backed by the physical appropriation of Magna Graecia where Odysseus himself was thought to have wandered, even reaching at one point in his travels the future site of Rome." Roman nationalism was not only a major factor in promoting the translation of Greek literature; it was a cultural force which sustained translation as confident appropriation and rewriting of the source text. As Leo observed, it was no accident that the beginning of Latin literature took place in 240 BC, the year after Rome's victory in the first Punic War.* A cultural identity commensurate with its new, hard-won status as a Mediterranean power was called for. To initiate the process of fashioning

Intertraffique of the Minde

49

a literature for the Romans, Livius was commissioned to translate a Greek play which was performed at a state-sponsored religious festival, the Ludi Romani. With that act the superiority and utility of Greek literature were acknowledged, though the acknowledgment carried with it the very important qualification that Greek literature would undergo transformation in order to meet the demands of its new audience. As part of the process of assimilation to the Roman universe of discourse, characteristic Homeric expressions are transformed in the native

idiom. The graphic detail of the formula ποῖόν

σε

ἔπος

φύγεν

ἕρκος

ὀδόντων (1.64, “what word escaped you the barrier of your teeth”) is replaced by a more generalized picture of speech traveling upwards and out of the mouth: guid uerbi ex tuo ore supra fugit (3, “what word escaped upwards out of your mouth”). Livius simplified the syntax by using a prepositional phrase ex tuo ore for the difficult double accusative of the whole (ce) and the part affected (ἕρκος

καὶ τότ᾽

Ὀδυσσῆος

λύτο

γούνατα

ὀδόντων). Likewise, in the line

καὶ φίλον

ἦτορ (5.297, “and

then

the knees of Odysseus were loosed and his heart"), Livius substituted a metaphor that identifies the effect of fear with freezing cold: igitur demum Vlixi cor frixit prae pauore (30, "only then did Ulysses’ heart freeze for fear")." It is important to note, however, that although Livius substitutes the verb frixit for λύτο, in doing so he is still translating Homer, but from a different context: ῥίγησεν δὲ πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς (5.171, "much-enduring glorious Odysseus shuddered").* Again, when Patroclus is compared to a god, ἔνθα δὲ Πάτροκλος, θεόφιν μήστωρ ἀτάAavTos (3.110, "there [lies] Patroclus, a counselor equal to the gods"), Livius translates with a more

restrained

expression

familiar

to Romans

from its use in elogia of members of the socio-political elite: ibidemque uir summus adprimus Patroclus (10, "and

in the same place [lies] Patro-

clus, a man supreme, the very first"). Thus the Homeric figure is inducted into the ranks of the Roman aristocracy. On the stylistic level, as Leo observed, Livius aimed at a dignity and solemnity of expression which set the standard for the diction of Latin epic poetry. No ordinary language was appropriate to the description of the deeds of heroes or to the speech of the heroes themselves. Leo's initial observation was explored in greater detail by E. Fraenkel, whose rigorous analysis of Livius's diction revealed that this solemnity of expression was achieved primarily through the use of morphological and lexical archaism, and of high-sounding phrases giving the parentage of divinities, i.e., expansions of Homeric patronymics into phrases of the type, "son of/daughter of/child of." Since morphological archaism is of

50

Translating the Heavens

no immediate importance to the present discussion, we will direct our attention to lexical archaism and patronymic phrases. The Odyssey begins, "Av6pa μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον (1.1, “Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways"). Livius translates, Virum mihi, Camena, insece uersutum (1, "Tell me, Camena, of the cunning man"). Leo and Fraenkel pointed out that insece, the translation of ἔννεπε, "tell," is a lexical archaism that adds a note of solemnity to the invocation, a solemnity which is completely lacking in the English verb ‘tell’ and in the Latin verb dicere ‘say’ which Horace used in his version: Dic mihi, Musa, uirum (Ars P. 141). The stylistic level of insece mihi may be comparable to the English ‘impart unto me’. Livius's choice of insece also suggests the translator's awareness of the Greek verb as a vox propria for invoking the Muse(s) in Homer, Hesiod, and later epic.* This sensitivity to the contextual nuance of Évveme is the mark of a translator who strives to reproduce the art as well as the content of the original. The use of patronymic phrases (noun of relationship + parent in the genitive) for divinities also heightens the level of style with their religious and honorific overtones, suggesting the ritual language of a Greek hymn addressed to a divinity. In the one line available for the comparison of a Greek patronymic adjective for a divinity with its translation: pater noster, Saturni filie... (2, “our father, son of Saturn") = ὦ πάτερ tpérepe Κρονίδη (1.45, “O our father, son-of-Cronus"), Livius, unlike his successor Ennius, did not use the possessive adjective as an equivalent for the patronymic adjective: whereas Ennius employs a semantic calque to translate the patronymic Κρονίδης ("son-of-Cronos"), Saturnius (“of Saturn," Ann. 444 Sk., with note), Livius expands the patronymic into its Latin equivalent Saturni filie ("son

of Saturn")

= Κρονίδη

(“son-of-

Cronus’), following the model of Odyssey 21.415, Κρόνου πάϊς (“child of Cronos”), the one example in the Odyssey where the noun + parent combination is used of Zeus. Livius's decision to use the Latin names of Greek divinities ruled out the possibility of the direct borrowing of the patronymic adjective because that would have resulted in morphologically hybrid forms, a Latin name combined with the Greek suffix -ἰδης, a development that was to come later in the history of Latin literature. There is one example of the possessive adjective used as a patronymic; it is used for a human, not a divinity: neque tamen te oblitus sum, Laertie noster (4).? The corresponding line of the Odyssey has not been securely identified, and the lines which have been suggested do not contain the patronymic Λαερτιάδης or the phrase υἱὸς Aaéptao in the vocative. (The fact that the Latin cannot be tied securely to any line of the original indi-

Intertraffique of the Minde

51

cates that Livius allowed himself to add patronymics for stylistic effect.**) Since the other patronymic phrases for divinities follow the pattern of noun + parent in the genitive: puer Saturni, filius Latonas,

Monetas filia,

it appears that Livius preferred to use these patronymic phrases, for which

there is precedent in the Homeric expressions υἱός θυγάτηρλταϊς τέκος + parent in the genitive, rather than adjectival forms like Saturnius.“ Livius's treatment of these patronymic phrases illustrates other important aspects of his translation technique. He adds them, for stylistic effect, at places where they are not found in the original and he produces them

by conflating lines from different parts of the poem or by conflating a line from the Odyssey with a source outside the poem. Conflation is evident in the translation of Odyssey 4.557, νύμφης ἐν μεγάροισι Καλυψοῦς ("in the house of the nymph Calypso"): apud nympham Atlantis filiam Calypsonem (13, "at

the house

of the nymph

Calypso, daughter

of At-

las).* Mariotti pointed out that Livius here conflated Odyssey 4.557 with 1.52 and 7.245, where Calypso is referred to as λτλαντος θυγάτηρ." An entire Saturnian is taken up with naming Juno: sancta puer Saturni [filia] regina (12, “holy queen, daughter of Saturn"). This is usually taken to be the translator's own expansion of the simple πότνια Ἥρη (4.513, "queen Hera"). In fact the line, as Merry suggested, is the product of conflation with Iliad 5.721, Ἥρη, πρέσβα θεά, θυγάτηρ μεγάλοιο Κρόvoto (“Hera, senior goddess, daughter of great Cronus”). Other examples of conflation are found in fragment 19, filius Latonas [Apollo], which is based on Iliad 1.9 and 16.849, and in fragment 21, nam diua Monetas filia docuit,

in which Homer's

Μοῦσα, never identified as the

daughter of Μνημοσύνη (Moneta) in the Iliad or Odyssey, is now so identified under the influence of Hesiod, Theogony 53-54 and 915-917 where Mnemosyne and Zeus are said to be the parents of the Muses.” Although in making these changes and additions Livius appears guilty of the unpardonable sin of violating the integrity of Homer’s text, he nonetheless legitimizes his free handling of the text by using Homer to rewrite Homer, with the exception of the reference to Mnemosyne, which is derived from Hesiod. It is as if Homer’s two epics were simultaneously active in the mind of the poet as he produced the translation, and the continuity and homogeneity in form, expression, and style of the Iliad and Odyssey suggested to him that he could utilize the resources of both poems to enhance the artistic quality of the translation. In addition to the use of archaism and patronymic phrases, the form itself of the translation, the Saturnian verse, which Livius chose as an analog to the Greek hexameter, contributed greatly to the solemn tone of the

52

Translating the Heavens

Latin version and to the assimilation of the source text to the Latin cultural environment. The Saturnian combined a quantitative metrical pattern with a highly distinctive form of expression, the carmen-style, a rhythmical prose articulated by balanced, usually asyndetic, cola, and rich in acoustic devices, which was used to achieve solemn and impressive utterance.” According to Mariotti’s acute reconstruction, the Saturnian recommended itself as an analog to the hexameter because it was used for prophetic utterances in Latin, as was the hexameter in Greek. The Saturnian as a functional equivalent of the hexameter provided not only a formal and stylistic medium for the translation, but also a cultural sanction that validated the translation as a Roman product. Here too was an important innovation (although Ennius was to see it as a retrograde step) in which the native resources of Latin poetic expression, such as they existed in the incantatory rhythm, acoustic devices, word patterns, and sacral solemnity of the carmen-style organized by the Saturnian, were wedded to Homer's epic narrative. Livius took the hexameter-Saturnian analogy further when he invoked his Camena instead of the Homeric Muse. As Waszink persuasively argued in his important discussion of Camena: when conceiving the plan of ‘Romanizing’

the Odyssey by means of a

version in Latin Saturnians, Livius decided to find a counterpart Homer’s Muses

in Roman

goddesses of prophecy

[i.e., the

of

Camenae],

firstly because as a Greek he was acquainted with a conception of the Muses as goddesses whose function was not only to inspire the poet but

also—and even more—to reveal to him the forgotten lore of the past, secondly because the Saturnian line which, in his earnest endeavor to provide

Rome with a truly Roman epic, he had raised to the level of literature, was in his time—and therewith to him—primarily known as the specific form for prophecies.”

In choosing the Saturnian as the vehicle for his translation and the Camena as his source of inspiration, Livius firmly grounded his translation in the Latin universe of discourse, specifically the sphere of Roman religious discourse, and thus gave his Odusia a seriousness and moral importance which would have been immediately evident to its Latin audience in virtue of its form, style, and sound. Livius thus established the social value of his novel work and of the epic poet himself as a singer of Saturnians in terms which were familiar to his audience, thereby facilitating the acceptance of the work and its maker. And although a generation later Ennius's introduction of the hexameter for epic poetry ended the

Intertraffique of the Minde

53

use of the Saturnian for Latin epic poetry, a direct borrowing of the hexameter at this beginning stage of Latin literature might well have turned out to be a premature

attempt

at enforcing

Greek

literary tastes on an

audience that was not ready to appreciate or accept them. Another important technique of Livius’s translation strategy comes under the category of philological analysis and exegesis. The high degree of correspondence achieved by Livius in his translation of the first line of the Odyssey, Virum mihi Camena insece uersutum, well exemplifies the translator’s philological habit. We have already commented on the semantic and stylistic concord of the verbs insece and ἔννεπε. The choice of the epithet uersutus, meaning ‘wily/clever’, to represent the Greek πολύτροπος shows the same philological sensitivity and acumen: as Mariotti pointed out, uersutus, derived from uerto ‘tum’, is the Latin etymological analog of todt-tpotos, derived from τρέπω ‘turn’.” Moreover, Livius’s rendering of πολύτροπος as uersutus may also be read as an exegetical comment on a word whose meaning was contested as early as the fourth century BC; for it was taken by some to mean ‘much traveled’, ‘much wandering’ rather than ‘of many wiles’.” Versutus thus performs the functions of both translation and interpretive gloss. Noteworthy also is the close correspondence in word order (with the exception

of the transposed Camena, insece for ἔννεπε Μοῦσα) which neatly reproduces the hyperbaton of ἄνδρα and πολύτροπον. This close correspondence between the first lines of translation and source text, a phenomenon which can be observed in other Latin translations of Greek poetry, may be due in part to the fact that first lines functioned as titles to identify works. Additional evidence of Livius’s philological habit was provided by H. Frankel, who pointed out that in fragment 20, nexebant multa inter se flexu nodorum dubio (“they were intertwining one another many times in a shifting twist of knots”), the phrase nexebant inter se looks very much like a translation not of Homer’s text ὀρχείσθην 8h ἔπειτα ποτὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ) ταρφέ᾽ dye rBopévw (8.378-379, "then indeed they danced upon the much-nourishing earth, passing it [the ball] frequently to each other"),

but of an interpretive gloss, found

difficult phrase ταρφέ᾽

εἰς

in the scholia, in which the

ἀμειβομένω is explained thus: πυκνῶς

πλέκοντες

ἀλλήλους (“intertwining one another frequently"), an attempt to de-

scribe more clearly the movements of the dancers.” The adverbial use of the neuter plural multa, on the other hand, appears to be a calque based on the neuter plural ταρφέα, an adjective which, as Merry and Riddell observe in their commentary, is found only in the plural in Homer.” Thus

54

Translating the Heavens

we find in the same line an interpretive glossing of Homer’s text combined with punctilious regard for the form of one word, multa = tapdéa. Livius’s incorporation of a gloss into his translation of the Odyssey, a kind of intratextual footnote, gives clear evidence, Frankel concluded, that for Livius translation involved interpretation: the translator as reader/interpreter is not an inert medium through which conversion of meaning takes place but an active agent who must make interpretive choices to create meaning in the receiving language. Livius’s procedure here, along with the other translation techniques mentioned above, reveals an awareness that literalism in translation cannot provide unmediated access to the source text and cannot, by means of scrupulous adherence to its wording, reproduce in the reader the experience of reading the source text. Instead of vainly attempting to isolate the Odyssey from the history of its reception by readers and teachers (and that includes Livius himself), and to strip away the veneer of reception and recapture it in a state of translational purity, Livius wrote reception, in the form of glosses, into his translation; and as a result of his playing a very active part as translator/interpreter, Livius treated the text of the Odyssey not as an artifact which required reverential preservation in Latin but as a living organism interacting with its new environment, still capable of change and adaptation, its past history creating new possibilities for the future. Our analysis of the smaller units of translation, word, phrase, and line, has provided ample evidence that for Livius the process of translation was not determined by fidelity to the wording of the original. Now as we turn our attention to the largest extant fragment of his Odusia, we will discover an even more ambitious program of alteration of the source text. In Book 8 of the Odyssey, when Laodamas, son of Alcinous, tries to cajole Odysseus into participating in athletic contests, he first compliments the hero on the sturdiness and solidity of his physique. But he soon undercuts his complimentary remark when he observes that Odysseus “has been shattered” by many misfortunes, an observation intended to goad Odysseus into the competition. Despite the appearance of a powerful physique, Laodamas suggests, the hero is now a broken-down man, unfit for the exertions of athletic contests. Laodamas concludes (138-139): οὐ yàp ἐγώ γέ τί φημι κακώτερον ἄλλο θαλάσσης ἄνδρα γε συγχεῦαι, εἰ καὶ μάλα καρτερὸς εἴη. (For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking

a man, even though he may be a very strong one.)"

Intertraffique of the Minde

55

Livius translates with important changes (18): namque nullum peius macerat humanum quamde mare saeuom: uires cui sunt magnae, topper confringent importunae undae. For nothing wastes a man worse than cruel sea: the man whose strength is great the relentless waves will quickly shatter."*

In Livius's version Laodamas's words ἐγώ φημι ("I say") are omitted and that omission, as Traina pointed out, changes the observation that there is nothing worse than the sea from a personal into a gnomic statement of general application." The dangers of the sea, only suggested in Homer's θαλάσσης, are spelled out in the Latin with the addition of the epithet saeuom and of the detail importunae undae (“relentless waves") which enhances the destructive power of the sea. Livius has further expanded the source text, as Leo noted, by using two verbs, macerat and confringent to render Homer's συγχεῦαι: the addition of confringent was

clearly suggested by the verb συνέρρηκται in 137 where Laodamas baldly says that Odysseus "has been shattered (cuvéppnkrai) by many misfortunes." Livius's amplification of the sea's destructive power, the gnomic cast of the entire statement, and the transposition of cwépprkrat from its original context in a personal comment on Odysseus's present condition to the context of a generalization about the destructive power of the sea's waves, may indicate that in the Latin translation Laodamas was circumspect and courteous, rather than mocking as Odysseus himself complains at 153, in suggesting that Odysseus was not up to competing

in athletic

games. The cumulative effect of the numerous changes observable in the few fragments that we have examined is to reveal that for Livius the process of translating the Odyssey was governed but not determined by the wording of the source text, and that the translator does not function as an inert medium through which the source text passes unaltered as it emerges into its new linguistic dress. The boldness of Livius's method of translation is indeed startling, and the sophistication of the result, as revealed even in a handful of fragments, is impressive. In view of the importance of Livius's achievement, the question inevitably arises: Why did Livius translate as he did? The answer lies, as Mariotti argues in an important paper, in the literary-historical context in which Livius wrote.” As a Greek by birth whose literary understanding and values were shaped by Hellenistic Greek paideia, Livius was both a student of the received tradition extending all

56

Translating the Heavens

the way back to Homer and a creative poet innovating within that tradition. In this respect his literary situation is analogous to that of Hellenistic poets (the term Hellenistic being used here in its primary chronological sense)" and their relationship to the great authors of the past with, of course, one vital difference: Livius was writing in Latin. His knowledge of the Greek literary past was given a new direction and a powerful new freedom of expression in the Latin language. Unlike contemporary Hellenistic poets such as Apollonius and Callimachus, who labored under the oppressive influence of the great works of the past and, in a sense, wrote in the margins and between the lines of their classical predecessors, Livius had an open field for the rewriting of Greek literature in Latin. While Hellenistic poets had to discover ways to avoid being parrots of Homer, Livius could make the Odyssey new by translating it into Latin. His method of translation was born of the fusion of the unexplored possibilities for poetic composition in the Latin language with the Hellenistic conception of the poet as one who writes with a profound knowledge of the literary past and can artfully integrate that past into the creation of new works. In general terms, Latin language and culture provided the raw materials; Livius, as a Greek writing in Latin, provided the literary experience and the know-how needed to shape those raw materials into poetry.

A Critical Description of the Poetics of Latin Translation In this introductory chapter I have discussed Livius's translation practice at some length for two reasons. First, it served as the paradigm for the translator-poets who came after him. Momentous changes were to occur in the poetics of Latin poetry after Livius, beginning with Ennius's adoption of the hexameter for epic poetry and culminating in the assimilation of the literary values espoused by the Hellenistic poets Callimachus, Aratus, Apollonius, and Theocritus. But the poetics of Latin translation remained essentially the same: Germanicus's method of translating Aratus's Phaenomena does not differ in any significant way, apart from his use of the hexameter, from Livius's method of translating the Odyssey. The second reason is that the descriptive approach to Livius's translation, employed with such great success by Leo, Fraenkel, and Mariotti, provides the most productive critical framework upon which we can base our understanding of the methods of Roman translator-poets. Leo's pioneering work and other important studies of the translation techniques of individual poets have convincingly demonstrated that Roman poets, although

Intertraffique of the Minde

57

they could achieve, when they wanted to, a high degree of literal fidelity, did not regard literal fidelity as the primary goal of artistic translation. In all cases where there is sufficient material for meaningful comparison of source text and translation, it is obvious that Roman translator-poets depart from the wording of their source texts to a degree that modern readers will find alarming.

The

reader

of Germanicus’s

translation

of the

Phaenomena immediately discovers that the Roman poet has substituted his own proem addressed to Augustus for Aratus’s famous hymn to Zeus: the substitution is bold and unsettling but is characteristic of the way in which the translator-poet works. That fact must be accepted as belonging to the very nature of Latin translation; it is a characteristic feature. We can now refine our conception of poetic translation in Latin and develop a useful critical description which generalizes from practice to principles and offers a more instructive conceptualization of the activity than is usually found in discussions of the art of translation among the Romans. Literary translation in Latin is subjective and innovative rather than objective and reproductive.” Latin translator-poets are not devotees of that self-repression whose goal is to make the translator a transparent medium for the faithful reproduction of a message. Rather, they assert themselves and give expression to their own talents and impulses in the context of their historical situation. They eschewed what Brock has aptly described as “the deliberately fossilizing embrace of the literalist approach.”” Whether one is studying translations of lyric, dramatic, epic, or elegiac poetry, the result is the same: when texts of sufficient length are available

for

comparison,

one

finds

numerous

significant

divergences

from the wording of the original as well as editorial activity, often extensive, in the form of additions, deletions, and structural reorganization. Livius and Mattius translating Homer; Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence translating Menander; Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius translating Greek tragedy; Cicero, Varro, and Germanicus translating Aratus; Catullus translating Sappho and Callimachus"—in each case the Latin translator innovates to a degree that is unthinkable to the modern reader and in so doing creates a text that bears the stamp of two makers, a phenomenon which literary criticism has for the most part ignored. As the result of a translation process that is governed but not determined by the wording of the source text, Latin poets produced translations that are important literary works in their own right as well as revelations of that complex, collaborative relationship that exists between the translator and the source text.

58

Translating the Heavens

It is, however, necessary to add an important qualification: this subjective, innovative approach to translation does not give carte blanche to a lawless rewriting of the original in which the translator-poet obliterates almost all resemblance to the source text. Quite the contrary, there are discernible two principles that guide Latin translators in their subjective, innovative treatment of the source text: their freedom in translating is a controlled freedom. First, as already mentioned in the discussion of Livius’s Odusia, the translation process is assimilative rather than preservative: the translator’s overall strategy is to assimilate the linguistic and cultural “foreignness” of the original to the Roman world of discourse. In Homer a word is said to escape the barrier of the speaker's teeth; in Livius that expression is simplified. And so what may seem to us a considerable departure from the wording of the original can be explained and justified as a change made in accordance with the speech habits of the receiving language. And second, the translation process is incorporative in the sense that texts other than the source text, i.e., both literary texts and critical or exegetical commentary, may be used as sources for material to be included in the translation. In this way various strands of the literary tradition are woven into the fabric of the translation. Cicero and Germanicus incorporated material from a commentary into their translations of the Phaenomena and Germanicus apparently made use of Hipparchus's commentary on the poem, or an epitomized version of it, to correct some of Aratus's observational errors. For example, at Phaenomena 70 Aratus writes that Engonasin holds his right foot (δεξιτεροῦ ποδὸς ἄκρον) on the head of Draco; Germanicus corrects this to the left foot (uestigia laeua 69), apparently on the authority of Hipparchus's note which points out that Eudoxus and Aratus are in error here.” The use of commentaries in the composition of literary texts has been well documented not only for translations but for original works as well'* As for the interpolation of material from other literary texts, Livius Andronicus, as we have seen, inserted phraseology from the Iliad and from Hesiod's Theogony into his translation of the Odyssey. Cicero in his translation of Phaenomena 947 on frogs as a weather sign omits Aratus’s description of them as “fathers of tadpoles” (πατέρες yuplvwv); instead, he substitutes, as Jermyn noted, the translation of a phrase from Aristophanes’ Frogs, λιμναῖα κρηνῶν τέκνα 211 = aquai dulcis alumnae Prog., fr. IV.1, the k-sounds of the Latin words aquai dulcis (followed by cum clamore) creating an acoustic echo of the obstreperous Aristophanic brekekekekex koax koax." Similarly Germanicus borrows a phrase from Nicander’s Theriaca in a passage where Orion’s violent attempt on Artemis is described: ἀχράντων...

Intertraffique of the Minde

59

πέπλων (16) = intactas...uestes (Aratea 648); Aratus has only πέπλοιο (Phaen. 638). On a much larger scale there is the practice of those Ro-

man comic poets who, in the process of translation, combined the text of a Greek comic script with material from another script. So, for example, Terence in the Adelphoe inserted a scene from Diphilus’s Synapothnescontes into Menander’s Adelphoe. It is clear from these few examples, which can easily be multiplied, that Latin translator-poets did not regard their source texts as discrete, inviolable creations that had to be preserved, to borrow Brock’s metaphor, as fossilized remains, but rather as elements in an organic system, as seeds that germinate in and grow out of the conditions of their new environment (the translators and their historical situa-

tions) to produce blooms that are unique." An interesting aspect of the incorporative nature of Latin translation is the translator’s self-conscious reference to the process of translation as a result of which the reader is simultaneously confronted with the source text and its translation. At the most basic level such reference may take the form of the poet’s statement that his poem is a translation. In the proem of his Aratea Germanicus names in the first line the author whose work he is translating: Ab Ioue principium magno deduxit Aratus; and refers to the activity of translating in line 15: Haec ego dum Latiis conor praedicere Musis. Or the poet may point out what Latin word is the equivalent of a Greek word as, for example, when Cicero gives the Latin words for the Greek ὁ ζῳδιακὸς

κύκλος

(the circle of the zodiac):

Zodiacum hunc Graeci uocitant, nostrique Latini

orbem Signiferum perhibebunt nomine uero; nam gerit hic uoluens bis sex ardentia signa. (317-319) (The Greeks call this circle the zodiac and we Latin speakers will designate

it with a true name, the sign-bearing circle; for it carries, as it revolves, twice six blazing signs.)

Here the issue of linguistic difference is incorporated into the poem. Rather than simply writing signifer orbis for the Greek or borrowing the Greek ζῳδιακός, Cicero brings the Greek and Latin together in a way that

makes explicit to the reader the translator's engagement with the language of the source text and perhaps suggests that the Latin term, in virtue

of its being

a "true

name"

(nomine

uero),

ie., one

which,

like

ζῳδιακὸς κύκλος, has etymological significance for the thing that it denotes, can claim equal authority with the Greek. Similarly Cicero glosses

60

Translating the Heavens

the Greek names of the constellations with their Latin equivalents where these exist. At a more sophisticated level of reference the reader may find an etymology of a Greek word which can only be understood by knowing the derivation of the Greek word in question, and which, in some cases, can only be fully appreciated by recalling the words of the source text. When Aratus describes the constellation Canis Major, he gives an etymology for the name of the bright star at the tip of its jaw: Σείριος from the verb σειριάειν meaning ‘to be hot and scorching’ (329-332): ἡ δέ A ἄκρη ἀστέρι βέβληται δεινῷ γένυς, ὅς pa μάλιστα ὀξέα σειριάει- καί μιν καλέουσ᾽ ἄνθρωποι Σείριον. (But the tip of its jaw is inset with a formidable star, that blazes most intensely: and so men call it the Scorcher.)

Sirius is, etymologically, “the Scorcher.” In Germanicus’s translation we read (333-335): talis ei custos aderit Canis ore timendo: ore uomit flammam, membris contemptior ignis. Sirion hanc Grai proprio sub nomine dicunt. (Such will be the guardian at his side, the Dog with its frightful mouth. From its mouth it spews flame, its limbs have a dimmer light. The Greeks call this [flame] by an appropriate name, Sirius.)

It was impossible for the Latin poet to reproduce the etymology; instead he uses verbal cues, the reference to the Greeks and to the name’s apt significance for the star (proprio sub nomine), either to activate the readers’ memory of the etymology in the source text or to send them to it for clarification. Thus the poet comments directly upon the language and the wording of the source text in his translation.” In addition to these forms of reference to the Greek text, there are more complex ways of incorporating the translation process into the poem and of stimulating, in the bilingual reader at any rate, an awareness of an ongoing dialogue between source text and translation. Above I mentioned that Germanicus includes Aratus’s name in the first line of his poem. This is more than a mere naming of the Phaenomena's author: it is an allusion, for those who are familiar with the Greek text, to Aratus’s

Intertraffique of the Minde

61

pun on his own name at the beginning of line 2, ἄρρητον." The Latin poet could not, of course, reproduce the pun but does succeed in writing the author’s name into the proem. On a much larger scale the meaning of Germanicus’s panegyric of the emperor Augustus in the proem cannot be appreciated fully without recourse to a detailed comparison with Aratus’s hymnic proem addressed to Zeus. And Germanicus signals the need for comparison by setting up an antithesis between the way the Greek poet began his poem and his own beginning (af nobis 2). One of the, most striking examples of the poet's referring to the translation process is to be found in Catullus's version of Sappho's famous ode φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος (Catull. 51). When in line 7 Catullus introduces the vocative Lesbia into his translation, he is, on one level of meaning recontextualizing Sappho's poem into his own cycle of poems addressed to or about his mistress. But on another level of meaning Lesbia refers to Sappho herself, the poet of Lesbos, as D. B. Kubiak pointed out," and by extension to the poem that Catullus is translating, for it is through the poem that he hears Sappho speak. In translating the Greek poem Catullus makes explicit his dialogue with the text; Sappho and her poem become the referent of the second-person pronoun "you" and the translation itself thus becomes a highly emotional response to the reading of Sappho's words. Although many will prefer to continue to read the poem as a description of the physical symptoms of the poet's passion for his mistress Lesbia, it is impossible to ignore this additional level of meaning achieved through the poet's reference to the activity of translating." In light of even these few examples it is apparent that in studying Latin translation it is necessary to consider in what ways, if any, the poet incorporates the translation process into the poem and uses it to create a new dimension of meaning. Although I have been emphasizing the subjective, innovative nature of Latin translation as its defining characteristic, it must also be pointed out that translators vary their mode of translating and that, as a result, the relationship between source text and translation is not uniform throughout. In general we tend to expect uniformity of method in translation: we imagine that translators will locate themselves at one of the opposite poles, literal or free, on the translation scale, or somewhere in between, and then hold to that position as tightly as linguistic and cultural difference will allow. If in the first line of a translation the translator renders the source text literally, then the translator, one assumes, will continue to translate literally. To the modern reader translation implies the consistent application of a given method of translation. In contrast to this notion of uni-

62

Translating the Heavens

form mode in translation, Latin translation is variable in mode: rather than being fixed at one point on the scale mentioned above the translator oscillates between the extremes of literal and free, and this freedom of movement gives full scope to the talents of translators who want to recreate the aesthetic quality of the source text in their own cultural and linguistic environment. Subjectivity, innovation, assimilation to the Roman world of discourse, incorporation of new material found in literary, critical or exegetical sources, and variation in mode—these are the defining features of Latin translations of Greek poetry. The critical description presented here will serve, I hope, as a useful guide to what readers may expect to find and ought to look for in Latin translations of Greek poetry. When it is applied to specific texts, it will of course have to undergo modification in accordance with the type of text that is being translated and the historical situation of the translator: Livius Andronicus translating Homer’s Odyssey and Catullus translating Sappho’s famous ode are very much alike in their subjective, innovative treatment of their source texts, but they also differ from one another in virtue of the different genres in which they are working, Livius in epic and Catullus in lyric poetry, and in virtue of the changes in poetics that had occurred since Livius produced the first play in 240 BC. So despite the exceptions that can be advanced on the basis of a particular instance against any generalization, the description will, I believe, retain its validity. In the foregoing discussion I have made no mention of what Latin authors themselves, most notably Cicero, Quintilian, and Pliny the Younger, have to say about methods of translation." The reason for the omission is that conceptualization of the activity, to judge from the extant sources, lagged very far behind practice. Moreover, the comments of the authors named above on the usefulness of translation as a compositional exercise to enhance the student-orator’s fluency, together with Cicero’s exhortation to translate non uerba sed uim, cannot be organized into any form of systematic treatment that deserves to be called “Latin translation theory.’”‘ Their observations give no hint of the sophistication and creativity to be found in Latin poetic translations from Livius Andronicus’s Odusia onward. Cicero’s exhortation to translate the spirit rather than the letter of the original comes naturally from one who was a consummate stylist and devoted himself to the cultivation of fluency in composition and mastery of the genera dicendi. Literalism, in Cicero’s view, obviously trammels the translator’s ability to make free and full use of the rhetorical and stylistic resources of the receiving language; it imposes on the translator a rhetorical indigence necessitated by the requirement of producing

Intertraffique of the Minde

63

a semantic facsimile of the source text. As Samuel Johnson wrote, "...the shackles of verbal interpretation [i.e., literal translation] must forever de-

bar it from elegance..." As Cicero's own translations demonstrate, though one would never guess it from his observations on how to translate, he rewrote his source texts to make them into Latin poems. Given the paramount importance of rhetoric in the Roman system of education, and the conning of exemplary texts, Greek and Latin, through reading, memorization, paraphrase, and imitation as the means of developing the student's rhetorical faculty, it is not surprising that fluency and elegance of expression would be ranked among the highest literary values and that these in turn would exert a powerful influence on the translator's attitude toward the task of turning Greek poetry into Latin. It comes, then, as no surprise that Cicero stigmatizes literal translators as indiserti "lacking ἃ command of language" (nec tamen exprimi uerbum e uerbo necesse erit ut interpretes indiserti solent, Fin. 3.15). To parrot another's words from Greek into Latin is an admission of verbal and rhetorical indigence." It follows from the critical description of Latin translation given above that the readers who could best appreciate the artistry of Latin poetic translations were bilingual readers who had studied the source texts as minutely as the translators themselves and whose literary culture had been formed by the same program of reading and study; and, from the translator's point of view, such skilled readers would be an ideal audience. It would, however, be a mistake to infer that all readers possessed the requisite linguistic competence and literary culture to reconstruct what went on in the translators’ workshop as they devised their transformations of the source text, and likewise to infer that translators produced translations for these ideal readers only. The great danger here is to fashion readers in the image of authors and scholars. Despite the thorough Hellenization of Roman education one cannot assume that a high level of proficiency in contemporary Greek, both spoken and written, automatically meant a high level of proficiency in reading the more difficult literary dialects employed by Greek poets of the archaic and classical periods; nor can one assume that such proficiency in reading the Greek "classics" was a pervasive phenomenon among the members of the Roman aristocracy. The cautionary remarks of N. Horsfall on this point are well worth quoting:”* It is unproductive to consider bilingualism as a phenomenon single, whole and unitary; to read, to write, to comprehend and to speak a second language are four distinct, though related talents. In the case of Romans trying to cope with Greek, there is a further complication: the fundamen-

64

Translating the Heavens tal changes which the Greek language had undergone. As Munro puts it in his Lucretius commentary: “the educated Romans of Lucretius’ time had an exquisite knowledge of their own tongue, its syntax, its grammar, its prosody, all its refinements and capabilities; they were also well ac-

quainted with Greek, such as Greek then was; but the Attic of Thucydides and Sophocles, of Plato and Demosthenes had been dead for centuries; and Greek had become the lingua franca of the civilized world.” We need to consider the Romans’ capacity to understand classical Greek literary texts, let alone reproduce them, not as part of some universal knowledge, but on the basis of the evidence, such as it is.

So although Cicero was fluent in the spoken and written Greek of his day, he did have difficulty, as his errors attest, in reading the highly artificial epic dialect of Aratus’s poem." And it is not difficult to imagine that other members of the aristocracy whose doctrina and literary enthusiasm did not run as deep as Cicero's would prefer to read a Latin translation of the Phaenomena than to immerse themselves in the philological minutiae of mastering every word in Aratus’s poem. The same might be said of Varro of Atax's translation of Apollonius's Argonautica. In view of the possible variations in linguistic proficiency, the assumption that the majority of readers who read translations of Greek poetry were thoroughly familiar with the source texts is unwarranted. There were, then, different levels of appreciation, ranging from the connoisseurship of highly educated readers, no doubt a minority, who had studied the source texts closely, to the much more limited critical responses of those who could not or would not read the source texts. Hence for the latter group poetic translations had a utilitarian value since by preference or necessity they read in Latin, though utilitarianism did not govern the translator's methods and goals. In the preceding pages I have attempted to demonstrate that in Latin literature translation is an artistic process and that the translations themselves deserve to be regarded as literary texts in their own right because they embody the literary values and aesthetic intentions of the translators. To identify a Latin poetic text as a translation from the Greek is to alert the reader to the exciting possibilities of a creative exchange which takes place between the translator-poet and the source text in the fertile environment of their shared literary tradition. In order to understand what initiated and sustained the process of exchange that produced Germanicus's Aratea, it is necessary to take a closer look at the Phaenomena and the history of its reception.

Intertraffique of the Minde

65

Notes

Kidd, Com., prefers to translate γαμβροῦ as “suitor” rather than “bridegroom,” because "Andromeda is represented as for ever in chains.” But it is clear from mevθερίον in 252 that Aratus has the sequel in mind; see also Martin, Com. In 250 περιμήκετος, which is to be taken closely with ἐν βορέω, refers to the northern latitude of the constellation, its celestial "height" and not its length, as Kidd understands it. This interpretation is supported by the reference in the next line to the extended right hand which touches the arctic circle and marks the constellation's northernmost point; it is also supported by Cicero's translation, Perseus, / quem summa ab regione Aquilonis flamina pulsant (21-22), and by Germanicus's

transference of the epithet sublimis (253) to the right hand itself. Thus the Greek phrase has directional force, i.e., Perseus is higher in the north than the constella-

tions just described in 239-247

where the poet takes the observer on

a course

southward from Andromeda (234) and the Triangle (235) to the two Fishes and the

Knot (239-247). Using Andromeda again as a guide in 248, now to find Perseus, the poet redirects the observer's gaze from south to north, moving up from the Northern Fish to Andromeda’s feet to Perseus himself; hence Perseus is περιμήκετος ἄλλων in the north, i.e., located higher in the north than the other constellations previously mentioned, Andromeda, the Triangle, the Knot, and the Northern Fish; see also Martin, Com.

Kidd, Com., translates τὰ δ᾽ ἐν ποσὶν

ola

διώκων

/ ἴχνια

μηκύνει “as if on

some immediate pursuit," taking Ta 8' ἐν ποσὶν as a substantival phrase; Mair (1921), “as if pursuing that which lies before his feet he greatly strides”; Martin, Com., “et comme s'il poursuivait quelque chose à ses pieds." I do not see the point of saying

that the hero is in pursuit of something

"at his feet," or in Kidd's more

generalized sense, something "immediate." I prefer to take ἐν ποσὶν as instrumental with διώκων (ποσὶν with διώκων is frequent in Homer) rather than as an attribu-

tive phrase with the neuter plural article; τά, on this interpretation, functions as the possessive with ἴχνια. In the scholia there is no interpretation of the line that suggests that τὰ 8' ἐν ποσὶν was taken as a substantival phrase. The point is that the constellation figure Perseus is in the posture of one "pursuing on foot," even though

pw

he is flying in the heavens. Kidd's translation omits kekovı μένος.

For a recent discussion of the whole passage see Hutchinson (1988) 219—222. In line 22 1 have adopted the variant quem, instead of the cum printed by Buescu and Soubiran, because the purpose of the clause is to indicate direction; cf. 184, Aram, quam flatu permulcet spiritus Austri. Baehrens' qua is also a possibility.

For Perseus as uictor of Medusa cf. Manilius 5.22, 567, 571. Germanicus differs from Aratus and Cicero in omitting the reference to Perseus's shoulders. On uirgo and puella and their levels of diction see Axelson (1948) 58; for additional statistics on usage see Lyne (1978) on Ciris 71. The two terms are not always to be regarded as synonymous in poetry (Watson [1983]).

The phrase is also reminiscent of Vergil's description of Dido, pesti deuota futurae (Aen.

1.712).

On gratus in love elegy see Pichon (1902) 160. There may be an echo of Prop. 4.3.72: saluo grata puella uiro, though here grata means "grateful" and the construction is different.

6ό 10.

Translating the Heavens On ab loue as a patronymic phrase see Gain and Maurach. Ovid engages in a similar play on the metonymic use of Jupiter’s name in the phrase caeloque louique (Met. 2.377; cf. Fast. 2.462, cum pro caelo luppiter arma tulit). The identification

two seems certain at Met. 2.377,

though it is denied by Bómer.

of the

See Enn.

301

Jocelyn = Sc. 345 Vahlen (1928?), to be read in its Ciceronian context, Nat. D. 2.4.

At Aratea 707 Germanicus tries another way of expressing Jupiter's dual role as father of Perseus and celestial abode: patrio fulgebit in aethere Perseus. Cicero may be hinting at the identity of luppiter and caelum with the repetition of summus: summo loue (20) and summa ab regione (22).

11.

12. 13.

Bómer, Met. 4.667, notes that this is the first occurrence of the expression aera findere and identifies a fragment of Euripides’ Andromeda (124 Nauck [18892]) as the direct or indirect source of Ovid's description: διὰ μέσσον γὰρ αἰθέρος / τέμνων κέλευθον πόδα τίθημ᾽ ὑπόπτερον ("cutting a path through the midst of the ether I place my winged foot"). Thus a Euripidean reminiscence is incorporated into the translation as well. More on Aratus's Phaenomena and its relation to the poetry of Homer and Hesiod will follow in Chapter 2. Hyginus was aware of the problem (Poet. astr. 3.11.2); he writes: Hunc [Perseum] Aratus cum diceret inter sidera kexouopévov | [sic] figuratum, acceperunt complures eum puluerulentum dicere; quod minime conuenit posse inter sidera etiam puluerulen-

tum apparere...Perseus autem,

qui adsidue uolaret,

non

potest

puluerem

(“When Aratus said that Perseus was represented as κεκονισμένον

habere

among the stars,

many understood him to mean "dust-covered." But it is by no means suitable that he can appear actually dust-covered among the stars...Perseus, however, since he flew constantly, cannot

be dusty.") Hyginus concludes that the constellation

cannot be

called dust-covered because it is located in the sky, and that the hero cannot be called the same because he flew. Hyginus offers Orion as an example of a constellation figure who can appropriately be so described. After rejecting the explanation of the cloud-like appearance of the stars in the Milky

Way, Hyginus claims that Aratus's

κεκονιμένος is to be interpreted according to the Aeolic usage of the verb ἀποκονίω; he explains, Aeolii enim cum uolunt aliquem decurrere significare, dtfrokóνισσε dicunt ("for the Aeolians, when they want to denote that someone is running,

say ‘he kicked up dust'"). Aratus is imitating Homer and Hesiod: a form of xexovtμένος occurs once in each, as in the Phaen.; Il. 21.541

14.

(44-45), and the translation by Lucretius, 3.19-22

(innu-

bilus aether 21); cf. also Il. 8.552, νήνεμος αἰθήρ. On the metrical side, in line 25 Cicero still allows the suppression of final s before a consonant, and he does not attempt fifth-foot spondee in 248.

16.

and Days 481.

See Kidd, Com. Avienius appears to have followed ZAratus 201.5-7 since he refers specifically to Perseus's feet as dust-covered (uestigia...puluerulenta 566—567), though he softens the epithet with quasi, and locates the feet "in the white heavens" (cano aere 567), presumably the Milky Way. See the famous description of weather conditions on Olympus in Od. 6.41—47, especially αἴθρη...ἀνέφελος

15.

and Works

(nor does Germanicus)

to reproduce Aratus's

Definitions of translation will vary according to the purpose of the translation and its intended audience: see further Nida (1964)

161—164;

spective, Bell (1991) 4—14. In Brower (1959) 233, Roman

general definition:

"Interlingual

translation

and from a linguistic

per-

Jakobson gives the most

or translation proper is an interpreta-

Intertraffique of the Minde

67

tion of verbal signs by means of some other language.” The problem of equivalence in translation is discussed later in this chapter. The title of this chapter “Intertraffique of the Minde” is taken from a poem in praise of translation by the English poet

and historian Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), quoted by Steiner (19922) 261. 17.

Diggle (1998) fr. iv. 44 (p. 108) = Austin (1968) fr. 65.44 (p. 36). M. J. Cropp conjectures «θ᾽» after ὠμόφρων and translates: “ incapable of tears «and» cruel is anyone who does not lament my sufferings”; see Collard, Cropp, and Lee (1995). On Ennius’s translation see the comments of Jocelyn

18.

1004.

The ab-

lative of description lapideo animo is an effective way to deal with the otherwise impossible compound epithet ὠμόφρων. Ricks (1988) 236-238. For his serious attempts at the translation of Greek tragedy see Housman (1959) 243-247, or Ricks (1988) 227-231. Housman’s Fragment into Greek.

19.

(1972)

Raven (1959) translated

Blänsdorf p. 315 = Courtney p. 350. On the identity of Labeo, of unknown date, see Harvey (1981) on Satire 1.4. It is possible that the Attius Labeo and the Homer translation cited in the scholiast's note are a fiction concocted to provide a specific target for the satirist's reproach: see Ferraro (1971) and Ferraro (1973).

Even if At-

tius Labeo was not a historical person, the line attributed to him remains a valid ex20. 21.

ample of the stylistic limitations imposed by literal translation. Gildersleeve (1875). See J. Barsby (1999). Cf. also the Andria prologue 21, istorum obscuram diligen-

tiam. What Terence says in the Eunuchus prologue is not contradicted by his statement in the Adelphoe prologue that he has incorporated a scene from Diphilus's Synapothnescontes literally translated (uerbum de uerbo expressum 11). The pro-

logue serves as a form of advertising for the play; so naturally, after mentioning that in the scene from Diphilus's play a young man abducts a prostitute from her pimp, Terence wants to assure the audience that he hasn't tampered with a scene that promises to entertain with lively theatrical effects. Moreover, as I will try to show in this chapter, a defining feature of Latin poetic translation is that it is variable in mode: the overall strategy of rewriting the original does not exclude the possibility of literal translation of the source text at various places.

22.

The circumstances of transmission, i.e., the fragmentary nature of either the Greek source texts or the Latin translations or both, have naturally conditioned the outlook of scholars and the form of analysis they employ; the severe limitations imposed on the comparative study of the source texts and their translations, most

notably the loss of the scripts of Greek New Comedy translated by Plautus and Terence, and the fragmentary state of Roman republican tragedies and many of their Greek originals, foster an approach to the study of translation which focuses on the extent to which the translation corresponds to and differs from the source text. The results of such analysis are piecemeal and divided by the polar opposition of the literal vs. the free. The pieces do not fit together into a whole. 23.

For Handley's paper and other discussions of these two texts see n. 84 below; for the

fragments of Menander's play see Handley and Wartenberg (1997) no. 4407. 24. 25.

Soubiran 266-267. In the Greek passage Calchas is referred to by name only, but elsewhere in the Iliad he is called οἰωνοπόλων 5x’ ἄριστος (1.69) and θεοπρόπος οἰωνιστής (13.70). In Matius’s translation of 1]. 1.106 (2 Blünsdorf = 2 Courtney), where Calchas is addressed as μάντι κακῶν, the Latin is obsceni interpres funestique ominis auctor.

68 26. 27. 28.

Translating the Heavens On translation as rewriting see Lefevere (19925). On the vocative Lesbia see n. 91 below. N. 16 above. Important introductions to the discipline in Bassnett-McGuire (1980) and Lefevere (19925). There are two useful source books for theories of translation: Lefevere

(1992*); and Schulte and Biguenet (1992). Kelly (1979) provides a valuable account, rich in examples,

of translation

theories and practices from Cicero to the present.

The reader will find good chapters on the history of translation theory in BassnettMcGuire (1980) 39-75, and Steiner (1992?) 248-311; see also Nida (1964) 11-29. Venuti (1995) approaches the history of translation through categories of cuitural and literary values. Good collections of examples illustrating the pragmatics of translation in Tytler (18134); Chukovsky (1984); Lefevere (1975). Barnstone

(1993) offers a wide ranging discussion of theoretical and practical problems which elegantly combines the sacred and the profane. 29. 30.

31. 32.

Bassnett-McGuire (1980) 81. Lefevere (1992) 41. One of the main goals of Lefevere's writings on translation is to make readers aware that there is more to the study of translation than what takes place on the lexical level. The reception of the Phaenomena will be discussed in Chapter 2. Line 32 of his version stands out as a piece of declamatory rhetoric: sed frustra, tem-

ere a uulgo, ratione sine ulla. The emphatic protest belongs to the Forum and the Senate house, not to the Phaenomena.

33.

A fragment of Cicero's translation of a Platonic dialogue provides

an interesting

example of the impact of cultural ideology on the translator. At the beginning of Plato's Protagoras a speaker asks Socrates where he has come from and suggests by

way of a question that Socrates has come "from the hunt for Alcibiades' beauty" (ἀπὸ κυνηγεσίον ToU περὶ τὴν ᾿Λλκιβιάδον ὥραν): in his translation of this passage Cicero, with characteristic Roman grauitas, omits phrase “the hunt for Alcibiades’ beauty," and says cibiade). Cicero's translation of the beginning of first two questions) is preserved in Priscian (Keil

34. 35. 36.

the homoerotic suggestion of the simply “from Alcibiades" (ab Althe Protagoras (the companion's [1857-1880] 6.63).

Mariotti (19862) 14. Lefevere (1992*) 12-13. Granting an independent status to the translation as a literary text seems to me the only way out of the critical impasse imposed by the heuristic device of positing a synonymy of source text and translation as the ideal condition to which the transla-

tion must always prove inadequate. One must allow the translation an independent existence in its own linguistic and cultural environment both as a literary work and as a potential example for other translators to follow or as a fertile influence on literary composition in general. If the study of translation is to develop as a form of literary criticism, then at some point the umbilicus that tethers translation to source text must be cut.

The critical problem posed by the dual nature of translations as both copy and original is well illustrated by Aulus Gellius's treatment of Caecilius Statius's Plocium, a translation

of Menander's

Πλόκιον

(NA

2.23).

Gellius

introduces

the

comparison of Menander and Caecilius with the general observation that when he is reading Latin translations of Greek New Comedy, he thinks that they are well written, so well written in fact that they cannot be surpassed (2.23.1-2); however, when

Intertraffique of the Minde

69

he compares the Latin versions with their Greek originals, he finds them to be complete failures (2.23.3). As a specific example of this critical response Gellius describes how he and his companions reacted favorably to a reading of Caccilius’s Plocium; but when they read Menander’s Πλόκιον, they became extremely unfavorable in their judgment of Caecilius’s play. In fact, Gellius exclaims that Caecilius’s Latin version is bronze exchanged for Menander’s gold (referring to the exchange of armor at Il. 6.234—236 between Diomedes, whose arms were bronze, and Glaucon, whose arms were gold). Two points about Gellius's methods are worth noting: first, he treats the play's script as a text for reading rather than for production and so completely ignores the dramaturgical perspective in his criticisms, especially the tastes of a Roman audience, whereas the dramatist himself was thinking primarily of production rather than publication; and second, Gellius's sole criterion of judgment is the literal fidelity of the Latin version to the Greek; the method of analysis itself, the juxtaposition of the Greek and Latin texts, suggests that the Latin ought to be a linguistic facsimile of the Greek. The critical reception of Menander as the foremost writer of Greek New Comedy will also have influenced Gellius's unfavorable verdict

on the Plocium. The critic will naturally be predisposed to assert the superiority and maintain the inviolability of an original

written by the acknowledged master. Gel-

lius, who is strongly influenced by Menander's reputation and critical reception, assumes that Caecilius's highest goal as a translator should have been to produce in Latin the semantic content of Menander's Πλόκιον. Given the limitations of his method it is not surprising that Gellius ends his discussion with a restatement of those contradictory critical responses without attempting to investigate the causes of the contradiction: Itaque, ut supra dixi, cum haec Caecilii seorsum lego, neutiquam uidentur ingrata ignauaque, cum autem Graeca comparo et contendo, non puto Caecilium sequi debuisse, quod assequi nequiret (2.23.22). ("Accordingly, as I said above, when I read these passages of Caecilius by themselves, they seem by no means lacking in grace and spirit, but when I match and compare them with the Greek version, I feel that Caecilius should not have followed a guide with whom he could not keep pace": translated by Rolfe [1946]). Important discussions, with positive evaluation,

of Caecilius's treatment of Menander's Πλόκιον in Leo (1913) 221—224, and Wright (1974) 120-126. On Gellius's comparison of Caecilius and Menander see Gamberale

(1969) 75—90. 37.

Pound (1954)

249.

Lewis (1954)

251-252

is less

enthusiastic

about

Golding's

Metamorphoses. The importance of Cicero's Aratea for the refinement of the hexameter, for the development of patterns of word order, and for the enrichment of the poetic vocabulary certainly entitles it to the status of a "second original." lt is, 38. 39.

moreover, a precious remnant of pre-Lucretian republican epic poetry. See the discussion in Bassnett-McGuire (1980) 23-31. There are occasions when Cicero's word order echoes the Greek: ecliptic

(300),

er

simul a medio media de parte secatur = Phaen. 528, μέσσος δέ € μεσσόθι τέμνει; celestial circles (244), atque pari spatio duo cernes esse duobus - Phaen. 468, ἀτὰρ μέτρῳ γε δύω δυσὲν ἀντιφέρονται. Here may also be noted Lucretius's studied imitation of the Homeric κεῖτο

μέγας

μεγαλωστί

(Il. 16.776)

in

magni magno cecidere ibi casu (1.741), which nicely reproduces both alliterating pairs in the Greek; κεῖτο is preceded by κονίης in 775; cf. also 5.905 and Il. 6.181. At 260-261 (= Phaen. 490-491) and 442-443

(= Phaen. 653—654)

Cicero imitates

the separation of article and substantive found in the Greek: see Clausen (1986) 165.

70

Translating the Heavens

40.

Cicero also introduces another piece of etymological gloss; αἰθήρ in the (121), gizing (1950) serves

word-play in 88, the epithet

the epithet igniferum, modifying aethera, points to the connection between (aether) and αἴθω ‘burn’, a connection reinforced by the occurrence of ardenti preceding line: see O’Hara (1996) 166, 189. Again, Cicero finds in Lepus the Latin translation of Aaywés (Phaen. 338), an opportunity for etymoloword-play in the phrase leuipes Lepus: see Varro, Rust. 3.12.6; Traglia 118-119; and O'Hara (1996) 48, n. 268. At Aratea XVI.1-4 he cleverly preAratus’s etymologizing explanation of the name Arctophylax (Phaen.

92-95): Arctophylax...Arctum...Arcturus = ᾿Αρκτοφύλαξ.. Αρκτον...᾿Αρκτοῦρος. At the same time he improvises a way to translate Aratus’s dual identification of the constellation as Arctophylax the “Bear Guardian” and as Bootes the “Herdsman,” as well as the dual identification of Arctos as the “Bear” and as the “Wagon” driven by Bootes, which is contained in the compressed phrase dnafalns “Apxtou (“the Wagon-Bear,” on which see Kidd, Com., on Phaen. 93). The identification of the constellation as Arctophylax requires a bear (Aptos), and its identification as

Bootes requires a wagon (ἀμαξαίη), which Bootes is imagined to be leading along. To translate ἁμαξαίης "Apkrov and explain the name Bootes, Cicero came up with the ingenious line Arctophylax, uulgo qui dicitur esse Bootes, / quod quasitemone adiunctam prae se quatit Arctum (“Arctophylax, who is commonly said to be

Bootes, because he urges on in front of himself the Bear yoked, so to speak, by the Wagon-pole [Temone]"). Temo, which identifies the constellation as a wagon in addition to its recognized form as a bear-arctus (cf. Enn. 188-191 Jocelyn = Sc. 215-218 Vahlen [19282]; Varro, Ling. 7.73), corresponds to ἁμαξαίη and explains

why Arctophylax the bear-guardian is also known as Bootes the driver. The participle adiunctam functions in a figurative, as well as literal, sense, for the two identi-

41.

ties of the constellation are indeed “yoked” together, Aratus’s seemingly untranslatable phrase “Wagon-Bear” into Latin as Temone adiunctam...Arctum. For a discussion names for Ursa Major see G. Gundel (1907) 59-70. “Texts in different languages can be equivalent in different equivalent), in respect of different levels of presentation

Arctus and Temo. Thus is successfully brought of Temo and other Latin degrees (fully or partially (equivalent in respect of

context, of semantics, of grammar, of lexis, etc.) and at different ranks (word-forword, phrase-for-phrase, sentence-for-sentence,” Hartmann and Stork, quoted in Bell (1991) 6. See also Bassnett-McGuire (1980) 23-29. 42.

Cicero's

use

of

the

"gnomic"

perfect

to

translate

the

Greek

gnomic

aorist

(ὀσφρήσαντο — duxere and ἐβάψατο 951 — demersit 9) obviously antedates its occur-

43.

44.

rence in Catull. 62.42, optauere, on which Fordyce (1961) comments: "Catullus is the first Latin writer to use the “gnomic” perfect, probably suggested by the similar Greek use of the aorist." According to Palmer (1954) 307, the gnomic use of the perfect is found as early as Plautus. Cf. Enn., Ann. 333 Sk.: si forte «feras» ex nare sagaci / sensit; Lucr. 4.993: crebro redducunt naribus auras; Verg., Aen. 7.480: noto naris contingit odore, Hor., Carm. 4.1.21-22: illic plurima naribus / duces tura. In a canticum in which the diction is elevated for comic effect Plautus writes: Flos ueteris uini meis naribus obiectust (Curc. 96). Williams (1968) 257. Cicero's misrepresentation of the original may be redeemed

somewhat by Pease's suggestion (1920-1923) 89 that the line ending lumina caeli is an Ennian echo which serves as an analog to the Homeric echo (Jl. 24.307) in

Intertraffique of the Minde Aratus’s οὐρανὸν

71

εἰσανιδόντες, on which see Kidd, Com. Williams also censures

Cicero’s use of sucus “as a perfect example of literary impropriety.” However, Cicero’s choice of sucus for ὕδωρ can be explained on the ground that sucus suggests

45. 46.

47.

48.

liquid contained in something and therefore hidden from view, as in this case moisture in the air which the oxen sense but humans cannot see. Sucus is used of moisture in the earth in Ovid, Met. 2.211. 22.5-6 Blänsdorf = 14 Courtney. Varro’s addition of patulis may have been suggested by a scholiast’s comment: [ol βόες] διαχάσκοντας ἔχοντες τοὺς μυκτῆρας, ZAratus 461.11-12. The interlocking word order in the second line is noteworthy: naribus aeriwn patulis decerpsit odorem. Cicero and Varro apparently omitted the adverb πάρος in 954, which again points to the prognostic function of the oxen’s behavior. Vergil, although he omits πάρος from his version in 375-376, shows regard for it elsewhere in the words that introduce the bucula and other signs of oncoming rain: 373-374, numquam imprudentibus imber / obfuit. None of the Latin poets attempts to reproduce the spondaic line-ending ὀσφρήσαντο. Varro, however, in his translation of Apollonius's Argon. 2.712 does reproduce the spondaic line-ending: conclamarunt (5 Blünsdorf = 7 Courtney) = κεκληγυῖα. In so doing Varro indirectly through Apollonius imitates Homer, who has the spondaic line-ending κεκλήγοντας at Od. 12.256. In the introductory essay to the Georgics Conington-Nettleship (18985) 146 characterize the Latin poet's manner of translating Aratus thus: "He delights in the profusion of picturesque images which is to be found in Aratus' collection of prognostics, and he makes free use of them for his own purposes; but those purposes are poetical rather than properly didactic. If the reader is not wearied, it matters little that he is left in ignorance of part of what it concerned him to know." For further discussion of these passages

see Thomas

(1986)

188-189

= Thomas

(1999)

130-132;

Kubiak

(1990); and Farrell (1991) 221-223. 49.

Suerbaum (1968) 1-12, 297-300 gives full discussion, with extensive bibliography, of problems in the biographical tradition; M. Drury, in Kenney and Clausen (1982) 799-801, offers an excellent concise account; most recent discussion in Gruen (1990) 80-82.

50. 51.

Leo (19122) 88 n. 2, and Mariotti (19862) 15 n. 4. Leo (1912?) 88: "Er hat den Weg gebahnt, indem er die Kunst des Übersetzens erfand, für Rom und die Welt”; cf. also

Leo (1913)

59-60.

Leo was aware that the

translation of the Septuagint came before Livius's literary activity but felt that the circumstances under which the translation of the Hebrew Bible was made, first and foremost the need to produce a faithful rendering of the Hebrew text, made the project an altogether different undertaking from Livius's translation

of Greek dramatic

and epic poetry. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Mariotti (19862) 13. Leo (19122) 88, and Leo (1913) 60. Leo (19122) 87-93, and Leo (1913) 73-75. In what follows I summarize Leo's main findings (19122) 87-93 and (1913) 73-75, together with the important contributions of Fraenkel (1931); Mariotti ( 19862);

Waszink (1956) = Waszink (1979) 1-18; and Waszink (1960) = Waszink (1979) 89-98. Waszink (1972) 887-889 provides a valuable critical survey of work on Livius's Odusia. Büchner (1979) reaffirms the artistic quality of the translation. Von

72

56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

Translating the Heavens Albrecht (1999) 33-44 assesses the velopment of Roman epic. There are the Odusia in Blünsdorf; I follow the On the form Οὐλίξης see Kretschmer in (1896) 280; the evidence of

fragments in relation to the history of the debibliographical references for each fragment of numeration of his edition. (1894) 147—148, with his additional comments vase inscriptions is updated by Brommer

(1982-1983). See also Ibycus fr. 305 in Page (1962) = fr. 305 in Davies (1991); and von Kamptz (1982) 355-360. See Phillips (1953) 53-67 and Solmsen (1986). Leo (1913) 47; his observation is developed by Gruen (1990) 79-92. Mariotti notes the sound play in Vlixi — frixi, (1986?) 32.

Traina (19742) 19-20. On the language of superlatives (primus, optimus, maximus) in the heroic ethos of the Roman aristocracy see Wiseman (1985). See West's note, in Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth (1988) Od. 1.1. The two verbs

insece and ἔννεπε are regarded as linguistically identical because they begin with the same prefix and have stems derived from the same verbal root. See Frisk (1960) s.v. ἐννέπω; Walde-Hofmann (1965) s.v. inquam; and Sihler (1995) 547. With insece the poet achieves an equivalence that is partially phonetic, linguistically literal in prefix and stem, semantic, metrical, and stylistic.

63.

64.

Itis possible that Livius coined the adjective Laertius to function as a patronymic on the analogy of patronymics (originally possessive adjectives?, see Aitchison below) ending in -ἰος which are found in the Homeric poems and serve as doublets for patronymics ending in -ἰδης. Although Homer has no adjectival form in «ἰὸς corresponding to the name Λαέρτης, Livius found precedent for such a form in the other adjectival patronymics used for heroes such as Τελαμώνιος and Νηλήϊος. See J. M. Aitchison (1964). Cf. Plaut, Bacch. 946, Vlixes Lartius; and Laevius, 20 Blansdorf = 20 Courtney: nunc, Laertie belle, para / ire Ithacam. In the lines that have been suggested as the source, Od. 1.65, 14.144, 20.205, Odysseus’s name occurs in the genitive, 'O8vo(o)fjos. It must, however, be noted that Livius's text of the Odyssey may have differed widely from our own because he

was writing before the editorial activity of the Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus who is credited with stabilizing Homer's text. See S. West's essay on the transmission of 65.

the text in Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth (1988) 33-48, esp. 45 on Aristarchus. It may, however, be the case that this consistent pattern of expression is the result of coincidence due to the accidents of survival and the exceedingly small number of

fragments relative to the length of the original. Livius may well have used patronymics of the type Saturnius and Saturnia, as did Ennius. But the fact that the same pattern occurs in the admittedly meager remains of Naevius's Bellum Poenicum argues somewhat against mere coincidence: filii Terras (8.3, "sons of earth"), refer-

ring to Giants, Titans, and Atlantes; Cereris Proserpina puer (22, “Persephone, child of Ceres”); louis...filiae (1, "daughters of Jupiter," referring to the Camenae. Since Homer does not use os patronymics for Olympian deities, it is possible that Livius and Naevius avoided the use of patronymic adjectives in -ius for divinities, preferring instead the noun + parent combination as the equivalent of Greek patronymics in -ἰδης or -tov. From Ennius onwards it appears that patronymic phrases of the type filius/filia/puer + parent became obsolete in epic poetry and were superceded by more elevated patronymic expressions composed of a participle meaning "born," “sired” + parent in the ablative, as already in Naevius's loue prognatus...Apollo (24)

Intertraffique of the Minde

73

[see Jocelyn's note on Ennius's Thyestes 291]; or a noun meaning “progeny,” “offspring" (proles, progenies, natus) + parent in the genitive; or adjectives of the type

Saturnius. Ennius may have been the first to introduce Greek patronymic forms directly into Latin epic poetry (Aeacida, Ann. 167 Sk., and possibly Scipiadas, found in Lucilius, fr. 394, Lucr. 3.1034, and Verg., Aen. 6.843, if that patronymic form goes back to the Annales, a possibility suggested by Munro in his commentary on Lucr. 1.26). Plautus can use Greek patronymics in -48ns; he writes Atridae for the sons of Atreus at Bacch. 925; or he can create comic fustian such as Thensaurochrysonicochrysides (Capt. 285), as well as hybrid forms that combine Latin words with the -ἰδὴς suffix (Virginesuendonides, Persa 702): see further Duckworth (1952)

349—350. Plautus also uses patronymic phrases of the prognatus-type and the noun * parent-type: see Fraenkel (1931) 604 and Fraenkel (1960) 93 n. 2.

66. 67. 68.

Cf. Plaut., Epidicus 604: hanc adserua Circam Solis filiam.

Mariotti (19862) 33. Cited in Wordsworth (1874) 571. Mariotti (19862) 33 thinks

that the accumulation

of titles for Juno is reminiscent of "le abbondanti formule cultuali latine." I do not know to what texts he is referring, but this form of naming seems to me reminiscent of what is found in the Homeric Hymns. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

See West (1966) on Theog. 54. See Williams in Kenney and Clausen (1982) 53-55.

Waszink (1956) 145 z Waszink (1979) 95. Mariotti (19862) 29. See West’s note, in Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth (1988), and Pfeiffer (1968) 4. Fränkel (1932); and for another example see Cazzaniga (1966). Since Livius's

trans-

lation antedated the first published commentary on the Odyssey, written by the great Alexandrian critic Aristarchus (ca. 216-144 BC), Frünkel was careful to specify a "pre-Aristarchean" date for the material used by Livius, an important qualification

which implies that "Livius was using a traditional explanation of the schools later incorporated into scholia" (Courtney p. 100):

see Pfeiffer (1968)

212

with n. 6.

Kessissoglu (1974) challenges the identification of Livius's fragment with Od. 8.378—379, proposing instead 5.480. The correspondence of multa with ταρφέ᾽ in 8.379 confirms, in my judgment, 8.378-379 as the source. On the Grecism multa see Skutsch on Ann. 48. The translation of Od. 8.378-379 is quoted from Garvie (1994).

For further observations

on

the

use of scholia

see

Goetz

(1918);

Leo

(19122) 97-99 on Ennius's translation of the prologue of the Medea and Leo (1960) on Accius's translation of the prologue of Euripides' Phoenissae; Ronconi (1973) 36 on Matius's

translation

of the /liad, fr. 2 Blansdorf

= 2 Courtney;

Horsfall

(1979). When it is possible to compare a whole text, rather than bits and pieces, with a substantial body of scholia, as in R. Schlunk (1974), one can see clearly how

the reception of the Homeric poems in the form of exegetical commentary was incorporated into the composition of a new poem that took for its models the Iliad and Odyssey. The habit of incorporating exegetical material into the process of poetic composition may have been fostered in part by the teaching activities of Livius and Ennius who, according to Suetonius, "...merely clarified the meaning of Greek authors or gave exemplary readings from their own Latin compositions" (nihil amplius quam Graecos interpretabantur aut si quid ipsi Latine composuissent praelegebant, Gram. 1.2): translation and text quoted from Kaster (1995) whose notes on interpretabantur and praelegebant must be consulted. The glossing of Greek words,

74

Translating the Heavens which was surely part of the process of “clarification” (interpretabantur), becomes a poetic mannerism: Enn., Ann. 139-140 Sk., et densis aquila pennis obnixa uolabat / uento quem perhibent Graium genus aera lingua, 211 Sk., nec quisquam sophiam, sapientia quae perhibetur, / in somnis uidit prius quam sam discere coepit; these

glosses give added meaning to Ennius's description of himself as dicti studiosus: cf. also Pacuvius 89 TRF Ribbeck, id quod nostri caelum memorant, Grai perhibent aethera. Vergil elevated the simple gloss into a sophisticated form of literary reference at G. 3.147-148, cui nomen asilo / Romanum

est, oestrum Grai uertere uocan-

tes: see Thomas (1982) = Thomas (1999) 305—310, and his commentary (1988). 75. 76. 71. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Merry and Riddell (1886?) on 8.379. Frünkel (1932) 307—308. Lattimore (1965). Warmington (1936) fr. 23—26, slightly modified.

A. Traina (19742) 21-22. S. Mariotti (1965) = Mariotti (2000) 5-20. I use the term Hellenistic to characterize Livius’s literary-historical situation in relation to the great literary works of the classical past: he would have been both student and custodian of the received tradition and, as a poet himself, he would have united his extensive knowledge of authors like Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, and Euripides with his own talent and with the radically different conditions of writing in Latin to compose poems that recapitulated the tradition and extended its boundaries. Moreover, he would have written poetry with a full awareness of the requirements of the genre in which he was working, as these could be assimilated to the Roman linguistic and cultural environment, and of the standards of poetic craftsmanship as these could be applied to the wholly new conditions of translating Greek poetry into

Latin. I do not suggest that Livius was an “Alexandrian” or the adherent of a particular poetic creed, specifically Callimachus's. Leo (1913) 47-55, esp. 50 and 53, strenuously rejected the possibility of Alexandrian and Callimachean influence on Andronicus.

But in his determination

to reject the specific

influence,

Leo

over-

looked the pervasive, formative influence of Hellenistic literary culture which felt 82.

constrained to work within the limits imposed by the canonical texts of the past. Again, to ensure that "subjective" and "innovative" will be useful as critical terms I define them. By "subjective" I mean that the translator gives expression to his own

individuality: the source text is assimilated not only to the Roman universe of discourse but also to the translator's own thoughts and feelings. It has already been pointed out how Catullus's insertion of the vocative

Lesbia into his translation

of

Sappho's ode (51) recontextualizes that ode within the cycle of Lesbia poems in the Catullan corpus and within the emotional and psychological world of the poet's relationship with Lesbia. One can observe a similar process in his translation of Callimachus's Lock of Berenice (66); and in general Latin translator-poets make their

presence felt in their translations. By "innovative" I mean that translator-poets do not feel bound to follow the wording of the source text and rewrite it. In this chapter we have seen translations in which there are radical departures from the wording of the Greek originals representing the various genres. While it is true that the process

of translation itself, even on the literal level, can be called innovative because it activates a continuous process of invention in order to find equivalence of form and expression for the source text, such a concept of innovation is too diffuse to be useful in a study of this kind. The broad freedom assumed by the translator-poet, the

Intertraffique of the Minde

83. 84.

75

freedom to rewrite the source text, indicates the nature and scope of innovation in Latin translation. Brock (1979) 79, an important paper. There is a useful summary, with bibliography, of studies on Latin translations of Greek poetry in Kaimio (1979) 271—284, with “Conclusion” on 292-294. In addition to the works cited in n. 36 (on Caecilius) and n. 55 (on Livius) readers may con-

sult these important studies of Latin translations that can be compared with their source texts: on the translation of Homer, Tolkiehn (1991) 111-190, Ronconi (1973), Aicher (1986), and Scaffai (1982) 66-73; on the translation of tragedy, Leo

(1960) 191—212 and Jocelyn 3-43, both works of fundamental importance; on Ennius in particular as a translator of Greek tragedy see, in addition to Jocelyn, Leo (19122) 97-98 and Leo (1913) 187-197, Terzaghi (1928), Roser (1939), and Brooks (1949); for the translation of Greek New Comedy the discovery of fragments of Menander's Δὶς Ἐξαπατῶν, the source text of Plautus's Bacchides, marks an important and exciting addition to the only other continuous portions of text available for comparison in this genre, the fragments of Caecilius's Plocium and the corresponding fragments of the Menandrean original: see Handley (1968) = Handley (1973) 249—276; texts of Plautus and Menander with English

veniently available, with additional bibliography,

translations

in Barsby

(1986).

are con-

On Terence

see H. Hafftner (1953) and Ludwig (1968); and on the whole question of the relation-

ship between the Latin plays and their Greek originals, Gaiser (1972). On Catullus see Wormell (1966) 187-201 and Kubiak (1979) 120-168. Traina (19742) touches on many of these authors. All of these comparative studies, and others like them, document the same phenomenon, the subjective,

85.

86. 87.

innovative

translation

strategy of

Latin poets. Richter (1938) analyzes the various Latin terms used to denote translation and discusses selected passages of Cicero's and Germanicus's translations of Aratus, with emphasis on the freedom the Latin translators allowed themselves (also included is a discussion of Apuleius's translation of the treatise περὶ κόσμου); Richter also provides a catalogue of known Latin translations in verse and prose down to the seventh century. On the general topic of the various ways, including translation, in which Latin authors adapted their Greek models see Kroll (1924) 1-23 and 139-184; Williams (1968) 250-357; and D. A. Russell (1979). Reiff (1959) examines how Latin authors understood the terms interpretatio, imitatio, and aemulatio and used them to define the relationship of their own works to Greek models. Seele (1995) presents a typology of problems in the artistic translation of prose and poetry and identifies the various strategies with which Latin translators responded to those problems on lexical, semantic, syntactic, and stylistic levels. The error is an easy one to make, if the observer is looking at a star chart. The natural tendency will be to orient the chart so that Engonasin is in an upright position, in which case it is his right foot that is located at the head of Draco. In the heavens, however, Engonasin is upside down and thus it is his left foot that treads the serpent's head. In his edition (pp. 14-16), Gain lists the passages where Germanicus agrees with Hipparchus against Aratus. See n. 74 above. Jermyn (1951) 36 and Thomas (1988) on G. 1.378. Met. 6.376, quamuis

sint sub aqua,

sub aqua

The echo is repeated by Ovid,

maledicere temptant

(of the Lycian

coloni who underwent batrachian transformation). Cicero's description of the griefstricken sisters of Phaethon (147-148) may have been inspired by their tears and

76

Translating the Heavens lamentation in Euripides’ Hipp. 738-741.

In fr. IV.10 of the “Prognostica”

Cicero

appears to have coined the unique Latin epithet mollipedes on the model of Theocritus's μαλακαὶ πόδας (Id. 15.103; βάρδισται in 104 suggests that μαλακαί is to be

88.

understood of motion, rather than of touch); see Pease (1921-1923) 89, and Gow (1950) vol. 2, 293. And in the vignette of Mercury's invention of the lyre (Aratea 42-44 -- Phaen. 268-271), Cicero adds the striking detail manibus...infirmis (43-44); cf. Catull. 61.211, porrigens teneras manus (of baby Torquatus). This realistic touch, which creates the appealing scene of the child god at work on the musical instrument, may have been a response to Aratus's παρὰ λίκνῳ (268), but there is the possibility that Cicero found a similar phrase in Eratosthenes' Hermes, in which the god's invention of the lyre was recounted. Given the fragmentary state of that pocm, Cicero's use of it here as a source can be no more than a guess. An interesting example of incorporation consists of a poet's quoting one or more lines from an existing translation of one Greek text when that text is quoted in his source text. According to Donatus's commentary on Terence, Eun. 590, a translation of Menander's Εὐνοῦχος, the words qui templa caeli summa sonitu concutit are taken

from one of Ennius's tragedies (incerta clxi Jocelyn 2 Sc. 380 Vahlen). The likeliest explanation for Terence's borrowing of the Ennian line is that Menander in his play quoted a line from a Greek tragedian, most probably Euripides, a favorite source of quotable lines. Thus we have a case of parallel equivalence in which Terence's quotation of Ennius corresponds to Menander's quotation of Euripides. Skutsch (1967) 128-130 = (1968) 177-180 suggested that Ennius's line is the first line of his translation of Euripides’ ᾿Αλκμήνη; Jocelyn 63 is sceptical of Skutsch's hypothesis. On Menander's quotation of Euripides see Webster (1950) 155-162, and Gomme and

Sandbach (1973) 96 on Shield 407, 98 on Shield 424—427, 99 on Shield 432; 382 on Epit. 1123; 577 on Sam. 325. There is also the example of Cicero's quotations of his translation of the Phaenomena in Book 2 of Nat. D. which presumably replaced the quotations of the original in his philosophical source: on this point see Jocelyn (1973) 75.

89.

For a different approach to revealing the etymological significance of Sirius’s name see O'Hara (1996) 288 on G. 4.425—428. At Aratea 218-223, the description of the

constellation

Equus/Pegasus, Germanicus gives another etymology

in which

the

reader must understand the significance of the Greek name: inde liquor genitus nomen tenet Hippocrenes (221); the stream that came forth at the blow of the Horse's hoof is called Horse-stream. Here it is necessary to return to the text of the earlier editors, Orelli, Baehrens, and Breysig (1867). The colon after tenet, adopted by Gain and Le Boeuffle following Breysig (1899), together with the accusative

Hippocrenen rather than the genitive, i.e., Hippocrenen fontes nomen habent, separates nomen Hippocrenes from its elucidation in inde liquor genitus; it also leaves the adversative sed at the beginning of the next sentence without force. The Greek genitive (cf. Fast. 5.7, Aganippidos Hippocrenes) deserves special consideration as the rarer form more likely to be assimilated to the accusative. Fontes nomen habent means "the spring is famous"; cf. Fast. 2.472, sidera nomen habent (immediately after the catasterism of Pisces); and McKeown (1989) on Am. 1.3.2122.

90. 91.

Kidd (1981) 355, and Com., with bibliography. On the significance of the name Lesbia Kubiak (1979) 138 writes: "Catullus is, as it were, 'signing' the piece with the name of the Greek authoress, as he signs it with

his own name in the last stanza."

Intertraffique of the Minde 92.

77

In poem 65 Catullus describes the circumstances, his sorrow at the recent death of

his brother, attendant on his sending a translation (66) of Callimachus’s

Lock of

Berenice (haec expressa tibi carmina Battiadae 65.16) to Hortensius. Since poem 65

acts as a cover letter for poem 66 and sets the mood for reading the translation (note especially semper maesta tua carmina morte canam 65.12), it is difficult not to see a transformation, in virtue of this new context, of Callimachus’s learned and clever court poem into the Latin poet’s more personal reflection on the themes of separation, loss, and astral immortality. The subject matter, the catasterism of a lock of hair cut from Queen Berenice’s head, may seem trivial in comparison to the poet’s sorrow over the loss of his brother; yet the apparent incongruity is resolved if the

reader will allow that through the process of translation the poet reinterprets the Lock of Berenice as a paradigm, albeit an unconventional one when compared to familiar mythological paradigms for grief like the story of Procne and Itys mentioned in 65, to express and relieve his own sorrow. Catullus’s comparison of himself to a uirgo at the end of 65 (65.20) immediately suggests a connection between the poet and Berenice in poem 66.

93.

Cicero, Acad. 1.10, Fin. 3.15, Hor., Ars P. 133-134;

De opt. gen.

14 (a spurious work), De or. 1.155;

Sen., Controv. 9.1.(24).13;

Quint.,

Inst.

10.5.2-3;

Pliny

the Younger, Ep. 7.9, where he makes the noteworthy observation that translation requires an intensive reading of the source text which distinguishes the activity of a translator

(transferentem) from that of a reader (legentem).

These

passages,

along

with St. Jerome’s famous Letter 57 and others, are discussed by Kytzler (1989); see also Brock (1979).

For detailed discussion of ancient translation

tion to the systematic study of language through

the disciplines

“theory” in rela-

of grammar and

rhetoric see Rener (1989) and Copeland (1991) 9-36. On the importance of translation as a compositional exercise for the training of the orator see Clark (1957)

94.

169-172. The apparent contradiction between Cicero’s characterization of Latin poetic translations as free (non uerba sed uim) in Acad. 1.10 and his characterization of them as literal (fabellas Latinas ad uerbum e Graecis expressas) in Fin. 1.4 can be explained,

as Traina (19742) 59-60 and Jocelyn 26-27 have pointed out, by a consideration of Cicero’s rhetorical strategy in each context. Moreover,

Cicero’s characterization of

the Latin translations as uerbum de uerbo expressum is of course refuted by the evi95.

dence of the poetic translations themselves. In this connection it is worth mentioning that for literary purposes a Latin author will rewrite even a text composed in Latin: Tacitus’s rewriting of the emperor

Claudius’s speech (Ann. 11.24) on the admission of citizens from Gallia Comata to the senate can be compared with the original

(JLS 212). The modern historian

will

be scandalized by the liberties Tacitus has taken in the interest of stylistic concord with his Annales: the emperor Claudius is made to speak in Tacitean phrases. In Ann. 15.63 Tacitus says that he will refrain from altering (inuertere), for inclusion

in his history, Seneca's final discourse before his death, because it had been published; similar comment in Livy 45.25.23, about Cato's Rhodian speech. The practice of such rewriting is based on the notion that the message-content of a given text is separable from the manner in which it is expressed. See further Fornara

(1983) 96. 97.

153-154.

Horsfall (1979) 79. See now Adams (2003) 1-14. See Ferrari (1940), and Soubiran 88.

Chapter 2

The Cosmographical Glass: Aratus’s Phaenomena

We turn now to the Phaenomena in order to get an overview of the whole poem and to take a brief look at the history of its reception. As was mentioned in Chapter 1, translators must deal not only with the words of the text but also with the ways in which those words have been read, interpreted, and criticized. In ancient, as in modern times, the poem was preceded by its reputation. Aratus of Soloi in Cilicia, Hellenistic scholar and poet (ca. 315—240/239 BC), has enjoyed uninterrupted, though gradually diminishing recognition from antiquity to the present as the author of a poem called Phaenomena, literally "Things that Appear." The poem can be divided into three sections in accordance with its subject matter. After the introductory

hymn

to Zeus

(1-18),

the

first part

(19-558),

which is based on an astronomical treatise, entitled Phaenomena, by the fourth century BC astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, describes the constellations of the northern and southern hemispheres and the great circles of the celestial sphere, tropics, equator, and (559—757), also based on the Phaenomena

zodiac. The second part of Eudoxus, describes the

constellations as they rise and set simultaneously with the zodiacal constellations.” As one ancient commentator observed, the first part gives a description of the celestial sphere at rest, while the second part represents the celestial sphere in motion.’ The third and final part (758-1154) gives a catalogue of celestial, atmospheric, and terrestrial phenomena that can be used for weather forecasting. The immediate source for this section is unknown but was in all probability not much different from the treatise on weather signs attributed to Theophrastus.*

80

Translating the Heavens

Proem:

Constellations as signs, providence of Zeus (1—18).

Part 1: Constellations and celestial sphere (19-558). 19-26 Axis and poles. 26-62 Northern circumpolar constellations. 63-318 Constellations between circumpolar stars and zodiac. 319-321 Transition to southern hemisphere. 322-450 Constellations of southern hemisphere. 451-453 Conclusion of description of fixed stars. 454-46] Refusal to describe planets; introduction of celestial circles. 462-558 Circles: tropics, equator, zodiac, (and Milky Way). Part 2: Celestial time-reckoning (559—757).

559—732 733—139 740-751 752-757

Simultaneous risings and settings; celestial sphere in motion. Days of the month, moon's waxing and waning. Sun’s path through Zodiac. The cycle of Meton.

Part 3: Weather Signs (758-1154).

758-772 Second proem. Importance of observing weather signs. 773-777 Signs from sun, moon, and other objects. 778-908 Celestial signs for weather: 778-818 Moon 819-891 Sun 892-908

909-1141

Star clusters

Atmospheric and terrestrial signs: clouds, sea, mountains, plants, animals, household objects.

Divided according to field of observation:

909-1043 Sailors 1044-1141 Farmers and shepherds Subdivided according to types of weather: 909-932 Wind 933-987 Rain 988-1012 Fair weather 1013-1043

Rainstorm, wind, hail

1044-1103

Prediction of coming summer

1104-1141

More signs of storm

1142-1154

Closing exhortation to observe and heed the signs.

It is a poem of modest length, a little over 1150 lines; the organization and treatment of the material are clear and simple, though the language is a complex amalgam of the epic diction of Homer and Hesiod. Aratus shuns the technicalities of mathematical astronomy and puts the reader at the center of his poetic cosmos to observe Zeus's universal order. Whatever difficulties the reader may encounter in following the descriptions of

The Cosmographical Glass

81

the constellation figures are easily solved by the use of a celestial globe or star chart. In fact, an illustrated Phaenomena does much to enhance the reading of the poem. The modern format of plain text without illustrations may appeal to our philological instinct to house the word in a pure environment, but such a format presents a real impediment to full enjoyment of the poem and seems rather backward in comparison to the more integrative approach of ancient and medieval manuscript production and Renaissance book production, in which astronomical illustrations in close

proximity to the text, either located in the margins or interspersed in the text itself, provide a visual dimension that not only facilitates reading the text with pictorial representation of the subject matter, but also helps readers to act out their role as observers of the stars, a role which some critics wrongly dismiss as nothing more than a stage prop of the poem’s didactic fiction. As the title Phaenomena itself indicates, the visual has an organic role to play in bringing readers a more direct experience of the poem.’ The Phaenomena belongs to the genre of catalogue poetry, the best known examples of which are the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 of the Iliad, and Hesiod’s Theogony, Works and Days, and Catalogue of

Women. We have references to and, in two instances, fragments of early astronomical poems that must have belonged to this genre; they were written, according to tradition, by Hesiod, Thales, and Cleostratus.’ As J. Kakridis has hypothesized in an important article, catalogue poetry is probably one of the earliest types of oral poetry and not a product of the epic in decline; one cannot refer to it pejoratively as “Hesiodic” in relation to Homeric narrative epic, implying a degenerate stage of development. Its primary function is to organize information and make it memorable rather than to narrate a story, although catalogue poets do construct narratives, usually brief, when they have touched on something of particular interest or want to illustrate a theme that is important to the catalogue as a whole: sometimes the intrinsic interest of an item and its thematic importance combine to stimulate the catalogue poet into narrative. What is usually referred to as the use of digressions to break the monotony of the catalogue is in fact the poet’s way of enlarging the scope of the catalogue beyond the listing of entries in order to provide an interpretive framework for understanding the significance of the information conveyed. Aratus’s narrative of the myth of the metallic races, far from being a digression or set piece, is an integral part of the poem which illustrates the major theme of Zeus’s providential care for humankind as revealed through “signs.”

82

Translating the Heavens

The chief tasks of the catalogue poet are to organize his material, to give it coherence and structure, and, if the poem is to be something more than a metrical list, the poet must provide some kind of synthesis and interpretation which give meaning to the recorded data: otherwise, when the information has been superseded, the poem will not be worth remembering or reading. Hesiod’s instructions on when and how to carry out various agricultural operations were important in themselves for people who lived in an agricultural world; in the industrialized, technologized world of the twenty-first century readers can still learn from Hesiod’s Works and Days because the agricultural information is situated within Hesiod’s own conception of a world order and his view of the nature of the human condition in it. Whether the Ascraean singer’s audience is a peasant sharpening a sickle or an undergraduate surfing the web, they will recognize that his poem goes well beyond the limits of its agricultural themes to say something very important about the morality of the individual and a just society. Likewise, Aratus’s Phaenomena, although it is based on an obsolete system of the universe, presents a theistic view of the world which transforms the astronomical information into the common experience of recognizing and observing the constellations and then attempting to understand the significance of their movements in relation to the existence of the observer. The most important question we can ask about the Phaenomena is not whether the astronomical information is always accurate or whether the behavior of worms and frogs is more reliable than the evening weather forecast, but whether we grasp the unifying conception that transforms information into knowledge and understanding.’ To whatever unfathomable reaches the latest breakthroughs in cosmology and physics may take us, we, as earth-bound observers, though we watch the heavens from the intellectual vantage of the new millennium, still see the stars rise on one horizon and set on another, as did those ancient star gazers. The Phaenomena, although it is the product of a literate, not an oral, poet, obviously preserves features of the original oral form of the catalogue poem in the formulaic elements of description; again and again the poet presents individual stars and constellations under the following categories: name, location, size, luminosity, geometrical shape, anatomical feature, usefulness for agriculture or navigation. The disposition of the material is formulaic as well: description follows description; the transitions are effected by a topographical link relating the position of one constellation to another; and the constellations are described individually or in clusters. When I use the word formulaic, I do so on the understand-

The Cosmographical Glass

83

ing that relative to the practice of the oral poet, Aratus, as a literate poet, cultivates variation in diction and arrangement to a much higher degree than the oral catalogue poet, but that ultimately the higher degree of variation does not destroy the formal similarity of Aratus’s verse to the more rigidly formulaic verse of the oral catalogue poet. Other common features that the poem shares with preserved specimens of catalogue poetry, apart from epic diction, include paratactic style, aetiological explanations in the form of narratives or etymologies to explain origins, and the poet’s sustained personal engagement with the reader. It is time now to consider a sample passage from the Phaenomena, the description of the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, in order to illustrate how Aratus employs these features of catalogue poetry in the art of astronomical description (21-44). αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὀλίγον μετανίσσεται, ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ αὕτως ἄξων αἰὲν ἄρηρεν, ἔχει δ᾽ ἀτάλαντον ἁπάντῃ μεσσηγὺς γαῖαν, περὶ δ᾽ οὐρανὸν αὐτὸν ἀγινεῖ. καί μιν πειραίνουσι δύω πόλοι ἀμφοτέρωθεν" ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν οὐκ ἐπίοπτος, ὁ δ᾽ ἀντίος ἐκ Βορέαο ὑψόθεν ὠκεανοῖο. δύω δέ μιν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσαι ἤΆρκτοι ἅμα τροχόωσι’ τὸ δὴ καλέονται “Αμαξαι. αἱ 5’ ἤτοι κεφαλὰς μὲν én’ ἰξύας αἰὲν ἔχουσιν ἀλλήλων, αἰεὶ δὲ κατωμάδιαι φορέονται, ἔμπαλιν εἰς ὦμους τετραμμέναι. εἰ ἐτεὸν δή, Κρήτηθεν κεῖναί γε Διὸς μεγάλον ἰότητι οὐρανὸν εἰσανέβησαν, ὅ μιν τότε κουρίζοντα Λύκτῳ ἐν εὐώδει, ὄρεος σχεδὸν Ἰδαίοιο, ἄντρῳ ἔνι κατέθεντο καὶ ἔτρεφον εἰς ἐνιαντόν, Δικταῖοι Κούρητες ὅτε Κρόνον ἐψεύδοντο. καὶ τὴν μὲν Κυνόσονραν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι, τὴν δ᾽ ἑτέρην Ἑλίκην. Ἑλίκῃ γε μὲν ἄνδρες 'Axatol εἰν ἁλὶ τεκμαίρονται ἵνα χρὴ νῆας ἀγινεῖν, τῇ δ᾽ ἄρα Φοίνικες πίσυνοι περόωσι θάλασσαν. ἀλλ᾽ ἡ μὲν καθαρὴ καὶ ἐπιφράσσασθαι ἑτοίμη, πολλὴ φαινομένη Ἑλίκη πρώτης ἀπὸ νυκτός" ἡ 8' ἑτέρη ὀλίγη μέν, ἀτὰρ ναύτῃσιν ἀρείων" μειοτέρῃ γὰρ πᾶσα περιστρέφεται στροφάλιγγι᾽ τῇ καὶ Σιδόνιοι ἰθύντατα ναυτίλλονται.

25

30

35

40

(The axis, however, does not move even slightly from its place, but just stays for ever fixed, holds the earth in the centre evenly balanced, and rotates the sky itself. Two poles terminate it at the two ends; [25] but one is not visible, while the opposite one in the north is high above the horizon. On either side of it two Bears wheel in unison, and so they are called the Wagons. They keep their heads for ever pointing to each other’s loins,

84

Translating the Heavens and for ever they move on their shoulders, [30] turned on their shoulders in opposite directions. If the tale is true, these Bears ascended to the sky from Crete by the will of great Zeus, because when he was a child then in fragrant Lyctus near Mount Ida, they deposited him in a cave and tended him for the year, [35] while the Curetes of Dicte kept Cronus deceived.

Now one of the Bears men call Cynosura by name, the other Helice. Helice is the one by which Greek men at sea judge the course to steer their ships, while Phoenicians cross the sea relying on the other. [40] Now the one is clear and easy to identify, Helice, being visible in all its grandeur as soon as night begins; the other is slight, yet a better guide to sailors, for it revolves entirely in a smaller circle: so by it the Sidonians sail the straightest course.)

This passage, the first description of a constellation in the poem, exhibits characteristic features of Aratus's treatment of the astronomical material. First the poet must identify the constellation by name, location, orientation, and shape. The “Apxtot (“Bears,” Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) are located around the northern pole, facing one another back to back with the head of each opposite the flank of the other (28-30). Their Shape, here as elsewhere in the poem, is imagined to be that of the animal for which they are named (κεφαλὰς .. ἰξύας 28; ὦὥμους 30), although the “wheeling” (τροχόωσι 27), circular motion of the constellations around the pole is mentioned to introduce and explain another name for them, "Auatat, “Wagons” (26-27). (In neither case, the shape of the Bears or of the Wagons, does the poet indicate what stars delineate the physical features of the form.) In addition to the group names "ἄρκτοι and "Auatat, the constellations are given individual names in connection with the brief narrative of the catasterism myth according to which the Bears are Helice (Ursa Major) and Cynosura

(Ursa Minor), nurses of the infant

Zeus, who hid him in a cave on the island of Crete and saved him from the cannibalism of Cronus

(30-37).

The poet avoids potential confusion

about the various names of the two constellations, Bears, Wagons, Helice, and Cynosura, by connecting each name with an important element of the description: the name "Bears" is essential for giving shape to the constellations and describing their orientation with respect to one another; the name “Wagons” is said to be derived from their wheeling motion around the pole, an observation which fixes their general location around the pole; and the names “Helice” and “Cynosura” explain the origin of the two constellations. Out of these basic elements of description, name, shape, location, and orientation, there is created for the constellations a complex of identities through which they become part of the observer's world of experience and memory.

The Cosmographical Glass

85

In addition to the elements of description just mentioned, there is also the constellation's function as a “sign” (ofa) for humans, the poem’s central theme which is adumbrated in the hymn to Zeus at the beginning. Helice and Cynosura, as the poet explains, are navigational guides for Greek and Phoenician sailors; Helice for the Greeks, Cynosura for the Phoenicians

(37-39).

The

statement

of their function

as

navigational

guides is then combined with new details about their size and appearance and about their distance from the pole (40-44).

In lines 26-35

the Bears

are presented as a pair of constellations arranged back to back, but facing in opposite directions, on either side of the pole: after they take on separate identities as Helice and Cynosura in 36-37, they receive further definition in two pév...5€ sentences, the first of which states that Helice is used by Greek mariners and Cynosura by Phoenician (37-39), and the second of which provides details of size, appearance, and distance from the pole in conjunction with their role as guides: Helice is large, bright, and easy to observe; Cynosura is small but closer to the pole and therefore a better guide for sailors (40-44).

The information

is laid out in a neat and

or-

derly fashion in 37-44 through antithetical pairing of the μέν and δέ clauses with Helice as the subject in the two pév clauses and Cynosura as the subject in the two 5é clauses. To ensure that the attributes of the two constellations are kept distinct from one another, the antithesis achieved on the syntactic level with the particles is reinforced on the lexical level by the antithesis of πολλή (Helice) and ὀλίγη (Cynosura), and then of Greeks (Helice) and Phoenicians (Cynosura).

Noteworthy too in this passage is the use of repetition with variation to emphasize an essential point. One cannot miss the importance of Helice and Cynosura as guides for sailors when the following phrases occur within the space of seven lines: εἰν ἁλὶ τεκμαίρονται ἵνα χρὴ νῆας &yweiv

(38);

Th

δ᾽

ἄρα

Φοίνικες

πίσυνοι

περόωσι

θάλασσαν

(39);

ναύτῃσιν ἀρείων (42); τῇ καὶ Σιδόνιοι ἰθύντατα ναντίλλονται (44). Such repetition of ἃ thought-pattern in paratactic structures, with less variation of expression, is a feature of oral catalogue poetry. The poet also makes use of etymologizing word-play as a means of organizing information and giving it significance. Thus, as was mentioned above, the additional name "Anafaı is derived from the “wheeling” movement of the two constellations together (dua) around the axis (ἄξων), as noted in the scholia.'^ Other examples of etymologizing word-play are κατωμάδιαι.. εἰς ὥμους τετραμμέναι (29-30); κουρίζοντα.. Κούρητες (32-35); ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι (36); περιστρέφεται στροφάλιγγι (43). The disclosure of these etymological significances is yet another way of repre-

86

Translating the Heavens

senting a rational, and therefore explicable, order in the phenomena being observed and described. When we move beyond the immediate purpose of this passage, namely to locate and describe the Bears, and consider its function in the context of the whole poem, we discover that it has an important role to play in the overall structure of the description of the celestial sphere and in the religio-philosophical theme of the providential deity whose existence can be deduced from the observed regularity and order of celestial phenomena. On the structural level Aratus fixes the Bears as a cardinal reference point which is used to locate other constellations of the northern hemisphere described later in the poem. And so these two constellations acquire an added importance as guides for the general observer and reader as well as the sailors for whom they are especially beneficial. On the thematic level,

the catasterism of Helice and Cynosura as a reward for nursing the infant Zeus and their function as navigational guides demonstrate Zeus’s providential care for humankind which was celebrated in the proem: for it was “by the will of great Zeus” (Διὸς μεγάλου ἰότητι 31) that Helice and Cynosura were translated to the heavens, there to guide the course of Greek and Phoenician sailors. Zeus is thus seen to be a benefactor in two ways: he has rewarded the nymphs

Helice and

Cynosura

with astral im-

mortality and in so doing has provided humans with signs, σήματα, to navigate by. Humans, in turn, observe these signs, recognize their utility, and interpret them as evidence of the god’s immanence in nature. The passage we have just analyzed is an epitome of the whole poem in which astronomical and, in the case of the “Weather Signs,” meteorological data are transformed by poetic discourse into argument and proof of the poem’s central proposition: the geocentric universe is a well ordered system presided over by a rational, beneficent deity whose presence is revealed by “signs.” Through the regular recurrence of its stichic meter, through

the

balance,

symmetry,

parallelism,

and

antithesis

which

structure the articulation of the thought, and through the repetition and predictability of the format and of the elements of description, the cosmos of the poem itself becomes the verbal manifestation of the cosmos that it describes. To label this or any other passage as “poetic” description or a “glorified list" expanded by poetic flashes and narrative digressions is to underestimate greatly the sophistication of the catalogue poet by assuming that the informational content is inherently unpoetic and devoid of emotive power. The proper medium for astronomical description, the reader may feel, is the simplest prose, preferably in the schematic form of the list. We tend to think that information comes in discrete, neutral pack-

The Cosmographical Glass

87

ets to be accumulated for storage and retrieval. This way of thinking, however, is completely at odds with the poet’s organic and teleological conception of the universe according to which god, humankind, and celestial phenomena are bound together in one great rational system whose order can be apprehended by observation and the correct understanding of σήματα as signs which direct the course of agriculture and navigation on earth and as signs of a divine providence. Aratus has incorporated the astronomical “data” into the grand scheme of an organic, teleological world. It has long been a commonplace to observe that the Phaenomena, despite its uninviting subject matter (“dry” is the favorite word of the literary historians), had a large readership, i.e., large relative to the small number of readers there were, and that its utility as a description of the geocentric celestial sphere and as a guide to the constellations secured its survival into the age of the printed book. Hailed as a stylistic masterpiece by contemporary poets, respected as an authority on the stars, the poem was read, imitated, annotated, and translated: there are even fragments of an Arabic version. To gain an idea of the labors expended on annotating the poem, one need only set Maass’s or Martin’s thick volume of scholia beside the slender poem. It is, however, important to realize that proper recognition of its verbal artistry was restricted to sophisticated readers who, like Aratus’s contemporary Callimachus, discerned its studied imitation of Hesiod and Homer." How many readers had the requisite erudition to appreciate Aratus's use of Homeric glosses or his variations on Homeric phraseology?" Moreover, when there is mention of the “ρορυlarity" of the Phaenomena, as is often the case in modern discussions of the poem, it is necessary to understand that its popularity, if it is legitimate to use that term, was due, as Pfeiffer observed, to its use "as a practical schoolbook on astronomy," a use which is amply attested by the mass of commentary that grew up around the poem.'* However, as we now venture into ancient literary judgments about the Phaenomena, we must be careful not to allow the utilitarian purposes for which it was used and its status

as a stylistic exemplar to obscure the poet's major themes and his ultimate purpose in describing the celestial sphere and weather signs." The Phaenomena was hailed as a masterpiece by two of Aratus's contemporaries, Callimachus of Cyrene and Leonidas of Tarentum, both of whom wrote laudatory epigrams commending the poet's skill. First Callimachus's epigram (27 Pfeiffer = 56 Gow-Page):

88

Translating the Heavens Ἡσιόδου τό τ᾽ ἄεισμα καὶ ὁ τρόπος" ob τὸν ἀοιδόν ἔσχατον ἀλλ’ ---ὀκνέω μὴ---τὸ μελιχρότατον τῶν ἐπέων ὁ Σολεὺς dmeudtaro: χαίρετε λεπταί ῥήσιες, ᾿Αρήτου σύμβολον ἀγρυπνίης. (Hesiod’s is the song and the manner; not the bard from first to last but—let me not hesitate—the sweetest part of his verses did the man of Soli take as his model. Greetings refined expressions, sign of Aratus’s sleeplessness.)

Although serious textual problems frustrate attempts to produce a generally acceptable interpretation of this epigram as a whole, there is one point on which there is complete agreement; and fortunately for us, it is the one point that is important for our discussion, namely that Callimachus praises the style of the Phaenomena because it conforms to his own aesthetic principles which are summed up in the adjective λεπτός, a preference for the "slender" and "fine" in literary production rather than the "thick" and "inflated." One thinks of Callimachus's "slender Muse" in the Aitia prologue (1.24 Pfeiffer) and his criticism of Antimachus’s poem Lyde as “thick and lacking in clarity" (398 Pfeiffer)." As a sign of his consciousness of writing in this style, Aratus spells the word λεπτή in an acrostic at lines 783—787." In Callimachus's judgment the poem is modeled on Hesiod's Works and Days: Aratus has imitated Hesiod's sweetest verses in that poem and has done so in a style that can be characterized as λεπτός. The literary acumen of the epigrammatist comes out clearly in the correct identification of the poem's model and in the choice description of Aratus's λεπταὶ ῥήσιες as the "sign of his sleeplessness,” i.e.; composing late into the night with the added suggestion of stargaz-

ing. Leonidas's epigram (101 Gow-Page) similarly extols Aratus's artistry, although it has more to say about the poem's content. Γράμμα τόδ᾽ ᾿Αρήτοιο δαήμονος ὅς Tore φροντίδι δηναιοὺς ἀστέρας ἐφράσατο

verbal

λεπτῇ

ἀπλανέας τ᾽ ἄμφω καὶ ἀλήμονας οἷσί τ᾽ ἐναργής ἰλλόμενος

κύκλοις

οὐρανὸς

ἐνδέδεται᾽

αἰνείσθω δὲ καμὼν ἔργον μέγα δεύτερος

ὅστις

ἔθηκ᾽ ἄστρα

καὶ Διὸς εἶναι φαεινότερα.

(This is the writing of learned Aratus who with subtle mind showed where to find the ancient stars, both the fixed stars and the planets and the circles to which the bright revolving heaven is fixed. Let him be praised for producing a great work and that he who made the stars brighter is second to Zeus.)

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This epigram shares with Callimachus’s the characterization of the poem’s style as λεπτός and also a reference to Aratus’s model, albeit an oblique reference, if one is willing to hear in ἔργον a hint at Hesiod’s Ἔργα. There is, however, an important difference between the two epigrams: Leonidas describes the content of the poem or, to be precise, the content up to line 559, where the description of the celestial circles ends. Leonidas may have been too precise for his own good; for as Gow-Page point out, he reveals his inattentive or perhaps selective reading of the poem by listing the planets as one of its subjects. Aratus states very clearly that he is not going to write about the planets because they are too difficult (460—461). One might exonerate Leonidas by explaining that here “planets” refers only to sun and moon, which Aratus does include in the poem. The epigram ends with a pleasing conceit in which Aratus is said to have made the stars more brilliant, because they have been depicted in the “refined style”; therefore Aratus can be praised as second to Zeus, an obvious echo of the poem’s opening line. Apparently we are to think of Aratus, if only momentarily, as man’s greatest benefactor after Zeus. It was Zeus, as Aratus says, who put the constellations in the heavens as signs of the seasons, and now Aratus has made them, in Leonidas’s view, more brilliant and easier to find through his poetry." There is no denying that the judgments of Callimachus and Leonidas are shrewd and cleverly expressed and that they derive a special authority from the reputations of their authors who, of course, were highly qualified to judge. But it is necessary to be on guard against epigrammatic literary judgments whose scope is necessarily limited by the constraints of the form and whose primary purpose is to commend Aratus to the reader. They cannot go far below the surface features of the poem.

With regard

to subject matter they make no mention of the “Weather Signs" and present Aratus primarily as an exemplar of the "refined style," a point which is emphasized, perhaps overemphasized, as Aratus's most conspicuous achievement to the detriment, no doubt unintentional, of the subject matter. Latent in these contemporary judgments are the seeds of a skewed approach to the poem that elevates Aratus's virtuosity in the treatment of his astronomical and meteorological material over the larger purpose of constructing that material into a poem. Such an approach will hardly be conducive to a balanced appraisal of the poem as a whole. We turn now from the reception of the Phaenomena as a literary work to its reception as an astronomical work, bearing in mind that the poem also includes a catalogue of weather signs, though these attracted much less comment. In the second century BC no less an authority than the

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great Hellenistic astronomer Hipparchus of Nicaea wrote a detailed commentary on the poem. It is one of the great ironies of intellectual history that the only extant work of Hipparchus is his commentary on a text that was written by a pseudo-astronomer and that it was preserved precisely because it was attached to the great name of Aratus. Hipparchus explains at some length his reasons for writing the commentary, and his explanation reveals quite clearly that the poem had established itself as an astronomical text of considerable authority. Hipparchus begins by saying that he is not the first to write a commentary on the poem, a comment which in itself indicates the poem’s success as an astronomical guide. “Very many others,” says Hipparchus, “have composed a commentary on Aratus’s Phaenomena but the mathematician Attalus, our contemporary, seems to have done the job most carefully of all. Explaining the thought of the poem, however, does not require great acumen; for the poet is simple and concise and is still understandable even for those who have a limited acquaintance with the subject. But understanding what Aratus says about celestial phenomena, i.e., what he has accurately described in accordance with the actual phenomena and what he has wrongly described, many would regard that as most beneficial and belonging to scientific knowledge.’ In this last sentence Hipparchus broaches what is for him the central issue where the other commentators have fallen short of the demands of their task, identifying Aratus's and Eudoxus's mistakes. I think it goes without saying that in praising the stylistic excellence of the Phaenomena neither Callimachus nor Leonidas had the slightest interest in detecting observational errors. Previous commentators, as Hipparchus goes on to explain, have been all too willing to accept the truth of what Aratus says, and it is poetry's power to beguile that makes them so willing. In this connection Hipparchus writes: When I observed that in numerous important points Aratus was at variance with the phenomena and with what actually happens in the heavens and that on nearly all these points not only the other commentators, but Attalus as well, were in agreement with Aratus, I decided for the sake of your love of learning and for the common benefit of others to set down what seemed to me to be errors. I proposed to do this not from a deliberate decision to win prestige by refuting others (that would be an idle and thoroughly mean spirited business: on the contrary I think it necessary to be thankful to all those who take it upon themselves to labor for the common good); I undertook the task so that neither you nor other lovers of learning will be led astray concerning the observation of celestial phenomena, a fate which many have suffered and with good reason because

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the beauty and charm [χάρις] of poetry bestows a certain credibility on what is said and nearly all the commentators on this poet agree with what Aratus says.”!

To what extent a commentator might succumb to the “charm” of Aratus’s poetry is illustrated by the attitude of Attalus of Rhodes when he came to write his commentary on the Phaenomena. Hipparchus has this to say of Attalus: It must be acknowledged at the outset that Attalus agrees with nearly everything that Aratus says about celestial phenomena as consistent with the actual phenomena described by him, with the exception of one or two places which we will also point out in what follows. In the prooemion Attalus says: ‘Therefore we have sent to you Aratus’s book, corrected by us, and a commentary, after establishing agreement on all details, on the one hand, with the phenomena and, on the other hand, with the words of the poet’ [i.e., the phenomena must

agree with the even emended Again he says followed when

be explained in such a way as to

poet’s words, or the poet’s words must be explained or to bring them in line with what is actually observed]. further on: ‘Perhaps some will inquire what rationale we we say that we corrected the book in accordance with the

poet’s intention. We give as the most compelling reason the agreement of

the poet with the phenomena.'?

Immediately after this revelation of Attalus's procrustean method, Hipparchus draws the important conclusion that wherever Eudoxus and Aratus agree in error, Attalus will also be in error with them. In adopting such an approach to the exegesis of Aratus's poem, Attalus gives new meaning to the old adage "save the phenomena," the phenomena being in this case Aratus’s poem. The few fragments of his commentary that we possess allow us to see his method in operation.” Hipparchus's commentary is a demonstration that Aratus was not an astronomer and that the astronomical portion of his poem was so flawed that it could not be regarded as a reliable source of information for anything more than an elementary description of the celestial sphere. Even so, after demonstrating that Eudoxus was Aratus's source and that Aratus himself made no observations on his own and possessed no scientific judgment, Hipparchus still treats the poet as an authority on a par with Eudoxus.* Indeed it is something of a paradox that on the one hand Hipparchus establishes Aratus's dependence on Eudoxus, presumably to subvert the authority attributed to the poem by commentators like Attalus, and, on the other, corrects the Phaenomena for further use. Although

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Attalus and Hipparchus differ completely in their judgments on the poem as astronomy, each commentator bears witness to the preeminent position of the Phaenomena as a guide to the stars. For the Latin translator Hipparchus’s commentary had a special significance because it provided material that could be incorporated into the rewriting of the Phaenomena. Hipparchus, in documenting the errors in the poem, created the opportunity for translators to incorporate his corrections into their translations. Modern translators would of course relegate Hipparchus’s corrections to footnotes but Germanicus, who read the Phaenomena as an authoritative guide to the constellations as well as a literary masterpiece, improved the poem’s accuracy as a guide by using Hipparchus’s commentary, directly or indirectly, to remove observational errors. Moreover, such a procedure is fully consistent with the incorporative nature of Latin translation which writes reception into the translation: thus the translation becomes, in a sense, a commentary on its source text and a proof of the translator’s learning. If we now retrace the two channels of reception that we have considered thus far, the Phaenomena as a literary and as an astronomical text, we see that immediately after its publication it was regarded by two contemporary poets, Callimachus and Leonidas, as a stylistic masterpiece and that it later established itself as an authoritative astronomical text worthy of the attentions of commentators, of whom Attalus and Hipparchus are the most notable. Hipparchus’s commentary succeeded in undermining Aratus’s reputation as an astronomer, while his literary reputation remained intact. Out of these twin channels there emerges a single stream in the form of what appears to be the judgment of the schoolroom. In De oratore 1.69 Cicero says that in the opinion of the learned (docti), Aratus,

though ignorant of astronomy, wrote about the heavens and the stars in the finest, most carefully wrought verses: Etenim si constat inter doctos, hominem ignarum astrologiae ornatissimis atque optimis uersibus Aratum de caelo stellisque dixisse; si de rebus rusticis hominem ab agro remotissimum Nicandrum Colophonium poetica

quadam facultate, non rustica, scripsisse praeclare: quid est cur non orator de rebus iis eloquentissime dicat, quas ad certam causam tempusque cognorit. (Indeed if it is agreed among the learned that a man ignorant of astronomy, Aratus, spoke in the most elegant verses of the finest quality about the heavens and the stars, and that a man who was far removed from the farmer's field, Nicander of Colophon, wrote brilliantly about agriculture with something of the poet's and not the farmer's skill, what reason is

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there why the orator should not speak very eloquently about those matters which he has conned for a specific argument and occasion.)

One should not lay too much stress on the phrase “ignorant of astronomy” because Cicero is using Aratus and Nicander as examples of the amateur who can write competently on a technical subject in order to show that the orator, after sufficient preparation, can do the same. If Cicero had meant that Aratus was completely ignorant of astronomy, he would have undermined the very point that he was trying to make. Although these ancient readers of the Phaenomena place the emphasis on either Aratus the stylist or Aratus the astronomer, they are not thinking in terms of a complete dichotomy between form and content. When Callimachus, who is interested primarily in Aratus’s stylistic achievement, says in the epigram that the song and the manner are Hesiod’s, he not only identifies Aratus’s principal model, he also affirms the ancient and honored literary precedent for the stars as the subject of poetic discourse. Likewise Hipparchus, whose attention is absorbed in exposing the errors of Eudoxus and Aratus, says quite clearly that the charm of poetry gives credibility to what Aratus says, even when he is wrong. Neither reader questions the validity of a description of the celestial sphere in verse. The literary-historical sensibility that admired Aratus as an astronomical poet and successor to Hesiod and used his poem as an authoritative source of information about the stars had not yet been inhibited in its outlook by the later differentiation of subject matter into material appropriate to prose and material appropriate to poetry, nor had it been habituated to the use of textbooks in prose compiled by experts. In the Greco-Roman system of education the curriculum was based on poetic texts. Moreover, it is clear from the substantial fragments of his translation that Cicero regarded the poetic form and the subject matter as working together to create what is, according to his reading of the Phaenomena, a poem which impresses the reader with the grandeur of the celestial bodies and the regularity of their movements; only in the grandest of ancient poetic forms, epic, do these ideas find their proper expression.” Toward the end of the first century AD the organic connection between astronomy and poetry in the Phaenomena was sundered irrevocably for later generations of readers. When in Book 10 of the Institutio oratoria Quintilian evaluates the authors on the reading list that was an essential part of the aspiring orator’s training (and it is worth noting that Aratus made it onto the list), he gives the Phaenomena a harsh review (10.55): Arati materia motu caret, ut in qua nulla uarietas, nullus adfec-

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Translating the Heavens

tus, nulla persona, nulla cuiusquam sit oratio; sufficit tamen operi cui se parem credidit (“The subject chosen by Aratus is lifeless and monotonous, affording no scope for pathos, description of character or eloquent speeches. However, he is adequate for the task for which he felt himself equal”).” It is important to remember that Quintilian is speaking as a professor of rhetoric and not as a literary critic: his devaluation of the poem’s subject matter comes as a consequence of his pragmatic concern with reading material that will be of benefit to the orator. When seen in this light the poem’s subject matter is clearly deficient because the stylistically elegant description of constellations and weather signs can add nothing to the orator’s arsenal of devices for the manipulation and persuasion of the audience. However, despite these serious limitations Quintilian’s assessment has been accepted and repeated with approval as a valid critical judgment principally because he formulates the dichotomy between form and content in a way that appeals to the modern understanding of the nature and function of poetry: his low estimation of the subject matter is based ultimately on the assumption that the chief excellence of poetry is its power to stir the emotions by means of the rhetorically effective treatment of a subject of immediate interest and relevance to the audience. When a subject, lacking in human interest and emotional power, does not conform to such an expectation, then the only goal the poet can hope to achieve is an attractive presentation of the material. Quintilian regards the Phaenomena as an exercise in poetic composition: Aratus demonstrated his skill as a poet by turning an intractable subject into an elegant poem, the task for which, as Quintilian says, he felt himself equal. Modern readers have in general agreed. I have reviewed these ancient judgments of Aratus’s poem because they come from knowledgeable readers who were in a much better position to understand the poem in its cultural and intellectual context and because they have exerted an influence out of all proportion to the very specific purposes for which they were originally written: to praise the author’s

style (Callimachus, Leonidas); to demonstrate that there are ob-

servational errors in the poem (Hipparchus); to illustrate the amateur’s competence in writing about technical subjects (Cicero); and finally, to reveal the inadequacy of astronomical poetry as a source of rhetorical nourishment for the orator in training (Quintilian). Working within the very narrow confines of these objectives, the authors that we have looked at could not possibly give a balanced appraisal of the whole poem. Indeed, as was mentioned before, they have nothing to say about the poem's last section on weather signs. Nonetheless modern critics of the

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poem have been heavily influenced by these ancient opinions in seeing the poem primarily as an exemplar of the “refined style” (whose importance, it should be noted, is due to its close association with Callimachus’s literary aesthetics rather than to a consideration of its merits as a style appropriate to a poem about astronomy and meteorology) and in regarding the astronomical content as flawed and antiquated even in Aratus’s day.

Those who side with Quintilian, and there are many, will go further and brand the subject matter as monotonous. Modern interpretation of the Phaenomena has hardened the dichotomy between form and content and has developed two main strategies to deal with it." One strategy is to downplay the role of astronomy and meteorology in the poem and to treat these sciences as the unsightly scaffolding set up to construct the brilliant literary facade of Aratus’s learned imitation of Hesiod and Homer. Thus we end up with a pretty but vacuous poem, just as Quintilian describes it, in which the virtuoso communicates with his dead predecessors and a few adept readers. The second strategy is to recognize instruction in astronomy and meteorology as a didactic fiction, i.e., a fossilized context for a literary composition; the imagined situation of instruction is not to be taken literally, because it is ultimately inconsistent with the poem's literary sophistication (farmers and sailors were not Aratus's intended audience). Thus readers must interpret the didactic fiction as a vehicle for achieving a higher purpose, namely to illustrate the poem's major theme that through signs in nature, all the way from constellations to ants, Zeus manifests his providentia] care for humankind. This line of interpretation, advocated most recently by Ludwig and Effe," rightly stresses the religious and philosophical aspects of the poem. Yet such an approach to the poem results in a stunning contradiction: how can observation and description of the celestial sphere, celestial phenomena, and weather signs be regarded as part of a didactic fiction when all of these things are themselves the very σήματα, the very signs of Zeus's providence, and when the observer's act of perceiving them reveals the rational order and teleology of the universe? To dismiss Aratus's careful guidance of the observer's eye through signs in the heavens or on the earth is to divest the poem's great theme of the very elements of which it is made. The poem itself, because of the selectivity of astronomical detail and its near uselessness as a farmer's calendar for agricultural operations such as Hesiod provides in the Works and Days, refutes the notion that its purpose is to teach astronomy and meteorology for practical application. Aratus, though, does present his material in the context of agriculture and navi-

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gation not because he is primarily interested in its practical application to those activities, but because these are the areas of common experience in which celestial and meteorological phenomena are directly observed and take on their value as signs. The difference between the practical Hesiod and the meditative Aratus is easily seen in the following comparison of the ways in which they present the Pleiades. Aratus writes (264—267): al μὲν ὁμῶς

ὀλίγαι

ἦρι καὶ ἑσπέριαι,

kal ddeyyées,

Ζεὺς

δ᾽ αἴτιος,

ἀλλ᾽ ὀνομασταὶ

εἱλίσσονται,

ὅ σφισι καὶ θέρεος καὶ χείματος ἀρχομένοιο σημαίνειν ἐπένευσεν ἐπερχομένον τ᾽ ἀρότοιο. (All alike they are small and faint, but they are famous

in their move-

ments at morning and evening, and Zeus is the cause, in that he authorised them to mark the beginnings of summer and winter and the onset of ploughing time.)

The Pleiades, in Aratus’s cosmos, are a sign of the seasons and of Zeus's providential care; yet, the poet doesn’t give the reader sufficient information to reckon when the Pleiades actually rise and set. Instead the reader is invited to contemplate their significance as a sign for which Zeus is responsible and which directs the course of human activity. Far different is Hesiod's method in the Works and Days as he begins his agricultural calendar (383-387): Πληιάδων ᾿Ατλαγενέων ἐπιτελλομενάων ἄρχεσθ᾽ ἀμήτον, ἀρότοιο δὲ δυσομενάων. at δή τοι νύκτας τε καὶ ἤματα τεσσαράκοντα

κεκρύφαται, φαίνονται

αὖτις τὰ

δὲ περιπλομένον

πρῶτα

χαρασσομένοιο

ἐνιαυτοῦ σιδήρου.

(When the Pleiades born of Atlas rise [before the sun], begin the reaping; the ploughing when they set. For forty days and nights they are hidden, and again as the year goes round they make their first appearance at the

time of iron-sharpening.)”°

Hesiod presents a calendric scheme which coordinates agricultural activities with astronomical phenomena: reaping when the Pleiades rise (in May) and plowing when they set (in November); and the mention of the forty-day period of their invisibility between their evening setting and morning rising completes the cycle." Hesiod’s description of the Pleiades is functional in the context of his agricultural calendar; Aratus’s description is not part of a calendric scheme but serves rather as further proof of

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Zeus’s organization of the cosmos. To think that Aratus constructed an elaborate didactic fiction of instructing farmers and sailors is to be misled by the use of the Phaenomena as a schoolbook as well as to ignore the evidence of the poem itself. The reading and interpretation of the Phaenomena ought not to be dominated by the epigrammatists’ promotion of it as an exemplar of the “refined style” or by its former pedagogical value as a school-text. The poem is a representation of the acts of observation and perception which ultimately lead the observer to the conclusion stated in the proem, that a providential deity controls the universe and that humankind is at the physical and teleological center of that universe. The ancient notion that human beings alone of all creatures were born to lift their eyes to the heavens and discover there the handiwork of divinity and their own origin is given brilliant expression in the Phaenomena, a poem which draws its readers by repeated injunctions to look and observe—no mere didactic fiction—into the activity itself of constructing order and purpose in the universe through the observation of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. Perceiving the geometry of the heavens, the regularity of stellar movements, and the recurrent patterns of weather signs; realizing that all these signs have a significance greater than their immediate astronomical or meteorological application; and reflecting on the centrality of the observer in this universe of signs—these are the ideas that bind poetry, astronomy, and meteorology together in the Phaenomena. The poem simulates the process of observation and of then deducing from the observed order and rationality of the universe the existence of a providential deity, although, it must be noted, the verbal medium of representation superimposes additional levels of order, such as syntactic structure and meter, and thus enhances the perceived coherence and systematic organization of what is observed. Aratus is, in a sense, providing a poetic proof, in the text of the Phaenomena, of the assertion made in the proem that Zeus is immanent in nature and has given signs to humans to guide their activities. In a passage that survives, appropriately enough for our investigation, only in Cicero’s Latin translation of it in De natura deorum 2.95, Aristotle gives fine expression to this whole complex of ideas: Imagine that there were people who had always dwelt below the earth in decent and well-lit accommodation embellished with statues and pictures, and endowed with all the possessions which those reputed to be wealthy

have in abundance. These people had never set foot on the earth, but through rumour and hearsay they had heard of the existence of some divine

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Translating the Heavens power wielded by gods. A moment came when the jaws of the earth parted, and they were able to emerge from their hidden abodes, and to set foot in this world of ours. They were confronted by the sudden sight of earth, seas, and skies; they beheld towering clouds, and felt the force of winds; they gazed on the sun, and became aware of its power and beauty, and its ability to create daylight by shedding its beams over the whole sky. Then when night overshadowed the earth, they saw the entire sky

dotted and adorned with stars, and the phases of the moon’s light waxed and waned; they beheld the risings and settings of all those enly bodies, and their prescribed unchangeable courses through all nity. When they observed all this, they would certainly believe that existed, and that these great manifestations were the works of gods.”

as it heavetergods

Cicero goes on to remark in connection with this passage that people have lost their sense of wonder at celestial phenomena because they are such a familiar sight, but that it is not the novelty of phenomena but rather their importance "that ought to arouse us to inquire into their causes" because contemplation of them leads ultimately to the realization that a divine and transcendent reason orders the whole system.” Aratus, I think, wants to stimulate just such a sense of their importance. To illustrate how the argument from design confirms the existence of diuina prouidentia through its creations Cicero uses extensive quotation from his translation of the Phaenomena and thus plays the part of star gazer (ut adsidue uidemus 2.104) in the perception and articulation of celestial order: the visual experience of observation is transformed into a primary form of representation, language, which itself then becomes a manifestation of that rational order which the observer perceives, and a mirror of that divine reason which controls the universe. To conclude, this brief introduction to the Phaenomena and its reception is intended to give the reader an impression of the ways in which the poem was read and appreciated. From the foregoing discussion of readers’ responses to the Phaenomena it is apparent that translating the poem was a formidable task for a Latin translator, and remains so for the modern, not only because it was a text of canonical status, was admired as an exemplar of the “refined style,” and was used as an astronomical guidebook in the schools, but also and primarily because it is a highly sophisticated literary work on a religious and philosophical theme of great importance. The Phaenomena challenges the translator to respect its established reputation and also to understand its ultimate purpose as something that goes beyond style and didacticism; it is a theological and philosophical meditation on an organic and teleological universe.

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In the study of translation it is important to realize that the source text cannot be taken as a self-sufficient verbal artifact which the translator reads without preconceptions or expectations and then fits into its new linguistic dress; the source text comes with a history and that history serves as both guide and stimulus to translators whether they embrace it or react against it. Germanicus did not translate the Phaenomena in a vacuum: in his reading and translation of the poem he was obviously influenced by Cicero’s version of it, by Vergil’s use of it in Georgics 1, and

by Ovid’s use of it in the Fasti, as well as by the critical reception of the poem discussed earlier.“ Out of these important poetic and critical influences (and influence can go either in the direction of borrowing and imitation or of correction and avoidance) Germanicus developed his own reading of the Phaenomena which is embodied in his translation. This sketch of the Phaenomena’s structure and content and of Aratus’s reputation in antiquity provides the necessary foundation for understanding and evaluating how Germanicus, who was fully aware of the poem’s canonical status, its reputation for stylistic elegance, and its theologicalphilosophical theme, employed the subjective, innovative method of translation to create a surprisingly novel Phaenomena.

Notes 1.

In Achilles’ biography of the poet (Maass [1898] p. 78.23-24)

to have

praised

Aratus ὡς

πολυμαθῆῇ

kal

ἄριστον

Callimachus is said

ποιητήν

(fr. 460

Pfeiffer

[1949-1953)). On Aratus's scholarly activities, with biographical information, see Pfeiffer (1968) 120-122. Martin, Com., xi-xlviii gives a detailed review of the an-

cient biographical

tradition with translations of the ancient

Phaenomena: best short treatments,

Kaibel (1894),

Virae. Studies of the

Ludwig (1963)

(condensed ver-

sion in Ludwig [1965]), and Hunter (1995); comprehensive treatment in Erren (1967); see also Webster (1964) 31—38; Effe (1977) 40—56; and Bing (1993). Pendergraft's dissertation (1982) is valuable for its comparison of Aratus's poetry with the fragments of Eudoxus. Hutchinson's analysis of the poem (1988) 214-236

is thought-provoking. Students of the Phaenomena now have the benefit of Erren's critical bibliography (1994); this can be updated from Hellenistic Bibliography: 2.

Aratus (2001). On the title Phaenomena see Kidd, Com., 161. Fragments of Eudoxus's Phaenomena, together with the corresponding passages of Aratus's poem, in Lasserre (1966) 39-67. For his contribution to Greek astronomy see Dicks (1970) 151—189. Aratus's dependence on Eudoxus's treatise is documented

in Hipparchus's commentary (Manitius [1894] 1.2.1-1.3.1, pp. 8-24). Martin, Com., Ixxxvi-xcvii challenges the authenticity of the quotations ascribed to Eudoxus by Hipparchus in his commentary and argues that they in fact belong to a spurious work derived from Aratus’s poem. In my judgment the authority of

100

Translating the Heavens Hipparchus’s testimony and the contents of the fragments themselves make a strong case for their authenticity. On the bookish “inspiration” of Hellenistic poets see Bing (1988) 10-48. Maass (1898) p. 80, 1.1-2.

Martin, Com., ciii-cxxv discusses Aratus’s sources for the “Weather Signs.”

This

outline is based on Martin (19565) xxi-xxiv and on Ludwig (1965) 31-32. For more

detailed structural outlines see Kidd, Com., 5—7, and Martin, Com., xliv-Ixxxv; and for a discussion of the poem's structural organization see Martin (1979). The διοστ μεῖαι (758-1141), despite the change in subject matter, does not form a separate poem. At Rep. 1.21-22 Cicero records the tradition that Aratus followed Budoxus's arrangement of the constellations on a celestial globe. In connection with the Roman capture of Syracuse in 212 BC during the Second Punic War and the removal to Rome

of Archimedes' famous globe Cicero writes: "But when Galus began to give a very learned explanation

of the device [the globe],

1 concluded that the famous Sicilian

had been endowed with greater genius than one would imagine it possible for a human being to possess. For Galus told us that the other kind of celestial globe, which was solid and contained no hollow space, was a very early invention, the first one of that kind being constructed by Thales of Miletus, and later marked by Eudoxus of Cnidus (a disciple of Plato according to tradition) with the constellations and stars which are fixed in the sky. He also said that many years later, Aratus, borrowing this whole arrangement and plan from Eudoxus, had described it in verse, without any knowledge of astronomy, but with considerable poetic talent" (translated by Keyes [1928], with corrected spelling ‘Galus’ for ‘Gallus’). Although Cicero is the only source for Eudoxus's globe and Aratus's dependence on it, there is no reason to reject

the possibility that Eudoxus marked out constellation figures on a globe, which then served as a guide for his treatise Phaenomena, and that Aratus relied on both the globe and the treatise in composing his poem. Pictorial representation of the constellations seems a necessary preliminary to verbal description of their shape, location, and arrangement. Dicks (1970) 159 accepts the existence of Eudoxus's globe;

ee

an

likewise Stückelberger (1990) 71-72, and Martin, Com., xcv-xcvii; Com., 17-18; see also Gee (2000) 109-111.

contra, Kidd,

See, with further bibliography, Edwards (1980). Ludwig (1965) 37—38. For the fragments of Hesiod's astronomical poem see Merkelbach and West (1967) 148-150; Thales, Diels-Kranz (19516) vol. 1, 67, Α.1; Cleostratus, vol. 1, 41-42. J. Kakridis (1972), esp. 160—161; see also Nilsson (1905). In general I prefer the generic category "catalogue poetry" to "didactic poetry," al-

though I have not studiously avoided “didactic,” for the following reasons: the label “didactic poem" inevitably invites unfavorable comparison with the systematic organization and exposition of the prose textbook; it suggests that the use of poetic discourse for the treatment of technical subjects is anachronistic and likely to result in distortion and inaccuracy in comparison to the directness and simplicity of prose; and finally it focuses attention on the instruction of the reader in a particular subject as the primary function of the poem with little or no regard for how the poet has organized his material into a comprehensive system and has transformed the exposition of the material into an affective experience. Since instruction in a technical subject is no longer regarded as a proper function for poetry, the criticism of didactic

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poetry proceeds on the assumption that the poem’s teaching technique and subject matter are a facade for some hidden “poetic” meaning.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

Such a procedure demeans the

poem and the poet. For the traditional account of the Phaenomena as a didactic poem see Ludwig (1963) and Effe (1977) 40-56. ZAratus 77.5—7. For a general discussion of etymology in the Phaen. see Pendergraft (1995) 54—59. A feature of this passage which is not in general characteristic of Aratus's method of astronomical description is the absence of any word for star and of any words for luminosity or radiation of light. Maass (1893) provides a register of loci similes.

See now Fakas (2001).

A. Ronconi (1937); Traina (1956) = Traina (19747) 205-220. Pfeiffer (1968) 121. His description of the poem identifies the sources of the poem’s appeal to cultivated readers: “A scientific subject was here treated with Stoic religious and philosophic feeling in a style derived from Hesiod. Aratus had learned these things in Ephesus and Athens, but the polished, simple form was his own and could not have earned any better praise than the epithet λεπτόν ‘subtle’ bestowed on it by Callimachus. Intimate knowledge of the Homeric language is obvious in every line” (121). On the use of the Phaenomena in the schools see Weinhold (1912) 23-53;

15.

he

includes much useful material from the scholia. Testimonia on the reception of the Phaenomena are collected in Mair and Mair (1921) 196-198 (Greek and Latin authors), and Buescu 19-23 (Latin authors only); discussion of these texts in Kidd (1961) 5-10 and A.-M. Lewis (1992).

16.

For the most part I follow the interpretation of Kaibel (1894) 120-121 and Cameron (1995) 374—379; commentary with discussion of other interpretations in Gow-Page (1965) vol. 2, 208-209; cf. also Ludwig (1963) 426-429. According to Kaibel 120

and Cameron 377, ob τὸν

ἀοιδόν

ἔσχατον is to be understood as “[imitated] the

poet not to the uttermost, not down to the last detail." This interpretation gives by far the best sense, since the "sweetest part of his verses" will then refer to Aratus's imitation of the Works and Days, the proem to Zeus, the myth of the metallic races,

and the description of astronomical phenomena in relation to the farmer's calendar of agricultural activities. Kaibel's suggestion to treat ὀκνέω μή as a parenthesis is the best way to deal with the syntax of 2-3. Otherwise, if the indicative ἀπεμάξατο is made subordinate to ókvéo μῆ, then Callimachus criticizes rather than compliments his fellow poet, saying "I fear that the man of Soli imitated the sweetest of his verses." Scholarly opinion now favors the transmitted reading σύντονος ἀγρυπνίη over Ruhnken's conjecture σύμβολον ἀγρυπνίης accepted by Pfeiffer (1949-1953) and Gow-Page: for recent discussions with bibliography see Schwinge

(1986) 11-16, and Cameron 379. The nominative ἀγρυπνίη, however, seems very harsh both as an appositive to ῥήσιες, a point noted by Gow-Page, and as a metaphoric expression for the poem itself; it cannot be readily assumed that ἀγρυπνίη is used here on the analogy of πονός, since the point of similarity in the pair ῥήσιες -πονός is not immediately apparent in the pair ῥήσιες -ἀγρυπνίη. The conjecture σύμβολον has a special epigrammatic point which has gone unnoticed: it is a play on the main theme of the Phaenomena, σήματα. Just as the constellations are "signs" of Zeus's providential care, so Aratus's verses are a "sign" of his toilsome craftsmanship. It is a double compliment in that Callimachus not only acknowledges Aratus's verbal artistry in terms of the unifying theme of the Phaenomena but also implies a comparison between Aratus and Zeus (cf. Leonidas's epigram dis-

Translating the Heavens

102

cussed above) in that the poet reveals his artistry in the same way that Zeus reveals his prouidentia, i.e., through “signs.” 17.

18.

Reitzenstein (1931), and most recently Cameron (1995) 303-338, esp. 323-328, with bibliography in n. 104 on 323. Cameron writes, “No word in the Hellenistic

poetic lexicon has been more minutely investigated over the past half century than λεπτός" (323). Identified by Jaques (1960); see also Bing (1993) 104 with n. 10; Pendergraft (1995) 44—46; and Cameron (1995) 324—325, where additional Aratean acrostics are

19.

considered; Cameron (37-38) provides a discussion of acrostics in Greek poetry. For an additional compliment to the poet of the Phaenomena in Leonidas's epigram see Cameron (1995) 322. There is a third epigram by a Ptolemy

on the same theme

of Aratus's “refined style" (τὸ λεπτολόγον σκῆπτρον “Apatos ἔχει); it asserts the primacy of Aratus over others who have written about the stars (text and commentary in Page [1981] 84-85; see also Kaibel [1894] 123). In Latin literature we have Cinna's Aratus epigram (11 Blünsdorf = 11 Courtney),

which appears to be a

partial imitation of Callimachus's commending the toil of Aratus's nights:

see the

discussion in Farrell (1991) 46—48.

20. 21. 22. 23.

Manitius (1894) Manitius (1894) Manitius (1894) When very hard

1.1.3-4 (p. 4). 1.1.5-7 (p. 4-6). 1.3.1-4 (pp. 24-26). pressed by an inconsistency between what is observed in the heav-

ens and what is written in the poem,

Attalus will resort to emendation

as well as

forced interpretation to save the Phaenomena. In his commentary on Phaen. 69-70 Hipparchus (Manitius

[1894]

1.4.9,

pp. 34-36)

records that Attalus altered μέσσῳ

δ᾽ ἐφύπερθε καρήνῳ to μέσσον δ᾽ ἐφύπερθε καρήνον (69) in order to rescue Aratus from the error of saying that the right foot (δεξιτεροῦ ποδός 70) of Engonasin, rather than the left, is located over the head of Draco. Attalus made the change to make δεξιτεροῦ agree with καρήνου instead of ποδός. Despite the difficulties that result, Attalus’s interpretation, without his name or his alteration of the text, made its way into the scholia where the reader is instructed to understand that Engonasin’s left foot is located over the right temple of Draco’s head or to construe δεξιτεροῦ with Δράκοντος at the end of 70 (ZAratus

24. 25. 26.

102.16-18;

103.8-11).

Manitius (1894) 1.1.8 (p. 6). Translated by Sutton and Rackham (1942), with modifications. Similar verdict in Rep. 1.22. Such a reading of the poem is made explicit when portions of it are quoted in Book 2

of the Nar. D. as proof of the rational (2001).

order of the Stoic cosmos.

See now Gee

27. 28.

Translated by Butler (1922). The results of the dichotomy for criticism are well illustrated in Hutchinson's ment (1988) 214—236.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

See n. 1 above. Translated by West (1988). See West's commentary (1978) 252-256, and Dicks (1970) 34-35. Translated by Walsh (1997). Compare the words of Isaac Newton quoted in Toulmin and Goodfield (1961)

treat-

251:

*This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

34.

The Cosmographical Glass

103

Of Ovid's translation of the Phaenomena we possess two fragments amounting total of six lines (1-2 Blansdorf = 1-2 Courtney). Though it is highly probable

to a that

Germanicus was influenced by Ovid's version, the only thing we know for certain is that the influence ended at Phaenomena 453, where Ovid's version ended. In his im-

portant monograph Hinds (1987) 3-24 suggests that on the basis of similarities between Ovid's two treatments of Pegasus (the horse)

in the Mer.

and Pegasus

(the

constellation) in the Fasti and Germanicus's translation of the Horse catasterism in the Phaenomena, Germanicus is echoing "the translation of the Horse episode in Ovid's Phaenomena" (14). The conjecture readily commends itself. However, as Hinds' method of analysis demonstrates, it is to the Metamorphoses and the Fasti

that we must look to recover Ovidian influence on Germanicus's translation. Nothing can be determined for certain about the chronological relationship between Germanicus's Aratea and Manilius's Astronomica, though attempts have been made, because coincidences in wording between the two may be due to the common fund of language, derived in large part from the translation of Aratus, which was used for astronomical description in Latin. Wempe (1935) concludes that Manilius is later; Goold (1977) xiv, on the other hand, thinks that Germanicus may be later, (discussion of evidence for Manilius’s date on xi-xiii). See further Helm (1956) 153-158;

Flores (1960-1961); Wilson (1986) 283-285; Abry (1993); and Neuburg (1993) 243-257. My own view is that Germanicus's poem is prior to the Astronomica. If it is accepted that the Aratea's date of composition falls between AD 4 and the end of AD 7, then it preceded the Astronomica, which is usually dated between the last years of Augustus's principate and the early years of Tiberius's.

Chapter 3 A Second Original

The Phaenomena’s interrelated themes of Zeus’s providential care and the rational order of his universe revealed by signs (σήματα) are announced in the famous hymn to Zeus that begins the poem. And it is here that Germanicus embarks on the creation of a Phaenomena for Roman readers of the Augustan age. The Proem (Aratus 1-18, Germanicus 1-16)' Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα, τὸν οὐδέποτ᾽ ἄνδρες ἐῶμεν ἄρρητον. μεσταὶ δὲ Διὸς πᾶσαι μὲν ἀγνιαί, πᾶσαι δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἀγοραί, μεστὴ δὲ θάλασσα καὶ λιμένες" πάντη δὲ Διὸς κεχρήμεθα πάντες. τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος εἰμέν' 6 δ᾽ Amos ἀνθρώποισι δεξιὰ σημαίνει, λαοὺς δ᾽ ἐπὶ ἔργον ἐγείρει μιμνήσκων βιότοιο, λέγει δ᾽ ὅτε βῶλος ἀρίστη

5

βουσί τε καὶ μακέλῃσι, λέγει δ᾽ ὅτε δεξιαὶ ὧραι καὶ φυτὰ γυρῶσαι καὶ σπέρματα πάντα βαλέσθαι. αὑτὸς γὰρ τά γε σήματ᾽ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἐστήριξεν ἄστρα διακρίνας, ἐσκέψατο δ᾽ εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν ἀστέρας οἵ κε μάλιστα τετυγμένα σημαίνοιεν ἀνδράσιν ὡράων, ὄφρ᾽ ἔμπεδα πάντα φύωνται. τῷ μιν ἀεὶ πρῶτόν τε καὶ ὕστατον ἱλάσκονται. χαῖρε, πάτερ, μέγα θαῦμα, μέγ᾽ ἀνθρώποισιν ὄνειαρ, αὑτὸς καὶ προτέρη γενεή. χαίροιτε δὲ Μοῦσαι, μειλίχιαι μάλα πᾶσαι’ ἐμοί γε μὲν ἀστέρας εἰπεῖν fj θέμις εὐχομένῳ τεκμήρατε πᾶσαν ἀοιδήν.

10

15

(Let us begin with Zeus, whom we men never leave unspoken. Filled with Zeus are all highways and all meeting places of people, filled are the sea and harbours; in all circumstances we are all dependent on Zeus.

[5]

For we are also his children, and he benignly gives helpful signs to men, and rouses people to work, reminding them of their livelihood, tells when

106

Translating the Heavens the soil is best for oxen and mattocks, and tells when the seasons are right both for planting trees and for sowing every kind of seed. [10] For it was

Zeus himself who fixed the signs in the sky, making them into distinct constellations, and organised stars for the year to give the most clearly defined signs of the seasonal round to men, so that everything may grow without fail. That is why men always pay homage to him first and last. [15] Hail, Father, great wonder, great boon to men, yourself and the earlier race! And hail, Muses, all most gracious! In answer to my prayer to tell of the stars in so far as I may, guide all my singing.)

The Latin version begins with Jupiter, but from that point on the reader discovers that there is a new power which Jupiter/Zeus must reckon with. Ab Ioue principium magno deduxit Aratus.

carminis at nobis, genitor, tu maximus auctor, te ueneror tibi sacra fero doctique laboris

primitias. probat ipse deum rectorque satorque. quantum etenim possent anni certissima signa,

5

qua Sol ardentem Cancrum rapidissimus ambit diuersasque secat metas gelidi Capricorni quaue Aries et Libra aequant diuortia lucis, si non parta quies te praeside puppibus aequor

cultorique daret terras, procul arma silerent? nunc uacat audacis ad caelum tollere uultus sideraque et mundi uarios cognoscere motus, nauita quid caueat, quid scitus uitet arator, quando ratem uentis aut credat semina terris. haec ego dum Latiis conor praedicere Musis,

10

15

pax tua tuque adsis nato numenque secundes. (From great Jupiter Aratus drew his beginning. But you, sire, are the greatest inspirer of song for me. You are the one that I reverence; you are the one to whom I bring sacred gifts, the first fruits of my learned labor. The ruler and begetter of the gods himself approves. [5] For what would the unerring signs of the year avail, where the sun at its fiercest moves in the burning Crab, and cleaves the turning post in frosty Capricorn directly opposite, and where the Ram and the Balance make an equal division of

the day, [what would they avail] if the peace won under your stewardship did not open the sea to ships [10] and give the earth to the farmer, if weapons of war did not lie quiet in the distance. Now is there time to lift one’s gaze boldly to the sky and to study the stars and the different movements of the heavens; what the sailor is to beware of, what the expert plowman is to avoid, when to entrust the ship to winds and seeds to earth. [15] While I make my attempt to foretell these things, may your peace and you yourself be by the side of your son and may you make your divine majesty favorable.)

A Second Original

107

Germanicus has replaced Aratus’s hymn to Zeus with his own composition of approximately the same length, a prayer addressed to the emperor Augustus. There are some obvious similarities between the two passages and the Latin text is equivalent in form, hymnic proem, and in structure, invocation, and statement of subject. Moreover, Germanicus’s proem successfully recreates the solemn and elevated tone of the Phaenomena’s proem: Augustus is invoked in the guise of the Aratean Zeus; and the programmatic statement of theme is cast in somewhat the same mold as Aratus’s—the regular appearances of the constellations mark the times for agricultural activities and, as Germanicus adds, for seafaring. But it should be noted that even these similarities of tone and general subject matter are, as we will see, the products of an ongoing dialogue between the two poets. As for literal equivalence the proem contains only two phrases that can be regarded as close renderings of the Greek: ab loue principium (1) and ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα (1); anni certissima signa (5) and τετυγμένα onpalvorev...wpdwv (12-13). Apart from these similarities the first sixteen lines of the Aratea are the translator’s independent creation which puts the Phaenomena in an entirely new context: Augustan Rome is the historical setting and Augustan poetry the literary setting. The rewriting is under way. Earlier in Chapter 1 when I discussed the poetics of Latin translation, I said that the translator may refer to the translation process itself and stimulate in the reader an awareness of the source text, thereby creating a new level of meaning that exists between the two texts. The first line of the proem is the reader’s cue that a full understanding of the Latin text requires a knowledge of the Greek text. Germanicus begins the line with what might be called Aratus's literary trademark, ab loue principium (1), but then abandons the wording of the Phaenomena to name the author himself, Aratus, and to pay him a compliment: the verb deducere had become, in Augustan poetics, a term that designated composition in that "refined style" for which Aratus himself was praised:’ thus reception too is incorporated into the text. Mention of the poet's name points to the second line of the Greek text where Aratus puns on his name with the adjective ἄρρητον ; Aratus, like Zeus himself, does not go unmentioned.‘ With the adversative at and the pronoun nobis in line 2, which are additional clues that Greek must be heard in counterpoint to the Latin, Germanicus's engagement with the source text takes a new turn; he introduces a genitor who not only inspires his song but is pointedly maximus (2) while Jupiter remains merely

magnus

(1). Now

the poet

is

108

Translating the Heavens

ready to develop the panegyrical potential of this bold substitution in a calculated response to Aratus’s proem. The centerpiece of the proem is the figure of Augustus. After neatly appropriating Zeus’s role for the princeps, who thereby gains from the implicit comparison in addition to the explicit praise, the poet invokes him as the supreme inspiration of his song (carminis...maximus auctor 2), and casts himself in the role of the emperor’s priest who brings his poetry as an offering (te ueneror tibi sacra fero doctique laboris / primitias 3—4).' These acts of invocation and oblation, we are told, are approved by Jupiter himself (probat ipse 4), a comment which sanctions the homage paid to Augustus. The venerable presence of Augustus leads naturally to the hallmark of that emperor's reign, peace (pax terra marique parta) and the end of a civil war which was worldwide in its extent and had completely disrupted agriculture and seafaring. Here the poet has succeeded very well in incorporating the Roman topic of peace restored after civil war and the subsequent renewal of agriculture and seafaring into the Aratean theme of the importance of the constellations for directing agricultural activities on earth. The pax-topic falls neatly into place because in anticipation of it the poet introduced a very practical consideration into Aratus's idealized picture of the happy collaboration of divine solicitude, human effort, and the regularity of the celestial calendar: such fruitful collaboration, in Germanicus's view, does not obtain under all circumstances, but only when there is peace to nurture it. And so by way of rhetorical question Germanicus points out that the annual progression of constellations which mark the seasons of the year (solstices: Cancer, Capricorn; equinoxes: Aries, Libra) is of no avail to farmers and sailors if they cannot pursue their daily tasks in peace and safety (5-10). The pointedness of the question becomes readily apparent if one imagines that it is spoken in an imaginary dialogue with Aratus's proem. Aratus there depicts a well-ordered cosmos in which the regularity of stellar movement controlled by the providence of Zeus directs the labors of mortals on earth. It is a peaceful, happy scene. The problem, Germanicus observes, is that this partnership between the heavens and humans can be easily disrupted by the devastation of civil war. Peace, therefore, is the necessary precondition for success in tilling the soil or voyaging forth on the seas. Thus a Roman poetic topic is neatly grafted onto the subject matter of the Phaenomena. The implications of the proem for the dynastic politics of the imperial house are obvious: Jupiter himself approves the supreme position of Augustus on earth; the Augustan peace fosters agriculture and seafaring, as

A Second Original

109

well as the writing of astronomical poetry by a poet who is himself a member of the imperial family; and the peaceful world order established by Augustus, who possesses divine majesty (numen), will continue under his son Tiberius (nato

16). The line of succession is clear, from

Jupiter,

the ruler of heaven, to Augustus, ruler of the orbis terrarum, to his son Tiberius. And of course our poet has a special interest in promoting the idea of a divinely sanctioned rule passed on from father to son, since he himself was next in the line of succession after his adoptive father Tiberius, until his premature death in AD 19. This concern, expressed in an astronomical context, for the continued success of the imperial family and the transmission of power from father to son has parallels in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in the Fasti. In Book 15 of the Metamorphoses, when Jupiter is prophesying the apotheosis of Augustus, he says that the ruler of the Roman world, looking ahead to the future, “will order the son born of a holy mother to take up his name and his cares” (prolem sancta de coniuge natam / ferre simul nomenque suum curasque iubebit 836—837); and this is said in the context of peace (pace data terris 832) and of Augustus's elevation, at an advanced old age, to the stars (sidera tanget 839).

Likewise in the Fasti, a poem with pretensions Ovid legitimizes the succession of power within ground that Augustus has attained the status Roman state and his family will inherit the achievements:

to astronomical learning, the imperial house on the of divine guardian of the grandeur of his godlike

tempus erit cum uos orbemque tuebitur idem, et fient ipso sacra colente deo, et penes Augustos patriae tutela manebit: hanc fas imperii frena tenere domum. inde nepos natusque dei, licet ipse recuset, pondera caelesti mente paterna feret. (1.529—534) (The time will come when the same man will be your [Vesta's] guardian and the world's; a god himself will conduct your rites, and the state will remain in the control of Augustus's successors. It is right for this family

to be at the reins of command. Then Tiberius, son and grandson of gods, despite his demurral, will bear his father's burden with a god-like mind.)

Like Ovid, Germanicus validates the claim of the imperial house to rule by placing that claim in the context of a world order which was established and maintained by Augustus and whose continuation is assured if it is entrusted to a member of his family.

110

Translating the Heavens

More mundane, in the midst of Germanicus’s imperial panegyric, is his statement that he intends to include some new astronomical material not found

in Aratus.

The

phrase mundi

uarios cognoscere

motus

(12),

to-

gether with the reference to weather forecasting in 13-15, indicates that the Aratea will also contain a treatment of the planets (explicitly rejected by Aratus, 460—461) and of the influences of celestial bodies on the weather (material foreign to Aratus's "Weather Signs"): The poet's theme is twofold: observation of celestial phenomena (stars and planets) and the practical application of those observations to meteorological forecasting for farmers and sailors. The addition of a new section on astrometeorology is significant not only because Germanicus edited out Aratus's “Weather Signs" from the translation in favor of his own discussion of the meteorological characteristics of the stars and planets, but also because his treatment of meteorology is fundamentally different from Aratus's. In Germanicus's Aratea the stars and the planets are not signs of the weather, rather they actually cause it. Why Germanicus completely abandoned the text of the “Weather Signs" might be explained in the following way. Because Aratus's conception of the significance of weather signs is the same as his conception of the significance of the constellations, i.e., "signs" of Zeus's immanence in nature, Germanicus

must

have found the “Weather Signs" incompatible with his own notions about the influences of the heavenly bodies on the weather and also with his more naturalistic view of celestial phenomena. A reading of Germanicus's meteorology reveals that he, unlike Aratus, is not much interested in signs, be they in heaven or on earth, that foretell weather conditions. Hence Aratus's concept of the sign instituted by divine providence for man's benefit, a concept that informs his entire poem, is regarded by Germanicus as an insufficient, or perhaps erroneous, explanation of how the celestial sphere really works and how its movements affect the earth. Our poet therefore chose to expound in the second part of his poem a more "scientific" meteorology that correlates observed astronomical phenomena with known weather conditions, since observation of regularly repeated phenomena always offers the possibility of establishing general patterns of behavior and, in this case, patterns of meteorological change. The presence of a given planet in a zodiacal constellation is a regular and predictable event, which, when observed and recorded together with the weather conditions over a long period of time, allows the observer to develop a system of meteorological forecasting that would seem to be more reliable than the behavior of birds and insects if for no other reason than the predictable regularity of the movements of the planets and stars.’

A Second Original

111

Germanicus's rejection of Aratus's "Weather Signs" indicates unmistakably that in his reinterpretation of the Phaenomena there is no room for the theme of Zeus's σήματα. His rewriting of the proem in order to praise the Jupiter-like figure of Augustus fits the same pattern of reinterpretation, though not on such a radical scale. Aratus's poem is the programmatic statement of the σήματα theme; by rewriting it Germanicus eliminates Aratus’s own philosophical and religious reflections on the heavenly bodies and their importance as signs for humankind. Once Aratus's interpretation of celestial phenomena as signs directed by a providential deity has been eliminated from the hymn to Zeus, and as a consequence, from the rest of the poem, Germanicus is free to embark on a program of rewriting that puts the reader not in a world order presided over by a providential deity, but rather in a world order presided over by the emperor Augustus. An important element in the proem that has been overlooked is the narrative voice that emerges in it, one that is more personal, less reticent than the voice we hear in Aratus's proem. The difference involves more than the Latin poet's self-conscious reference to his work as an offering to the dedicatee (sacra fero 3), as the "first fruits of learned labor" (docti laboris primitias 3—4), and as a translation (Latiis...Musis 15); it was

pointed out earlier that reference to the translation process is part of the poetics of Latin translation. Beyond this, Germanicus's narrator, unlike Aratus's, calls attention to the actual activity of observing the constellations (nunc uacat audacis ad caelum tollere uultus 11) and locates both

the activity and the description of what is observed in the context of the Augustan peace. The narrative voice is saying in effect that this Phaenomena is a poem written for the Augustan age in the poetic idiom of the age. The distinctiveness of this narrative voice suggests that there is more to Germanicus's rewriting of Aratus's proem than the familiar topics of Augustan political ideology expressed in counterpoint to Zeus's world order praised by Aratus. Although the translator for the most part abandoned the wording of the source text to create a purely Roman beginning, he nonetheless achieves a form of equivalence at a very complex level of meaning which is easy to overlook, the level of intertextuality. Germanicus is able to create equivalence on the intertextual level by alluding to a work of Latin literature, Vergil's first Georgic, which itself includes a sophisticated rewriting of both Aratus's Phaenomena and its thematic and structural model, Hesiod's Works and Days.

112

Translating the Heavens

Already in antiquity it was well known that Aratus imitated Homer and Hesiod: in the case of Homer, the imitation is primarily of epic diction; in the case of Hesiod, apart from shared elements of diction with the Homeric epics, the imitation is thematic and structural, and for that reason Hesiod is the more important influence of Aratus’s epic predecessors. In the Phaenomena’s proem Aratus is responding to the proem of Hesiod’s Works and Days, in which Zeus is praised as the all-powerful deity who maintains order and justice in the world. Aratus, adopting a more philosophical outlook than the pragmatic Hesiod, transforms the menacing Hesiodic Zeus into a gentle father, a beneficent deity who represents the rational order of the universe and helps mortals win their livelihood. In addition to enhancing the solemnity of the Phaenomena’s proem, Aratus’s imitation of Hesiod puts the reader in mind of themes treated in the Works and Days, the relationship between the divine and the human, the order of the natural world and the place of human beings within it, the necessity of hard work and just behavior to ensure success and prosperity. One cannot read the opening lines of the Phaenomena without hearing the clear Hesiodic echoes, verbal and thematic. The two texts, Phaenomena and Works and Days, work in concert to create an added dimension of meaning in which the majesty and raw power of the Hesiodic Zeus are softened to produce a kinder, gentler Zeus who organizes and guides human activities through signs. Is it possible for a translator to reproduce this intertextual dimension, to find a literary analog for the nexus of textual connections that binds the Phaenomena to the Works and Days? Germanicus made the attempt and found his analog to Aratus's imitation of Hesiod in the Georgics, Vergil's Ascraeum...carmen (2.176), in particular the opening prayer of Book 1 and its panegyric of Octavian. In the first book of the Georgics Vergil uses Hesiod's Works and Days as a structural and thematic model and also translates the “Weather Signs" of Aratus's Phaenomena as well as imitates piecemeal his description of the constellations.'^ Thus the book not only embodies in its language, subject matter, themes, and structure both the Works and Days and a major section of the Phaenomena, but also makes explicit their literary relationship by combining them in the same book. In the first Georgic Vergil's imitation of Hesiod and translation of Aratus is in effect a reflection and continuation of Aratus's own imitation of Hesiod. As a result of Vergil's use of Hesiodic and Aratean material in Book 1 of the Georgics, there existed in Latin poetry an invaluable poetic resource which could serve as both a point of reference and as a context for the translation of the Phaenomena. For in drawing

A Second Original

113

on the Georgics Germanicus situates his translation in the literary context of a famous exemplar of the Latin imitation of Hesiod and Aratus, and is thus able to use it in his translation of the Phaenomena as an analog for the intertextual relationship between Hesiod and Aratus. The most conspicuous Vergilian element in Germanicus’s proem is the invocation and panegyric of Octavian in the context of agriculture, seafaring, and the constellations (G. 1.24—35). tuque adeo, quem mox quae sint habitura deorum concilia incertum est, urbisne inuisere, Caesar, terrarumque uelis curam, et te maximus orbis

auctorem frugum tempestatumque potentem accipiat cingens materna tempora myrto;

an deus immensi uenias maris ac tua nautae numina sola colant, tibi seruiat ultima Thule, teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undis; anne nouum tardis sidus te mensibus addas, qua locus Erigonen inter Chelasque sequentis panditur (ipse tibi iam bracchia contrahit ardens

Scorpius et caeli iusta plus parte reliquit). (And you above all, Caesar, whom

we know

not what company

of the

gods shall claim ere long; whether you choose to watch over cities and care for our lands, that so the great globe may receive you as the giver of increase and lord of the seasons, wreathing your brows with your mother's myrtle; whether you come as god of the boundless sea and sailors worship your deity alone, while farthest Thule owns your lordship and Tethys with the dowry of all her waves buys you to wed her daughter; or whether you add yourself as a new star to the lingering months, where, between the Virgin and the grasping Claws, a space is opening (lo! for you even now

the blazing Scorpion draws in his arms, and has left more than a due share of the heaven!)!!

As Wissowa rightly pointed out, the influence of Aratus's famous proem

is unmistakable in Vergil's formulation of the possible spheres in which Octavian's divine power, still a poetic prophecy, will manifest itself: earth, sea, or sky may feel the efficacy of his power." Moreover, the absence of Jupiter from the list of divinities in Vergil's opening prayer, which culminates in the invocation of Octavian, coupled with the reminiscence of Aratus's hymn to Zeus, now employed in a panegyric of Octavian, strongly suggests an implied comparison between the god and the Roman leader." And it is Octavian who is given priority. The picture of Augustus presented in Germanicus's proem is the supreme fulfillment of what Vergil prophesied in Georgics 1:'* the efficacy

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of Augustus’s power is now felt in all three areas, on the earth, on the sea, and in the heavens because his peace promotes agriculture and seafaring, and thus makes worthwhile the regulation of those activities by the motions of the constellations. But a major shift in outlook has taken place: Germanicus openly invokes Augustus’s numen. It becomes clear from a comparison of both passages that Germanicus read and interpreted Aratus’s proem through Vergil’s imitation of it at the beginning of Georgics 1. As a result of this highly synthetic form of composition in which the texts of Vergil and Aratus, and, through Aratus, Hesiod, become woven into the same fabric, Germanicus’s proem possesses an allusive power in relation to the proem of Georgics 1 that is comparable to that of Aratus’s proem in relation to the proem of the Works and Days. Behind the Aratean Zeus there is the Zeus of Hesiod’s Works and Days: behind Germanicus’s Augustus there is the Octavian of Vergil’s first Georgic who in turn is largely a creation of the Hesiodic-Aratean conception of the all powerful divinity pervading the world. So far we have examined the proem from a purely literary point of view. In the course of our examination we have seen that Germanicus demonstrates considerable skill not only in completely rewriting the hymn to Zeus as imperial panegyric, but also in transforming it into a highly allusive text that recreates the intertextual relationship that exists between Hesiod and Aratus. We have also seen that he has deliberately modified the contents of the Phaenomena to include a treatment of the planets and astrometeorology. Yet there remains an even greater change, one which distinguishes Germanicus’s view of the heavens from Aratus’s. This fundamental difference between the two poems is a conceptual one which has far-reaching consequences. Aratus’s perspective throughout the Phaenomena is essentially theistic. According to that theistic perspective celestial phenomena are a manifestation of Zeus’s providence and his immanence in nature. Because the god controls the great celestial clock that unfailingly regulates the growth of crops on earth, he is mankind’s greatest benefactor. This beneficent deity (ἤπιος 5) gives man favorable signs (δεξιὰ σημαίνει 6) in the form of constellations to mark the seasons of the year. Hence the stars are not just signs of the seasons but also signs of the existence and immanence of Zeus. In his proem Aratus is elaborating the ancient argument that celestial phenomena, by their very appearance and by the regularity of their apparent motions, inspire religious awe and are for those same reasons proof that gods exist." Germanicus adopts a more secularizing stance. He ignores completely the theological ramifications of the stars as signs of the providential god

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and brings about a fundamental shift of emphasis away from Aratus’s theistic perspective to his own more naturalistic perspective which, so to speak, looks up from the earth to the heavens while Aratus’s theism looks down from the heavens to the earth.'* This shift of emphasis is most evident in the prominence given to Augustus and in Jupiter’s greatly diminished presence. Augustus and the peace which he established dominate the proem. Jupiter has only a nominal importance because the poet has consciously subordinated the theme of the well-ordered cosmos to that of the good order which Augustus has returned to the Roman world after protracted civil war. And again, it is the Augustan peace which allows the poet to pursue his doctus labor, the farmer to return to the soil and the sailor to the sea. Whereas Aratus’s inspiration comes from contemplation of the heavens as a manifestation of divinity, Germanicus finds his inspiration in the new-found peace and stability which allow him to look overhead, to observe, and to describe the celestial sphere. As we will see, these changes are part of a deliberate program of revision to create a poem that is completely different in conception from the original. Germanicus’s naturalistic view of the stars can be seen in his reference to the four constellations, Cancer, Capricorn, Aries, and Libra, which mark the seasons of the year (5-10). He does not say that these constellations are driven by a supreme divinity, nor does he treat them as signs that communicate to man anything other than the change of seasons. As is shown by the epithets gelidus (7, Capricorn) and ardens (6, Cancer) and by the description of Aries and Libra as making an equal division of the day, the poet is interested primarily in their utility as instruments of a celestial calendar and in their meteorological characteristics." And it is this naturalistic view which makes it possible for the poet to make the claim that the movements of the stars cannot work for the benefit of humankind without the peaceful rule of Imperator Caesar. Thus far I have spoken only of Germanicus and Aratus. There is, however, a third interlocutor taking part in this poetic dialogue, Cicero. Unfortunately, almost nothing of Cicero's translation of the proem survives: it would have been most interesting from the point of view of comparative analysis to see how he translated the hymn to Zeus. But in the following pages he will play a more prominent part. As the fragments of Cicero's translation become more substantial, the reader begins to notice that in composing his Aratea Germanicus was reacting to Cicero's text as well as to Aratus's and that on a stylistic level Cicero's influence was of necessity the negative influence of what was to be avoided because his translation in its language and meter represents the epico-tragic tradition of the old re-

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Translating the Heavens

publican poetry." Germanicus was writing a “modern” translation, working in the stylistic and metrical idiom of Vergil and Ovid, and seems to have studiously avoided the more repetitious elements of Cicero’s phraseology.” The poet’s treatment of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, which follows the proem, reveals in this first piece of astronomical description an important principle of Germanicus’s rewriting which is followed more or less consistently throughout his version of the Phaenomena, the greater fusion of astronomy and mythology. As Steinmetz rightly observed, in his telling of the catasterism myths which explain the origins of constellations Germanicus consciously reshapes the versions found in his model by exploiting more fully the pictorial qualities of the anthropomorphic, theriomorphic, and inanimate figures which are formed by the stars. Steinmetz’s words on this point are well worth quoting

fundamental poets.”

difference of temperament

as they bring out the

and treatment between the two

Aratus sees, above all, stars which belong to this or that figure but still remain stars, he sees stars that form figures (STERNbilder). Accordingly he prefers verbs which designate the mere position or mean that the stars rotate or revolve with the firmament, that they rise and set, that they shine; and he prefers adjectives which indicate the degree of luminosity of the individual stars. Germanicus, on the other hand, employs chiefly verbs and adjectives which are characteristic of the figures in which the stars are joined together and of the living beings which they represent, verbs and

adjectives which designate those features and movements that are peculiar to these beings. Germanicus sees, above all, figures made of stars (Stern-

BILDER).

Aratus is interested primarily in the stars, Germanicus in star-figures. Hence the latter gives greater attention to pictorial representation and mythological detail. And indeed as one reads his version of the “Phaenomena” one gets the impression that Germanicus, using a favorite device of Hellenistic poetry, describes the celestial sphere as if it were, quite literally, a work of art: the figures depicted on it, as the description progresses, take on a life of their own. Germanicus employs a more suggestive, emotive diction to animate the anthropomorphic and theriomorphic constellations so that the reader will visualize them not as static formations but as living beings. In this chapter, therefore, I want to analyze in some detail selected passages of Germanicus’s “Phaenomena” which will illustrate the ways in which the Latin poet reacts to and reinterprets the Greek original.

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117

Ursae (Aratus 26-44, Germanicus 24—47, Cicero V, VI, VID The catasterism of the circumpolar Bears, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, offers an excellent example of how Germanicus responds to and rewrites the Phaenomena and how both source text and translation collaborate in an ongoing creative dialogue.” Moreover, it is of special interest to the reader because it gives the first indications of the ways in which Germanicus's description of the starry heavens will differ from Aratus's. In the proem we saw that the Latin poet replaced the hymn to Zeus with his own independent creation which is at the same time a carefully calculated response to Aratus's words. While following the structure of the original and recreating its elevated tone, he rewrites the contents entirely to fit the changed circumstances of an invocation addressed to Augustus. Now we will observe Germanicus engaged in a rewriting that follows the Greek more closely. For the sake of convenience the passage can be divided into three sections: location, shape, and name; catasterism myth; and navigational guides. Location, Shape, and Name δύω δέ μιν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσαι "Apkror ἅμα τροχόωσι᾽ τὸ δὴ καλέονται Ἅμαξαι. αἱ δ᾽ ἤτοι κεφαλὰς μὲν én’ ἰξύας αἱὲν ἔχουσιν ἀλλήλων, αἰεὶ δὲ κατωμάδιαι φορέονται, ἔμπαλιν εἰς ὦμους τετραμμέναι. (26-30) (On either side of it [the axis] two Bears wheel in unison, and so they are called the Wagons. They keep their heads for ever pointing to each other’s

loins, and for ever they move on their shoulders, turned on their shoulders in opposite directions.) Axem Cretaeae dextra laeuaque tuentur siue Arctoe seu Romani cognominis Vrsae Plaustraue, quae facies stellarum proxima uerae: tres temone rotisque micant sublime quaternae.

si melius dixisse feras, obuersa refulgent ora feris; caput alterius super horrida terga

alterius lucet; pronas rapit orbis in ipsos declinis umeros. (24—31) (Cretans guard the axis on left and right, whether they are called Arctoe [in

Greek] or by their Roman name, Ursae or Plaustra [Wagons]; this shape comes closest to the true shape of the stars: high up three stars gleam on

118

Translating the Heavens the yoke pole and a group of four on the wheels. If it’s better to speak of them as wild animals, the faces of the animals shine opposite to one another; the head of one shines above the shaggy back of the other; their circular course sweeps them along headfirst leaning forward on their shoulders.)

Both poets begin their descriptions by giving the location of the two constellations, their shape and their position relative to one another, and the two names by which they are most commonly known, Bears or Wagons. Germanicus’s description, however, is two lines longer as the result of certain additions. Unlike Aratus he anticipates the catasterism myth, which he will soon narrate, first with the adjective Cretaeae (24) referring to the

home of the two nymphs, Helice and Cynosura, who were transformed into the two Bears, and then with the verb tuentur (24), which is appropriate to the activity of the two guardian nymphs who protected the infant Jupiter on Crete. Aratus, on the other hand, uses a verb appropriate to the movement of the constellation, τροχόωσι (27).

With regard to the names of the constellation, Germanicus elaborates the original by incorporating some new material. In 25 he gives the Greek name Arctoe, which he glosses with the Latin name, Romani cognominis Vrsae; he adds a second Latin name Plaustra (26), the equivalent of the Greek "Anafaı (27); he comments that this shape comes closest to representing the true configuration of the stars (26); he hints at a third Latin

name, Temo, when he mentions the number of the stars on the yoke pole (temo); and finally he describes the number

and location

of the stars in

the constellations: tres temone rotisque micant sublime quaternae (27). The combination of Greek and Latin names, Arctoe and Vrsae, in the same line, and the specific mention of the translator's language in Romani cognominis are ways in which the poet incorporates the translation process into his poem. Germanicus's comment on the close resemblance of the constellation to a wagon, which has no counterpart in the Greek text, is a direct response to Aratus's etymologizing word-play on dpa (27) and ἄξων (22): the Bears wheel around the same axis together and are therefore called "Apga£at.? Germanicus cannot reproduce the etymological explanation and instead points out that the two constellations are so named because they resemble the yoke-pole and the wheels of a cart: a visual rather than linguistic resemblance is employed to explain the name. To clarify his point he gives the location of the stars, three on the yokepole and a set of four for the wheels, whereas Aratus makes no mention of the stars or their arrangement in the two constellations. After the description of the Wagons, Germanicus resumes the pictorial representation

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of the constellations as bears: hence the necessity of adding

the transi-

tional phrase si melius dixisse feras (28) to bring the reader back

to the

shape of a bear. One phrase in particular reveals the author’s penchant for pictorial detail, horrida terga (29). The imagination, not the eye, of the observer can perceive the Bears’ “shaggy” backs. The

last two lines of the Greek

(29-30)

reveal

the difficulties

with

which Germanicus had to deal in reading Aratus. After describing the position of the Bears relative to one another in 28 (they face in opposite directions, the head of one opposite the loin of the other), Aratus says that they move "on their shoulders” (κατωμάδιαι 29), apparently meaning back to back in relation to one another as they revolve around the pole; he also says that they are “turned in opposite directions on their shoulders" (ἔμπαλιν els ὥμους τετραμμέναι 30), again apparently meaning back to back but facing in different directions.” Ancient scholiasts and modern scholars have had difficulty in understanding these lines. Although some uncertainty will remain, it seems best to understand Aratus’s description in the context of actual observation. From the observer’s perspective the most salient feature of the Bears’ movement is that they revolve back to back around the pole, engaged in what looks like a reciprocal motion, as Martin pointed out (Com.), and that in their movement, as a scholiast seems to suggest (&Aratus 79.10-13), they always maintain the same position relative to one another, unlike some constellations which rise in an upright position but set diagonally. Because of their back-to-back revolution around the pole Aratus focuses attention on their shoulders because more than any other anatomical detail the shoulders orient the two constellations to one another and to the pole, the point of reference with which the description began. Germanicus is no exception among readers who have had trouble understanding Aratus’s description. He interprets Aratus’s words, perhaps with the help of a commentary, to mean that the Bears approach the horizon headfirst (pronas 30) and appear to be sinking onto their shoulders (in ipsos 7 declinis umeros

30-31).*

His addition

of rapit orbis (“their

circular course sweeps them along"), together with pronas, suggests an attempt to realize a picture of these constellations as they dip downwards toward the horizon headfirst. Germanicus's difficulties, as well as those of ancient and modern interpreters, in understanding Aratus here point up the very real problems of interpretation encountered by any translator at the initial stage of reading a source text and at the later stage of embodying the interpretation in a translation.

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Translating the Heavens

Catasterism Myth el ἐτεὸν δή, Κρήτηθεν κεῖναί γε Διὸς μεγάλου ἰότητι οὐρανὸν εἰσανέβησαν, ὅ μιν τότε κουρίζοντα Λύκτῳ ἐν εὐώδει, ὄρεος σχεδὸν Ἰδαίοιο, ἄντρῳ ἔνι κατέθεντο καὶ ἔτρεφον εἰς ἐνιαυτόν, Δικταῖοι Κούρητες ὅτε Κρόνον ἐψεύδοντο. (30-35) ([30] If the tale is true, these Bears ascended to the sky from Crete by the will of great Zeus, because when he was a child then in fragrant Lyctus near Mount Ida, they deposited him in a cave and tended him for the year, [35] while the Curetes of Dicte kept Cronus deceived.)

ueteri si gratia famae, Cresia uos tellus aluit, moderator Olympi donauit caelo. meritum custodia fecit, quod fidae comites prima incunabula magni fouistis Iouis, attonitae cum furta parentis aerea pulsantes mendaci cymbala dextra, uagitus pueri patrias ne tangeret auris, Dictaeae texere deae famuli Corybantes.”’ (31-38)

(If the old tale has any credit, the land of Crete nourished you, the ruler of Olympus granted heaven [to you]; keeping guard was the cause of the reward, because as faithful companions [35] you tended great Jupiter in his earliest infancy when the dumbfounded mother's theft was hidden by the Corybantes, servants of the Dictaean goddess, who clashed bronze cym-

bals with deceiving hand so that the child's wailing would not reach his father's ears.)

The narrative is introduced by a phrase, ueteri si gratia famae (31), which has been subjected to various interpretations." It is not an expression of doubt: it is, rather, a formulaic expression belonging to the conventions of Hellenistic and Roman poetry which "should not be interpreted as a mark of skepticism, so much as a storyteller's device for underlining the marvelous nature of an incident in the narrative. It also comes in handy as a disclaimer when a poet is about to tell a story that may be offensive to a divinity: the responsibility falls on the shoulders of tradition. The poet thus acknowledges the traditional nature of his material, and at the same time he leaves open the possibility that there may be a different legend which explains the origin of the Bears.” Such an introduction to the catasterism myth of Helice and Cynosura, as it is told by Aratus and Germanicus, is most appropriate because the evidence provided by the ancient sources points unanimously to the greater currency of another

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legend which the two poets chose not to relate. According to that legend Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, was violated by Zeus, changed into a bear by Artemis, and was finally translated to the sky as Ursa Major by Zeus.” Obviously the choice of a tale that portrayed the father of gods and humans as a rapist would have been ill-suited to a poem about his benevolence and providential care, although later in the poem Germanicus will be less sensitive to the incongruity between the benevolent Aratean Zeus who steers the universe and a much less philosophic Jupiter who transforms himself to seduce mortal women. Aratus, because he uses the less widely known legend, prefaces it with a phrase, εἰ ἐτεὸν δή (30), which characterizes the catasterism of Helice and Cynosura as an account, not the account of the appearance of the Bears in the sky, and Germanicus duly reproduces that phrase in Latin. Aratus presents the catasterism myth simply and quickly in a single period which explains the origin of the two constellations: they are the nymphs Helice and Cynosura who nursed the infant Zeus on Crete and as a reward were translated by him into Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The action is summarized in three verbs, κατέθεντο (34), ἔτρεφον (34), ἐψεύδοντο (35): the two nymphs hide the infant in a cave and nurse him for a

year while the Curetes deceive Zeus. Just enough information is given to readers so that they can understand why Helice and Cynosura were thus honored. The reader is not told why Zeus was brought to Crete or how the Curetes carried out their deception. The austere, allusive quality of Aratus’s treatment of the myth is the result of a deliberate avoidance of unnecessary detail which might obscure the importance of his twofold theme to tell of the stars and the beneficence of Zeus. Indeed, the myth of Helice and Cynosura is intended not as a narrative set-piece to make astronomy seem poetical, but rather it is intended to provide an exemplum of that divine beneficence which had just been celebrated in the proem. For the two were raised to heaven “by the will of great Zeus” Διὸς μεγάλου ἰότητι (31).

Germanicus, on the other hand, elaborates the tale, employing those narrative devices which Aratus eschews: dramatization, pathos, and pictorial realism. He begins by apostrophizing the two immortalized nymphs (Cresia uos tellus aluit 32) and underlines the moral of the story (meritum

custodia fecit 33). New elements are introduced into the myth itself to give it a more dramatic, pathetic quality: fidae comites (34), picking up on custodia in the previous line, together with a second apostrophe (fouistis 35), casts Helice and Cynosura in the role of heroines; prima incunabula (34)” calls attention to the helplessness of the infant, with a touch of hu-

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Translating the Heavens

mor in the juxtaposition of prima incunabula and magni louis (34-35),

which deflates the solemnity

of Aratus’s

epic phrase

Διὸς

μεγάλου

ἰότητι in 31,? and perhaps the solemnity of the poem's opening words as well, ab loue principium magno; attonitae furta parentis (35), in addition to capturing the emotional state of the mother, alludes to what had preceded the removal of the infant to Crete, Saturnus's cannibalism; the clever stratagem by which Ops (Rhea) saved her youngest child is ironically referred to as an abduction (furta); and finally, whereas Aratus makes only a brief mention of the Curetes’ deception of Cronus (Κρόνον ἐψεύδοντο

35), Germanicus provides a full description (36—37)

that com-

bines pictorial detail (aerea pulsantes...cymbala 36), personification (mendaci...dextra 36), and pathos (uagitus pueri patrias ne tangeret auris 37). In addition he presents the characters in the narrative as family members: Jupiter the wailing child (uagitus pueri 37); Ops (Rhea) the mother dumbfounded

(attonitae parentis 35) at her husband's

cannibal-

ism of his own offspring; Saturn, the father who may hear the cries of his child (patrias auris 37) and then devour him; and finally Helice and Cynosura, the fidae comites (34) who nurture him. All of these elements

taken together produce a version of the catasterism myth

which is more

complex and more dramatic than Aratus's.

The question of the source of these additions merits attention. They may plausibly be explained as the results of Germanicus's own attempt to make the catasterism myth more appealing than Aratus's simple and unadorned treatment of it in order to meet the demands of a Roman audience. However, the fact that our poet refers to his work as a doctus labor alerts us to the very likely possibility that he has incorporated earlier treatments of the myth into his own. If one searches through the literary history of the Cretan legend, one finds close parallels in the work of an Alexandrian poet who greatly admired Aratus, Callimachus. Germanicus composed this brief narrative under the influence of Callimachus's Hymn to Zeus and not only adopts Callimachus's more personal approach but also grafts specific details of Hymn 1.46—54 onto Aratus's version. Ζεῦ, cé δὲ Κυρβάντων ἑτάραι προσεπηχύναντο Δικταῖαι Μελίαι, σὲ δ᾽ ἐκοίμισεν ᾿Αδρήστεια λίκνῳ ἐνὶ χρυσέῳ, σὺ δ᾽ ἐθήσαο πίονα μαζόν αἰγὸς ᾿Αμαλθείης, ἐπὶ δὲ γλυκὺ κηρίον EBpws. γέντο γὰρ ἐξαπιναῖα Πανακρίδος ἔργα μελίσσης Ἰδαίοις ἐν ὄρεσσι, τά τε κλείουσι Πάνακρα. οὖλα δὲ Κούρητές σε περὶ πρύλιν ὠρχήσαντο τεύχεα πεπλήγοντες, ἵνα Κρόνος οὔασιν ἠχήν ἀσπίδος εἰσαΐοι καὶ μή σεο κουρίζοντος.

50

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123

(But you, O Zeus, the companions of the Cyrbantes took into their arms, the Dictaean Meliae, and Adrasteia laid you to rest in a cradle of gold, and you sucked the rich udder of the she-goat Amaltheia, and ate as well the sweet honeycomb. For suddenly on the hills of Ida, which men call Panacra, appeared the works of the Panacrian bee. And in quick tempo the Curetes danced a war-dance around you, beating their armour, that Cronus might hear with his ears the din of the shield, but not your infant crying.) The

main

similarity between

Germanicus's

account

and

Callimachus's

lies in the treatment of the infant Zeus's protectors, the Curetes in Callimachus, the Corybantes in Germanicus: τεύχεα πεπλήγοντες (53) aerea

pulsantes...cymbala

(36);

Κρόνος

otaow...ceo

κουρίζοντος

(53-54) - uagitus pueri patrias ne tangeret auris (37).* However, Callimachean influence may be indirect via the channel of Ovid's account of Zeus's Cretan phase at Fasti 4.199—214, specifically his account of raucous percussions of Curetes and Corybantes (207—213): ardua iamdudum resonat tinnitibus Ide,

tutus ut infanti uagiat ore puer. pars clipeos sudibus, galeas pars tundit inanes:

hoc Curetes habent, hoc Corybantes opus. res latuit, priscique manent imitamina facti: aera deae comites raucaque terga mouent. cymbala pro galeis, pro scutis tympana pulsant. (For a long time steep mount Ida echoed with jingling so the baby boy could wail in safety. Some struck shields with pikes, others struck hollow helmets: the Curetes performed this task, the Corybantes, too. The truth was concealed, and imitations of the ancient deed survive: followers of the goddess shake cymbals and rumbling hides. They beat cymbals instead of helmets, tambourines instead of shields.)

Ovid's account is rich in detail about how the Curetes and Corybantes made the noise that protected the infant because the poet is giving an aition to explain why the worship of Cybele is attended by the noise of cymbals and tambourines. À curious detail in Germanicus's version, the phrase aerea cymbala (36), hints that he was influenced by this passage. The reference to cymbala is curious because, according to tradition, the Corybantes produced the noise with their armor (τεύχεα in Callimachus's Hymn, 53; galea and scuta in Ovid's Fasti 4.213), not with musical instruments. It appears then that Germanicus has conflated the Corybantes, who protected the infant by clashing bronze armor, with the latter-day worshippers of Cybele who clashed cymbals. Additional support for this

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Translating the Heavens

view comes from the description of the Corybantes as Dictaeae deae famuli (38), a description which fits both the Corybantes and worshippers of the goddess. Germanicus has condensed the aition of cymbal-playing in the worship of Cybele by means of a proleptic reference to the Corybantes’ armor as the musical instrument which will replace it in performance of the ritual. In Ovid’s aition the substitution of instruments for armor and the commemoration of the original act by ritual imitation are made explicit; Germanicus dispenses with the formalities of the aetiological poet’s learned explanation, which carefully relates the past to the present, by combining original act and commemorative ritual into one. Comparison of Ovid’s language, aera 212, cymbala...pulsant 213, said of the goddess’s worshippers, with Germanicus's aerea pulsantes...cymbala, said of the Corybantes, reinforces the connection between the two passages. Aratus's account of the service rendered by Helice and Cynosura to Zeus, for which they were rewarded with catasterism, has been elaborated by the Latin poet into a domestic melodrama that includes an aetiological explanation for the origin of a ritual in the worship of Cybele. One detail remains puzzling. Why does Germanicus say that the Corybantes, not the Curetes as Aratus specifies, deceived Cronus by clashing their cymbals? Of course, the puzzle may be no puzzle at all since the two names were treated by Roman poets as if they were interchangeable; and Ovid names both Curetes and Corybantes in his version." There is, however, some evidence to support the conjecture that Corybantes is a deliberate substitution. Vergil and Horace associate the Corybantes with the clashing of bronze: Corybantiaque aera (Aen. 3.111) and sic geminant Corybantes aera (Carm. 1.16.8). The combined authority of these two authors may alone have invited the change. But it appears that the juxtaposition of Corybantes and aera in Vergil and Horace may represent a learned gloss on the meaning of Corybantes: Servius comments on Aeneid 3.111: alii Corybantes ab aere appellatos, quod apud Cyprum mons sit aeris ferax quem t cypri coriam uocant ("others [say] that the Corybantes were named from copper, because on Cyprus there is a mountain, rich in copper, which they call ¢ cypri coriam”). Although the text is uncertain at the very point where Servius gives the name of the Cyprian mountain which would reveal the derivation of the name Corybantes, nonetheless his main point is clear: in the name Corybantes there is an element which is derived from a word for copper. If there is any truth in this piece of erudition preserved by Servius, then Corybantes is a significant name for mythological characters who clash bronze armor." Therefore, in Vergil's phrase Corybantiaque aera the noun aera, ac-

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cording to the derivation recorded by Servius, is intended to elucidate the meaning of its epithet Corybantia. Germanicus’s substitution of Corybantes for Curetes would then be a deliberate attempt to gloss in Latin the meaning of Corybantes and, what makes this conjecture somewhat attractive, the Corybantes-aera gloss provides a counterpart to Aratus's and Callimachus's etymologizing word-play on Koüpnres and the participle kovpllovra.”

Navigational Guides Aratus concludes his description of the circumpolar Bears with a mention of their importance as navigational guides for Greek and Phoenician sailors; the former follow Helice, the latter Cynosura: καὶ τὴν μὲν Kuvócoupav ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι, τὴν δ᾽ ἑτέρην Ἑλίκην. Ἑλίκῃ γε μὲν ἄνδρες 'Axatol εἰν ἁλὶ τεκμαίρονται ἵνα χρὴ νῆας ἀγινεῖν, τῇ δ᾽ ἄρα Φοίνικες πίσυνοι περόωσι θάλασσαν. ἀλλ᾽ ἡ μὲν καθαρὴ καὶ ἐπιφράσσασθαι ἑτοίμη, πολλὴ φαινομένη Ἑλίκη πρώτης ἀπὸ νυκτός" ἡ δ᾽ ἑτέρη ὀλίγη μέν, ἀτὰρ ναύτῃσιν ἀρείων. μειοτέρῃ γὰρ πᾶσα περιστρέφεται στροφάλιγγι᾽ τῇ καὶ Σιδόνιοι ἰθύντατα ναυτίλλονται. (36-44)

(Now one οὗ the Bears men call Cynosura by name, the other Helice. Helice is the one by which Greek men at sea judge the course to steer their ships, while Phoenicians cross the sea relying on the other.

[40]

Now the one is clear and easy to identify, Helice, being visible in all its grandeur as soon as night begins; the other is slight, yet a better guide to sailors, for it revolves entirely in a smaller circle: so by it the Sidonians sail the straightest course.)

We are fortunate in having all but what probably amounts to about four lines of Cicero’s translation of this passage to compare with Germanicus’s. When the two passages are brought together, one can plainly see that Cicero and Germanicus, although they are working with the same source text, produce completely different versions, Cicero following the original closely in this instance and Germanicus expanding it. First Cicero (VID: Hac fidunt duce nocturna Phoenices in alto; sed prior illa magis stellis distincta refulget, et late prima confestim a nocte uidetur.

126

Translating the Heavens Haec uero parua est, sed nautis usus in hac est: nam cursu interiore breui conuertitur orbe.

(Phoenicians put their trust in this one [Cynosura] as their nocturnal guide on the deep. But that one [Helice] shines first, more conspicuous

with its stars and from night's first onset it is immediately seen far and wide. To be sure, the former is small, but it is valuable to sailors: for it revolves on an inner path with a short revolution.) Germanicus's version: hinc Iouis altrices Helice Cynosuraque fulgent. dat Grais Helice cursus maioribus astris, Phoenicas Cynosura regit. sed candida tota et liquido splendore Helice nitet; haud prius ulla, cum Sol Oceano fulgentia condidit ora, stella micat caelo, septem quam Cresia flammis.

certior est Cynosura tamen sulcantibus aequor, quippe breuis totam fido se cardine uertit Sidoniamque ratem nunquam spectata fefellit. (39—47) (As a result [of their guardianship] Jupiter's nurses, Helice and Cynosura

shine. (40] Helice marks the course for Greeks with her larger stars, Cynosura guides the Phoenicians. But Helice shines all radiant and with clear brilliance; when the sun has hidden its bright face in Ocean, scarcely any star shines in the sky earlier than Cretan [Helice] with her seven lights. [45] Cynosura, however, is the more accurate guide for those who cut a

path across the sea, because, being small, she turns all of herself at the reliable pole and never, when observed, has she misled a Phoenician ship.)

The closeness of Cicero's rendering is self-evident not only in the numerous verbal correspondences but also in the line-for-line correspondence between the Latin and the Greek. In fact, the most noteworthy feature of Cicero's version is its uncharacteristically high level of equivalence on the semantic and stylistic levels. The simplicity of its language and syntax reproduces that of the source text and gives the reader a better impression of the stylistic and syntactic qualities of the Phaenomena than almost any other passage in Cicero's Aratea. Germanicus, on the other hand, even while he follows the thought pattern of the original—Helice, big and bright, guides the Greeks; Cynosura, small with a shorter path, guides the Phoenicians—and the paired arrangement of the constellations (Helice-Cynosura, Helice-Cynosura), still manages to make something quite different from Aratus. He does this chiefly by continuing to represent the two constellations as the fidae comites of the catasterism myth,

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only now they are the faithful guides of sailors. In order to stress their role as guides Germanicus makes them the subjects of the important verbs dat (40), regit (41), and fefellit (47): in the syntax of the Greek it is the mariners who steer their course by the stars. Germanicus also expands some words and phrases in the original to give the passage an epic coloring: ναύτῃσιν (42) is expanded into the epic periphrasis sulcantibus aequor (45); the simple prepositional phrase πρώτης ἀπὸ νυκτός (41), handled neatly by Cicero in prima...a nocte, is elaborated into a whole line, cum Sol Oceano fulgentia condidit ora (43), in imitation of Ovid's description of the setting sun at Metamorphoses 15.30, candidus Oceano nitidum caput abdiderat Sol. In 44 we have another periphrasis, this time for Helice, septem Cresia flammis, a reference to the catasterism myth (Cresia), as well as a possible echo in septem of Septentriones, the native

Latin name for the circumpolar Bears.“ Germanicus’s version of Phaenomena 26-44, reveals the complex workings of a translation strategy which is subjective and innovative in its treatment of the source text, one which combines it with material from other texts both literary and exegetical, and which transforms it into the idiom of Augustan poetry. In each of the three sections in which the passage was divided, location, catasterism myth, and navigational guides, Germanicus adds astronomical and mythological details not found in Aratus. The principle of elaboration at work behind these additions, here and throughout the poem, is to identify as much as possible the constellation figure with whatever it is said to represent and then to exploit the new possibilities thus created for a more dramatic and emotional treatment. Germanicus’s use of the adjective Cretaeae in the first line of the description signals his interest in Arctoe as the Cretan nymphs who protected the infant Jupiter. Moreover, he uses this conception to unify the three sections; for in each one there is a reference to Crete: it is mentioned first in the description of the constellations, Cretaeae Arctoe (24—25),

then in the

catasterism myth, Cresia tellus (32), and finally in the concluding section on navigation, septem Cresia flammis (44): the fidae comites of the infant Jupiter on Crete are also the fidae comites of sailors. The cumulative effect of all the changes made by Germanicus is to substantiate the poet's claim that his work is a doctus labor and, more importantly, to alert the

reader that he is translating the Phaenomena according to his own reinterpretation of the poem, a reinterpretation whose full significance will be discussed in Chapter 4. It now remains to point out what Germanicus has edited out of the Phaenomena in his rewriting of the Helice-Cynosura catasterism.

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Translating the Heavens

What is missing in the Latin version and is by contrast so prominent in the Phaenomena is the theme of Zeus’s beneficence and his immanence in nature. Readers of the Phaenomena as they proceed from the hymnic proem to the description of the circumpolar Bears cannot help but see the thematic link that binds the two passages. The catasterism myth of Helice and Cynosura serves as an exemplum to undergird what has just been said of Zeus in the proem: he is humankind’s greatest benefactor because he has set the constellations in the sky as signs to guide human activity. In the legend of the Arctoe that is exactly what we see: not only are Helice and Cynosura justly rewarded by Zeus for nurturing him in his infancy, but also, as a result of their translation into constellations, they become navigational guides for Greek and Phoenician mariners. When Germanicus replaced the original proem with his own, he severed this vital link between the two passages which raises the catasterism of the two Cretan nymphs above the level of mythological narrative to that of being a manifestation of Zeus’s providential care. All of the changes made by the Latin poet in his version of Phaenomena 26-44 lead the reader away from the poem's religious and philosophical theme and into the world of mythological narrative which exploits the possibilities for human interest and emotion created by the fusion of constellation figure and living being.

Virgo (Aratus 96-136, Germanicus 96-139, Cicero XVI.5—6, XVII, XVIII, XIX) Nowhere else in the Aratea is the translator's subjective, innovative treatment more in evidence than in the catasterism myth of Virgo-Iustitia, the longest mythological narrative in the Phaenomena." Here we find, in addition to the distinctive features that characterized Germanicus's treatment of the circumpolar Bears, dramatization, pathos, and pictorialism, a complex interweaving of Hesiodic, Aratean, and Vergilian motifs. Germanicus's version of the myth of the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Ages is a rewriting of Aratus's myth of the metallic races through Latin poetic texts which tell of a Saturnian Golden Age in Latium, although the lineaments of the source text still remain highly visible to the reader.” Aratus begins by locating Parthenos under the feet of Bootes: ἀμφοτέροισι δὲ ποσσὶν ὕπο σκέπτοιο Βοώτεω Παρθένον, ἥ ῥ᾽ ἐν χειρὶ φέρει Στάχυν αἰγλήεντα. (96-97)

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(Beneath the two feet of Bootes you can observe the Maiden, who carries

in her hand the radiant Spica.)

Germanicus has a much more ambitious beginning: Virginis inde subest facies, cui plena sinistra fulget Spica manu maturisque ardet aristis. quam te, diua, uocem? tangunt mortalia si te carmina nec surdam praebes uenerantibus aurem exosa heu mortale genus, medio mihi cursu stabunt quadrupedes et flexis laetus habenis teque tuumque canam terris uenerabile numen. (96-102)

(Next comes the Virgin in whose left hand a full ear of wheat shines and burns with its ripened awn. What am I to call you, goddess? If songs made by mortals touch you and you do not turn a deaf ear to those who worship you, in hatred, alas, of the human race, my steeds will halt in mid-career and, with changed course, I will happily sing of you and your divine majesty revered on earth.)

In the first two lines Germanicus is already at work making some minor changes. Locating Spica precisely in Virgo's left hand (sinistra manu —év χειρί) he describes the brightness of that star in metaphorical terms: a fully ripened ear of grain with its awn (plena, maturis aristis). The luminosity of the star, the brightest in the whole constellation, becomes a quality of the object which the star is thought to represent, fullness and ripeness suggesting bigness and brightness. In addition, the treatment of

Spica as an actual ear of grain allows the poet to introduce a piece of etymological word-play in the phrase ardet aristis. As D. O. Ross has shown, Roman poets, at least from the time of Catullus, were conscious of an etymological connection between arista and ardere/aridus." In its astronomical context the etymological glossing of aristis with ardet functions in a novel way because this particular ear of grain does in fact “burn.” By far the most important change introduced into the passage is the addition of five lines (98-102) which do not correspond to anything in the original. Germanicus invokes Virgo with a prayer containing a conventional metaphor in which the poet equates the act of composition with controlling a chariot in a race, a metaphor which, in the present instance,

signals the upcoming

excursus on the myth of the Ages. The driver’s

halting of his horses marks the poet’s transition from the relatively brief treatment of previous constellations to the much more elaborate narrative of the Ages-myth.“

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Translating the Heavens

The invocation of Virgo and the chariot-metaphor serve several important functions. The invocation gives some depth to a rather shadowy figure in Latin literature, the goddess Iustitia: the apostrophe, the precatory language, and the dramatic situation of the poet’s encounter are an effective means of giving the reader a sense of Iustitia's presence, although the Latin goddess lacks the stature of the Hesiodic Δίκη with which Aratus is working. Second, the invocation dramatizes the upcoming

tale with its anticipation of the sad conclusion (exosa heu mortale genus 100) and the suggestion in 99 that the goddess might turn a deaf ear to the poet’s song. And finally, invocation and chariot-metaphor impart a high seriousness to the tale; the language of the invocation strikes a note of solemnity“ and the chariot-metaphor conveys a sense of the urgency for what is about to be told. This is an extraordinary moment, the reader is advised, in the poet’s progress through the heavens because now he is stopping his swift course to tell at length the origin of the constellation Virgo. How this constellation got its name is a question that the history of astronomy has not yet answered, if ever it can. Even so, Aratus has very definite ideas about the origin of the constellation, although the lines in which he raises the question of Parthenos’s parentage (98-101) have been interpreted in various ways. As I understand the passage, Aratus first suggests two possibilities in 98—100: “Whether she is the daughter of Astraeus, who, they say, was the original father of the stars, or of some other, may her way be peaceful!" The first alternative seems to be tacitly rejected when he commences his narrative of Parthenos's life on earth with the words "There is, however, another tale (λόγος ἄλλος 100) current among men, that once she actually lived on earth..." The expression λόγος ἄλλος, which clearly suggests another identification, the one which is revealed in the ensuing narrative, implies that "some other" and not Astraeus is the father: otherwise ἄλλος has no real force. Moreover, it follows from the statement that Parthenos once lived on earth that she

cannot be the daughter of Astraeus; for he is reputed to be the father of the stars, not of a being who once lived on earth. Hence both the identity and the parentage of Parthenos remain unknown until the poet reveals them in 105: καί € Δίκην καλέεσκον. Aratus or perhaps someone before him has drawn a connection between the Parthenos that is a constellation in the heavens and the Hesiodic personification of Δίκη as a parthenos sired by Zeus: ἣ δὲ Te παρθένος ἐστὶ Δίκη, Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα (Works and Days 256). And to my mind there can be no doubt that, in a passage so redolent of the old Ascraean singer, Aratus wanted his reader to under-

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stand that Parthenos is Dike, the daughter of Zeus, who, after withdrawing completely from human society, was translated to the heavens. Although Aratus does not explicitly identify the father of Dike, the pervasive influence of the Hesiodic personification of Dike and his myth of the metallic races, which comes clearly into focus as the reader progresses through the narrative, leads the reader inevitably to the realization that Zeus is the father of Dike in the Phaenomena as in the Works and Days. The identity of the father in the Parthenos-Dike catasterism has important consequences for both the Phaenomena and the Aratea. In the Phaenomena Zeus’s paternity, when viewed from a theological perspective, transforms the Parthenos-Dike catasterism into another example of Zeus’s providential care for humankind, made manifest in the person of his offspring, Dike. When viewed from a literary perspective, Zeus’s paternity is another conspicuous thematic link that tightens the already close connection between Hesiod’s text and Aratus’s. These two aspects of Aratus’s Parthenos catasterism (the divine presence of Zeus and the poetic presence of Hesiod) pose difficult challenges for Germanicus. First, with regard to Aratus’s theological outlook, we have already seen in our discussion of the proem that Germanicus edited out Aratus’s programmatic statement about Zeus’s providential care and the nature of his “signs”; and second, as regards Aratus’s use of Hesiodic material, Germanicus was confronted, as a Roman poet writing for a Roman audience, with the very considerable technical problem of finding an analog, as he did in his rewriting of the proem, for the complex of allusions to Hesiod, both verbal and conceptual, that are the very fabric of Aratus’s myth of the gold, silver, and bronze races. It is important to appreciate the difficulties of the task Germanicus has undertaken in trying to transplant the HesiodicAratean myth of the metallic races into Roman soil and to train his adaptation of the myth around Vergil in the same way that Aratus had done with Hesiod. The analysis of this passage is divided into two parts, first a discussion of Virgo-Iustitia as a counterpart of Parthenos-Dike and then an examination of the myth itself. Virgo-Iustitia elt’ οὖν ᾿Αστραίον κείνη γένος, ὅν ῥά τέ φασιν ἄστρων ἀρχαῖον πατέρ᾽ ἔμμεναι, εἴτε τεν ἄλλου, εὔκηλος φορέοιτο. (98--100) (Whether she is the daughter οὗ Astraeus, who, they say, was the original father of the stars, or of some other, may her way be peaceful!)

132

Translating the Heavens Aurea pacati regeres cum saecula mundi Iustitia inuiolata malis, placidissima uirgo,

siue illa Astraei genus es, quem fama parentem tradidit astrorum, seu uera intercidit aeuo ortus fama tui... (103-107)

(When you were ruling the golden age of a peaceful world, Justice undefiled by evils, virgin most mild, whether you are the issue of Astraeus, whom tradition has handed down as the father of the stars, or whether the true account of your origin has been forgotten over time...)

Germanicus has restructured the order of Aratus's presentation by immediately identifying Virgo with Iustitia (both names are placed in the same line, 104; Justitia = Δίκη in Phaen. 105 and uirgo = Παρθένον in 97). Aratus, on the other hand, had postponed the identification with Dike until after he has begun to describe her life on earth, seven lines intervening between the first mention of the Parthenos and the first occurrence of ‘Dike’. In lines 105-106, which provide an excellent example of how closely Germanicus can translate and how freely he can invent within the space of two and a half lines, he repeats Aratus's conditional statement that Astraeus may be the father, but then suggests the possibility that the true account of her origins has been lost with the passage of time. The addition of the idea that tradition no longer preserves the name of her father fits in with the use of Iustitia as a translation of Dike because the Latin goddess, a mere personification of the abstract concept, does not in fact have a parent: she is a pale reflex of the Greek goddess, lacking in affective power and literary resonance. Whenever Latin poets refer to her, she appears a shadowy figure at best. Calling her Astraea, as some poets do (Ovid appears to be the first to use the epithet), is merely a feeble attempt to admit her into the society of time-honored divinities, an attempt based on the first of the alternatives in Phaenomena 98-100. It is precisely because Iustitia lacks the highly developed literary persona of Dike, complete with divine ancestry, which Aratus found ready to hand in Hesiod, that Germanicus is forced to leave her parentage a mystery. He had no Hesiod to provide the literary background, but he did have Vergil. And for Vergil Iustitia (Virgo) stands with Saturn as co-founder of the Golden Age in Italy." This is the literary association that our poet intends to develop.

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Golden Age In order to understand how Germanicus has been influenced by Vergilian conceptions of the Golden Age, we must first isolate and consider those elements which clearly distinguish Germanicus’s version from Aratus’s: λόγος ye μὲν ἐντρέχει ἄλλος

ἀνθρώποις,

ὡς δῆθεν ἐπιχθονίη

πάρος Tv,

ἤρχετο δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων κατεναντίη, οὐδέ ποτ᾽ ἀνδρῶν οὐδέ tot’ ἀρχαίων ἠνήνατο φῦλα γυναικῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀναμὶξ ἐκάθητο καὶ ἀθανάτη περ ἐοῦσα. καί E Δίκην καλέεσκον᾽ ἀγειρομένη δὲ γέροντας ἠέ πον εἰν ἀγορῇ ἢ εὐρυχόρῳ ἐν ἀγνυιῇ, δημοτέρας ἤειδεν ἐπισπέρχουσα θέμιστας. (100--107) (There is, however, another tale current among men, that once she actually lived on earth, and came face to face with men, and did not ever spurn the tribes of ancient men and women, but sat in their midst although she was immortal. [105] And they called her Justice: gathering together the elders, either in the market-place or on the broad highway, she urged them in prophetic tones to judgements for the good of the people.) ... mediis te laeta ferebas sublimis populis nec dedignata subire tecta hominum et puros sine crimine, diua, penatis iura dabas cultuque nouo rude uulgus in omnem formabas uitae sinceris artibus usum. (107-111)

(...gladly you used to walk, an exalted figure, in the midst of the people nor did you, goddess, disdain to enter the houses and dwellings of men unpolluted by crime. You administered justice and by means of honest skills you shaped the people, untrained in the new way of living, for every requirement of life.)

In 103, quoted earlier, we find a significant departure from Aratus when we read that Iustitia, who continues to be addressed in the second person, ruled (regeres) the aurea saecla. In 109 the poet introduces a distinctly Roman element, puros sine crimine penatis.^ And in 110-111 Aratus's picture of Dike as counselor and guide of the assembled elders, urging them to enact laws more favorable to the people, is replaced by Iustitia who is herself a lawgiver (iura dabasy' and also is something

of a

culture hero, teaching the rude uulgus honest skills for the procurement of life's necessities. This primitive state of human existence, which preceded the establishment of the Golden Age under Iustitia, points unmistakably to the localized Latin version of the Ages-myth in which the

134

Translating the Heavens

indigenous god Saturn established laws and instructed primitive man in the necessary skills of civilized life. From these several clues it is not difficult to discover the formative influence behind Germanicus’s innovations, King Evander’s description of the aurea saecla of Saturn at Aeneid 8.314—327 together with motifs contained in Eclogue 4 (the return of the Saturnian Golden Age), Georgics 1.125-159 (the Saturnian Golden Age and labor) and Georgics 2.458—474 (the happy condition of the farmer).”

From these Vergilian loci Germanicus has appropriated the motif of a ruling deity in the Golden Age (Saturn) and transferred it to Iustitia, a plausible development of the notion latent in Eclogue 4.6 (iam redit et Virgo,

redeunt

Saturnia

regna)

that

Saturn

and

Iustitia

founded

the

Golden Age or at least that Iustitia was an indispensable partner in the success of the aurea saecla. Also taken over from Vergil is the primitive stage of human existence prior to the advent of the Golden Age as described by Evander at Aeneid 8.313-325. tum rex Euandrus Romanae conditor arcis: *haec nemora indigenae Fauni Nymphaeque tenebant gensque uirum truncis et duro robore nata, quis neque mos neque cultus erat, nec iungere tauros

aut componere opes norant aut parcere parto, sed rami atque asper uictu uenatus alebat. primus ab aetherio uenit Saturnus Olympo arma Iouis fugiens et regnis exsul ademptis. is genus indocile ac dispersum montibus altis

315

320

composuit legesque dedit, Latiumque uocari maluit, his quoniam latuisset tutus in oris. aurea quae perhibent illo sub rege fuere

saecula: sic placida populos in pace regebat.

325

(Then King Evander, founder of Rome's citadel: "In these woodlands the native Fauns and Nymphs once dwelt, and a race of men sprung from

trunks of trees and hardy oak, who had no rule or art of life, and knew not how to yoke the ox or to lay up stores, or to husband their gains; but the

tree branches nurtured them and the huntsman's savage fare. First from heavenly Olympus came Saturn, fleeing from the weapons of Jove and exiled from his lost realm. He gathered together the unruly race, scattered over mountain heights, and gave them laws, and chose that the land be called Latium, since in these borders he had found a safe hiding place. Under his reign were the golden ages men tell of: in such perfect peace he ruled the nations.)*

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A comparison of certain key phrases in both authors will clarify the similarity of conception. Vergil

Germanicus

quis neque mos neque cultus

cultuque nouo rude uulgus

erat (316)

(110)

genus indocile (321) legesque dedit (322)

iura dabas (110)

aurea quae perhibent illo sub rege fuere / saecula: sic placida

Aurea pacati regeres cum saecula mundi (103)*

populos in pace regebat

(324-325)

In Aratus there is no trace of this primitive stage of existence, nor does Dike give the men of the Golden Race instruction in any artes. It will now be apparent to the reader that Germanicus is translating the Hesiodic-Aratean myth of the metallic races into a Roman, specifically Vergilian, literary context by developing his treatment of the aurea saecla independently of his model along the lines of the Vergilian Golden Age of Saturn. And we will see this same process of Romanization continue as we proceed with our analysis. οὕπω λευγαλέον οὐδὲ διακρίσιος

τότε velkeos ἠπίσταντο περιμεμφέος οὐδὲ κυδοιμοῦ,

αὕτως

χαλεπὴ

δ᾽ ἔζωον’

δ᾽ ἀπέκειτο

θάλασσα,

καὶ βίον οὕπω νῆες ἀπόπροθεν ἡγίνεσκον, ἀλλὰ βόες καὶ ἄροτρα καὶ αὐτὴ πότνια λαῶν μυρία

πάντα

παρεῖχε

Δίκη,

δώτειρα

δικαίων.

τόφρ᾽ ἦν ὄφρ᾽ ἔτι γαῖα γένος χρύσειον ἔφερβεν.

(108-114)

(At that time they still had no knowledge of painful strife or quarrelsome conflict or noise of battle, [110] but lived just as they were; the dangerous

sea was far from their thoughts, and as yet no ships brought them livelihood from afar, but oxen and ploughs and Justice herself, queen of the people and giver of civilized life, provided all their countless needs. That was as long as the earth still nurtured the Golden Age.) nondum uesanos rabies nudauerat ensis nec consanguineis fuerat discordia nota,

ignotique maris cursus, priuataque tellus grata satis, neque per dubios auidissima uentos Spes procul amotas fabricata naue petebat

136

Translating the Heavens diuitias, fructusque dabat placata colono sponte sua tellus nec parui terminus agri praestabat dominis, sine eo tutissima, rura. (112-119)

(Not yet had savageness unsheathed frenzied blades nor had men of the same blood known conflict; unknown were the sea lanes, and a man's own land was [115] satisfaction enough. Most greedy hope did not build a

ship and search on the uncertain winds for far-off wealth. Of its own accord the peaceful earth bore fruit for the farmer and the boundary stone of the small field did not secure farms for owners because they were completely safe without it.)

Three items in this passage deserve special attention because they reveal how Germanicus assimilates Aratus's Golden Race to the Roman universe of discourse. First, in the Latin version we find a more concentrated, emotive depiction of warfare. Germanicus reduces Aratus's list of three abstracts, νείκεος (108), διακρίσιος (109), and κυδοιμοῦ (109), to one, discordia (113), and that one, as we will see, was chosen for a specific rea-

son. Moreover, the poet creates a striking image madness that unsheaths swords (nondum

in the uncontrollable

uesanos rabies nudauerat

ensis

112), an image which surpasses in effect the more conventional treatment which simply says that the sword had not yet been forged." In addition rabies establishes another connection with Evander's account of the Golden Age in Aeneid 8: there the Golden Age succumbs to an inferior age and belli rabies (327).

But what is most striking in the poet's evoca-

tion of bloody conflict is that he, unlike Aratus, is not referring to warfare in an abstract, general way, but is referring specifically to the great scourge of Roman political life, civil war. He has carefully chosen words whose connotative meaning and cumulative effect (rabies 112, discordia 113, consanguineis 113) cannot fail to evoke thoughts of civil strife, discordia in particular touching the nerve that is sensitive to its nuance in literary treatments of civil war.” The second item which contributes to the peculiarly Roman color of the passage comes in lines 115-117 where Germanicus introduces the shibboleths of greed (auidissima spes) and wealth (diuitiae) as the agents of moral decline. For the Golden Race, says Aratus, there was no seafaring and ships did not bring men their livelihood from distant lands. Furthermore, in his account seafaring for the purpose of procuring one's livelihood is not stigmatized as something morally reprehensible; it is an activity unsuited to the Golden Race because it is life-threatening (χαλεπὴ θάλασσα

110)

and

because

there

is no

need

to run

the

risk of death

among the waves for “oxen and ploughs and Justice herself, queen of the

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137

people and giver of civilized life, provided all their countless needs.” Germanicus, on the other hand, taking a moralistic stance, alters significantly the import of Aratus’s lines on seafaring when he characterizes it as an activity used in the pursuit of wealth rather than of livelihood, thereby introducing the familiar Roman topos of luxuria-diuitiae and with it a tone of moral censure. Auidissima spes and diuitiae are intended to invite reflection on the calamitous irruption of wealth and luxury into Roman society and the subsequent decline of its moral values.” In his characterization of the Golden Age as a time untroubled by discordia ciuilis and untainted by auaritia (both of which are familiar motifs

in literary meditations on the moral decline of the Roman state), Germanicus combines Aratus’s text with Roman elements in order to set the Greek myth squarely within his own literary and historical tradition. In addition to these two elements there is a third, the reference to boundary stones (terminus

118),

which

contributes

to the

Romanization

of the

Greek original. While the absence of warfare and seafaring is a motif common to descriptions, Greek and Roman, of the Golden Race/Age, the absence of boundary stones used to mark off private property is a characteristic of the aurea saecla Saturni as depicted in Latin poetry: their absence is mentioned in Vergil, Tibullus, and Ovid in the context of the Saturnian Golden Age;* there is of course no mention of them in Hesiod or Aratus. And so we have yet another link that binds Germanicus's treatment of the Golden Age to his predecessors' treatment of the aurea saecla Saturni, most especially Vergil's. And it may not be amiss to detect in this evocation of the Golden Age native to Latium and Italy a contemporary allusion to that new Golden Age inaugurated by Augustus.“ Unfortunately, Germanicus is not entirely successful in his interweaving of motifs drawn from his Greek and Latin sources. There is a visible seam which cannot be smoothed over. At 117-118 Germanicus, repeating

an idea that appears first in Hesiod (Works and Days 116-118) and later becomes a traditional element in Latin literary treatments of the Golden Age, characterizes that Age as a time when the earth produced her fruits spontaneously: fructusque dabat placata colono / sponte sua tellus (117-118).? There was no need of agriculture.

This statement, however,

conflicts not only with Aratus's observation that the men of the Golden Race practiced agriculture“ but also with Germanicus's own observation made earlier (110-111) that Iustitia taught men sincerae artes for procuring all the necessities of life. And it is impossible to imagine that agri-

culture does not fall under the category of sincerae artes, since the production of food is a prime necessity (in omnem uitae usum). Moreo-

138

Translating the Heavens

ver, the practice of agriculture is consistent with Germanicus’s evocation of the Saturnian Golden Age, for Saturn himself is an agricultural deity and it was in that age that man first learned to use the plow and to sow crops.® It is not difficult to understand how the confusion arose. Germanicus is interweaving the strands of two different but not mutually exclusive traditions, the Golden Age of earth’s spontaneous provision and the Golden Age of agricultural labor, each contaminated with elements of the other. In the former man lives in peace and idleness, enjoying the earth’s spontaneous provision of necessities: in the latter, even though living conditions are still marked by peace and justice, man no longer relaxes in unrestricted otium, but must till the fields and grow his own food. Apart from this one detail the same happy living conditions are found in both types of Golden Age. And it would be easy for a poet who is working with Hesiodic, Aratean, and Vergilian motifs to make the kind of slip that has been detected. At the beginning of his description of the Golden Age (103-111) Germanicus’s train of thought is dominated

by the aurea

saecla Saturni, by Vergil’s picture of that time as a “hard” Golden Age in which man acquires skills necessary for growing his own food, and by the close association of Justitia with the virtue and moral innocence of the farmer:“ accordingly he represents man as uncultured and Iustitia as a lawgiver and teacher of sincerae artes. However, as the description proceeds (112-119), the almost formulaic quality of the list of those livingconditions which obtained in the Golden Age led the poet to include the familiar but, in this instance, inconsistent detail that the earth produced her fruits sponte sua (118).

Silver Age dpyupég δ᾽ ὀλίγη τε kal οὐκέτι πάμπαν ἑτοίμη ὡμίλει, ποθέουσα παλαιῶν ἤθεα λαῶν. ἀλλ᾽ ἔμπης ἔτι κεῖνο κατ᾽ ἀργύρεον γένος fev,

115

ἤρχετο δ᾽ ἐξ ὀρέων ὑποδείελος ἠχηέντων μουνάξ, οὐδέ τεῳ ἐπεμίσγετο μειλιχίοισιν, ἀλλ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ἀνθρώπων μεγάλας πλήσαιτο κολώνας, ἠπείλει δἤπειτα καθαπτομένη κακότητος, οὐδ᾽ Er’ ἔφη εἰσωπὸς ἐλεύσεσθαι καλέουσιν᾽ “οἵην χρύσειοι πατέρες γενεὴν ἐλίποντο χειροτέρην᾽ ὑμεῖς δὲ κακώτερα τεξείεσθε.

καὶ δή που πόλεμοι, καὶ δὴ καὶ ἀνάρσιον αἷμα ἔσσεται ἀνθρώποισι, κακῶν δ᾽ ἐπικείσεται ἄλγος." ὡς εἰποῦσ᾽ ὀρέων ἐπεμαίετο, τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα λαοὺς εἰς αὐτὴν ἔτι πάντας ἐλίμπανε παπταίνοντας.

120

125

A Second Original

139

(But with the Silver she associated little, and now not at all willingly, as

she longed for the ways of the earlier folk. But nevertheless she was still with this Silver Age too. She would emerge from the sounding moun-

tains towards evening all alone, and not engage anyone in friendly conversation. [120] But filling the broad hillsides with people, she would then speak menacingly, rebuking them for their wickedness, and say she would never more come face to face with them, even if they called her: "What an inferior generation your golden fathers have left! And you are likely to beget a still more evil progeny. [125] There will surely be wars, yes, and unnatural bloodshed among men, and suffering from their troubles will come upon them." So saying she made for the mountains, and left the people all staring after her.) At postquam argenti creuit deformior aetas, rarius inuisit maculatas fraudibus urbis seraque ab excelsis descendit montibus ore uelato tristisque genas abscondita rica, nulliusque larem, nullos adit illa penatis. tantum, cum trepidum uulgus coetusque notauit,

120

125

increpat *o patrum suboles oblita priorum,

degeneres semper semperque habitura minoris,

quid me, cuius abit usus, per uota uocatis? quaerenda est sedes nobis noua; saecula uestra artibus indomitis tradam scelerique cruento'. haec effata super montis abit alite cursu,

130

attonitos linquens populos grauiora pauentis.

([120] But after an uglier age of silver arose, Justice very seldom visited the cities defiled with crimes, but came down from the mountain heights at a late hour, her face covered and her sorrowful eyes hidden by a

veil.

She approached no one's hearth, no one's dwelling. [125] She only scolded the people when she took note of them assembled in a frightened mass: ‘Progeny forgetful of your forefathers, destined to have descendants ever more degenerate, why do you call upon me with your prayers when your association with me has ended? I must seek a new home; [130] I will leave this generation of yours to its violent ways and bloody crime.’ With these words she departed in winged flight over the mountains, leaving the people thunderstruck, fearing worse.)

In Germanicus’s Silver Age the theme of moral decline is more pronounced than in the Greek version. In fact, the poet seems so taken with the notion of a steady decline that he exaggerates, in comparison with Aratus’s Silver Race, its inferiority to the Golden Age. As a consequence of this exaggeration, he upsets the fine parallelism between Dike’s grow-

140

Translating the Heavens

ing dissatisfaction with humankind and the outward expression of that dissatisfaction in her gradual withdrawal from human society. The Silver Race, as depicted by Hesiod and Aratus, although it clearly marks a falling-off from the Golden Race, does not represent such a dire turn of events as does the change from the Silver to the Bronze Race." Aratus characterizes it simply as xetporépnv (124)" because it has been corrupted by evil (121). He concentrates more on the external signs of

Dike's growing disaffection: she dwells in the mountains now and comes down only at nightfall; harsh words of reproach will give birth to a worse spite of the now severely

she does not associate with individuals and has for the assembled people, prophesying that they progeny that will be assailed by new evils. But in restricted conditions of her association with hu-

mankind, Dike still dwells on earth (117). Germanicus, on the other hand,

gives such added emphasis to the theme of human degeneracy that Iustitia's estrangement from humankind in the Silver Age appears to be complete, even though she does not abandon the earth altogether until the advent of the Bronze Age. Several new details, which sharpen the poet's critique of moral backsliding, widen considerably the gulf between the first two ages. Whereas Aratus had been content to say that one was worse than the other, Germanicus's Silver Age is ugly in a moral sense (deformior aetas 120);” the cities of men are defiled with crime (maculatas fraudibus urbis 121);" the

casta domus of the Golden Age that once welcomed the goddess is now abhorrent to her (nulliusque larem, nullos adit illa penatis 124); and as the moral overtones of deformior and maculatas suggest, the house must labor under a pollution of some kind.” Furthermore, this somber account is not relieved by Aratus's hopeful reminder that during the time of the Silver Race Dike still lived on earth. Germanicus's account leaves the reader with the impression that the moral gulf that separates the Golden from the Silver Age is as great as the one that separates the Silver from the Bronze.

In addition to overstating the wickedness of the Silver Age, our poet develops the theme of estrangement between goddess and man a little too far at this stage of the myth. As an external sign of Iustitia’s estrangement, Germanicus describes her face as covered with a veil: seraque ab excelsis descendit montibus ore / uelato tristisque genas abscondita rica (122-123). This veil serves as a protection against the ugliness of the age and is also a sign that she is in mourning because of human moral degeneracy. As Maurach notes, the addition of this pictorial detail may have been suggested by Hesiod's description (Works and Days 197—201) of

A Second Original

141

Nemesis and Aidos as robed in white when they abandon the earth and the moral chaos of the Iron Age.” When Iustitia delivers her haunting prophecy about humankind's continual descent into moral chaos (degeneres semper... 127)” and says that she herself must find a new habitation (quaerenda est sedes nobis noua, 129, a detail not found in Aratus), the stage appears to be set for her final departure to the heavens. In fact, the description of her departure (haec effata super montis abit alite cursu 131) anticipates somewhat Aratus's description of her final departure in the Bronze Age (ἔπταθ᾽ ὑπουρανίη 134). As the foregoing analysis shows, Germanicus has produced an overly elaborated version of the Hesiodic-Aratean Silver Race that exaggerates the symptoms of moral decline. The fault is one to which the poetics of Latin translation is easily susceptible. It is due in part to his desire to pre' sent a picture of that age, complete with Roman elements, which is noticeably more degenerate than the Golden Age, and in part to his striving for dramatic effect. The stimulus to elaborate in this way comes from the poet's own literary tradition. Roman poetic treatments of the Ages-myth are almost always developed around the stark contrast between the Golden and Iron Ages (from gold to dross, from peace and justice to violence and bloodshed); the force of the contrast is not dissipated by reference to the intermediary stages of Silver and Bronze Ages. This is true of Vergil's treatment of the myth, which, as we have seen, strongly influenced Germanicus. Accordingly it would have been easy for Germanicus, following Vergil’s example, to think in terms of sharply defined differences between each age rather than to follow the subtler Hesiodic-Aratean scheme in which the degree of moral decline is not uniform throughout. Hence for the Roman poet there arises the difficulty of distributing dreadful symptoms of moral degeneracy evenly over two ages (Silver and Bronze) instead of concentrating them all in the last age. The imbalance created by the excessive elaboration of Aratus's Silver Race is heightened by Germanicus's treatment of the Bronze Age, where his powers of innovation begin to flag. After detailing the moral degeneracy of the Silver Age, he returns to a closer adaptation of Aratus's Bronze Race, which now seems somewhat tame and weak by comparison with what has just preceded it and not well suited to its new Latin context. As a result, the climax of the narrative, whose force has gradually been eroded through the poet's various additions up to this point, is spoiled: the Silver Age proves to be as sinister as the Bronze Age, if not more so, and Iustitia appears to have packed her bags already and left for good.

142

Translating the Heavens

Bronze Age ἀλλ᾽ Ste δὴ κἀκεῖνοι ἐτέθνασαν, ol δ᾽ ἐγένοντο χαλκείη γενεὴ προτέρων ὀλοώτεροι ἄνδρες, ol πρῶτοι κακοεργὸν ἐχαλκεύσαντο μάχαιραν εἰνοδίην, πρῶτοι δὲ βοῶν ἐπάσαντ᾽ ἀροτήρων, καὶ τότε μισήσασα Δίκη κείνων γένος ἀνδρῶν ἔπταθ᾽ ὑπονρανίη, ταύτην δ᾽ ἄρα νάσσατο χώρην,

ἧχί

περ

Παρθένος

ἐννυχίη ἐγγὺς

ἔτι φαίνεται ἐοῦσα

ἀνθρώποισι

πολυσκέπτοιο

Βοώτεω. (129-136)

(But when these men also had died and there were born [130] the Bronze

Age men, more destructive than their predecessors, who were the first to forge the criminal sword for murder on the highways, and the first to taste

the flesh of ploughing oxen, then Justice, conceiving a hatred for the generation of these men, flew up to the sky and took up her abode in that place, [135] where she is still visible to men by night as the Maiden near conspicuous Bootes.)

Aerea sed postquam proles terris data, nec iam semina uirtutis uitiis demersa resistunt ferrique inuento mens est laetata metallo, polluit et taurus mensas assuetus aratro, deseruit propere terras iustissima Virgo,

et caeli sortita locum, qua proximus illi tardus in occasu sequitur sua plaustra Bootes. (133-139)

(But after the progeny of bronze was given to the earth and the seeds of virtue, overwhelmed by evil practices, no longer resisted, [135] and the

mind rejoiced in the discovery of the metal iron, and the ox, accustomed

to the plough, polluted their tables, [then] did that most just virgin' swiftly abandon the earth and gain a place in the sky, where, next to her, Bootes, who is slow in his setting, follows his Wagon.)

The Bronze Age comes as an anticlimax to the rising tide of human vice that drowned the Silver Age. What is disappointing about the passage is that Germanicus has abandoned his technique of using concrete images to enhance the characterization of the two previous ages and instead adopts a detached philosophical attitude to explain the causes and not, as one would expect, to describe the results of moral decline in the Bronze Age. While Aratus tells us that the Bronze Age was destructive (ὀλοώτεροι 130), in the Latin version we are presented with a diagnosis of moral failure: nec iam / semina uirtutis uitiis demersa resistunt (133-134).

The ab-

stract explanation seems out of place, especially in view of Iustitia’s chilling prophecy: saecula uestra / artibus indomitis tradam scelerique

A Second Original

143

cruento (129-130). Similarly the invention of the sword and its evil consequences

(Phaen.

131-132)

are replaced

by

a curious

observation

on

man’s delight in the discovery of iron: ferrique inuento mens est laetata metallo (135). We are given another abstraction (mens est laetata), and in

the ambiguous phrase ferri inuento metallo the poet may be referring either to mining as an incentive to human greed or to the invention of the sword.” In either case it is a poor substitute for Aratus’s line. Moreover, the awkward intrusion of iron into the Bronze Age, following so closely on aerea proles, is distracting since the novelty is introduced for no apparent reason.” In 136 Germanicus translates the original more closely: polluit et taurus mensas assuetus aratro. But even here he substitutes the

abstract for the concrete, using polluo for Aratus’s graphic πατέομαι (132). The young Cicero, in what remains of his translation, had greater success in catching the spirit of Aratus’s lines: Ferrea tum uero proles exorta repentest

ausaque funestum primast fabricarier ensem, et gustare manu iunctum domitumque iuuencum. (XVIII)?

(Then indeed an iron race suddenly arose and was the first to dare to forge the deadly blade and to taste the bullock yoked and tamed by hand.)

Germanicus's description of Iustitia's departure is also weakened in its effect by the omission of certain details which are found in the last four lines of Aratus's closing period and are indispensable to a satisfying conclusion of the narrative: Dike loathes the Bronze Race (μισήσασα 133); she takes wing (ἔπταθ᾽ 134), flies to her new abode in the heavens (Urov-

ρανίη 134), and there in the night sky is still visible to men (ἔτι φαίνεται ἀνθρώποισι 135). In the Latin adaptation Iustitia's departure is, in the poet's

own

words,

hasty

(deseruit propere

137):

no

mention

of

her

loathing, which was moved forward to the beginning of the narrative, of her winged flight, which was moved forward into the Silver Age, or of the fact that she is still visible at night. In short there is not that artful metamorphosis, so elegantly achieved by Aratus, of the fleeing Dike into the constellation Parthenos.” Germanicus's translation of this section ends with one final change. When Parthenos has reached her home in the sky, Aratus says that she is located

near

to

"conspicuous

Bootes"

(ἐγγὺς

ἐοῦσα

πολυσκέπτοιο

Βοώτεω 136), the last two words echoing a phrase found at the first mention of Parthenos, σκέπτοιο

pound

epithet

πολυσκέπτοιο,

Βοώτεω

(96).

replacing

Germanicus

omits

it with a standing

the com-

epithet

of

144

Translating the Heavens

Bootes in Latin poetry, tardus ‘slow in its setting’, which is derived ultimately from Odyssey 5.272, ὀψὲ δύοντα Βοώτην, and used by Aratus at Phaenomena 585. Germanicus concludes with the image of Bootes the herdsman following behind the Wain, i.e., Ursa Major. That image, repeated mechanically from Phaenomena 93 (= Aratea 90), does nothing to convey the hopefulness of Aratus’s message that although Parthenos no longer dweils on the earth, she can be seen in the night sky and can be found by locating “conspicuous” Bootes, yet another sign of Zeus’s providence. To sum up, the weakness of the passage on the Bronze Age is due to the fact that Germanicus had already used at earlier stages in the narrative important material which he should have reserved for his treatment of the Bronze Age: Iustitia's hatred for humankind had been mentioned in the opening prayer (exosa heu mortale genus 100); her winged flight had been mentioned in the Silver Age (alite cursu 131); and the invention of

the sword had already been forcefully expressed in the line nondum sanos rabies nudauerat ensis (112).

By the time Germanicus

ue-

reached the

Bronze Age he found that his quiver was empty. Despite these criticisms of the Latin version, I do not want the reader to come away from this discussion thinking that my primary purpose is to show that Germanicus’s myth of the Ages is a poetic failure because he departed too much from the text of the original and was then unable to weld all the details of his rewriting into a unified, satisfying whole. On the contrary, my purpose has been to point out that Germanicus set himself the ambitious task of translating the myth of the metallic races in terms of a Roman

context

(Age

of Saturn,

discordia,

auaritia)

and

succeeded

overall quite well in doing so. It is true that the elaboration of the Silver Age is excessive in the context of Aratus's narrative structure and creates an imbalance in what ought to be series of ages which become progressively more degenerate. In order to correct the imbalance it would have been necessary to depart still further from the source text, a course which Germanicus did not follow. But the passage is an effective one in itself and the elaboration of parts at the expense of the whole is a regular feature of Latin translations of Aratus. It is only in his treatment of the Bronze Age that the reader begins to sense a decline in the quality of the translator's work when it is compared with his description of the other two Ages and with Aratus's Bronze Race. And this decline, as I have suggested above, comes as a result of using in earlier passages of the myth material which should have been reserved for the climactic Bronze Age.

A Second Original

145

Germanicus’s version of the Ages-myth illustrates the poetics of Latin translation in full operation with all its complex processes of transformation and their attendant problems. Through a rewriting of the source text that is on the one hand strikingly innovative, yet intimately connected to the source text, the Latin poet assimilates Aratus’s Ages-myth to the Roman universe of discourse and specifically to Vergil’s treatment of the Saturnian Golden Age. Germanicus’s use of Vergil’s poetry as an analog to Aratus’s use of Hesiod’s Works and Days achieves equivalence on an extremely difficult level, that of intertextual reference, and reveals thereby the sophistication of a translation strategy which seeks to produce a “second original.” Lest the reader form, at this stage of the investigation, the false impression that Germanicus is constantly introducing major changes into the text of Aratus’s poem, it is important to recall that in the critical description of the poetics of Latin translation given in Chapter 1 I pointed out that translators vary their mode of translation from the literal to free invention. The proem of the Aratea is an independent composition written in counterpoint to Aratus's hymn to Zeus; Aratus's catasterism myths of the Bears and Parthenos, as we have seen, were rewritten through the mediation of other poetic texts by Callimachus, Vergil, and Ovid. The substitution of a different proem and the changes made by the poet in the other two passages can best be understood in terms of the thematic importance of all three passages in the Phaenomena and the Latin poet's need to modify them to bring them in line with his own reinterpretation of the poem. The replacement of the original proem initiates a process of editing that eliminates the theme of Zeus's benevolence and the revelation of his immanence in nature through signs. As a result the poet is free to elaborate catasterism myths for their intrinsic interest as narratives, to make them the focus of attention, while in the Phaenomena they remain subordinate to the poem's great religious-philosophical theme which they are intended to illustrate. There is then a rationale for the changes. There are, however, other passages in the Phaenomena, descriptions of constellations unaccompanied by mythological narratives, whose wording Germanicus follows more closely.

146

Translating the Heavens

Draco (Aratus 45-62, Germanicus 48-64,

Cicero VIII, IX, X) Germanicus’s description of the constellation Draco" provides a good example of how closely the translator can follow the original (and there is the added advantage of having eleven lines of Cicero’s translation for comparison).

Germanicus

uses the same number

of lines (18)

as Aratus,

and there is, for the most part, a line-for-line correspondence in content between the two texts." Although the Latin poet does not reproduce every detail found in the original, he does capture Aratus's ease and lightness of touch in mapping out a rather complicated piece of celestial topography, as I will now attempt to illustrate. τὰς δὲ δι᾽ ἀμφοτέρας οἵη ποταμοῖο ἀπορρὼξ εἰλεῖται μέγα θαῦμα, Δράκων, περί τ᾽ ἀμφί τ᾽ ἐαγὼς μυρίος αἱ 8' ἄρα οἱ σπείρης ἑκάτερθε φέρονται "ApkTot, κνανέου πεφυλαγμέναι ὠκεανοῖο. αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾽ ἄλλην μὲν νεάτῃ ἐπιτείνεται οὐρῇ, ἄλλην δὲ σπείρῃ περιτέμνεται. ἡ μέν οἱ ἄκρη οὐρὴ πὰρ κεφαλὴν Ἑλίκης ἀποπαύεται ἤλρκτου, σπείρῃ δ᾽ ἐν Κυνόσουρα κάρη ἔχει ἡ δὲ Kat’ αὐτὴν εἰλεῖται κεφαλὴν καί οἱ ποδὸς ἔρχεται ἄχρις,

ἐκ δ᾽ abrıs παλίνορσος ἀνατρέχει. οὐ μὲν ἐκείνῃ οἰόθεν οὐδ᾽ οἷος κεφαλῇ ἐπιλάμπεται ἀστήρ, ἀλλὰ δύο κροτάφοις, δύο δ᾽ ὄμμασιν, εἷς δ᾽ ὑπένερθεν ἐσχατιὴν ἐπέχει γέννος δεινοῖο πελώρου. λοξὸν δ᾽ ἐστὶ κάρη, νεύοντι δὲ πάμπαν ἔοικεν ἄκρην εἰς Ἑλίκης obpíjv: μάλα δ᾽ ἐστὶ κατ᾽ ἰθὺ καὶ στόμα καὶ κροτάφοιο τὰ δεξιὰ νειάτῳ οὐρῇ. κείνη που κεφαλὴ τῇ νίσσεται, ἧχί περ ἄκραι μίσγονται δύσιές τε καὶ ἀντολαὶ ἀλλήλῃσι.

45

50

55

60

(Between the two Bears, in the likeness of a portion of a river," winds ἃ great wonder, the Dragon, writhing around and about at enormous length; on either side of its coil the Bears move, keeping clear of the dark-blue ocean. It reaches over one of them with the tip of its tail, [50] and inter-

cepts the other with its coil. The tip of its tail ends level with the head of the Bear Helice, and Cynosura keeps her head within its coil. The coil winds past her very head, goes as far as her foot, then turns back again and runs upwards. In the Dragon’s head there is not just a single star shining by itself, [56] but two on the temples and two on the eyes, while one below them occupies the jaw-point of the awesome monster. Its head is slanted and looks altogether as if it is inclined towards the tip of Helice’s tail: the mouth and the right temple are in a very straight line with the tip

A Second Original

147

of the tail. [61] The head of the Dragon passes through the point where the end of settings and the start of risings blend with each other.) Has inter medias abrupti fluminis instar immanis Serpens sinuosa uolumina torquet hinc atque hinc supraque illas (mirabile monstrum) Oceani tumidis ignotas fluctibus Arctos, semper inocciduis seruantes ignibus axem.

cauda Helicen supra tendit; redit ad Cynosuran squamigero lapsu. qua desinit ultima cauda hac caput est Helices; flexu comprenditur alto Serpentis Cynosura; ille explicat amplius orbes sublatusque retro maiorem respicit Arcton. ardent ingentes oculi, caua tempora claris ornantur flammis, mento sedet unicus ignis. tempus dexterius qua signat stella Draconis

50 [63] [64]

55

60

quaque sedet mento, derecta nouissima cauda

extremumque Helices sidus micat. hac radiatur Serpentis decline caput, qua proxima signa Occasus ortusque uno tanguntur ab ore." (In the middle of the Bears a monstrous Snake, like a rushing river, twists its winding coils [50] on this side and that and above them (a wondrous

portent), the Bears unknown to the swelling waves of Ocean, ever watching over the axis with their never-setting fires. With its tail it extends above Helice, with its scaly glide it returns to Cynosura. Where the tip of its tail ends, [55] there lies the head of Helice; in the deep bend of the Snake Cynosura is enclosed. The Snake unrolls its coils further and raising itself up in the opposite direction looks back at the Greater Bear. The great eyes sparkle; the hollow temples are adorned with bright flames, on the chin sits a single star. [60] On a straight line with the point where a star marks the right temple of Draco and its chin, there shines the very tip of Helice's tail. The head of the Snake, bent down, shines where the points of rising and setting, being closest to one another, are touched by one circle.)

In a passage which maps out the relative positions of three different constellations the translator is well advised to follow carefully Aratus's guiding hand: the structure and wording of the passage neatly organize the details of location, shape, and relative position into a clear picture. After locating Draco, which is said to resemble "a portion of a river" between the two Bears, Aratus fixes the position of the constellation figure relative to them by directing the observer's eye to three key reference points, Draco's tail, coil, and head. The poet begins with a general orientation of the three constellations, using the first two reference points, tail

148

Translating the Heavens

and coil (49-50):

Draco stretches toward the one Bear (ἄλλην)

with the

tip of its tail (νεάτῃ.. οὐρῇ), and hems in the other (ἄλλην) with its coil (σπείρῃ). This general orientation is given greater precision in 50-54, where each reference point, placed at the beginning of the line, is connected with that part (the head) of the Bears, now differentiated by their

names Helice and Cynosura, near which they are located: the tip of Draco’s tail lies near the head of Helice, its coil by the head of Cynosura. These alternating pairs of associations reinforced by repetition—tip of tail/the one Bear, coil/the other Bear, followed by more precise information, tip of tail/head of Helice, coil/head of Cynosura—recreate the stellar pattern with a verbal one. There follows in 54-62 a description of Draco's head that gives the anatomical features marked out by stars, one each on temples, eyes, and chin (54—57); and the orientation of the head, nodding toward the tail of Helice (58-59). The poet expands the last point into an instruction for finding Helice's tail (59-60): one can draw a straight line on the stars in Draco's mouth and right temple (left according to Hipparchus) to the star in the tip of Helice's tail. The passage concludes with the location of Draco's

head near the horizon

(61—62).

The

artfulness of the whole description, on the structural level, lies in the identification and paired arrangement of the key reference points of the Draco constellation figure with corresponding anatomical features of the Bears. The Latin poet wisely follows this structure. It is not necessary to point out all the verbal correspondences between the Greek and Latin texts since these are clear enough: at certain points the Latin is less detailed than the Greek. Instead, I want to concentrate on a few items of special interest. The opening lines of Germanicus's translation are an especially close rendering of the original. The first line in particular has a notable verbal precision when compared with the original: the word order of the prepositional phrase has inter medias (48) follows that of the Greek, τὰς δὲ δ᾽ ἀμφοτέρας (45); and the past participle abrupti in the phrase abrupti fluminis instar (48), although not semantically equivalent to the noun ἀπορρώξ (45), is composed of equivalent verbal elements, ab = ἀπό and rumpo = píyvuu." It is not clear why Germanicus translated Aratus's phrase "like a portion of a river" as "like a rushing river." Perhaps he was influenced by Cicero, who translated it as rapido cum gurgite flumen. Has inter, ueluti rapido cum gurgite flumen, toruu' Draco serpit supter superaque reuoluens sese, conficiensque sinus e corpore flexos. (VIII)

A Second Original

149

(In between them [the Bears], like a river with a rushing current, the sav-

age Snake slithers, rolling itself above and below and forming out of its body twisted coils.)

Cicero’s rapido cum gurgite and Germanicus’s abrupti can be considered equivalents of the adjective dmoppw , but not of the noun. In any case, it appears that the Latin poets were interested in giving an impression of movement as well as of size. The point of Aratus’s phrase “like a portion of a river” is twofold: first, of course, the comparison of a snake to a river greatly enhances the size of the snake; and second, the description of it as a "portion" indicates the observer's perspective because, unlike terrestrial rivers, the whole length of Draco from head to tail lies in the observer's field of vision. Cicero and Germanicus either failed to notice or ignored this second point." Aratus refers twice to the enormous size of the snake, μυρίος (47) and μέγα Gata (46), and once to its frightening aspect, δεινοῖο πελώρου (57). Cicero and Germanicus, taking the hint in δεινοῖο πελώρον, which they do not translate in the corresponding lines of their versions (Cicero IX.4, Germanicus 59), make additions to the source text to realize its potential for pictorial elaboration. In the second line of fragment VIII Cicero begins his additions to the original by substituting the more colorful epithet toruus for Aratus's μυρίος (47): Germanicus's immanis (49) is the correct

rendering. This addition is followed by others of picturesque detail: the verb serpit, the mot juste for snaky locomotion, which also suggests a pun on the Latin name Serpens; the emphatic pleonasm of reuoluens sese and conficiens sinus e corpore flexos; and three more epithets in fragment IX (quoted below, trucibus oculis, feruida lumina, and a tereti ceruice. Germanicus engages in a similar, though less extensive process of pictorial elaboration through the addition of epithets: simuosa uolumina (49), squamigero lapsu (54), ingentes oculi and caua tempora (58). It may also be worth noting that the sibilant sound effects that normally accompany serpentine contortions in Latin poetry are less pronounced in Germanicus's version than they are in Cicero's. (I do not detect any attempt at producing such an effect in Aratus's lines.) The alliteration in Cicero's lines has an Ennian ring to it, heavily accentuated as it is by the accumulation of s sounds at both the beginnings and ends of words (five beginning with s and four ending in s and two with medial s (sese and flexos). Germanicus adopts a subtler Vergilian sound." His phrase immanis Serpens sinuosa uolumina (49) shows a more delicate handling

of sound

imitating sense; in addition to the acoustic effect, the choice of words, one

150

Translating the Heavens

of three syllables and two of four syllables, are suggestive of both size and motion. How deftly our poet can reproduce the syntactic concision of the original is well indicated by two lines on the disposition of the stars in Draco’s head (58-59 = Aratus 54-57). οὗ μὲν ἐκείνῃ

οἰόθεν οὐδ᾽ οἷος κεφαλῇ ἐπιλάμπεται ἀστήρ, ἀλλὰ δύο κροτάφοις, δύο δ᾽ ὄμμασιν, εἷς δ᾽ ὑπένερθεν ἐσχατιὴν

ἐπέχει

γέννος

δεινοῖο

πελώρου.

(In the Dragon’s head there is not just a single star shining by itself, but two on the temples and two on the eyes, while one below them occupies the jaw-point of the awesome monster.) ardent ingentes oculi, caua tempora claris ornantur flammis, mento sedet unicus ignis.

(The great eyes sparkle; the hollow flames, on the chin sits a single star.)

temples are adorned with bright

Here Germanicus has successfully recreated the quick movement and syntactic neatness of the original by employing three short asyndetic cola whose arrangement follows the descending order of luminosity of the stars described:" the brightest stars, located in the eyes, are ingentes: the stars that shine in the temples, next in order of luminosity, are simply clara, and the faintest star, located in the chin, has no qualitative modifier at all.” This is, I believe, the aesthetic motive that lies behind his alteration of Aratus's arrangement: temples, eyes, chin. Germanicus, however, introduces greater variety of expression and arrangement. Aratus employs the following pattern, number of stars (δύο, δύο, eis 56) followed by anatomical feature (κροτάφοις, ὄμμασιν, Eaxarıtv...yevuos 56-57); these anatomical features are not accompanied by epithets and there is only one verb for the radiation of light, ἐπιλάμπεται

(55). Germanicus

transforms

the austere economy of the description by dropping the anaphoric δύο and replacing it with the epithets ingentes and caua: in the first clause he actually identifies the stars with Draco's eyes, ardent ingentes oculi; he substitutes synonymous terms for ἀστήρ, flammis and ignis; he elaborates ἐπιλάμπεται into ardent and ornantur; and finally he varies the word order from clause to clause. It is interesting to note that Germanicus did not translate ob μὲν ἐκείνῃ οἰόθεν, οὐδ᾽ οἷος κεφαλῇ ἐπιλάμπεται ἀστήρ (54—55). Perhaps he found

A Second Original

151

the thought redundant in a context where the very next lines describe how many stars shine on Draco’s head or was puzzled by the meaning of οὐ μὲν..«οἰόθεν, οὐδ᾽ οἷος, which is an adaptation of a Homeric phrase.” The pleonastic expression “not just a single star shining by itself" emphasizes the point, as a scholiast observed (ZAratus 96.7-9), that Draco’s

head

is

well delineated by five stars which mark out three different features, temples, eyes, and jaw. In this respect Draco is much better off than other constellations whose heads are defined by a more economical or more erratic distribution of stars. Cicero’s gets the gist of the Greek in the phrase non una modo...stella (“not just one star") in the first line of another fragment from his translation of the Draco passage: Huic non una modo caput ornans stella relucet, uerum tempora sunt duplici fulgore notata, e trucibusque oculis duo feruida lumina flagrant, atque uno mentum radianti sidere lucet. (IX. 1—4)

(Not just one star shines adorning its head; in fact its temples are distinguished by a twofold brightness, and from the menacing eyes two glowing lights blaze, and with one gleaming star the chin shines.)

Although Cicero does not reproduce the syntactic concision of Phaenomena 56—57 and expands the description into three lines without any noticeable gain in precision of detail or effectiveness of description, he does preserve more of the semantic content than Germanicus." Cicero also introduces picturesque epithets, trucibus and feruida, and employs greater uariatio of expression for number, duplici and duo; for star, stella, fulgore, lumina, sidere; and for the radiation of light, relucet, flagrant, radianti, and lucet. In general, when it comes to describing the various parts of constellation figures Germanicus has mastered Aratus's skill in crafting neat, concise descriptions, whereas Cicero shows an irrepressible tendency to expand them with his more or less formulaic expressions for luminosity and the radiation of light. It is as if Cicero wanted to outdo in Latin the formulaic language of astronomical description in Aratus’s catalogue poem.

Thus

far

we

have

examined

Germanicus’s

method

catasterism myths (Arctoe and Parthenos) and a complex

of

translating

piece of astro-

nomical description (Draco). In addition to these narrative and descriptive modes there is a third in which a catasterism myth is merely alluded to and the reader is left to supply the story. A good example is the catasterism of the river Eridanus into which the flaming body of Phaethon crashed, struck down by Jupiter's thunderbolt.”

152

Translating the Heavens οἷον γὰρ κἀκεῖνο θεῶν ὑπὸ ποσσὶ λείψανον

Ἠριδανοῖο,

πολυκλαύτον

φορεῖται ποταμοῖο. (359--360)

(For under the gods’ feet that too moves a separate group, a remnant of Eridanus, river of much weeping.)

The allusion to Phaethon’s fall into the river is as concise as it can possibly be. Aratus says that a remnant (λείψανον) of the Eridanus has been enstarred

and

that it is a river of tears (πολυκλαύτου

toTapoto).”

The

reader is left to infer why there is only a remnant of the river in the heavens, who was mourning, and what the cause of mourning was. From the brief allusion

in the

text one

must

recollect

the

myth’s

scenario:

the

burning body of Phaethon crashed into the river; part of the river was burnt up from the flames of Jupiter’s thunderbolt, hence λείψανον; Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliades, mourned their lost brother and were turned into poplar trees; the river received the Heliades’ tears, which became beads of amber as they fell in. Despite the extreme brevity of the vignette Aratus does manage to give it a touch of pathos. He alludes to the two most important events relevant to the catasterism myth, the remnant of the river (λείψανον) left by Phaethon’s flaming corpse, and the mourning of the Heliades (πολυκλαύτου).

Moreover,

through

this brief characteri-

zation Aratus depicts the river in its sorry state as the victim of the crash. A comparison of Cicero’s and Germanicus’s versions is instructive for it allows us to observe how both poets, on the one hand, seize the opportunity to rewrite the source text through

the poetics of Latin

translation

and, on the other, produce very different versions in accordance with the poetic styles dominant at the time when they wrote. Neither one of them is content with reproducing the austere brevity of the original. They both favor a more pathetic treatment which fills in what Aratus leaves unsaid. Cicero’s version (145-148) focuses on Aratus’s allusion to the mourning

of the Heliades." Namque etiam Eridanum cernes in parte locatum caeli, funestum magnis cum uiribus amnem, quem lacrimis maestae Phaethontis saepe sorores sparserunt, letum maerenti uoce canentes. (145—148)

(For you will see Eridanus also, placed in a part of the sky, funereal river of mighty current, which the bereaved sisters of Phaethon sprinkled with their tears, as they sang of his death with grieving voice.)

A Second Original Here one finds an lacrimis, maestae, by πολυκλαύτον. peated action: the

153

abundance of words for death and mourning, funestum, letum, maerenti, ali of which were apparently inspired Cicero neatly evokes the image of an often (saepe) reHeliades sprinkling the river with their tears as they sing

with plaintive voice the death of their brother Phaethon. This last detail, letum canentes, depicts the sisters as lamenting in song what the poet himself refrains from telling, the death of their brother. It is through the grief

felt by the sisters and expressed in their dirge that the poet evokes in the reader the tragedy of Phaethon’s death. There are some, I hope, who will credit such sophistication to Cicero the poet. An interesting, if somewhat misguided, alteration of the passage is Cicero’s omission of Aratus’s reference to the “remnant” of the river. In its place he substitutes a bit of Italian local color with the descriptive phrase magnis cum uiribus, “with mighty current.” That phrase was inspired by the real Eridanus, the Po River in northern Italy with which the mythical Eridanus came to be identified." According to Polybius (2.16.6)

and Pliny the Elder (3.117)

the Po carried a greater volume

water than any other river in Italy;" and Vergil, using its Greek

of

name

Eridanus, calls it fluuiorum rex (G. 1.481—483) and describes the force of

its current thus: Eridanus, quo non alius per pinguia culta / in mare purpureum uiolentior effluit amnis (G. 4.372-373). Good piece of Italian nationalism though it is, Cicero's reference to the river's current results in an inconsistency with the source text because mention of the mighty current suggests the opposite of λείψανον, which calls to mind the damage done to the river by the flames. Cicero allows the reality of the Po River to encroach on the Eridanus, fabled river of the West." Germanicus (362—366) too capitalizes on the opportunity to construct ἃ brief narrative. Belua sed ponti non multum praeterit Amnem, Amnem qui Phaethonta suis defleuit ab undis, postquam patris equos non aequo pondere rexit, uulnere reddentem flammas Iouis; hunc, noua silua, planxere ignotis maestae Phaethontides ulnis. (362-366) (But the Sea Monster does not pass much

beyond the River, the River

which wept for Phaethon from its own waters as he gave forth Jupiter's flames from his wound, after he lost control of his father's horses, lacking the proper weight. The bereaved sisters of Phaethon, in their new treebodies, beat their breasts for him with arms that were a strange sight.)

154

Translating the Heavens

The Eridanus catasterism is now presented in a series of three evocative vignettes, one for each of the main figures in the story; Eridanus, Phaethon, and the Heliades. The river itself is personified and is said to mourn for Phaethon from its own waters (suis...ab undis 363): it becomes

a participant in the action. This innovation may have been inspired by the Greek original, if Germanicus interpreted the epithet πολυκλαύτον (360) in an active rather than a passive sense; “a much lamenting river" instead of “a much lamented river." The Phaethon vignette includes a brief mention of the youth's ill-fated ride in the chariot of the sun together with a graphic description of the manner of his death. Phaethon could not control his father's chariot because, as the poet rather tersely explains, he lacked the bulk (non aequo pondere 364) of his divine parent which was needed to act as a curb on the strength of the horses and to keep the car stable. This is a distinctly Ovidian detail.^ Mention of the rampaging

horses and chariot is immediately followed up with a gruesome picture of the punishment meted out by Jupiter; the body of Phaethon, struck by a thunderbolt, spews flames from its wound into the waters of the river. That picture, in addition to its dramatic effect, also supplies the explanation for Aratus's reference to the enstarred Eridanus as the remnant of a river: the flames of Jupiter's thunderbolt caused part of the river to dry up. In the vignettes of Eridanus and Phaethon, Germanicus has developed the catasterism myth well beyond Aratus's brief allusion and has given it a more variegated treatment than Cicero, who focuses on the sisters' lamentation. It is with the vignette of the Heliades that Germanicus achieves one of his finest moments as a translator. The transformation of Phaethon's sisters into trees as they mourn is the last episode in the myth. Neither Cicero nor Aratus mentions the transformation. Germanicus touches upon it ever so delicately. He does not describe the actual process of transformation: he does not name the kind of tree into which the Heliades were transformed, and he does not mention the tears that became drops of amber. Instead, our poet tries to communicate, with Aratean brevity, something of the mystery of the metamorphosis. The adjectives noua (365)

and ignotis (366)

underscore

the strangeness of the event as it is

experienced by the Heliades, who are presented in both their human aspect as mourners and in their, one might say, arboreal aspect as a noua silua. Vinis (366) calls attention to the bodily metamorphosis, although the poet avoids any overt statement of what has happened to the Heliades; and ignotis, which is written from the perspective of the sisters, reveals their perception that their arms, though recognizable in shape, are unfa-

A Second Original

155

miliar in appearance as they turn into branches. The "strange, new wood" and the "unfamiliar arms" are clues that readers must follow up in the imagination. The silua is noua in two senses: it is "new" because it had not existed on that spot before; it is “strange” because it is the product of a metamorphosis. One may even go a step further and interpret noua, appearing in the context of a metamorphosis, as an acknowledgement of the influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses which begins In noua..., and which contains a detailed account of the Heliades' transformation into poplars.'” Another great poetic predecessor surfaces in the last line: the high-sounding Phaethontides echoes Vergil's Phaethontiadas in Eclogue 6.62, where the sisters are transformed

into alder trees (alnos 63):

Germanicus's ulnis, placed at line end, looks like a play on Vergil's alnos in the same position. It is a poignant final touch that in the last line the poet asserts their human identity in the word Phaethontides and their human form in ulnis after they have become a noua silua. Germanicus has found a place in his Phaenomena for an Ovidian-style metamorphosis. Here it is important to note that while Cicero and Germanicus have rewritten the source text by constructing a brief narrative to which Aratus merely alludes in two words, they are still using Aratus as their model for their compositional technique: they select one or two elements of the catasterism myth, for Cicero the mourning of the Heliades, for Germanicus the destruction of Phaethon and the transformation of the Heliades; and in a few quick strokes they paint a compelling picture. A compositional technique employed elsewhere in the source text has become an important instrument in the rewriting of it. The purpose of the foregoing discussion has been to illustrate, through the comparative analysis of sample texts representing the different kinds of poetry found in the Phaenomena (hymnic proem, astronomical description, catastersim myths), how Germanicus transformed the Greek text of the Phaenomena through the poetics of Latin translation into an Augustan poem that shows unmistakable signs of Vergilian and Ovidian influence. The subjective, innovative approach gave the translator-poet great freedom in rewriting and elaborating the source text. That freedom, however, was controlled and guided by three important considerations: first, by the process of assimilating the Phaenomena to the Roman universe of discourse and specifically to the poetics dominant at the time of writing; second, by the poet's own reinterpretation of the poem based on a conception of the constellation figures which is very different from Aratus's, à conception in which the figure is actually identified with what it represents, and as a result of that shift in conceptualization they no longer serve

156

Translating the Heavens

the function of being σήματα (signs) of Zeus’s providential care; and third, by the consistent elaboration of the Phaenomena’s potential for vivid pictorialism, dramatization, and pathos, leading ultimately to a complete mythologizing of the stars. Aratus’s restraint and economy in his treatment of the constellations are rejected in favor of a more variegated presentation with a broader appeal to human interest and emotion. But there is more to Germanicus’s fusion of mythology and astronomy than a series of picturesque descriptions of astronomical phenomena combined with dramatic moments from catasterism myths. If Zeus and his “signs” have been dethroned from their position of thematic preeminence in the Phaenomena, Germanicus compensates for the loss with his own unifying theme. What that theme is will be the subject of the next chapter.

Notes 1.

The proem is one of the finest pieces of poetry written by our doctus poeta, who here plays a brilliant counterpoint to the proem of the Phaenomena, and for that reason it

has attracted much comment. Its evidential value for the question of authorship and attendant problems of interpretation are discussed in Appendix A. I mention the following discussions of the proem to which I am indebted though I do not necessarily agree with the theories and conclusions put forward in them. Steinmetz (1966) 451-457 = Steinmetz (2000) 308-315 sees the proem as a programmatic statement

in which Germanicus casts himself in the role of aemulator Arati and deliberately invites comparison

with his model. Montanari

Caldini (1976)

108-117

and (1973)

147-157 is mainly interested in the proem as an expression of the fundamental difference in outlook between the two poets: Aratus, the theistic, astronomical poet who understands celestial phenomena as a manifestation of Zeus's providential care for mankind, and Germanicus, the devotee of astrology who has a very practical interest in the stars as instruments of forecasting the future. Santini's discussion (1977) 22-32 of the proem is directed toward a reconstruction of its historical and

political background: Germanicus as a member of the Julio-Claudian house and designated successor of Tiberius. Maurach (125-131) analyzes the proem as a prime specimen of the chief stylistic feature of the whole poem; amplification of the

original effected through the use of pictorialism and pathos. He also comments on the importance of the proem as the poet's own personal statement. Voit (1987) examines the poet's panegyric of the dedicatee, identified by him as the deified Augustus, in the context of the ways in which Vergil, Horace,

Propertius,

Tibullus,

and

Ovid praise Augustus. My own discussion is directed toward a reading of the proem as the first stage in a deliberate program of rewriting that transforms the 2.

Phaenomena into an Augustan poem with its own themes and aesthetic goals. The force of the verb praedicere ‘foretell’ (15) is to be understood in the context of the preceding questions concerning the appropriate times for the activities of farm-

ers and sailors. However, the “Phaenomena” section of the poem does not really

A Second Original

157

provide a calendar for their activities; it is rather the fragmentary “Prognostica” that fulfills the promise to “foretell.” The phrase numenque secundes (16, “and may you make your divine majesty favorable”) is an unusual one for which no parallel has been adduced. In the context of a prayer addressed to a divinity, secundare would normally be taken to mean “to bring to a favorable outcome,” a meaning inappropriate to the object numen: cf. Aen. 7.259-260, di nostra incepta secundent / auguriumque suum; see Gain, Maurach, Voit (1984)

501

n. 8, and Trankle

(1960)

44-45. We are left, then, to conclude that here secundare means “to make favorable,” a meaning found in the very different context of weather conditions. It is just possible that our poet was inspired to use secundare in this “meteorological” sense, with a personal subject and with the unexpected object numen, by his panegyrical construction of the emperor as a mighty power that causes human activity to prosper

on land and sea: Augustus's numen, if it is favorable, will promote, like fair weather, agriculture and seafaring. On the identification of the living Augustus as the poem's dedicatee and of Tiberius as the natus in 16 see Appendix A (227-233).

The view now prevelant is that Ti-

berius is the dedicatee and Germanicus himself is the natus. On the history of this phrase see Fantuzzi (1980); (1950) on Idyll 17.1; and Soubiran,

Kidd, Com.; Martin,

Com.; Gow

158 n. 2.

On the spinning metaphor in deducere for composition in the "refined style" see OLD s.v. 4.6; see further Hinds (1987) 18-21; Eisenhut (1975); and Brink (1971) on Ars. P. 129. For further bibliography

and discussion see Myers (1994) 4 n. 13.

There are three possible ways to interpret the first line: (1) Aratus began his poem with Jupiter, (2) Aratus composed his beginning

in the "refined style";

(3) Aratus

drew down his beginning from heaven; on (3) compare Manilius 1.1—4. See Kidd, Com., with the bibliography

cited there, and Chapter

1, p. 59. There is

also, as Zehnacker (1989) 321 points out, a pun on the unspoken name of the dedicatee: auctor in 2 is an etymological play on the name Augustus. Cf. Manilius 1.384—386: uno uincuntur in astro, / Augusto, sidus nostro qui contigit orbi, / legum nunc terris post caelo maximus auctor. Avienius takes the translator's internal reference to the author of the Phaenomena a step further by mentioning

not only

Aratus (64-66) but also Aratus’s source, Eudoxus of Cnidus (53-54). Thus by means of the authorial sequence Eudoxus-Aratus-A vienius (me quoque 67), Avienius writes himself into the history of Greek astronomy and astronomical poetry. Steinmetz (1966) 456 = Steinmetz (2000) 314 compares Vergil's G. 2.475—477: me

so

uero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, / quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore, / accipiant caelique uias et sidera monstrent, cf. also Manilius 1.6, hospita sacra fer-

ens; for a discussion of sacra fero in the Georgics passage see Hardie (1986) 41-42. Vergil's tone of didactic seriousness is unmistakable in Germanicus's proem, although it is not sustained throughout the poem. Moreover, the phrase certissima signa (5) may be taken as an allusion to Vergil's translation and adaptation of Aratus’s “Weather Signs" in G. 1.351-463; the section begins, atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis (cf. also certissima signa at G. 1.439). See further Thomas (1988) on G. 1.351. See Introduction, p. 7. Pliny the Elder (HN

18.209-210), advocating a meteorology

based on astronomical

observation, asserts the unreliability of insect and animal weather signs (butterflies and migratory birds) for forecasting the return of spring.

158

Translating the Heavens

10. On the intertextual relationship of the first Georgic to Hesiod’s Works and Days and the Phaenomena

see the important

discussion

of Farrell

(1991)

131-168.

Bede

(1936) analyzes Vergil’s translation of the “Weather Signs.” 11. Translated by Fairclough (1999-2000). 12. Wissowa (1917) 103-104. 13. Thomas (1988) on Georgics 1.2442 comments, “Octavian has virtually replaced the absent Jupiter.” 14. Zehnacker (1989) 322; see also Montanari Caldini (19815) 73-80 and 94-114. 15. Aristotle, frs. 10, 11, 12 in Rose (1886); and Nilsson (1940), from which the references to Aristotle are taken; see also Scott (1991) 3-49.

On the “argument from de-

sign” to argue the existence of a providential deity see Dragona-Monachou (1976) 131-159. Aratus never says that the stars are divinities. Gain’s interpretation of δαιμονίη (Phaen. 188, see his note on Aratea 165) as “divine” is mistaken: there it means “hapless,” “unfortunate”: see Kidd, Com. and Martin, Com. In the Aratea, on the other hand, the stars are explicitly referred to as divinities: numina 165, 563; diuus 180, 441,

601; deus 234:

interested in developing

see Le Boeuffle xxviii.

the theological

significance

Germanicus, however, is not

of their divine aspect, but

rather in using their divine aspect as a foundation for representing the constellations as enstarred beings. The stars are not explicitly said to be subject to the con-

trol of a ruling god, though Jupiter is responsible for elevating mythological figures to the stars. 16. Germanicus has replaced the providential Zeus with natura: multa dedit natura homini rata signa salutis / uenturamque notis cladem depellere suasit (399-400). And in general he has a greater interest in celestial phenomena as practical aids to agriculture and navigation, the latter receiving more attention in the Aratea's proem than in the Phaenomena's, apparently under the influence of the first Georgic. 17. Maurach (129) gives the wrong impression when he characterizes gelidus and ardens as "malende Beiwörter” since they provide a practical description of meteorological effect.

18. Traglia (1980-1981) compares the diction of both poets; comprehensive treatment of Cicero's poetry in Traglia (1950); shorter, informative accounts in (1933) 1-71 and in Soubiran 1-106. Recently scholars have been interested tifying Cicero's anticipation of neoteric techniques, most notably Kubiak and Clausen (1986). Ewbank (1933) 2 himself had already remarked on the

Ewbank in iden(1981), connec-

tion: "His [Cicero's] sincere affection and respect was given whole-heartedly to the early Roman poets, but there is no evidence that he despised the ‘neoteroi’ in consequence of this. He laughed at them, but he himself translated Aratus with much of their technical skill. He was older than they, and stood outside a movement

which,

in actual fact, if not in historical truth, belonged to the next generation." See now Gee (2001) 421-427. 19. On the conformity of Germanicus's metrical technique to the practice of the Augustan age see Leuthold (1942)

96-114;

Le Boeuffle xxxii-xxxiv;

(1982). Leuthold called attention to Germanicus's

literary goal

and di Lorenzo

of producing

a mod-

ernized Latin translation of the Phaenomena (116): "Germanicus wollte aber nicht nur eine verbesserte Auflage der Phaenomena herausgeben sondern auch dadurch,

dass er sie für seine Zeit nach dem Vorbild von Vergil und Ovid umarbeitete, sie seinen Zeitgenossen näher bringen...Er wusste die Bedeutung der Phaenomena in vollem Umfang zu würdigen und hat aus diesem Grunde auch keine Mühe gescheut,

A Second Original

159

um seinen Zeitgenossen das Werk in einer würdigen Form zu übermitteln." Germanicus’s modernization, however, goes well beyond metrical technique and poetic 20.

style; it results in a completely different interpretation of the Phaenomena. Steinmetz (1966) 467 = Steinmetz (2000) 325: “Arat sieht vor allem Sterne, die sich zu diesem oder jenem Bild fügen, aber doch Sterne bleiben, er sieht STERNbilder. Dementsprechend zieht er Verben vor, die die blosse Lage bezeichnen oder ausdrücken, dass die Sterne mit dem Himmelsgewólbe sich drehen oder Kreisen, dass sie auf-und-untergehen, dass sie leuchten, und Adjective, die den Grad der Helligkeit der einzelnen Sterne angeben. Germanicus dagegen verwendet vornehmlich Adjective und Verben, die für die Bilder, zu denen mann die Sterne zusammenfügt, und für die Wesen, die sie darstellen, charakteristisch sind, die jene Eigenschaften und Bewegungen, die für diese Wesen eigentümlich sind, bezeichnen. Germanicus sieht also vor allem SternBILDER.” Steinmetz's paper stimulated new interest in the

Aratea, a poem which had been all but forgotten, and drew attention to Germanicus's "romanization" of the Phaenomena along with the importance of pictorialism and 21.

22.

pathos in his treatment of the constellations. It is interesting to note in this connection that already in Homer (Il. 18.483-489) the firmament and the constellations enwrought on the shield of Achilles are imaginatively described as moving. For collections of ancient testimonia on the catasterism myth of Helice and Cynosura and discussion of the intricacies of the mythological traditions attached to these two constellations see Gundel (1961); Gundel (1925); Gundel (1912); and “Sternbilder” 869-881; all with references to earlier literature. Aratus's description

of the circumpolar Bears is discussed in Chapter 2, pp. 83-86,

where the emphasis

is on the artistry and themes of the Phaenomena.

23. ZAratus 77.5—7; 78.1-3; and Martin, Com., on 27. 24. ZAratus 77.8-12. 25. Kidd, Com., on 29 and 30, interprets and translates

26. 21.

somewhat differently: "they leading, aligned towards the shoulders, but in opposite dihis translation to reflect my view that in Aratus's descripmove "shoulderwise," i.e., shoulders to the pole. noted that the Bears “always set on their heads and never

move with their shoulders rections.” I have modified tion the Bears are said to At ZAratus 79.14-15 it is on their tails." I have followed Breysig (1899) and Le Boeuffle in reading Dictaeae...deae famuli in 38; Gain (1976) reads Dictaeis...adytis [Heinsius] famuli. As I will soon explain,

there is special point to the expression Dictaeae...deae famuli, in connection with 28.

the reference to cymbala. How widely interpretation of the phrase varies will become apparent from a comparison of the following opinions. Steinmetz (1966) 480 = Steinmetz (2000) 338

reads the phrase as confirmation of the legend's credibility (“...um das Wunderbare der Erzählung glaubhaft zu machen”) while Montanari Caldini (1976) 94-96 interprets it as a profession of the poet's scepticism and in general she attributes to Ger-

manicus a deliberately sceptical and ironical treatment of myth

(94—99).

Maurach

(39) thinks that the poet wants to give greater credibility to the legend by characterizing it as old. These scholars seem to forget that Germanicus's phrase is a transla-

tion of Aratus's εἰ

ἐτεὸν

dh

and that the original

phrase is itself a Hellenistic

convention (see next note). Gain translates gratia as "charm" (“if the charm pertain-

ing to the old tale really exists"); Maurach (39) rejects Gain's version

and interprets

160

Translating the Heavens gratia as approximate in meaning to “authority” (“Autorität alter Sage"). The most accurate translation is that of Le Boeuffle: "A en croire l'antique legende." The phrase is similar to examples found in Ovid’s Mer., though there gratia is used of persons

29.

(Bómer,

Met. 2.293).

Stinton (1976) 66. In this important paper Stinton gives the most sensible interpretation of the phrase εἰ ἐτεὸν 86. He observes that the phrase has a twofold function

(63):

first,

as a narrative

device,

it signals

the novel

treatment

of legend;

second, as a component of the didactic fiction, it serves "to enhance the objective tone proper to this kind of poetry." In a more general sense such expressions of disbelief are often employed merely to emphasize the incredible nature of the story. To use Stinton's modern parallel, an expression of disbelief may carry the force of the English "I can't believe it" rather than "I don't believe it" (61). He rightly rejects the scholiast's interpretation: “a mark of hesitation or doubt" (ZAratus 80.9-10). In addition one must bear in mind that in the hands of the Alexandrian poets these

seemingly obvious professions of doubt became the conventional

formulae of the

"scholarly poet who is concerned to claim the authority of tradition" (Fordyce [1977] on Aen. 7.48). For numerous examples of these expressions in Latin poetry and their Greek models see Norden (19505) on Aen. 6.14. The conclusions there ex-

30.

pressed should be reviewed in the light of Stinton's paper. Germanicus does in fact allude to a variant tradition later in the poem when he mistakenly

refers to Ursa Minor

as Lycaonis

Arctos "the Bear, daughter of Lycaon"

(226); Callisto, the daughter of Lycaon, was transformed into Ursa Major. See next note. 31.

The catasterism of Callisto as Ursa Major is attributed in the ancient sources (cited

below) to Hesiod. The greater currency of the Callisto legend is confirmed not only by the fact that it appears more frequently than the Helice legend in ancient literature (see "Kallisto" in Roscher's Lexikon 931—935), but also by the fact that the sections on Ursa Major in Cat. (50-54) and in Hyginus (2.1) treat exclusively the Cal-

listo legend (on the nature of the work known as the Catasterismi see Chapter 4, n. 11); and similarly ZAratus 72.8—75.6 and ZGer. 58.5-19 devote much more space to recounting the details of the Hesiodic Callisto legend than they devote to anno-

tating the Helice legend as it is given by Germanicus and Aratus. In his reconstruction of the Callisto legend Sale (1962) points out that there is no way of knowing how the legend ended in Hesiod and suggests that it may well have been Eratosthenes who added the catasterism of Callisto. On Ovid's versions of the myth in Met. and Fast. see

Heinze

(19603)

349-350,

385-388;

Johnson

(1996)

9-24;

Gee

(2000) 174-187. 32. Germanicus uses incunabula in the transferred sense of ‘infancy’ (prima incunabula = ‘earliest infancy’) rather than ‘the apparatus of a crib’ or ‘crib’; so also Ovid, Met. 3.317, incunabula Bacchi, and Manilius 2.15, Iouis et cunabula magni. At Met. 8.99 Ovid uses incunabula in the sense of ‘birthplace’ in the phrase louis incunabula, Creten.

33.

Similarly Vergil refers to Jupiter, in his Cretan phase, as caeli regem though he is an infant and dependent on bees for nourishment (G. 4.152). The phrase Διὸς μεγάλον ἰότητι is a good example of the way in which Aratus can combine Homeric and Hesiodic phraseology.

Homer uses ἰότητι

11 times (plus 2 examples

in the Homeric

Hymns: the accusative occurs once, Il. 15.41), but it is never accompanied by the genitive phrase Διὸς μεγάλον; Hesiod never uses ἰότητι. Both poets, however,

A Second Original share in common

the phrase Διὸς

fines of Homeric and Hesiodic

34.

μεγάλον

διὰ

usage in this

161 βουλάς. Within the narrow con-

instance,

Aratus’s Διὸς

μεγάλον

ἰότητι is an innovation. See Janko (1992) on Il. 15.41, and Hainsworth, in Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth (1988), on Od. 8.82. Another mother thunderstruck at the loss of a child at Met. 5.509-510, mater [Ceres]...attonitaeque diu similis. Translation by Mair (1921), with modifications.

35. 36. Cf. also Ovid, Her. 11.71—72 patrias uagitus ad aures / uenit (Acolus hears the cries 37.

of his daughter). McLennan (1977) on Hymn

1.46 observes

that Germanicus, like Callimachus,

lo-

cates the Asian Corybantes in Crete. Aratus follows the main tradition in which the Cretan Curetes, attendants of Rhea, protected the infant Zeus. For further details about the tradition see Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) on Hor., Carm. 1.16.7, and Im38. 39.

misch's article "Kureten" in Roscher's Lexikon 1587-1628. According to Frisk (1960) the etymology of the word is unknown. Aratus and Callimachus may be suggesting different etymological meanings for Κούρητες: in Phaen. 32 the participle κουρίζοντα is taken to mean "being an infant" (see Kidd, Com. and Martin, Com.); in the Hymn to Zeus, 54, the participle κουρίζοντος is taken to mean “wailing like a baby” (McLennan [1977], though this interpretation is questioned by Martin, Com.). Accordingly, in the Phaen. the ety-

mological connection is based on Zeus's infancy and the name Κούρητες signifies their role as protectors of Zeus as κοῦρος, while in Callimachus's Hymn the etymological connection is based on the infant's cries, which might betray his hiding place, and the Curetes are significantly named as the ones whose noisemaking masked the cries of the infant Zeus. Germanicus's uagitus, Ovid's uagiat, and Vergil’s canoros / Curetum sonitus crepitantiaque aera (G. 4.150-151) are clearly derived from the latter etymology. Lucretius (2.633-635) hints at both meanings: Curetas qui Iouis illum / uagitum...pueri circum puerum. See O'Hara (1996) 284. In Germanicus's version the separation of aera pulsantes at the beginning of 36 from Corybantes at the end of 38 is paralled by the separation of the noun Koó-

40.

ρητες and the participle of κουρίζω in the passages from Aratus and Callimachus. The septem element in Septentriones is found in tmesis in Cicero, Vergil, and Ovid: Cic., fr. V, quas nostri Septem

soliti uocitare triones; Verg., G. 3.381,

talis Hy-

perboreo Septem subiecta trioni, Ovid, Met. 2.528, gurgite caeruleo Septem 41.

hibete triones, both cited by Soubiran 197 n. 2. For a collection of ancient testimonia and catasterism

959-963

and Gundel (1949), esp. 1945-1951,

myths

42.

"Sternbilder"

where eighteen different identifica-

tions of Parthenos are given. In Latin poetry Parthenos-Virgo

fied as Erigone,

see

pro-

daughter of Icarus, an identification

which

is most often identi-

is probably

due to

Eratosthenes" famous poem of the same name. Solmsen (1947) gives a detailed reconstruction of the poem; see also Merkelbach (1963) 469—526; the fragments of the poem have been edited most recently by Rosokoki (1995). On the Hesiodic myth of the metallic races and its extensive bibliography see West

(1978) on Works and Days 106-201; and Gatz (1967) 28-51 Aratus, cussed Ludwig (1996).

on Hesiod, 58-76 on

Cicero, Germanicus, and Ovid. Aratus's version of the Hesiodic myth is disin Kaibel (1894) 83-87; von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1924) 2.265-270; (1963) 440—442; Solmsen (1966); Erren (1967) 36-39; and Schiesaro Germanicus's rewriting is discussed in detail by Steinmetz (1966) 458—465

162

Translating the Heavens = (2000) 316-323 and by Maurach 148-157. Full collections of illustrative material on the myth in Greek and Latin literature are available in Smith (1913) 244 on

1.3.35, and Bömer, Met. 1.89-162. Readers will now want to consult Bellandi, Berti, and Ciappi (2001). 43. Ross (1987) 35-36 and O'Hara (1996) 54 and 196 on Aen. 7.720. 44. Sailing-metaphors and chariot-metaphors for literary composition are common in Latin prose and poetry. They can be purely ornamental or they can be used as structural devices to mark the beginning or the end of a literary work or to signal a transition from one topic to another. The parallels adduced by Steinmetz (1966) 463 n. 6 z Steinmetz (2000) 321 for Germanicus's use of the metaphor are not quite apposite (G. 1.40 and 2.541—542): G. 1.40 marks the beginning of that poem's argument, and 2.541-542 mark the end of the second book. Germanicus, however, uses the metaphor to signal the transition to the excursus on Virgo-Iustitia. A closer parallel would therefore be Ovid's Ars am. 2.425—428 where the chariot-metaphor ends a digression and marks the poet's return to the main theme; at Fast. 6.586 Ovid assures the reader that he will not digress for too long on the death of King Servius: nos

45.

46. 47.

tamen adductos intus agemus equos. There is in Roman literature no fully developed mythological tradition attached to the personified figure of Iustitia, apart from her role as the alienated goddess who abandons mankind. Vergil and Ovid do no more than to make her appear only to disappear: Justitia, G. 2.474; Virgo, Met. 1.149-150; Justitia, Fast. 1.249—250; cf. Catull. 64.398. See Weinstock (1971) 243-248, and Franchet d’Espérey (1997). The repeated te, the vocative dea, as well as the vocatives in 104 followed by the reference to the goddess's ancestry, and the verb canam, are all elements of a hymn. Kaibel (1894)

85-86

and Martin,

Com., conclude from these lines

that Aratus re-

jects the traditional identification of Zeus as Dike's father and replaces him with Astraeus. That conclusion is premature because the identity of Parthenos herself has yet to be established in the narrative. As von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1924) 2.265 rightly pointed out, Aratus's statement about Dike's father, at this stage of the story, is inconclusive.

48.

Solmsen (1966) 125 are stated by Aratus: traeus or identify her the phrase εἴτε tev

gives the correct interpretation of the two possibilities as they "We may either regard the Maiden as a daughter of 'ancient' Aswith Dike, who in the early days dwelt among men on earth”; ἄλλου leaves open the possibility of Zeus's paternity (124, n.

4). Kidd, Com., likewise sees a hint at Zeus in the second alternative.

Is Parthenos

to be identified as a daughter of Astraeus or as the daughter of someone else, i.e., Zeus? It becomes clear in the narrative of the catasterism myth that Aratus chose the latter identification, Dike the daughter of Zeus. It may well be the case that Aratus himself invented the catasterism of Dike as the constellation Parthenos. For a different interpretation of Virgo's identity see Santini (1987).

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

Ecl. 4.6; G. 2.473-474; cf. also Ovid, Fast. 1.249-250. Steinmetz (1966) 461 = Steinmetz (2000) 319.

[Justitia] iura dabas nicely reproduces the etymological δικαίων.

figure in Δίκη,

δώτειρα

Steinmetz (1966) 461 = Steinmetz (2000) 319. Vergil’s treatment of the Golden Age is discussed by Smolenaars (1987), and by Wilkinson (1963); see further Johnston (1980), especially 41-61 on Ecl. 4 and G.

A Second Original 2. Farrell (1991) 161-162 has an important Vergil’s “aetiology of labor.”

discussion

163 of Aratean influences

on

54. Fairclough (1999-2000). 55. Cf. also Ecl. 4.17: pacatumque [noua progenies] reget patriis uirtutibus orbem. 56. Maurach (64) at first suggests the possibility that Germanicus has given to Iustitia the part played by Saturn as a teacher of the arts of civilization in Aen. 8.314—323, but then goes on to reject the obvious connection between the two passages on the ground that sincerae artes does not mean "practical arts of civilization" but rather

“just, virtuous behavior." Gain concludes in his note on 130 that "artibus has nothing to do with the arts of civilization which do not come into our account at all." There is, however, no reason why sincerae artes should be taken in the narrow sense of "virtuous behavior," especially since they are to be employed for a variety of practical purposes (in omnem uitae usur). Furthermore, the thought of these lines

and its expression are consistent with other references to the improvement of human life through the development of artes: e.g., Cic., Leg. 1.8.26, artes uero innumerabiles repertae sunt, docente natura. Quam imitata ratio res ad uitam necessarias sollerte consecuta est. Cf. also Off. 2.15; Verg., G. 1.145, Aen. 6.663; and Sen.,

Ep. 90.7. The meaning of sincerae artes takes its cue from the artes indomitae of 130: agriculture, viticulture, and animal husbandry are simple, benign artes as opposed to the violent artes of crime and warfare to which the Bronze Age is given.

Gain's and Maurach’s preference for sincerae artes in the restricted sense of “virtuous behavior" instead of "arts of civilization" was probably motivated by a desire to save our author from the noticeable inconsistency of a Golden Age in which man acquires the use of artes to support himself while at the same time the earth supplies his needs sponte sua, an inconsistency which I will soon address.

57. Verg., G. 2.540; Tib. 1.3.47; Ovid, Met. 1.99; Juv. 15.168.

Santini (1987) 140 n.

18 observes that Germanicus's use of a series of negative expressions to characterize life in the Golden Age (nondum...nec...neque...nec) is similar to Ovid's description in Met. 1.89-112: see Bómer, Met. 1.89-112, headnote to "Die Goldene Zeit";

cf. also Tib. (108-109).

1.3.37—44.

Aratus, however,

is the model:

οὕπω... οὐδὲ .. οὐδὲ ...

58. Verg., Ecl. 1.71—72, en quo discordia ciuis / produxit miseros; G. 2.496, infidos

59.

agitans discordia fratres, Hor., Carm. 3.24.25-26, o quisquis uolet impias / caedis et rabiem tollere ciuicam. See further TLL s.v. ‘discordia’ 1338.77 ff. Auidissima spes and diuitiae are additional links to the Vergilian conception of the Ages-myth in Aen. 8.314—327; for it is amor habendi, acting together with belli rabies, that brings down the Golden Age. Seafaring receives a different treatment at G. 1.136-138, in the famous passage on the aetiology of labor, where it is presented as the product of human resourcefulness.

60. Steinmetz (1966) 461 = Steinmetz (2000) 319. 6. Verg., G. 1.125-127; Tib. 1.3.43-44; Ovid, Am. 3.8.42 and Met. 1.135-136. 62. Compare the reaction that attends the departure of Iustitia: haec effata super montis abit alite cursu, / attonitos linquens populos grauiora pauentis (131-132); and the reaction that attends the return of Augustus's numen to the heavens: hic, Auguste, tuum genitali corpore numen / attonitas inter gentis patriamque pauentem (558—559). Both passages appear to be indebted to Ovid's description of the impact of Caesar's assassination at Met. 1.202-203: attonitum...terrore...humanum genus. Steinmetz (1966) 463 z Steinmetz (2000) 321 sees

164

63. 64.

Translating the Heavens a connection between the catasterism myth of lustitia and Augustus’s dedication of a temple to Iustitia in Rome. Cf. G. 1.127-128: ipsaque tellus / omnia liberius nullo poscente ferebat. Aratus's departure from Hesiod's description of the earth as a spontaneous and gen-

erous provider (Works and Days 116-118) is not so strange an innovation as it may appear to be at first sight. I suggest that, in the process of grafting Dike onto the Ages-myth, Aratus simply added another detail from Hesiod's characterization of the goddess found at Theog. 901—903: δεύτερον ἠγάγετο λιπαρὴν Θέμιν, ἢ τέκεν Ὥρας /Etwoulny τε Δίκην Te καὶ Εἰρήνην τεθαλυῖαν, αἵ τ᾽ ἔργ' ὠρεύουσι καταθνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι. Although the precise meaning of the verb dpedovor is uncertain (see LSJ? s.v. and West [1966] on 903), the general sense is clear: Dike, along with the other goddesses named, protects or fosters the plowed fields. Hesiod’s characterization of Dike as a goddess who helps to advance man’s livelihood lies behind Aratus’s statement that Dike, the plow and the oxen provided everything in abundance (113). In the minds of both poets, when justice prevails, the works of men flourish: see Solmsen (1966) 124-128. Moreover, as von WilamowitzMoellendorff observed (1924) 2.265, there is an important thematic consideration,

made clear in the Phaenomena’s proem, which prevented Aratus from depicting the Golden Age as a time when the earth produced food spontaneously for humans: Aratus could not present a period in human history when the stars did not perform their 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70.

Zeus-given function as signs that guided agricultural activity on earth. See Wissowa (1912?) 204-208, and his article in Roscher's Lexikon 4.427-436. Verg., G. 2.473-474; Varro, Rust. 3.1.4-5. Vergil himself is not consistent on this point. In Ecl. 4, when the Golden Age of Saturn returns, the earth will produce its fruits of its own accord (39-40); the same

thought is expressed at G. 1.125-127; but in Aen. 8.314-323

the primal condition

of human existence is one of disorder and ignorance: then Golden Age in which humans learn artes. See n. 56 above. Verdenius (1985) on 144.

comes

the

Saturnian

Hesiod, Works and Days 127: γένος πολὺ χειρότερον. Evander describes the age that follows the aurea saecla Saturni as deterior...ac decolor aetas (Aen. 8.326).

71.

Fraudes means ‘acts of wrongdoing’, ‘crimes’, and should not be limited to “crooked dealing” (Gain) or “la fourberie” (Le Boeuffle). Cf. Verg., Ecl. 4.31, uestigia fraudis and OLD s.v. ‘fraus’ 3.

72.

Catull. 64.384, praesentes [dei] namque ante domos inuisere castas; Verg., G. 2.524, casta pudicitiam seruat domus; Hor., Carm. 4.5.21, nullis polluitur casta domus stupris. Luck (1976) 221 n. 13 calls attention to Catullan influence in Germanicus's treatment of the Ages-myth. It may not be far-fetched to see an astronomical as well as a literary motive for the veiled figure of Iustitia: her face is said to be covered because the stars that form the

73.

face and head of the constellation are faint. The veil thus becomes a device for explaining the dimness of the stars. It should also be noted that the veil is a traditional garment of the female mourner and that in Hesiod, Works and Days 222, Dike is described as κλαίουσα πόλιν καὶ ἤθεα λαῶν. 74. The beginning of lustitia's prophecy bears a somewhat comic resemblance to G. 2.59: pomaque degenerant sucos oblita priores. Our poet appears to have been unin-

fluenced by Horace’s adaptation of Dike’s prophecy at Carm. 3.6.46-48.

A Second Original 75. 76.

165

Verg., Ecl. 4; G. 1.125-146; Aen. 8.314—327; Tib. 1.3.35-50. For the full myth of Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages see Ovid's Met. 1.89-150. The phrase iustissima Virgo neatly combines the name of the constellation with an echo of the goddess's name. It may also be a response to Ovid's Virgo Astraea who abandons the earth at the end of his version of the Ages-myth in Mer. 1.149-150, a

version which shows signs of Aratean influence. If Virgo is to be identified with Dike-lustitia, then she cannot, Germanicus implies, be called Astraea "the daughter of Astraeus." 77.

In his version of the Ages-myth Ovid dispenses with the Bronze Age in two and a half lines, characterizing it as non scelerata (Met. 1.125-127); he then quickly introduces the Iron Age, de duro est ultima ferro (1.127). 'The discovery of iron occurs

in the Iron Age (iamque nocens ferrum...prodierat, 1.141—142), when humans began

78.

to mine the earth's mineral resources (1.138-140), which prove to be inritamenta malorum (140). The novelty of iron discovered in the Bronze Age becomes more striking when set against Aratus’s etymologizing word-play xaAketn...é xaMkeóaavro (130-131), in

which the name of the race becomes the element of its destruction; the word-play calls attention to the oddity of the sequence aerea proles...ferrique. Germanicus's

79.

novel combination of the Bronze Age and the discovery of iron is imitated by Avienius who puts cruentus amor chalybis (341) in the aerea saecla. It is possible that in combining the two Germanicus took a hint from Ovid who credits the Iron Age not only with the discovery of iron, but of gold as well (Mer. 1.141). Ewbank (1933) 142: “For concise and dramatic effect these three verses undoubtedly surpass the original.” On this fragment see Landolfi (1990) 93-96.

80. Erren (1967) 36-39. 81. Wagner (1905) 1647-1648, and "Sternbilder" 881-884. 82. Germanicus omits the sentence that begins at the end of Phaenomena 54 and continues through 55.

83.

Kidd, Com., translates οἵη ποταμοῖο ἀπορρώξ "in the likeness of a river," which suggests that ἀπορρώξ is tautologous. In the note he explains that here ἀπορρώξ strengthens the comparison to emphasize the notion "in the very likeness of a river" and rejects the possibility that the word has its normal meaning 'a piece broken off’ or ‘portion’. However, in light of the Homeric and later parallels (to which add Aeschylus, fr. 273 A Radt [1985]), in all of which the notion of piece or portion

is still felt, it seems better to accept ἀπορρώξ in its normal sense, ‘a portion’, and to assume that Aratus means that because the constellation Draco begins and ends, unlike the entire length of a river, at fixed points within the observer's field of vision, it resembles “a portion of a river." Similarly Eridanus is described as the “remnant of a river" (360), a description which fits both the mythological river scorched

by Phaethon and the constellation figure which, beginning

at Orion's left foot and

extending to Cetus, does in fact resemble a section of a river. Martin, Com., translates “tel le flot d'une riviére," but this too strikes me as less satisfactory than

ἀπορρώξ = ‘portion’. 84. On the transposition of 63-64 after 50 and the readings qua...derecta in 60-61 85.

Possanza (1990) 361-366. As noted by Gain. The correct rendering of abrupti fluminis river": “tel un fleuve impetueux" (Le Boeuffle).

see

instar is “like a rushing

Translating the Heavens

166 86.

In his description of the constellation Vergil uses the phrase in morem fluminis (G. 1.245), on which Servius quotes a fragment usually attributed to Hesiod’s Astronomia, ποταμῷ ῥείοντι ἐοικώς, Merkelbach and West (1967) fr. 293. Aen. 11.753: serpens sinuosa uolumina uersat, quoted by Gain.

87. 88. The phrasing is reminiscent of Ovid’s description of the snake killed by Cadmus in Met. 3.33—34: igne micant oculi, corpus tumet omne ueneno, / tresque micant linguae, triplici stant ordine dentes. Bömer, Met. 3.33, observes that micare is the

standard epic verb to describe flashing eyes. But cf. Aen. 5.277, ardensque oculis (of the snake run over by a wagon wheel).

89.

I am assuming that for Germanicus the stars B and y DRAC represent the eyes and v andt DRAC the temples. In modern pictorial atlases of the constellations B and v DRAC are the eyes and y andE the temples, although there is some variation. Much depends on the attitude and imagination of the observer.

90. The phrase οἰόθεν οἷος occurs twice, at Il. 7.39 and 226: see Kirk (1990) on 7.39, and Kidd, Com. 91. Cicero rightly understood οὐ p&v...olößev, οὐδ᾽ οἷος as an intensified expression meaning "alone by itself." 92. Cat. 176-179; Hyg. 2.32; 2.42.2; "Sternbilder" 989-993. I am especially indebted

93.

to Knaack's article "Phaethon" in Roscher's Lexikon 6.2177—2202 (especially 2187-2189 on the myth in Alexandrian poetry and 2192-2194 on the myth in Roman poetry) and to Diggle's critical discussion of the myth (1970) 3-32. πολύκλαντος can be either passive ‘much lamented’ or active ‘much lamenting’

(LSJ? s.v.). Kidd, Com., translates “river of much weeping” and understands the adjective to refer to the fact that the river received the tears of the Heliades; likewise Martin, Com., "fleuve rempli de larmes"; cf. also ZAratus 254.5-8. The natural inference is that the tears belong to the Heliades, not to the river. Since there is no indication in Aratus's text (admittedly he says very little) that he is departing from the traditional version of the story, there is no reason to assume that the river is mourning for Phaethon: rather, as the watery grave of Phaethon, it receives the tears of the Heliades, which, according to the tradition, turned into drops of amber. Cicero interprets the word in the passive sense: amnem, / quem lacrimis maestae Phaethontis saepe sorores / sparserunt (146—148). Hence the river is called πολύκλαυτος not be-

cause it shed tears but because it received the tears of the Heliades. 94. ZAratus 254.14. 95. Buescu 274, and Diggle (1970) 7-8. 96. Buescu 273 notes that some scholars have suspected magnis cum uiribus and have tried either to downplay its significance as an attribute of the river (Turnebus took it as equivalent in meaning to magnopere modifiying funestum) or to emend it. Buescu himself explains the phrase as a periphrastic expression for magnus, again an at-

tempt to downplay the literal meaning of the attribute. But the parallels that he adduces do not bear out his conclusion. In Lucr. 1.287, ualidis cum uiribus amnis, the attribute "with mighty current" cannot be called a periphrasis for magnus since it there describes a rain-swollen river in flood: the force of the current is the very thing

that the poet wants to emphasize. In Cicero's Aratea VIILI, the phrase rapido cum gurgite is a mistranslation of Aratus's ἀπορρώξ. The two attributes of the river, "funereal" and “with mighty current" can both be accounted for by the dual nature of the Eridanus-Po as the mythical tomb of Phaethon and as the major waterway of Italy.

97.

Phillip (1942).

A Second Original 98.

See Eur., Hipp. 735-741, with Barrett’s commentary (1964); with West's commentary (1966); and Escher (1907) 446—448. it as the Padus, 617. 99. On the text of line 363 see Possanza (1990) 367—369. 100. See n. 93 above. 101. Non aequo pondere is a rather compressed expression, coming other words of explanation. Gain omits it from his translation of his father's horses"). Le Boeuffle renders "sans une charge account (Met. 2.150-328)

the difference in weight between

167 Hesiod's Theog. 338 Germanicus refers to

as it does without any ("having lost control suffisante." In Ovid's Phoebus

and Phaethon

is several times mentioned as an important factor in the youth's inability to control the chariot: leue pondus 161; solita grauitate 162; nimia leuitate 164; onere adsueto

165. Ovid's prior treatment provides the background for understanding the full implication of non aequo pondere. 102. Transformation, Ovid, Met. 2.340-360: tree, Verg., Ecl. 6.62-63 (alders); Aen. 10.189-190 (poplars); Valerius Flaccus 5.429—430; tears, Ovid, Met. 2.364—366. In the Ecl. passage cited above Vergil employs the unusual device of using a patronymic, “Phaethontiadas,” to mean “sisters of Phaethon": see Coleman (1977) on Ecl. 6.62-63. Huyck (1987) favors the interpretation “daughters of Phaethon,” Phaethon being in this instance another name for Helios. The form used by Germanicus, Phaethontides, is first attested in Ovid, Met. 12.581, in uolucrem...Phaethontida, where Anderson adopts the reading Cygneida: see Bömer, Met.

12.580-582. 103. Nouus is a thematic word in Ovid’s narratives

of transformation (Bömer, Met. 2.377); it is found in the Heliades episode: stillataque sole rigescunt / de ramis electra nouis (2.364-365), and in another tree transformation (Daphne): [Phoebus] sentit adhuc trepidare nouo sub cortice pectus (1.554). Bömer, Met. 8.209, calls

ignotus “ein Lieblingswort der Met.”

Chapter 4 Doctus Poeta

In the previous chapter I several times mentioned Germanicus’s reinterpretation of the Phaenomena without fully explaining what it is, except to say that he discarded Aratus’s central theme of the constellations as signs of Zeus’s immanence in the cosmos, and instead identified the constellations with the figures they are thought to represent. In the Phaenomena Aratus, with few exceptions, treats the constellations primarily and consistently as astronomical phenomena; in the Aratea Germanicus represents them primarily as enstarred beings. This different conception of the constellations, however, is not employed for its own sake as a clever way to introduce changes into the Phaenomena and make the constellations more appealing as poetic subjects; it is rather a fundamental part of the poet’s deliberate program of rewriting which situates the Phaenomena in the cosmos of Augustan Rome and illuminates it with the refinements of Augustan poetics. Accordingly, it now remains to explain Germanicus’s reinterpretation of the poem which guided his translation of it. In translating the Phaenomena Germanicus expanded the role of the aetiological star myths to such an extent that aetiology becomes a major theme of the poem; and quite often it is the erotic element in the star myths which attracts the attention of our poet. In Germanicus’s hands the celestial sphere becomes a setting for the love-sport of gods and humans. For this reason the Aratea has more in common with the aetiological, erotic treatment of the stars found in elegiac poetry, in Callimachus’s Lock of Berenice together with Catullus’s translation, and in Ovid’s Fasti, than it does with Aratus’s religious and philosophical meditation on the constellations as proof of the existence of the divine order of the universe. The Latin poet’s greater interest in the catasterism myths that explain the origins of the constellations as humans, animals, or objects that have been

170

Translating the Heavens

enstarred, usually as a sign of divine honor—Helice and Cynosura for raising Jupiter on Crete, the Dolphin for uniting Neptune with his beloved Amphitrite, Aquila for bringing Ganymede to Jupiter—and his sustained effort in depicting the constellations as the real beings and objects which they are believed to represent are the direct result of his overall reinterpretation of the Phaenomena as an Augustan aetiological poem.' Aratus describes a total of forty-six constellations in the northern and southern hemispheres: for only fourteen of these does he give a catasterism myth, often in no more than a few lines, the length of the Parthenos and the Orion-Scorpio catasterisms being exceptional. In fact, it is his custom to give pride of place to the description of a constellation as a group of stars, and then, where he thinks it appropriate, either to allude briefly to a catasterism myth or to condense it into one or two lines. G. Kaibel has given an accurate appraisal of the Greek poet’s attitude toward these myths: Aratus disdained to write catasterisms, to learnedly imitate aetiological myths or to cleverly invent them on his own, myths full of tragic catas-

trophes or emotional scenes of ill-starred love; and then by means of skillful arrangement to link these characters and their fates to the origin of the star-map. This Ovidian and Nicandrian virtuosity was far removed from his nature and was certainly far removed from his design.

The poet of the Phaenomena deliberately avoids poeticizing the constellations as real persons, animals, and objects in their own right and does not obscure their true nature as celestial bodies under the fabric of their mythological origins. And herein, I believe, lies one of the most notable features of Aratus's poem: he is able to look at the constellations with the

poet's as well as the astronomer's eyes and to hold in balance this double vision, poetical conception and astronomical observation, as he fulfills his promise "to tell of the stars." For Germanicus, on the other hand, the aetiology of the constellation figures in the form of catasterism myths, often transmitted in variant versions, provided the material for a modern, Augustan reinterpretation of the Phaenomena, a truly doctus labor. His conception of the poem he was writing as primarily an aetiological one is revealed both in the number of catasterism myths which he added to the source text and in the specific details of his descriptions of the constellations. The profound change in tone and purpose that can be effected in just a few lines is startling, as the following passage illustrates. The catasterism of Taurus, which belongs to a mythological excursus of over thirty lines on the constellations of the

Doctus Poeta

171

zodiac (Aratus simply lists the twelve constellations in five lines), is the story of Jupiter’s abduction of Europa after he transformed himself into a bull. corniger hic Taurus, cuius decepta figura Europe, thalamis et uirginitate relicta, per freta sublimis tergo mendacia sensit, litore Cretaeo partus enixa marito. (536—539)

(Here is the horned Bull; deceived by its shape, Europa left behind her bedchamber and virginity; borne high up on its back through the sea, she realized the deception; she bore her mate offspring on the Cretan shore.)

The abduction and its result are compressed into a relative clause consisting of two participial phrases (decepta...Europe and thalamis...relicta), and two main verbs (sensit and enixa ). This arrangement

gives the

reader a view of the action from the abduction to the birth: Europa is deceived by Jupiter in the guise of a bull; too late she realizes the deception, when she is mounted on the bull's back in the midst of the water; on the island of Crete, where the bull landed her, she gives birth. In this brief narrative Jupiter's disguise is maintained; the poet does not name the god, merely suggesting the bull's true identity in the adjective Cretaeus, which alludes to the period of Jupiter's infancy on that island. In these few lines the reader is transported from the stability and sobriety of Zeus's cosmos as depicted in the Phaenomena to the Ovidian world of metamorphosis and amatory deception. And what is more, the perpetrator is Jupiter himself; the great Zeus of Aratus's hymnic proem is now portrayed as a deceiving and adulterous divinity; and this is neither his first nor his last offense in the Aratea. Erotic elements, familiar from Ovid's poetry and utterly foreign to Aratus's poem, do much to lighten and enliven the tone of this purportedly astronomical discourse: seduction by disguise (decepta figura); the humorous authorial comment thalamis et uirginitate relicta which anticipates the end of the story and plays on the paradox that even though Europa left the thalamus behind, the proper setting for a maiden to lose her virginity in the rites of lawful marriage, she still became a lover and a mother, in a quite different setting and after a very unusual courtship (one might have expected a reference to the shore or land being left behind, as in Ovid's version, litusque...relictum, Met. 2.873)? the helplessness of the mortal woman who realizes the bull's form is an illusion (mendacia sensitf and can do nothing about it; and the momentary ambiguity of marito as either (animal) mate or (divine)

husband.' The addition of other catasterism myths which, like the Taurus

172

Translating the Heavens

catasterism, include erotic elements and are handled in much the same way, shows that Germanicus was rewriting the Phaenomena in accordance with a comprehensive reinterpretation of the poem along aetiological lines.

Now let us cus has added table showing faced type are

consider as a group the catasterism myths which Germanito those found in the original. Below is given a comparative the catasterisms mentioned by each poet. Those in boldnew additions by Germanicus.

eSnrnaveapynn

Catasterism Ursae Corona Bootes Virgo Auriga

Capra Cepheus Cassiopeia Andromeda Equus

Deltoton Perseus Pleiades

Lyra Cycnus Aquila Delphin Argo Eridanus

Centaur (Excursus on Zodiac) 21. Aries 22. Taurus 23. Gemini 24. Cancer 25. Leo

26. 27.

Sagittarius Capricornus

Germanicus

31-38 70-72 90-92 96-139 157-162 165-168 184-186 198-200 205-206 218—220 234-236 248-250 261—265 270 275-277 315-320 321-323 350-352 362-365 418-420

532-535 536-539 540-542 543-546 547 551-553 554-560

Aratus

30-35 71-73 100-136 162-164 179-181 195-196 202-204 216-217 248-249 261-263 268-269

Doctus Poeta

173

28.

Aquarius

561-562

—

29.

Pisces

563-564

—

Orion-Scorpio Cassiopeia

644—660 662-666

637—646 656-658

*30. 31.

*The catasterism myths of the zodiacal constellations Virgo and Scorpio-Chelae are not included in the excursus because they occur elsewhere in the poem: the catasterism of Virgo has already been narrated at length (93—139) and so the poet simply mentions her name pia Virgo (547); the catasterism of Scorpio-Chelae will be told later in connection with the Orion legend (646—656), as the

poet himself explains: (Scorpios] quem mihi diua canet dicto prius Orione 550).

Germanicus added a total of sixteen catasterisms, thus more than doubling the number in the original (Aratus 14, Germanicus 30).* The majority of these additions is found in a passage which is itself a new and significant addition to the Phaenomena, the excursus on the zodiac (531—564). And it is a point worth noting that Germanicus's largest contribution of new material to the text of the "Phaenomena" is a catalogue of the aetiological myths about the origins of the zodiacal constellations. That fact sheds considerable light on the Latin poet's intentions when he undertook the task of translating Aratus. Accordingly, we will begin our analysis of Germanicus's treatment of the catasterism myths with the excursus on the zodiac. haec uia Solis erit bis senis lucida signis.

nobilis hic Aries aurato uellere, quondam qui tulit in Tauros Phrixum, qui prodidit Hellen, quem propter fabricata ratis, quem perfida Colchis sopito uigile incesto donauit amori. corniger hic Taurus, cuius decepta figura Europe, thalamis et uirginitate relicta, per freta sublimis tergo mendacia sensit,

535

litore Cretaeo partus enixa marito. sunt Gemini, quos nulla dies sub Tartara misit, sed caelo, semper nautis laetissima signa,

540

Ledaeos statuit iuuenis pater ipse deorum. te quoque, fecundam meteret cum comminus Hydram

Alcides, ausum morsu contingere uelle, sidere donauit, Cancer, Saturnia Iuno, numquam oblita sui, numquam secura nouerca.

545

174

Translating the Heavens hinc Nemeaeus erit iuxta Leo, tum pia Virgo; Scorpios hinc duplex quam cetera possidet orbe sidera, per Chelas geminato lumine fulgens, quem mihi diua canet dicto prius Orione.

550

inde Sagittifero lentus curuabitur Arcus,

qui solitus Musas uenerari supplice plausu acceptus caelo Phoebeis ardet in armis. cochlidis inuentor, cuius Titania flatu proelia commisit diuorum laetior aetas, bellantem comitata Iouem, pietatis honorem, ut fuerat geminus forma, sic sidere, cepit.

555

hic, Auguste, tuum genitali corpore numen

attonitas inter gentis patriamque pauentem in caelum tulit et maternis reddidit astris. proximus infestas, olim quas fugerat, undas

560

Deucalion paruam defundens indicat urnam.

annua concludunt Syriae duo numina Pisces tempora. tunc iterum praedictus nascitur ordo. (This circle [the Zodiac] is the sun’s path, illuminated by twelve constellations. The Ram famous for its golden fleece is here, the one who once carried Phrixus into the land of the Tauri and betrayed Helle; because of it the ship Argo was built; it was the one that treacherous Colchian Medea, [535] putting its guardian to sleep, gave to her illicit love. Here is the horned Bull; deceived by its shape, Europa left behind her bedchamber and her virginity; borne high up on its back through the sea, she realized the deception; she bore her mate offspring on the Cretan shore. [540] Here are the Twins whom no day sent under Tartarus, but the father of the gods himself set the young sons of Leda in the sky, always a most favorable sign for sailors. You too, Crab, because you dared to bite the descendant of Alceus [Hercules] when he was mowing down the regenerative Hydra at close quarters, [545] were made a constellation by Juno, daughter of Saturn, ever mindful of her status, ever a troubled stepmother.’ Next after the Crab comes the Nemean Lion, then the dutiful Maiden. After her comes the Scorpion who occupies twice as much of the circle as the other constellations, shining with a double light because of its Claws. [550] The goddess will sing to me of the Scorpion when she has first spoken of Orion. After it the Archer’s flexible Bow will be bent; because it was his custom to honor the Muses with humble clapping, he was received into heaven and shines in the weapons of Phoebus. The discoverer of the conch, by whose trumpet blast [555] a happier age of gods, followers of warring Jupiter, joined battle against the Titans, received the honorable reward of its devotion: like the bi-form creature it had been, so it is as a constellation. This one [Capricorn], Augustus, amid thunderstruck nations

and a fearful homeland carried your numen on its body, your natal sign, [560] into the sky and returned it to its maternal stars. Next Deucalion,

pouring out the threatening waters which he had once fled, displays his

Doctus Poeta

175

small water-jar. The two Fishes, divinities of Syria, complete the year. Then the order just described is born again.)

The series of tableaux that make up the Latin poet’s description of the sun’s path has no counterpart in Aratus’s enumeration of the zodiacal constellations. Τῷ ἔνι Kapkivos ἐστί, Λέων ἐπὶ τῷ, καὶ im’ αὐτὸν Παρθένος, αἱ δ᾽ ἐπί οἱ Χηλαὶ καὶ Σκορπίος αὐτός, Τοξευτής τε καὶ Αἰγόκερως, ἐπὶ δ᾽ Αἰγοκερῆι "Y8poxóos: δύο δ᾽ αὐτῷ En’ Ἰχθύες ἀστερόωνται, τοὺς δὲ μέτα Κριός, Ταῦρός δ᾽ ἐπὶ τῷ Δίδυμοί τε.

545

ἐν

550

τοῖς

ἠέλιος

πάντ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν

κύκλον

ἀέξονται

φέρεται

ἄγων,

πᾶσαι

δνοκαίδεκα

καί οἱ περὶ

ἐπικάρπιοι

πᾶσι

τοῦτον

ἰόντι

ὧραι.

(On it [the circle of the zodiac] is the Crab, and next the Lion, and under

that the Maiden, after her the Claws and the Scorpion itself, the Archer and Capricorn, and after Capricorn the Waterpourer; after him the two Fishes are starred, after them the Ram, the Bull after that and the Twins [550]. Through all these twelve signs goes the sun as it brings the whole year to pass, and as it goes round this circle, all the fruitful seasons increase.)

The thirty-four lines devoted to the zodiac in the Latin version afford us an excellent opportunity to observe Germanicus, now completely free from the guiding influence of Aratus’s text, as he develops his major thematic interest in the description of the constellations. Here he is working on his own and, as the results indicate unmistakably, his interest in the zodiacal constellations is aetiological. For nine of the eleven constellations Germanicus either summarizes or alludes to a catasterism myth: in two special cases, Virgo and Scorpio-Chelae, zodiacal catasterisms are narrated elsewhere in the poem." The constellations and their myths are set out in the following table." Aries (532-535)

the ram which brought Phrixus to Colchis

and en route lost its other passenger, Phrixus’s sister Helle. Taurus (536—539)

the supposititious bull (Jupiter) which carried

off Europa and landed her in Crete. Gemini (540—542)

the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.

176

Translating the Heavens

Cancer (543-546)

the crab sent by Juno to attack Hercules as he

fought the Hydra. Leo (547)

the Nemean lion slain by Hercules.

Virgo (547)

already identified as Iustitia (96-139).

Scorpio-Chelae (548-550)

the scorpion sent by Artemis to kill Orion (see 646—656).

Sagittarius

identified as Crotus, son of Eupheme, a fa-

(551-553)

vorite of the Muses, who is said to have invented clapping: the figure is represented as either a two-legged satyr or a four-legged centaur.

Capricornus

(554-560)

a biform creature (head and forequarters of a

goat, tail of a fish) which discovered the conch-trumpet and gave it to Jupiter to use in his war against the Titans. Aquarius (561-562)

Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, who to-

gether with his wife Pyrrha survived the deluge sent by Jupiter.

Pisces (563—564)

two fish which found a large egg in the Euphrates river and rolled it onto dry land: from that egg was born Dea Syria."

Since the zodiacal constellations form a universally recognized group and since their locations and their shapes have already been described earlier in the poem, the poet can easily amplify Aratus's unadorned list into an exclusively mythological excursus on the origins of these constellations. It is worth noting, however, that the aetiological approach to the zodiac was not the only one the poet could have chosen. Hence there is meaning in the choice. Cicero too worked up Aratus's austere list into an elaborate description which reveals Cicero's enthusiasm for the poem's didacticism. Aestifer est pandens feruentia sidera Cancer;

320

hunc subter fulgens cedit uis torua Leonis,

quem rutilo sequitur conlucens corpore Virgo; exin proiectae claro cum lumine Chelae, ipsaque consequitur lucens uis magna Nepai; inde Sagittipotens dextra flexum tenet arcum; post hunc ore fero Capricornus uadere pergit;

umidus inde loci conlucet Aquarius orbe; exim squamiferi serpentes ludere Pisces; quis comes est Aries, obscuro lumine labens,

325

Doctus Poeta

177

inflexoque genu, proiecto corpore, Taurus,

330

et Gemini clarum iactantes lucibus ignem. Haec sol aeterno conuestit lumine lustrans, annua conficiens uertentia tempora cursu. ([320] Cancer is the bringer of heat, when he reveals his broiling stars; beneath him comes flashing the fierce force of the Lion whom Virgo follows shining with her body aglow. Next the Claws lie extended with a bright light, and the great force of the Scorpion itself follows after; [325] next the Archer holds the bent bow in his right hand; after him Capricorn with its stormy visage makes its way; next in place shines watery Aquar-

ius on the circle; then sliding along the scaly Fishes gambol; Aries is their companion, gliding with a dim light, [330] and Taurus on its body leaning forward, and the Twins casting a bright fire stars. These [constellations] the sun arrays with its eternal light els through them and completes with its course the cycle of

bent knee, with their as it travthe year's

seasons.)

Cicero either failed to note or ignored the fact that Aratus’s purpose in listing these twelve constellations, all of which are described earlier in the poem, is to define the space occupied by the celestial circle called the Zodiac; they need no additional description. Yet, his new lines on the Zodia-

cal constellations, although they violate the economy and structural organization of the Phaenomena, are consistent with his own rewriting of the poem according to which he strives to achieve vivid portraits of the constellations through a combination of an enhanced, in comparison to the source text, epic grandeur and a zealous didacticism. On the didactic side Cicero deploys his formulaic phrases for describing a constellation figure, its radiation of light and its movement through the sky, in order to construct a numerical correspondence between the description itself and what is being described: there is one verse for each

of the twelve zodiacal constellations; and, it is worth noting, in seven of those verses the name of the constellation occupies the last position in the

line, a structural device which may have aided in the memorization of the sequence. Moreover, the passage has a certain momentum sustained by the variation in connecting links that organize these constellations as a series of twelve: syntactic monotony is avoided through the use of relative and demonstrative pronouns, prepositional phrases, adverbs, and conjunctions as the connecting links which bind these twelve constellations into a unit; and, to help clarify the arrangement, the transition from one constellation to another takes place almost always at the beginning (in 327 inde is in second position).

of the line

178

Translating the Heavens

On the epic side Cicero elaborates the unadorned names of Aratus’s list into impressive figures through the use of epithets, simple and compound, or descriptive phrases in the ablative: aestifer (320), Sagittipotens (325), ore fero (326), umidus (327), squamiferi (328),

proiecto corpore (330);

of these, three embody

inflexo genu

and

the meteorological

sig-

nificance of the constellation; Cancer — heat (aestifer), Capricorn — cold (ore fero), Aquarius — rain (umidus). In addition Cicero twice uses the ele-

vated epic periphrasis uis + adjective + name in the genitive (in both cases the archaic genitive ending in disyllabic -ai) to enhance the stylistic level and rhetorical impact of the passage: uis torua Leonis (321) and uis magna Nepai (324). This Latin zodiac has little in common with Aratus’s presentation except for the names of the constellations and their arrangement; it is the product of Cicero’s deliberate program of rewriting the Phaenomena to enhance its epic qualities and its ethos as a didactic poem. Cicero’s brother Quintus showed greater poetic ingenium when he composed a poetical tour of the Zodiac because he selected an obvious and interesting unifying theme, the change of seasons caused by the annual passage of the sun along the zodiac, a theme which allows for variety of treatment on both an imaginative and a meteorological level. We are ignorant of the larger context in which the passage occurs. Flamina uerna cient obscuro lumine Pisces curriculumque Aries aequat noctisque dieique,

cornua quem condunt florum praenuntia Tauri. Aridaque aestatis Gemini primordia pandunt longaque iam minuit praeclarus lumina Cancer languificosque Leo proflat ferus ore calores. Post modium quatiens Virgo fugat orta uaporem Autumni reserans portas; aequatque diurna

5

tempora nocturnis dispenso sidere Libra, ecfetos ramos denudat flamma Nepai. Pigra Sagittipotens iaculatur frigora terris, bruma gelu glacians iubar est spirans Capricorni, quem sequitur nebulas rorans liquor altus Aquari."

10

(Dimly lit Pisces rouses the spring breezes and Aries makes equal the course of day and night, Aries whom horned Taurus, harbinger of flowers, conceals.

Gemini

heralds the commencement

of parched summer,

[5]

bright Cancer shortens the long daylight and Leo with ferocious maw blows out gusts of withering heat. Next Virgo, shaking her bushel, puts

the heat to flight at her rising, as she opens the gates of autumn, and Libra makes daytime equal the night. The Scorpion's burning sting strips clean the branches that have already borne their fruit. [10] The Archer

shoots numbing cold at the earth, and Capricorn's radiance, breathing out

Doctus Poeta

179

congealing frost, is the home of the winter solstice. Capricorn is followed by Aquarius’s deep water showering down cloudy mists.)

The solstitial and equinoctial constellations are described with reference to their effect on the hours of day and night: Cancer marks the summer solstice, after which the hours of daylight grow shorter, and Capricorn marks the winter solstice, after which the hours of daylight grow longer; Aries and Libra make the hours of day and night equal. The other constellations are described with reference to the change of seasons. Quintus Cicero dispenses entirely with the formulaic language for stellar movement and radiation of light found in his brother’s version, and instead employs an imaginative conception of the constellations which depicts the constellation figure in terms appropriate to its meteorological effect. So, for example, Libra balances the hours of day and night; Sagittarius shoots arrows of cold; Aquarius pours out water; Virgo, identified as Ceres, brandishes the modius, a detail which suggests the richness of the harvest. The pleasing correspondence of meteorological function and zoomorphic conception gives these lines their strength. Both of these passages are significant for our understanding of Germanicus’s translation because they represent two possible ways in which he might have amplified Aratus’s list. Marcus Cicero’s purely descriptive approach and Quintus Cicero’s meteorological approach were open to him and he chose neither. One can easily imagine that Germanicus, with his penchant for vivid pictorialism, could have composed a series of lively vignettes that brought out in high relief the shapes, the brightness, and the imaginary movements of the creatures that inhabit the zodiac. As for the example of Quintus’s meteorological treatment, our poet announced meteorology as one of his themes right at the beginning of the poem and his interest in the subject is well attested by the fragments of his “Prognostica." Accordingly, a meteorological excursus would have harmonized well with the whole poem. Since pictorial description is an important technique in Germanicus’s poem and meteorology is a major theme, his decision not to follow either of these approaches in his treatment of the zodiac but to develop the excursus around the theme of stellar origins was obviously governed by his reinterpretation of the Phaenomena as an aetiological poem. The space allotted to each catasterism varies from four lines to a single epithet (Nemeaeus Leo 547) and the myths themselves range in subject matter from the familiar (Taurus the bull that carried Europa overseas to Crete) to the recherché (Pisces and the birth of Dea Syria). But in all of

180

Translating the Heavens

them the purpose is the same, to explain the origin of an anthropomorphic or theriomorphic constellation. The catasterism of Aries is especially rich in aetiological connections (532-535).'* Here the poet identifies Aries as the ram that carried Phrixus

and Helle on its back. In addition, he mentions the drowning of Helle (qui prodidit Hellen 533), thereby alluding to the aition of the name Hellespont.' He also mentions the building of the first ship for the Argonauts who completed the first sea voyage to retrieve the ram's golden fleece (quem propter fabricata ratis 534); and finally, as if to follow up every possible connection, the poet introduces the erotic element in the story, Medea's love for Jason and the assistance she gave to help him secure the fleece (534—535). Medea herself is perfida because of her treachery to her own family and her passion is incestus because of the crimes she committed to win Jason, to keep him, and to avenge herself upon him. Thus the aition of the constellation Aries becomes the point of departure for an eventful narrative sequence and for the introduction of a second aition, the name Hellespont, and a third, the origin of the constellation Argo. The presentation is adroit: a series of events mentioned briefly and allusively, arranged in chronological order and all of them dependent on Aries and its golden fleece. The origins of the next four constellations (Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo) are loosely linked by the fact that they are all related, explicitly or implicitly, to Jupiter's infidelities committed with mortal women." In the form of a bull (Taurus) he abducted Europa, who later gave birth to Minos and Rhadamanthys on Crete (536-539);'’ of Leda's

twin sons Castor

and Pollux (Gemini), the latter is said by tradition to have been the son of Jupiter (540-542); and Hercules, who was attacked by the crab (Cancer) and killed the Nemean lion (Leo), was Jupiter's son by Alcmene

(543-547). The connection is, as I said, a loose one but is supported by the fact that Jupiter's philandering is the ultimate cause of all the actions here described or implied: the abduction of Europa, the birth of Pollux and the catasterism of the Dioscuri, and Juno's sending of the crab and Nemean lion against Hercules. Although Jupiter's love for a mortal woman is directly mentioned only in the bull-Europa episode, it certainly lies in the background of the Gemini catasterism in connection with the reference to Leda (Ledaeos...iuuenis 542) and the play on pater, i.e., Jupiter, the pater of gods as well as the pater of Pollux; and it lies in the background of the catasterisms of Leo and Cancer in connection with the reference to Juno as insecure stepmother (numquam secura nouerca 546),

Doctus Poeta

181

ever conscious of her status as the queen of heaven (numquam oblita sui 546). Virgo's catasterism has already been narrated and the reader will easily recall the story. Therefore, her presence in the Zodiac requires only brief acknowledgment, pia Virgo (547). Similarly the poet passes over the Scorpion and its Claws with the promise that he will tell its story when he comes to the constellation Orion (Scorpios hinc duplex quam cetera possidet orbe / sidera, per Chelas geminato lumine fulgens, / quem mihi diua canet dicto prius Orione, 548—550). And this remark is sufficient in itself to indicate that the Scorpion is the one sent by Artemis to sting Orion. The remark is interesting in another respect. It allows the reader to catch the translator in a rare moment of poetic self-revelation about his rewriting of the Phaenomena. When the poet says that the story of the Scorpion will be told in connection with Orion, he is acknowledging the structural problem created by his addition of the excursus on the Zodiac. The excursus sets up the expectation that for each constellation there will be a catasterism myth. However, in the case of the Scorpion that expectation is disappointed because the Scorpion-Orion catasterism comes later in the Phaenomena at 634—646 and is much longer than the vignettes given in the excursus, where it would be out of place both because of its length and because of the need to include Orion, which is not a zodiacal constellation. In order to solve the structural problem that resulted from the addition of the excursus the poet comes forward and notifies the reader that he will in fact tell the story of the Scorpion's catasterism but not until his divine source mentions Orion. The constellation Sagittarius presents a special problem and therefore an opportunity for innovative treatment to the poet who is interested in aetiology. Unlike the other zodiacal constellations its identity was never permanently established by a generally accepted myth that gave an account of its history before it was translated to the stars.'* The shape of the constellation was thought to represent either a two-legged satyr or a fourlegged centaur. In the latter case there is some evidence to support the identification of Sagittarius with the famous Centaur Chiron, the tutor of Achilles.” As for Sagittarius as a satyr, the tragic poet Sositheus (third century BC) wrote a satyr play in which he made the connection between Sagittarius and Crotus, the son of Eupheme, who lived with the Muses on Mt. Helicon. He invented the bow and also invented clapping as a sign of appreciation for the Muses' singing: in return for the latter invention he was translated to the sky by Jupiter at their request.” This is, in general outline, the version followed by Germanicus (qui solitus Musas uenerari

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Translating the Heavens

supplice plausu 552), although, it must be noted, he does not mention Crotus by name (plausus, however, is the Latin translation of κρότος"). In his treatment of the catasterism myth, the poet’s doctrina introduces one interesting variation. Instead of making the obvious choice and mentioning that Crotus is reputed to have invented the bow, a perfectly good aetiological explanation of Sagittarius’s most conspicuous attribute (lentus...Arcus 551), Germanicus offers a more recondite explanation

of

the bow’s presence. Crotus’s association with the Muses, the one detail of the legend that our poet chooses to mention, entitles him, presumably as part of the reward bestowed on him by the Muses, to carry as a sign of honor the iconographic emblem of Apollo: acceptus caelo Phoebeis ardet in armis (553). And since one purpose of the catasterism myths is to help the reader visualize a shape appropriate to a group of stars, the line just quoted may be intended to suggest to the reader’s imagination, if only momentarily, a composite form of the goatish satyr and the handsome Apollo holding a strung bow.” Capricorn, next in the excursus, remains a somewhat mysterious constellation for two reasons: first, it is a biform creature, part goat and part fish, whose nature as such has never been explained;” and second, the emperor Augustus attached great importance to it as his birth-sign, though scholars continue to argue about the reasons for his choice of this sign.” Both of these considerations come into play in 554—560, where we are told that Capricorn discovered the conch-trumpet, gave it to Jupiter to use in his war against the Titans, and, as Jupiter’s reward for this service, earned

translation

to the heavens

as a constellation

(554—557).

We

are

also told that Capricorn carried the numen of Augustus into the sky and returned it to materna astra (560), the stars whence it came. The meaning of this phrase will be discussed below. The details of Germanicus's version of the catasterism coincide for the most part with those given in the Catasterismi with one notable exception: according to the latter version Capricorn was a goat and only when it was transformed into a constellation did it acquire the tail of a fish in order to signify that it had found the conch-trumpet in the sea. This artificial explanation of the biform creature is obviously an attempt to harmonize the anatomical oddity of a goat-fish constellation, which is demonstrably Babylonian in origin, with the Greek myth of a goat (or possibly goatman)

that was raised with Zeus on Crete and

assisted him

in the Tita-

nomachia. Germanicus, however, if he was aware of this explanation of the fishtail, rejected it because, as he says, Capricorn was a biform creature before it became a constellation (ut fuerat geminus forma 557). This

Doctus Poeta

183

statement is perhaps an allusion to recondite star-lore known to the author, but lost to us, that explained the origin of such a creature. Without doubt the most intriguing item in these lines on Capricorn and in the whole excursus is the ascent of Augustus’s numen on his natal sign back to the stars and the astral mysticism implicit therein. Of the several interpretations to which this passage is susceptible I want to follow up the one which I believe to be most consonant with the spirit of the whole poem, which is certainly not astrological, and with the subject matter of the excursus itself, the catasterisms of the beings found in the Zodiac and astral immortality. The poet treats the Zodiacal catasterisms (and others in the poem) as a sign of divine honor granted by the gods, most often Jupiter. In this he appears to follow Ovid, who in the Fasti often concludes a catasterism myth with the remark that a person or creature has been enstarred for a particular merit or that heaven is a reward (praemium) for meritorious behavior. The theme of catasterism as divine honor is expressly stated for four zodiacal constellations: Gemini (Ledaeos statuit iuuenis pater ipse deorum 542); Cancer (te ... / sidere donauit, Cancer, Saturnia luno

543—545); Sagittarius (acceptus caelo 553); Capricorn (pietatis honorem / ... cepit 556—557); and it is surely implied in the catasterisms of the other zodiacal constellations, as for example in the case of Pisces, the two fish which were translated as constellations by Jupiter at the request of Dea Syria, or of the Nemean lion, which was rewarded with catasterism by Juno for his fatal encounter with Hercules." The return of Augustus’s numen to the stars fits nicely into this context because, as those exempla suggest, Augustus, who in the proem is presented to the reader as the great benefactor of all mortals, deserved to be rewarded and was rewarded with eternal life among the stars. I should point out, however, that Germanicus is not talking about the catasterism of Augustus's body or any part thereof or even of the catasterism of his numen: rather, his numen is returned to the heavens to live among the divine stars. Nothing is said about the numen actually being transformed into a star or a constellation. The whole presentation seems to be the product of the conflation of three beliefs: (1) the belief that the starry firmament is the abode

of gods; (2) the

belief that persons who have benefited humankind are deified and given a seat among

the gods;* and

finally (3) the belief that the

stars are the

source of the human soul and that therefore a kinship exists between the stars and humankind.” According to our poet's conflation of these three beliefs, Augustus's numen, which here takes the place of the human soul since Augustus was a praesens diuus on earth, originated from the stars,

184

Translating the Heavens

themselves divinities, and hence can be said to have returned

there (red-

didit 560) on his natal sign Capricorn, a conceit that owes more to poetical conceptions of the deification of the emperor than to astrological doctrine." The stars are characterized as materna astra because they are the source of the human soul. They stand in the same relation to Augustus's numen as mother to offspring.” And since Germanicus was a member of the imperial cult, it is possible to see in these lines something more than a brief digression built around a poetical conceit of the emperor's deification. By representing in such graphic fashion the celestial origin and, after his death, the celestial abode of the numen Augusti, the poet reaffirms the legitimacy of the cult and the worthiness of the object of its veneration, the divine power of Augustus "who like a star had fallen to the fortune of the Roman world." Of the two constellations that remain, Aquarius and Pisces, the circumstances that lay behind the catasterism of the latter have already been mentioned and need no further comment except perhaps to remark that the legend of Dea Syria hatched from an enormous egg salvaged from the Euphrates by two fish is not found in the Catasterismi and may have been selected by our poet because it was the more recondite tale.” The catasterism of Aquarius, however, has some interesting features. proximus infestas, olim quas fugerat, undas Deucalion paruam defundens indicat urnam. (561—562)

(Next Deucalion, pouring out the threatening waters which he had once fled, displays his small water-jar.)

Germanicus identifies Aquarius as Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, who survived the great deluge that destroyed humankind. The choice of Deucalion is noteworthy because the constellation is more commonly identified as Ganymede, beloved of Jupiter and his cupbearer.” The poet's decision to follow the less common catasterism myth was probably influenced by two important considerations: the rape of Ganymede had already been related in a different connection, the identification of Aquila as the eagle of Jupiter (316-320); and the Deucalion myth allows the poet to develop the aqueous connection between the survivor of the flood and the constellation known as the “Waterpourer.” Moreover, it is possible that the poet wanted to supply a clever etymologizing aition for the origin of the constellation. Although the following etymology is no more than a conjecture because it is not documented in the ancient sources, it is possible that Germanicus is suggesting that Deucalion's name is derived from

Doctus Poeta

185

δεύω (to wet, drench). The etymological explanation of Deucalion as the “drencher” seems to me to be underscored by the paronomasia in undas...defundens; the words functioning as a Latin gloss on the meaning of Deucalion’s name." Moreover, the relative clause infestas, olim quas fugerat, undas, which economically recalls the deluge sent by Jupiter, points to the ironic reversal of Deucalion's role from that of survivor to sender of rain storms and emphasizes the etymological appropriateness of the name to the activity of the constellation. A further indication that we might expect etymological word-play here is that Aratus's description of the Waterpourer also contains an etymological explanation of the name: δεξιτερῆς ἀπὸ χειρὸς ἀγαυοῦ "Y8poxóoto, οἴη τίς τ᾽ ὀλίγη χύσις ὕδατος ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα σκιδναμένον, χαροποὶ kal ἀναλδέες εἱλίσσονται.

(392-394)

(like a small outpouring of water being sprinkled this way and that

from the right hand of the illustrious Waterpourer some pale and feeble stars go round.)

For Aratus, the etymology of the Hydrochoüs's name is a way of bringing out, on the linguistic level, the order of the heavens; in this case name and function coincide. For Germanicus, the name Deucalion and its ety-

mology are a means of humanizing the constellation and integrating it into the Zodiac of enstarred beings. There is also an important meteorological connection that underpins the identification of Aquarius with the enstarred Deucalion. The constellation Aquarius, which appears to have its origin in a Babylonian water divinity, was the sign of rainy weather when it was occupied by the sun.” Hence the Deucalion catasterism and the myth of the deluge represent the meteorological significance of Aquarius. This combination of astronomy, meteorology, and mythology finds its clearest expression in Lucan 1.653, Deucalioneos fudisset Aquarius imbres. Here the constellation (Aquarius), its notable meteorological characteristic (imbres), and its mythological, diluvial eponym (Deucalion) are explicitly noted. Germanicus's vignette presents the meteorological significance of the constellation in metaphorical terms consistent with the part played by Deucalion in the story of the deluge (infestas, olim quas fugerat, undas 561) and with the pictorial representation of Aquarius (paruam...indicat urnam 562). There is perhaps a touch of humor in the evocation of the flood waters (infestas...undas) of the deluge which are then revealed as flowing from a small

186

Translating the Heavens

pitcher (paruam...urnam); there is no danger, the poet seems to suggest, of a second deluge from Jupiter. The excursus as a whole is enlivened by two devices common to aetiological poetry: dramatic representation and authorial comments which are used to characterize persons, objects, actions, or situations. * Dramatic effects are specially prominent in the apostrophization of Cancer and Augustus, in the poet's brief aside to the reader about the forthcoming legend of Orion and the Scorpion, and in the rapid narrative sequence centered on Aries. Authorial comments, often in the form of evaluative epithets, add an extra dimension to the aetiological catasterism myth by emphasizing the human interest of the story and bringing it within the ken of human sympathetic response: the treachery of Medea (perfida Colchis 534) and her illicit passion for Jason (incesto...amori 535);

deception

and

relicta 537);

rape

of Europa

the derring-do

(decepta

of Cancer

536;

(ausum

thalamis morsu

the

et uirginitate

contingere

544); Juno the wronged wife and insecure stepmother (numquam

uelle

oblita

sui, numquam secura nouerca 546); the stunned reaction to the ascent of

Augustus's numen (attonitas inter gentis patriamque pauentem 559); and the dangerous

waters of the deluge

(infestas...undas 561).

The

overall

effect of these devices is to give to the description of the Zodiac a rich variety of emotions and experiences that takes the reader from the remote mythological past down to contemporary Rome and the ascent of Augustus's numen into the heavens. Now when we leave the zodiac and travel to the celestial demesne of other constellations, we find that Germanicus employs these same techniques in presenting their catasterism myths: dramatic representation, pathos, pictorialism, and authorial comment. In addition to the zodiacal catasterisms, our author includes seven more not found in Aratus: Bootes (Icarus) 90-92, Auriga

(Myrtilus)

157—162,

Deltoton

234—236,

Cycnus

275-277, Aquila 315-320, Delphin 321-323, and Centaur 418-420. Of these I have selected four which contain an erotic motif and are the most useful for illustrating Germanicus's method of handling such catasterisms (Auriga, Cycnus, Aquila, Delphin): the remaining three (Bootes, Deltoton, and Centaur) do not go much beyond simple identification. The lines on Auriga (157—162) are perhaps the most interesting because they combine so well many of the devices used by our poet to exploit the literary potential of the catasterism myth as an aition that goes beyond the mere explanation of origins and brings the constellation to life by recreating the most memorable episode of its former existence.

Doctus Poeta Est etiam Aurigae facies, siue Atthide terra natus Ericthonius, qui primus sub iuga duxit quadrupedes, seu Myrtoas demersus in undas Myrtilos. hunc potius species in sidere reddit: sic nulli currus, sic ruptis maestus habenis perfidia Pelopis raptam gemit Hippodamian.

187

160

(There is also the figure of a Charioteer; he is either Ericthonius, born

from Attic soil, who first led steeds under the yoke, or Myrtilos, drowned in the waves of the Myrtoan sea. [160] The latter is the one that the appearance of the constellation better represents. Thus with chariot gone, thus with reins broken, in sadness he grieves that Hippodameia has been taken away by the treachery of Pelops.)

At the outset the poet acknowledges the existence of two different identifications for the Charioteer" According to one, the constellation Auriga is Ericthonius, Attic hero and Athenian king who invented the chariot; according to the other, it is Myrtilus, the charioteer of king Oenomaus, who was instrumental in helping Pelops gain victory in his deadly race against the king; Myrtilus betrayed Oenomaus either by rigging his chariot or by causing him to be thrown from it. Although the mythographical tradition gives variant explanations of Myrtilus's motive for betraying Oenomaus and of Pelops's motive for drowning Myrtilus, our poet was following a version of the story in which Myrtilus himself had fallen in love with Hippodameia. Again, however, the tradition varies about Myrtilus's role as lover. According to one variant, he was bribed by Pelops with the promise of spending a night with her; when Myrtilos tried to claim his reward after the destruction of Oenomaus, Pelops reneged on his promise and threw Myrtilus into the sea, where he drowned. According to another variant, Myrtilus was thrown into the sea by Pelops after he tried to rape Hippodameia.” Of these two variants the first is much more likely to be the one that Germanicus was following because he portrays Myrtilus as the victim of Pelops's treachery and as a lover who has lost his beloved, an unlikely characterization for a rapist whose punishment at the hands of Pelops was justified. Germanicus prefers the Myrtilus-Charioteer catasterism because, as he points out, the imaginary outline of the constellation is better suited to represent Myrtilus (hunc potius species in sidere reddit 160). If the constellation figure represents only a charioteer without either chariot or horses, then to satisfy the requirements of pictorial realism Myrtilus becomes the obvious choice: he lost his chariot when he was unseated from it by Pelops and thrown into the Myrtoan sea (sic nulli currus, sic ruptis maestus habenis 161). If, on the other hand, Auriga is identified as Er-

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Translating the Heavens

icthonius, who was rewarded with catasterism chariot, then the Charioteer, as Germanicus’s have, as a conspicuous attribute, the chariot he ture presented by Manilius, who identifies the

for his invention of the argument implies, should invented. Such is the picCharioteer as Ericthonius:

he refers to the Attic hero as memor currus “minding his car”

(5.20) and

describes the rising of the constellation as the upward course of chariot and horses: primum iuga tollit ab undis / Heniochus cliuoque rotas conuellit ab imo “straightaway the Charioteer lifts his team from ocean and wrests his wheels up from the downward slope of the horizon” (5.68—69).

In Germanicus’s imaginative conception of the constellation there is only the driver holding the broken reins. Even so, his justification of his choice is artificial. His motive is literary refinement rather than astronomical precision. He is not very much interested in Myrtilus as a figure that offers a more precise delineation of the constellation, which in any case does not readily strike the observer’s eye as a charioteer whether it be Myrtilus or Ericthonius. The reason for his preference, as T. Mantero pointed out, is clear: Ericthonius’s invention of the chariot lacks the amatory pathos of the Pelops-Hippodameia-Myrtilus triangle." Furthermore, the Myrtilus catasterism allows our author to engage in some mild scholarly polemic, characteristic of the learned aetiological poet, in which the appropriateness of the Ericthonius catasterism, although it had the greater currency," is challenged and rejected. There is, I think, another reason which may have influenced the poet's choice. As Germanicus will soon point out, located in the hand of Auriga are the two stars known as the Kids (Haedi). These stars are characterized as nautis inimicum sidus “ἃ constellation hostile to sailors" (170) and are represented as the distant observers (uidere 172) of storm-tossed vessels

and frightened sailors who meet a cruel death among the waves. Now when we first encounter Myrtilus, we read that he was drowned in the Myrtoan sea: Myrtoas demersus in undas (159). Of course, Myrtilus was a charioteer, not a sailor, and he was thrown into the sea by Pelops, not by a storm. Even so, the thematic connection of death at sea for the Charioteer and for sailors under the baleful watch of the Kids gives added point to the choice of Myrtilus. Although Germanicus rejects the Ericthonius catasterism, it is not quite accurate to say that he is uninterested in it.“ After all, his treatment of the Myrtilus catasterism is longer by only a line. There is much art in the Ericthonius vignette. First, Germanicus provides a Latin gloss on the meaning of Ericthonius's

name

(terra natus

157-158),

"the

one

born

from

the earth":^ the gloss is, in turn, an allusion to the story of Ericthonius's

Doctus Poeta

birth from soil upon which Hephaestus’s

189

semen had fallen. The phrase

Atthide terra (157) locates the scene of Hephaestus’s

amorous

pursuit of

Athena which came to the frustrating conclusion just mentioned. And finally, we are told that Ericthonius is the inventor of the chariot. All of these details reveal the poet’s attentive interest in the legend, his doctrina, and his perspicacity in selecting just the right material to give a concise presentation of the Ericthonius catasterism. The Myrtilus catasterism is rich in pathos. His own treachery, the theft of his promised reward Hippodameia, and his drowning in the waters of the Myrtoan sea produce a much more dramatic story than that of a culture-hero credited with a practical invention. But it is worthwhile to note that for both heroes Germanicus shows the same interest in etymological word-play on their names. Just as he had given a Latin gloss on the meaning of Ericthonius, so also the name of Myrtilus allows the poet to spell out the aetiological connection between Myrtilus and the sea that was named after him, Myrtoas...undas 159." The drowning of Myrtilus is of course more than a device for introducing an aition to explain the name of a body of water: it is the final, tragic episode in his attempt to possess Hippodameia. And it is this erotic theme that focuses the reader's attention on the more pathetic aspect of Myrtilus’s story, his role as the disappointed lover, and obscures the less appealing fact that he conspired with Pelops to betray his master and succeeded. Pelops, on the other hand, comes

off as the double-dealing

villain (perfidia Pelopis,

raptam

162)

who, after he secures Myrtilus’s cooperation, apparently by promising him a night with Hippodameia, reneges on his promise and throws his accomplice into the sea. In the end the betrayer is betrayed; Myrtilus, portrayed as a victimized lover, loses the woman and his life.“ To heighten the pathos Germanicus first creates the poignant picture of the unfortunate charioteer bereft of his car and holding the broken reins, and then describes him as still grieving for Hippodameia (maestus 161, gemit

162);

a most effective means

of transforming

a simple

de-

scription into a concise, expressive vignette in which the constellation of the Charioteer and the mythological hero Myrtilus merge into one and become indistinguishable. In the three remaining catasterisms (Delphin, Cycnus, Aquila) the erotic element plays a prominent part. With an admirable lightness of touch Germanicus reduces the myth to a few selected details that create an allusive vignette of the characters involved. The verses on the Dolphin" that brought to Neptune his beloved Amphitrite and was rewarded with a

190

Translating the Heavens

catasterism successfully create with deft economy of words the fiction of the sea-creature as emissary of the sea-god’s love (321—323).* Delphin inde breuis lucet iuxta Capricornum paucis sideribus: tulit hic Atlantida nymphen in thalamos, Neptune, tuos, miseratus amantem. (Next there shines the small Dolphin with its few stars, near to Capri-

corn; this is the one that carried the nymph, the daughter of Atlas, to your marriage bed, Neptune, taking pity on a lover.)

Here the poet employs the familiar devices which we have observed elsewhere in the poem: apostrophe of one of the characters in the myth (Neptune); the pathos of one of Neptune’s sea-creatures taking pity on the forlorn lover (miseratus amantem); the amatory

ambiance condensed

into one word, thalamos; and Atlantida, the stylized patronymic ing Amphitrite as the daughter of Atlas. Cycnus receives the same treatment (275-277).”

identify-

Contra spectat Auem, uel Phoebi quae fuit olim Cycnus uel Ledae thalamis qui illapsus adulter

furta Iouis falsa uolucer sub imagine texit. (On the other side, it [the Lyre] looks on the Bird which was once Phoe-

bus’s Cycnus or the winged adulterer who slipped into Leda’s bedroom and hid Jupiter’s secret tryst under a false appearance.)

Again we find the quick evocation of the setting for the erotic encounter in the word thalamis.^ And into this setting the poet introduces the Ovidian motif of the adulterous Jupiter in disguise (illapsus adulter, furta, falsa sub imagine). In the catasterism myth of Aquila," Jupiter's eagle which carried off Ganymede, the love story comes to an uncharacteristically grim conclusion (315—320). Est etiam, incertum quo cornu missa, Sagitta quam seruat Iouis Ales. habet miracula nulla, si caelum ascendit Iouis armiger. hic tamen altum

315

unguibus innocuis Phrygium rapuit Ganymeden et telo appositus custos quo Iuppiter arsit

in puero, luit excidio quem Troia furorem.”

320

Doctus Poeta ([315] There is also

an Arrow—it

191

is uncertain by

shot —which Jupiter's Bird guards. It holds no Jupiter's thunderbolt has come into the sky. snatched Trojan Ganymede aloft in talons that tioned as guard to the weapon by which Jupiter for the boy, a mad passion which Troy paid for

what

bow

it was

wonder that the bearer of Yet this is the one who did no harm and was staburned with passion [320] with its destruction.)

The force of the passage lies in a clever contrast between "conventional" weapons (the arrow, the eagle as armiger, and the eagle's talons) and their sudden transformation into "unconventional" weapons of love and abduction. The reader is at first assured that there is nothing miraculous about the ascent of Jupiter's eagle into the heavens, and this is true of course on a literal level if one thinks of nothing more than the eagle's flight. The catasterism of the eagle, however, is indeed a miraculum be-

cause it is a transformation.” And that is not the only marvel; the poet has another in store. It comes in 317 where there is a noticeable shift in tone signaled by tamen, a shift from the familiar details in the initial description of the Arrow and Aquila and from the didactic reassurance of habet miracula nulla (316) to the highly emotive language of passion and destruction as the Arrow and Aquila are suddenly transformed into Cupid's arrow and the eagle that carried off Ganymede; they are no longer what we were led to believe, simply Jupiter's armiger and an arrow. À miraculum, a wondrous transformation, has taken place: the astronomical phenomena become the instruments of a mad passion which will bring destruction upon the city of Troy. Ganymede is abducted by Aquila but remains unharmed by its talons. What is significant about this particular detail is that it sets up a contrast, almost sardonic in its effect, between the violence, on the one hand, of Jupiter's sexual passion (arsit 319, furorem 320)” with its terrible consequences for Troy (excidio 320—Troy too will burn), and, on the other, the gentle handling of Jupiter's beloved. There is a secondary contrast as well between Aquila as majestic armiger, the bearer of Jupiter's weapons and, in this instance, the abductor of Jupiter's beloved, Trojan Ganymede. Here the departure from the astronomical phenomena that inspired this vignette is so complete (from the constellations Arrow and Aquila to Jupiter's passion and the destruction of Troy) that the juxtaposition of the images of Ganymede's rape and the destruction of Troy momentarily arrest the reader's attention with a powerful scene from the epic past. The heavens become the scene for the erotic theme of Jupiter's burning passion and the epic theme of Troy's destruction.”

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Translating the Heavens

The poet’s most successful handling of a stellar aition based on an erotic encounter comes in the Scorpion-Orion catasterism." According to the version of the myth told by Aratus, when Orion took hold of Artemis by her peplos, the goddess called forth a scorpion from the earth which then stung and killed the Boeotian hero. καμπαὶ δ᾽ dv Ποταμοῖο καὶ αὐτίκ᾽ ἐπερχομένοιο Σκορπίου ἐμπίπτοιεν ἐυρρόον ὠκεανοῖο, ὃς καὶ ἐπερχόμενος φοβέει μέγαν ᾿Ωρίωνα. ἤΑρτεμις ἱλήκοι᾽ προτέρων λόγος, οἵ μιν ἔφαντο ἑλκῆσαι πέπλοιο, Χίῳ ὅτε θηρία πάντα καρτερὸς ᾿Ωρίων στιβαρῇ ἐπέκοπτε κορύνῃ, θήρης ἀρνύμενος κείνῳ χάριν Οἰνοπίωνι. ἡ δέ οἱ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἐπετείλατο θηρίον ἄλλο, νήσον ἀναρρήξασα μέσας ἑκάτερθε κολώνας,

σκορπίον, ὅς ῥά μιν οὗτα καὶ ἔκτανε

635

640

πολλὸν ἐόντα

πλειότερος προφανείς, ἐπεὶ "Aprenıv ἤκαχεν αὐτήν. τοὔνεκα δὴ καί φασι περαιόθεν ἐρχομένοιο Σκορπίου Ὠρίωνα περὶ χθονὸς ἔσχατα φεύγειν.

645

(The windings οὗ the River will plunge into the fair stream of ocean as soon as the Scorpion arrives, [636] which also puts great Orion to flight at its coming. May Artemis be gracious! It is a tale of the ancients, who said that stalwart Orion seized her by the robe, when in Chios he was smiting all the wild creatures with his stout club, [640] striving to secure

a hunting gift for Oenopion there. But she immediately summoned up against him another creature, breaking open the centre of the island’s hills to left and to right, a scorpion that stung and killed him for all his size, emerging even more massive, because he had outraged Artemis herself. [645] That is why they say that when the Scorpion comes over the horizon, Orion flees round the earth’s boundary.)

The pace of the narrative is brisk. The episode is presented in a series of three scenes, each of which focuses on one of the characters; first Orion, then Artemis, then the scorpion: Orion did violence to Artemis while he was hunting on Chios to win favor with Oenopion; Artemis broke open the earth and sent the scorpion against him; the scorpion wounded and killed Orion. The whole episode is framed between corresponding descriptions of the astronomical phenomenon which it is intended to explain: when the Scorpion rises, Orion sets; or in the poet’s figurative language, when the Scorpion attacks, it puts Orion to flight. The compound forms ἐπερχομένοιο (634) and ἐπερχόμενος (636) at the beginning of the episode are repeated in the simplex form, épxopévoio (645), at the end; and the observation in 636 that Scorpio puts Orion to flight (φοβέει) is

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restated in 645-646 with Orion now as the subject fleeing (φεύγειν) the Scorpion. A second framing device is the repetition of the name of Artemis, the divine authoress of the punishment in 637 and 644, and of the verb of saying, ἔφαντο in 637, and φασι in 645. The artful deployment of words contributes much to the effectiveness of the brief narrative sequence. The phrase θηρίον ἄλλο, the third and final reference to hunting

in the series θηρία

πάντα

(638), θήρης

(640),

and θηρίον ἄλλο (641), hints that the great hunter is about to face a creature unlike any other he has encountered.* The full significance of the

riddling θηρίον ἄλλο is kept in suspense for an entire line (642) until the word σκορπίον appears at the beginning of 643. There is also the pointed

juxtaposition, in terms of their might, of the two combatants, πολλὸν ἐόντα / πλειότερος προφανείς (643—644); the contrast is reinforced in a second juxtaposition Σκορπίου ᾿Ωρίωνα (646). The threefold repetition of the participle ἐρχόμενος modifying the Scorpion at the beginning and end of the episode clearly suggests that the astronomical phenomena of the Scorpion’s rising is in fact a reenactment of its encounter with Orion. Aratus refrains from developing the story’s potential for the high drama of an epic combat, something which appealed very much to Cicero in his version.” Instead he focuses the reader’s attention on Orion's reversal of fortune: the successful hunter becomes the prey and is killed; mighty though Orion was, the scorpion proved mightier; the Scorpion puts to flight, and Orion flees. This reversal also has a literary dimension, for in Hesiod’s Works and Days the Pleiades flee when Orion rises (619-620); in the Phaenomena it is Orion who must flee before Scorpio. When Aratus concludes the narrative by making the connection between the events just narrated and the astronomical phenomena that occasioned the narrative, (i.e., when the Scorpion rises, Orion flees in fear), the reader may be conscious of a slight inconsistency: Orion’s encounter with the scorpion ended in Orion’s death, but the constellation figures are said to represent the scorpion’s pursuit and Orion’s flight, a scene which in fact is not part of the narrative itself and must be understood as an artificial construction based on what happened to Orion on Chios. Although this inconsistency may now seem to be the product of an overly rationalistic interpretation of the myth and its application to the constellations, it will later play an important part in Germanicus’s rewriting of Aratus’s text. Germanicus develops his rewriting of the Scorpion-Orion catasterism along three different lines: greater emphasis on the erotic element, a novel retelling of the myth itself in order to make it conform more closely with what is observed in the sky, and an enhanced epic solemnity that is under-

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Translating the Heavens

cut by the poet’s version of the catasterism. I will take up each of these in the following analysis. Non prius exoriens quam clarus fluxerit Amnis, Scorpios Oriona fugat; pauet ille sequentem.

645

sis uati placata, precor, Latonia uirgo; non ego, non primus, ueteres cecinere poetae, uirginis intactas quondam contingere uestes

ausum hominem diuae sacrum temerasse pudorem. deuotus poenae tunc impius ille futurae nudabatque feris augustas stipite siluas pacatamque Chion dono dabat Oenopioni. haud patiens sedenim Phoebi germana repente numinis ultorem media tellure reuulsa scorpion ingenti maiorem contulit hostem. parcite, mortales, numquam leuis ira deorum.

650

655

horret uulnus adhuc et spicula tincta ueneno flebilis Orion et quamquam parte relicta

caeli tela fugit, tamen altis mergitur undis,

Scorpios ardenti cum pectore contigit ortus.

660

(The Scorpion, which does not rise before the illustrious River has flowed away, [645] puts Orion to flight; Orion flees in terror at the Scorpion's

pursuit. Be favorably disposed to the bard, I beseech you, virgin daughter of Leto. I'm not the one, I am not the first, poets of old have told in song how a man once dared to lay hands on the undefiled garments of the virgin goddess and so violated her sacred chastity. Thereupon [650] that ungodly

man, doomed to imminent punishment, was stripping the majestic forests bare of wild beasts with his club and was subduing Chios to give as a gift to Oenopion. But hardly enduring this, the sister of Phoebus suddenly split the earth in two and matched the avenger of her divine majesty, [655] a scorpion, a mightier foe, against hulking Orion. Forbear, mortals, the anger of the gods is never trifling. Lamentable Orion still shudders at being wounded by the Scorpion's sting steeped in venom. And, although he has relinquished a part of the sky and flees its weapon, nevertheless he sinks in the deep waters [660] when the Scorpion with glowing breast has touched the eastern horizon.)

Erotic Element

The that her. the his the

narrator-uates is much more apprehensive than his Greek counterpart the goddess will be offended by the story about Orion's attempt on This is evident in the poet's desire to placate the goddess beforehand; narrator of the Aratea, unlike the Phaenomena's, speaks insistently in own person when he cites tradition, and not himself, as the source of story and beseeches Artemis to recognize that he is not the source of

Doctus Poeta

195

the offensive tale: precor (646); non ego, non primus (647). The poet’s

apprehension is perhaps warranted by the greater emphasis which he places on the enormity of Orion's act. The poet focuses attention on the goddess's virginity; in 646 she is addressed as uirgo; in 648 the word is repeated, uirginis intactas...uestes, the figura etymologica in the phrase intactas...contingere underscores the double meaning in the verb contingere ‘to touch’ or ‘to defile’. Germanicus moves well beyond Aratus’s reticent description, μιν.. ξλκῆσαι πέπλοιο (637-638), when he bluntly names the object of Orion’s violent behavior, sacrum temerasse pudorem (649), words introduced by a juxtaposition that emphasizes his aggression, hominem diuae. The poet, though he begs the goddess’s pardon, is not at all reticent about bringing up the painful details of that violent encounter which Aratus had suppressed.

The Myth The narrator’s vigorous protestation that he is not the first to tell the story of Orion’s attempted rape of Artemis is true with regard to the crime, but his version of the catasterism myth is not without a novelty of its own, which comes in the description of the punishment. As in his version of the Ages-myth which leads up to the catasterism of Virgo-Iustitia, the narrator anticipates the outcome in line 650, deuotus poenae tunc impius ille futurae, before the story is told. But the description of the punishment is handled in a way very different from Aratus’s straightforward account in which the scorpion wounds and kills Orion. The preliminaries are the same: Diana breaks open the earth, summons the scorpion, and sets it against Orion; in the phrase ingenti maiorem (655) Germanicus neatly reproduces Aratus’s πολλὸν ...πλειότερος (643—644). There is, however, no mention of the fatal encounter in which Orion is killed. Instead, the emergence of the scorpion is immediately followed in 656 by the poet’s admonition not to offend the gods: parcite, mortales, nunquam leuis ira deorum. After this interruption of the action, the poet resumes the tale of the Scorpion and Orion who, to the reader’s surprise, have suddenly become the enstarred figures of the great hunter and the venomous arachnid. The

transition, if it can be called such, from

embattled

hero

to en-

starred being comes in the warning not to offend the gods (parcite, mortales 656). In the following lines, 657—660, by authorial sleight of hand Orion and the Scorpion now appear in the heavens, Orion still in flight and the Scorpion in pursuit. The fight in which Orion was killed is omitted in order to establish a direct connection between the astronomical

196

Translating the Heavens

phenomena of the Scorpion’s rising with the setting of Orion. Here we have an instant metamorphosis: as the adverb adhuc indicates, the celestial flight and pursuit is a continuation of what was happening on earth at the very moment when Orion and the Scorpion were enstarred. According to the structure of the narrative, Orion’s celestial flight comes immediately after Diana sent the scorpion against him. Orion’s death, as told in the Phaenomena, thus becomes a problematic detail that is inconsistent with the complete identification of these constellations with their eponyms who, in the poet’s conception, were enstarred in the act of fleeing and pursuing. In his account of the Orion catasterism (Fast. 5.537—544)

Ovid

employs a similar sleight of hand. He follows a different version of the myth according to which Orion, the protector and companion of Diana, was hunting in the company of the goddess and her mother Leto when he made the arrogant boast that he could kill every wild animal produced by the earth; in response to that boast Earth (Tellus) sent a giant scorpion to kill the hunter (5.541—544):* scorpion immisit Tellus: fuit impetus illi curua gemelliparae spicula ferre deae; obstitit Orion. Latona nitentibus astris addidit et *meriti praemia" dixit ‘habe.’ (Earth sent against him a scorpion. When it got the urge to strike the goddess-mother of twins [Leto] with its curving stinger, Orion blocked it. Latona put him with the shining stars and said, "Have this reward for your service.)

Ovid says nothing about Orion's death: one moment he is acting as a shield to defend the goddess and the next he is transformed into a constellation.“ The scorpion's attack on Leto appears to be Ovid’s own contribution to the story. This scorpion apparently had a mind of its own and attacked the most vulnerable member of the hunting party, Leto, rather than risk a fight with the great hunters, Orion or Diana. As a result, Orion, instead of meeting his end as an arrogant hero who was justly punished by a divinity, is rewarded with catasterism for courageously intervening to protect Leto and is spared the narrative of an ignominious death inflicted by the scorpion's sting. In light of this novel twist in the catasterism of Orion and the Scorpion, Germanicus's

description of Orion as deuotus poenae futurae (650)

de-

serves a second look. That phrase proves to be an equivocation. At first sight it is natural to take it as a reference to his being killed by the scorpion, “the punishment about to take place" which, the reader assumes,

Doctus Poeta

197

will soon be related. When, however, the narrative of the catasterism myth ends without any mention of Orion’s death, readers must revise their understanding of poenae futurae in light of the story’s conclusion. For, as a result of their astronomical situation, Orion sets when the Scorpion rises and always escapes its sting. Therefore his punishment, if poena is taken to mean death from the Scorpion’s sting, is an event that is quite literally always about to take place (futurae) but never does. If, on the other hand, his condition of perpetual flight is his punishment, then that form of punishment is aptly called poena futura because it will happen over and over again in the future whenever Orion sets and the Scorpion rises. On either interpretation it is clear that Germanicus has deleted Aratus’s reference to the wounding and death of Orion in order to create a novel version of the Scorpion-Orion catasterism which identifies Orion’s

punishment for his attempted rape of Diana as his perpetual flight and setting when the Scorpion rises. Epic Solemnity Germanicus makes a number of additions which enhance the epic nity of the narrative: Diana is named by matronymic, Latonia uirgo and a stylized periphrasis, Phoebi germana (653); Orion is impius and is doomed, deuotus poenae...futurae (650);* unlike Aratus’s

solem(646) (650) θηρίον

ἄλλο (641), the scorpion is described as an instrument of divine revenge, numinis ultorem (654), and a foe, hostem (655);" its sting is referred to

proleptically as uulnus, and metaphorically as an arrow tipped with poison, spicula tincta ueneno (657), both suggesting epic combat." The import of the whole episode is summed up for the reader as an exemplum of divine anger in the striking authorial comment, parcite, mortales, nunquam

leuis ira deorum

(656).

As a result, Germanicus's

version of the

story performs a dual function as both aition and cautionary tale and reverses the emphases of Aratus's version. Aratus, with his customary detachment, presents the narrative primarily as an explanation (τοὔνεκα 645), handed down by tradition (φασι 645), for Orion's flight. And although his version is clearly a cautionary tale about divine retribution, he leaves it to the reader to draw the moral. Germanicus, on the other hand, draws the moral and suppresses the overt reference to the killing of Orion, preferring instead to suggest to the reader that Orion and the Scorpion were enstarred in the act of flight and pursuit. Despite, however, all these signs of an elevated epic discourse in the Latin version, the high seriousness of the theme of a divinity's revenge on a wicked mortal is undercut by a certain playfulness in the poet's attitude

198

Translating the Heavens

toward the Scorpion-Orion catasterism. The poet’s disclaimer that he is not responsible for the offensive story because ueteres poetae (647) have told it before him may be taken as a reference to actual predecessors. The phrase ueteres poetae would then be a self-conscious reference to the source text and the process of translation; for Aratus himself, who also disclaimed responsibility, and his translator Cicero are obviously among those ueteres poetae who have told the story of Orion’s attempted rape of the goddess. The reader, then, is aware of at least two ueteres poetae who can be identified and whose versions of the catasterism authorize the present one. At the same time, however, Germanicus's version differs significantly from theirs in the much greater attention he gives to the erotic element, thereby stressing an aspect of the story which his two predecessors treated with much greater delicacy; his version also differs from theirs in his novel treatment of the catasterism which takes the sting out of Diana's vengeance. Aratus's version is the most restrained and the least dramatic of the three; it is objective in the sense that the narrative creates the impression of reporting what was observed without any attempt to enter into the thoughts and feelings of the actors themselves. And as always in the Phaenomena, the catasterism myth remains subordinate to the astronomical phenomenon which it explains. Cicero introduces strong emotion and the drama of epic combat: Orion is in a killing-frenzy while on the hunt and makes his attack on Diana;’” Diana sends the scorpion against him and he is laid low like a Homeric warrior. By invoking these poets as authorities for his own version, Germanicus actually calls attention to the innovativeness of his own retelling of the story and comments indirectly on the fact that no two poets tell the same tale in the same way, even when they are translating the same source. Two other elements in the passage modify the tone of epic seriousness. There is the poet's play on the meaning of poenae futurae (650) which turns out to be not death from the Scorpion's sting, but a perpetual flight from the heavens when the Scorpion rises. And there is the poet’s sympathy for the fate of Orion, flebilis Orion (658), whose emotional

state the

poet enters into when he describes the great hunter as still shuddering in fear of the Scorpion's sting (horret uulnus adhuc et spicula tincta ueneno 657)." The adjective flebilis, which Cicero used as an epithet for the Scorpion's sting (flebile acumen 430, in an active sense meaning "the sting that causes tears"), is transferred by Germanicus, for emotional effect, to the intended victim, with a change to the more common passive meaning of the epithet, "lamentable Orion." The perpetrator has now become the victim. The fact that Orion's punishment does not end in his

Doctus Poeta

199

death from the Scorpion’s sting but in perpetual fear and flight from it and the poet’s sympathetic response to Orion’s fate suggest to the reader that the line parcite, mortales, numquam leuis ira deorum (656) is less an admonition to refrain from offending divine majesty than a comment on the excessiveness of the gods’ punishments. In Aratus and Cicero the catasterism myth of Scorpion-Orion is a tale of divine revenge on a wicked mortal: the mighty hunter is laid low by the Scorpion acting as an instrument of divine anger. Germanicus’s version achieves a subtler effect: although Orion has committed an unspeakable act, the authorial comment on the severity of the gods’ anger and the hero’s never-ending flight from and fear of the Scorpion elicit sympathy for the plight of flebilis Orion. Moreover, because Germanicus’s version of the myth effects an exact correspondence between the two constellations and their eponyms as pursuer and pursued, it can be read as a critique of the versions of Aratus and Cicero: their Orion must be brought back to life after he is killed by the scorpion so that he can continue to flee in the heavens. From the foregoing discussion of Germanicus's treatment of the catasterism myths not found in the Phaenomena, one can see that he has skillfully adapted Aratus's technique of giving a concise, allusive presentation of the catasterism but has adapted that technique to his own purpose. In the space of two or three lines Germanicus creates a vivid cameo that depicts the central episode of the story. But an important difference between the two poets is to be noted. Aratus is primarily interested in the catasterisms as a means to achieve his goal of using celestial phenomena as proof of Zeus's providential care, a point which I will explain below in greater detail. The catasterism myths serve the practical purpose of helping the reader to visualize the constellations, for example the family group Perseus, Andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia; and they serve to illustrate the poem's philosophical argument; Perseus, the rescuer of Andromeda, was a son of that same Zeus who rules the heavens. Germanicus, on the other hand, is very much interested in creating the aetiological fiction of a firmament inhabited by enstarred beings. Through the consistent use of the various stylistic devices which have already been discussed he has endeavored to convince the reader that his imaginative representation of the constellations as enstarred beings is an acceptable framework for viewing the heavens, if only within the confines of his poem. Germanicus radically altered the content and theme of the Phaenomena by adding new catasterisms, especially those with erotic elements, which are found in the excursus on the Zodiac and elsewhere in the poem, and by rewriting the Scorpion-Orion catasterism in a way that

200

Translating the Heavens

gives much greater emphasis to Orion’s attempted rape of Diana. Along with these major changes in the treatment of the constellation figures comes a complete transformation in the narrative voice that inhabits the poem. Gone is the usually sober, meditative tone of the Phaenomena which is well matched to the lofty theme of an ordered universe under Zeus’s providential care. The tone of the Phaenomena partakes of the sublimity of its theme. The Aratea draws the constellations down into the world of human experiences and human passions. Its narrative voice has a strongly Ovidian tone familiar to readers of the Metamorphoses and Fasti: it is more playful, more engaging, more assertive; and it is well suited to the theme of the origins of the constellations and to the anthropomorphizing treatment of the constellation figures which seeks to give immediacy to the thoughts and feelings of the enstarred beings. As we have already seen in Chapter 2, Germanicus’s language of astronomical description identifies, on both the visual and the psychological levels, the constellation figure with what it is said to represent: Engonasin is weary with toil (effigies...defecta labore 65); with arms spread apart he assumes the posture of a suppliant (suppliciter 68), a one-word addition that adds a new dimension of sympathetic response similar in affective power to the

phrase miserabile sidus in 74. Two of the most noticeable expressions of this narrator’s identity occur when important narrative sequences are introduced with an emotional apostrophe to a divinity not found in the original (the catasterism of Virgo in 96-132, and of the Scorpion and Orion in 644—660). The poet begins the catasterism of Virgo with an invocation of the goddess Iustitia, quam te, diua, uocem? (98); he attempts to conciliate her in an address, tangunt mortalia si te / carmina nec surdam praebes uenerantibus aurem (98—99), in which the poet actually anticipates the outcome of the story about to be told, exosa heu mortale genus (100) 2 Phaenomena

133; he concludes

with an Abbruchsformel,

an announcement that the goddess will now be his theme: medio mihi cursu / stabunt quadrupedes et flexis laetus habenis / teque tuumque canam

terris uenerabile

numen

(100—102).

The

rhetorical

fanfare

of the

Abbruchsformel has no counterpart in the Phaenomena and makes quite a contrast to the decorous reserve that controls Aratus's narrative voice which introduces the Parthenos catasterism as a story (λόγος

100). At the

same time it reveals the poet's deliberate treatment of the Virgo catasterism as a digression, a departure from his regular course of astronomical description. The catasterisms of the Scorpion and its intended victim Orion receive similar treatment: first there is the invocation of Artemis, sis uati placata,

Doctus Poeta

201

precor, Latonia uirgo (646); then the poet’s disclaimer, to avoid the possibility of offending the goddess, that the story he is about to tell has the authority of tradition, non ego, non primus, ueteres cecinere poetae (647), a remark which situates Germanicus’s narrative in the context of

the prior narratives in Aratus and Cicero; and finally the authorial comment, addressed to the reader, in the form of a general admonition about the anger of the gods. All of this is foreign to Aratus’s text but consistent with Germanicus’s program of creating a self-conscious narrator who asserts his role not only as translator, a Latin voice, but also as an altogether different poetic voice that retells the Phaenomena as an aetiological poem. The range of Germanicus’s narrative voice becomes more complex if we think of it as engaged in an intertextual dialogue with the Phaenomena or with Cicero’s translation or with both. Oftentimes the wit and sophistication of what Germanicus has written cannot be fully appreciated until the reader realizes that it must be understood as a response provoked by something in the texts of Aratus or Cicero. In Chapter 1 we saw that in the passage on the constellation Perseus Germanicus’s phrase “the clear ether” (purum aethera 254) was a humorous comment on Aratus's description of Perseus as "dust covered" (kexoupévos 253), an

epithet which Cicero accurately translated as puluerulentus

(25). And

in

the discussion of the Scorpion-Orion catasterism (644—660) we noted that

Germanicus revised Cicero's phrase "the acumen 430) to "lamentable

Orion"

sting that causes tears" (flebile

(flebilis Orion 658), thereby evok-

ing pathos for the Scorpion's intended victim. And, on a much larger scale, the proem of Germanicus's Aratea participates in an ongoing dialogue with Aratus's hymn to Zeus. The opening of the dialogue is signaled in the first line when the Latin poet mentions Aratus's name and cites the famous beginning of the Phaenomena: ab loue principium magno deduxit Aratus. From there Germanicus goes on to elaborate an encomium of Augustus which cleverly transforms the emperor into the Aratean Zeus and situates this Latin Phaenomena in the world of the Augustan peace and Augustan Rome. Our narrator also has the interesting habit, noted earlier, of mentioning variant aetiologies, a habit that reflects the influence of Ovid's Fasti." On several occasions he gives more than one identification for a constellation; for example, there are two possibilities for the identification of the constellation Bootes:

202

Translating the Heavens Inde Helicen sequitur senior baculoque minatur, siue ille Arctophylax seu Bacchi ob munera caesus Icarus, ereptam pensauit sidere uitam. (90-92) (Next an old man follows Helice and threatens with his staff. Whether he is the Bear-Guardian or Icarus who was murdered on account of Bacchus's

gift, he made up for a life that was snatched away with a constellation.)

Bootes is either Arctophylax (the “Bear-guardian”), an identification which connects Bootes with Ursa Major, or Icarus, the first human to practice viticulture. Here the poet clearly echoes Ovid, Fasti 3.405: siue est Arctophylax, siue est piger ille Bootes; other examples of these dual stellar identities in the Fasti confirm the Ovidian influence." This is very different from Aratus's procedure: not only is Aratus highly selective in his use of catasterism myths, but he is also very careful to present only one version of the myth, though he tacitly acknowledges the existence of variant explanations of origin when he refers to what has been passed along by tradition, as, for example, when he says that the father of Parthenos may be Astraeus or someone else. In contrast to Aratus's highly selective method, Germanicus strives for an almost encyclopedic coverage of the catasterisms which culminates in the excursus on the zodiac, a series of anthropomorphic and theriomorphic identifications whose function is purely aetiological rather than astronomical: the zodiac in the Aratea becomes what its name signifies, a circle of living creatures." Although the multiple identifications give proof of the poet's doctrina and provide a wealth of mythological reference which Aratus deliberately eschewed, it is difficult to discern in them any higher purpose beyond those just mentioned. Ovid's references to variant versions of catasterisms in the Fasti are thoroughly consistent with his practice of giving different explanations of the origins of customs and names. Moreover, Ovid's inclusion of variant aitia is one of the important elements that goes into the making of the distinctive narrative voice of the Fasti, one that at times seems almost overwhelmed by the mass of contradictory explanations given by its sources.” Ovid has created a narrator who is an investigator of causae and who is often presented to the reader in the act of interviewing his sources. The narrator of the Aratea, on the other hand, is not a student of causae;

the mention of variant catasterisms, though appropriate to the persona of the narrator as aetiologist in the Fasti, finds no such thematic justification in the Aratea where the poet is not a collector of variant causae but a guide to the map of heaven. Within the framework of a poem whose principal subject matter is the concourse of inanimate and distant stars, Germanicus has created the

Doctus Poeta

203

variegated and learned fiction of the heavens as a marvelous realm inhabited by living beings: the constellations assume the reality of their mythological eponyms. That effect, moreover, is achieved without sacrificing the didactic intention of Aratus’s Phaenomena to describe the constellations. The catasterism myths, the chief element in the creation of this fiction, are for the most part consistent with the poem’s didacticism in so far as they explain the origins of the constellations and provide a pictorial guide to aid the observer in visualizing and remembering the figure represented by a certain group of stars. In fact, the reader receives a lesson not only in astronomy, but also in the mythological traditions attached to the various constellations. The purely poetical conception of the stars, as it is treated by Germanicus, adds a new dimension to the themes of astronomy and, in the second part of the poem, to meteorology. The frequent use of catasterism myths allows the poet to develop the human side, so to speak, of the constellations, a development that fits well with ancient astral beliefs: a cognatio exists between man and the stars; the stars are divinities; and finally, human beings can be placed among the stars as a sign of divine honor. Hence the Phaenomena can easily accommodate the new emphasis on the personification of the constellations according to the various situations described in the catasterism myths without losing its effectiveness as a description of the celestial sphere and without degenerating into a collection of disjointed stories about the constellations. In the Aratea astronomy and aetiology serve one another well: the stars provide the raw material; the poet’s imagination and doctrina refine it into a sustained and convincing fiction with a didactic purpose. The importance that our poet attaches to the highly pictorial, pathetic representation of the constellations as well as to the maintenance of this fiction throughout the poem is evident not only in the comparative analysis of the Greek and Latin texts presented thus far but also in Germanicus’s revealing omission of a key passage in the Phaenomena (367-385) about the naming of the stars.” In these lines Aratus explains that the constellation figures and their names are manmade. If Germanicus had reproduced in the Aratea Aratus’s rationalistic explanation of the naming of the stars, he would have toppled the intricate structure which he had built up in his rewriting of the Phaenomena. His whole approach to translating the poem is guided by the principle that the constellations are

in reality the transformed figures of humans, animals, and inanimate objects." Whether Germanicus himself believed in this explanation of the origin of the stars is, of course, a question that cannot be answered. Suffice it to say that for the purpose of translating the Phaenomena Ger-

204

Translating the Heavens

manicus has assumed informs his treatment Aratea, therefore, the the fiction.” We may

the attitude of an aetiological poet and that attitude of the astronomical material.” In the world of the catasterism myths are best regarded as the “facts of turn now to Aratus on the naming of the stars.

ol δ᾽ ὀλίγῳ μέτρῳ ὀλίγῃ δ᾽ ἐγκείμενοι αἴγλῃ μεσσόθι πηδαλίον καὶ Κήτεος εἱλίσσονται, γλαυκοῦ πεπτηῶτες ὑπὸ πλευρῇσι Λαγωοῦ, νώνυμοι᾽ οὐ γὰρ τοί γε τετυγμένον εἰδώλοιο

βεβλέαται

μελέεσσιν

370

ἐοικότες, οἷά τε πολλὰ

ἑξείης στιχόωντα παρέρχεται αὐτὰ κέλευθα ἀνομένων ἐτέων, τά τις ἀνδρῶν οὐκέτ᾽ ἐόντων ἐφράσατ᾽ ἠδ᾽ ἐνόησεν ἅπαντ᾽ ὀνομαστὶ καλέσσαι Muda μορφώσας" οὐ γάρ κ᾿ ἐδυνήσατο πάντων οἰόθι κεκριμένων ὄνομ᾽ εἰπεῖν οὐδὲ δαῆναι. πολλοὶ γὰρ πάντη, πολέων δ᾽ ἐπὶ loa πέλονται μέτρα τε καὶ χροιή, πάντες γε μὲν ἀμφιέλικτοι" τῷ καὶ ὁμηγερέας οἱ ἐείσατο ποιήσασθαι ἀστέρας, ὄφρ᾽ ἐπιτὰξ ἄλλῳ παρακείμενος ἄλλος εἴδεα σημαίνοιεν. ἄφαρ δ᾽ ὀνομάστ᾽ ἐγένοντο ἄστρα, καὶ οὐκέτι νῦν ὑπὸ θαύματι τέλλεται ἀστήρ᾽ ἀλλ᾽ οἱ μὲν καθαροῖς ἐναρηρότες εἰδώλοισι φαίνονται, τὰ δ᾽ ἔνερθε διωκομένοιο Λαγωοῦ πάντα μάλ᾽ ἠερόεντα καὶ οὐκ ὀνομαστὰ φέρονται.

375

380

385

(Other stars covering a small area, and inset with slight brilliance, circle between Argo’s steering-oar and the Monster, lying below the flanks of the grey Hare, [370] without a name; they are not cast in any resemblance

to the body of a well-defined figure, like the many that pass in regular ranks along the same paths as the years complete themselves, the constellations that one of the men who are no more devised and contrived to call all by names, [375] grouping them in compact shapes: he could not, of course, have named or identified all the stars taken individually, because there are so many all over the sky, and many alike in magnitude and color, while all have a circling movement; therefore he decided to make the stars into groups, so that different stars arranged together in order

[381] could represent figures; and thereupon the named constellations were created, and no star-rising now takes us by surprise; so the other stars that shine appear fixed in clear-cut figures, but those beneath the hunted Hare [385] are all very hazy and nameless in their courses.)*°

Here Aratus offers a rationalistic explanation of the constellation figures and their names. Some ancient observer devised the figures on the principle of spatial proximity in order to be able to establish points of reference for locating and identifying stars: he then named each constellation in accordance with its shape. At first sight, the observation that the

Doctus Poeta

205

constellation figures and their names are the products of human observation seems at variance with Aratus’s use of catasterism myths to explain their origins; the unavoidable inference being that the rationalistic explanation given in 370—385 is the one that Aratus himself credits and that the catasterism myths are charming fictions insofar as the poet does not really expect his reader to believe that Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are in fact the catasterized Helice and Cynosura. But the apparent contradiction between rationalistic explanation and mythological catasterism can be explained without taking the extreme measure of characterizing the catasterisms as mere “fantasies,”*' if one realizes that in Aratus's celestial sphere the constellations have a significance as "signs" that goes well beyond that of their physical nature as purely astronomical phenomena. Moreover, when they are identified with mythological eponyms, they continue to function within the religious and philosophical framework of the poem as signs of Zeus's providential care and that includes in some cases (Eridanus, Cassiopeia, and Orion) divine retribution to maintain or-

der." The origin of a constellation by catasterism in accordance with the will of Zeus is not incompatible with the notion that the first-namer recognized the enstarred figure in the heavens and thus added another dimension to the significance of the stars as signs from Zeus, in addition to their importance as indicators of time and seasonal change. Zeus, who has no need of constellations, is responsible for a providential arrangement of the stars which human intelligence then recognized and organized as discreet constellations. If Zeus enstarred Helice and Cynosura, it was left to a human observer to identify them in the heavens as signs put there by the god. Moreover, the process of naming, which illustrates the human comprehension of the universal order ordained by Zeus, is the initial act that gave birth to the concept of catasterism: to name a group of stars Perseus or Orion is not merely to label them, it is to establish an identity which, on the basis of beliefs in astral immortality and in the heavens as the abode of the gods, raises the mythological eponym to a new level of existence; and the act of naming also initiated a process of explaining the catasterisms through narratives which eventually became formalized as catasterism myths. In terms of an evolutionary framework, if one is needed, Zeus rewarded living beings by raising them to the heavens; the first-namer, when he appears on the scene, recognizes them as constellations, giving birth to the concept of catasterism, the enstarring of living beings; his identification of the constellations with mythological eponyms initiates the development of λόγοι to provide formal explanations of how the

206

Translating the Heavens

eponyms became enstarred; and these λόγοι take us back to our starting point, Zeus’s elevation of the eponyms to the heavens, an event which took place in the legendary past. The constellations as astronomical phenomena and as catasterisms are not two completely distinct conceptions in the Phaenomena, one fact, the other fantasy; they are, rather, a reflection of different stages in the evolution of Zeus’s cosmos in which these beings were enstarred by Zeus, recognized and identified by a human observer, and now benefit human beings as signs of Zeus’s providential care."

Most importantly the passage on the naming of the stars suggests that the Phaenomena itself is, in a sense, a recapitulation of that initial act of naming and delineating the constellation figures because Aratus recreates the process of locating, describing, and naming them and in so doing demonstrates the human ability to comprehend the significance of Zeus's σήματα. And like the first namer, Aratus’s primary interest is in the perception of order and regularity, in the transformation of the observed astronomical phenomena into something of great significance for humans, σήματα; and the legendary traditions of their origins as enstarred humans, animals, or objects is an integral part of the poet's conception of their significance as σήματα. Throughout the passage on the naming of the stars the notion that a firstnamer made the constellation figures and gave them their names is brought home by the repetition of words that have to do with "shaping" and "naming": εἰδώλοιο (370), μελέεσσιν ἐοικότες (371), μορφώσας (375), εἴδεα (381), εἰδώλοισι (383); ὀνομαστὶ καλέσσαι (374), ὄνομ᾽ elır εἰν (376), ὀνομάστα (381). What has often been overlooked

is that Aratus

uses the same or similar language throughout the poem to distinguish spatially proximate stars from the constellation figure superimposed on them by the observer. Aratus defines the constellation figure as an image (εἴδωλον) or likeness (ἐοικώς) and uses the verb καλεῖν, sometimes in the indefinite third-person plural, to suggest that names were assigned to the constellations by a man." And these are precisely the words that Germanicus generally avoids because they would undercut the fiction of the constellation figure as the living being which it is said to represent. Here are a few examples. Aratus concludes the catasterism myth of the Bears with the following statement: καὶ τὴν μὲν Κυνόσουραν ἐπίκλησιν τὴν δ᾽ ἑτέρην Ἑλίκην. (36-37)

καλέουσι,

(Now one of the Bears men call Cynosura by name, and the other Helice.)

Doctus Poeta

207

In Germanicus’s version, on the other hand, the fiction of Cynosura and Helice as the nurses of the infant Zeus is continued without any suggestion that those names have been assigned for purposes of identification: the Bears are the enstarred Helice and Cynosura. hinc Iouis altrices Helice Cynosuraque fulgent. (39) (Here the nurses of Jupiter shine, Helice and Cynosura.)

Where Aratus compares Arctophylax “like to one that drives”)"* and says Bootes (ἄνδρες ἐπικλείουσι Bowrny stellation as an enstarred being: he

to a herdsman (ἐλάοντι ἐοικώς 91, that men also call the constellation 92), Germanicus presents the conoffers no explanatory comparison

(ἐοικώς) and he makes no statement about how men identify it. Inde Helicen sequitur senior baculoque minatur, siue ille Arctophylax seu Bacchi ob munera caesus Icarus, ereptam pensauit sidere uitam. (90-92) (Next an old man follows Helice and threatens with his staff. Whether he is the Bear-Guardian or Icarus who was murdered on account of Bacchus's

gift, he made up for a life that was snatched away with a constellation.)

Germanicus is primarily interested in creating a picture (senior, baculoque minatur) and in drawing attention to the catasterism of a human being (ereptam pensauit sidere uitam). And again, Aratus introduces the catasterism myth of Parthenos-Dike

as an ἄλλος

λόγος

(100)

"another

tale...current among men," a statement which notifies the reader that men have devised more than one explanation for the origin of Parthenos. Germanicus, omitting any reference to the catasterism as a λόγος, proceeds with his narration of the catasterism myth on the assumption that Virgo is the enstarred Iustitia: the myth is presented as the true account of the metamorphosis of Iustitia into a constellation. Examples could be multiplied. But our earlier discussion of Germanicus's treatment of the catasterism myths, taken together with the examples given above, are sufficient to illustrate the point that Germanicus effected a fusion of mythology and astronomy by excising almost all traces of Aratus's notion that the names and the shapes of the constellations were devised by a firstnamer. Just as Germanicus's omission of Aratus's hymn to Zeus signaled his abandonment of the Phaenomena's theological and philosophical perspective on the order of the universe, so his omission of the passage on

208

Translating the Heavens

the naming of the stars continues that deliberate program of editing to remove any suggestion that humans had a role to play in forming and naming the constellations. These two key omissions come as the result of the Latin poet’s intention to rewrite the Phaenomena with a primary emphasis on the origins of the constellations. When Germanicus undertook the task of translating the Phaenomena, he had in mind a reinterpretation of the source text that differed completely from the original in conception and spirit. The difference lies in two areas: in the new emphasis placed on the aetiological catasterism myths through which the constellations become their mythological eponyms; and in the absence of Aratus’s theistic perspective which views the constellations as signs of Zeus’s providential care for humankind. As a result of this radical rewriting, Germanicus transformed the Phaenomena into an Augustan aetiological poem. And it is aetiology with an erotic twist that considerably lightens the tone of the Phaenomena. Germanicus not only doubled the number of star myths found in the source text, he also develops, wherever possible, the erotic element in those myths, even when it creates serious embarrassment, in the form of adulterous relationships, for Aratus’s providential Zeus. The Greek poet’s lofty theme of the constellations as “signs” of the providential deity’s immanence in nature is completely subverted and in its place we find no theme of comparable religious and philosophical significance. Instead we discover that it is the poet himself who controls this cosmos, who as storyteller and self-declared uates turns the map of heaven into a realm of Ovidian transformations where the revelation of what the constellations once were humanizes and dramatizes the existence of those distant astral bodies.

Notes 1.

Germanicus’s greater interest in catasterism myths was noted by Sieg (1886) 23; see also Leuthold (1942) 75; Steinmetz (1966) 476 = Steinmetz (2000) 334; Le Boeuffle xx; and Mantero (1987). Keller (1946) traces the history of catasterism poetry,

i.e.,

poetic narratives, such as Callimachus's “Coma Berenices," which tell the story of how humans, animals, or objects became enstarred, as opposed to the poetry of astronomical description exemplified by the Phaenomena in which the explanation of

the origins of the constellations is secondary to the larger purpose of mapping the heavens. Since Keller (9) defines the true poet of the catasterism genre as one who

could write a mini-epic on the scale of Callimachus's

Hecale (ca. 1000

lines; see

Hollis (1990] 337—340) about a constellation, be credits Eratosthenes with being the inventor of the genre in his elegiac poem Erigone and in his mini-epic Hermes.

On the basis of stichometric

notation

given on a papyrus fragment of the latter

poem, Parsons and Lloyd Jones (1983) conjecture that the Hermes contained about

Doctus Poeta 1,600 verses. There is no evidence see Rosokoki (1995) 26. A poet’s gin as the main theme of a poem, the story is told, seems to me the true Sterndichtung.

for a reliable intent to treat rather than the decisive factor

209 estimate of the length of Erigone; the story of a constellation’s orilength of the composition in which in determining whether a poem is

Kaibel (1894) 87: "Arat hat es verschmäht Katasterismen zu schreiben, aetiologische Mythen gelehrt nachzuerzühlen oder scharfsinnig selbst zu erfinden, voll von tragischen Katastrophen oder dyserotischen Rührscenen, und dann durch geschickte Anordnung die Personen und ihre Schicksale an der Hand der Sternkarte mit einander zu verbinden. Diese Ovidische und Nikandreische Virtuosität lag seiner Natur, sicher aber seinem Plane fern." Kaibel also perceptively notes the three different ways in which the poet can view the constellations (89): he can see simply as a group of stars, he can see them as the figures of specific persons, mals, and objects, or he can see them as persons, animals, and objects in their right. Enixa, finite verb (enixa «est») rather than participle. The Taurus catasterism trates a common syntactic pattern in Germanicus's aetiological vignettes; the

them aniown illusstory

is condensed into one or more relative clauses in which participial phrases provide important structural support. In the Aries catasterism (532—535), discussed later, the

relative seems overworked: qui...qui...quem propter...quem. Ovid's account of Europa and the bull in Met. 2.833-875 focuses on the incongruity of the father of gods and men in bovine disguise and the suspenseful prelude to Europa’s mounting the bull’s back; his account in Fast. 5.603-620 gives picturesque

details of Europa’s ride on the bull. This combination of concrete and abstract, thalamis et uirginitate, the trope known as syllepsis, is a pervasive feature of Ovid’s style; for examples and bibliography see Tissol (1997) 18-26 and 218—222; and Bömer, Met. 9.279.

For mendacia, neuter plural, of one of Jupiter's theriomorphic Her.

8.67,

fluminei...mendacia

cygni.

Le

Boeuffle

disguises cf. Ovid,

wrongly

construes

men-

dacia...litora. Cf. also the use of the adjective mendax in Met. 10.159: percusso mendacibus aére pennis, said of Jupiter when he changed himself into an eagle to carry off Ganymede. Gain comments "marito here = ‘mate’, not ‘husband’”; both meanings, however, are in play until the reader decides. Jupiter is, after all, taking

Europa to his former

home, Crete. One might increase the number to 33 because in three instances Germanicus mentions two possible identifications for a constellation: Bootes (Arctophylax, Icarus);

Auriga (Ericthonius, Myrtilus); Cycnus (Apollo's Cycnus or the swan [Jupiter] that impregnated Leda). The catasterism myth of Cassiopeia occurs twice in each poem but is counted only once.

“Regenerative” is the translation of the epithet fecundam in 543. In Ovid, Her. 9.95-96 Deianeira describes the Hydra thus: quaeque redundabat fecundo uulnere serpens / fertilis, at Met. 9.70 Hercules himself, telling of his encounter with the Hydra, says, uulneribus fecunda suis erat illa. Again it seems that Germanicus's brevity of expression relies on Ovid's prior treatment. See Chapter 3, n. 101 on the 10.

phrase aequo pondere. The seriatim presentation of the zodiacal catasterisms in this passage is reminiscent

of Ovid's compressed treatment of numerous transformations

in Met. 7.350-390.

210

Translating the Heavens The catasterism of Virgo is told at 103-139,

Scorpio-Chelae at 644—660.

cus’s cross-reference to his narrative of the Scorpio-Chelae

11.

Germani-

catasterism is paralleled

by similar references at Fast. 3.57-58 and 5.723-724. The principal sources for the catasterism myths of the zodiacal constellations are the Καταστερισμοί and Hyginus’s Poetica astronomica. The Καταστερισμοί, as it is now commonly called, although the title transmitted by one of the manuscripts appears to be ᾿Αστροθεσίαι ζῳδίων, is an anonymous work which is thought to be an epitome of a work by Eratosthenes, entitled Κατάλογοι and containing star myths and catalogues of the individual stars found in each constellation. On the contents of Eratosthenes’ Κατάλογοι and its relation to the epitome and to Hyginus’s Poet. astr. see the fundamental discussion in Robert (1878) 1-35; Robert's views are well summarized and discussed by Knaack (1907) 377-381; see also Martin (1956) 57-68; Pfeiffer (1968) 168; and Fraser (1972) 2.597 n. 303. Other relevant source materials are conveniently collected in RE articles on the constellations, in

12.

“Sternbilder,” and in Roscher’s Lexikon. References to these works will be provided as each constellation is discussed. The Fasti contains the following catasterism myths for zodiacal constellations: Aries 3.857-876; Taurus 5.603-620; Gemini 5.693-720, referred to in Met. 8.372 as nondum 2.459-474.

13.

caelestia sidera; the Scorpion (and Orion) 5.537-544; For a comparison of the Fasti catasterisms with the text

Pisces of the

Phaenomena see Gee (2000) 194—204. Heinze (1960?) 347—352 analyzes Ovid's treatment of catasterisms. Courtney p. 179 = Blünsdorf p. 182. I have made two changes in the text: the participle reserans for the transmitted reserat in 8, and the semi-colon after portas in the same line; also, I retain the transmitted reading est in 10. See Possanza (1991)

14. 15.

44-46. Cat. 124-125; Hyg. 2.20; Gundel (19229); "Sternbilder" 934-938. Le Boeuffle quotes Ovid's Fast. 4.715,

qui prodidit Hellen. In his narrative

of the

catasterism myth of Aries (Fast. 3.857-876) Ovid makes explicit the etymological connection: dicitur infirma cornu tenuisse sinistra / femina, cum de se nomina fecit aquae (869—870).

16.

Taurus, Cat. 106; Hyg. 2.21; Gundel (1934) 53-58; ini,

Cat. 86-88;

Hyg.

2.22;

“Sternbilder”

"Sternbilder" 938-942:

946-951:

Cancer,

Cat.

88-95;

GemHyg.

2.23; "Sternbilder" 951-954: Leo, Cat. 96-98; Hyg. 2.24; Gundel (1925°); “Stern-

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

bilder” 954—959. The treatment of Jupiter's infidelities en bloc is reminiscent of the scenes woven by Arachne in Met. 6.103-114. Jupiter in the role of disguised lover had appeared earlier at 275-277: contra spectat Auem, uel Phoebi quae fuit olim / Cycnus uel Ledae thalamis qui illapsus adulter / furta louis falsa uolucer sub imagine texit.

Cat. 150-154; Hyg. 2.27; Rehm (1920); “Sternbilder” 967-971. Rehm (1920) 1750; "Sternbilder" 970-971. Rehm (1920) 1750; “Sternbilder” 971; Gundel (1922®) 2028-2029. Bouche-Leclercq

(1899)

143

describes

Sagittarius

as

“une

copie

ou

caricature

d'Apollon"; quoted by Rehm (1920) 1750. Cat. 148-150; Hyg. 2.28; "Sternbilder" 971-974. On the vexed question of Augustus and Capricorn,

his natal sign or sign of concep-

tion, see Barton’s important contribution (1995). Whatever the correct astrological explanation of the connection between Capricorn and Augustus may be, it is clear

Doctus Poeta

211

that in this passage Capricorn’s role as the bearer of Augustus’s numen on its return trip to the stars is directly related to its significance

as Augustus’s natal sign (geni-

tali corpore 558); the sign that presided over the entry of Augustus’s numen into the world. Barton (49) points out the important ideological connection between Capricom and Augustus which is related to Capricorn’s role as Jupiter’s helper in the war against the Titans: Augustus’s victory brought peace on land and sea, in the words of the Augustan slogan, pax parta terra marique. Capricorn is a biform creature (geminus forma 557, Capricorni biformis, fr. 4.130), i.e., a creature of land and sea. Its dual nature corresponds to the twofold division of the world which had come under Augustus's authority. The depiction, on a coin, of Capricorn carrying a cornucopia

represents prosperity and plenty resulting from the restoration of peace on land and sea where the presence of Augustus's power is manifest. Capricorn has more than an astrological significance as Augustus's sign; it is also an emblem of the pervasiveness of his power on land and sea. See also Gee (2000) 137-142.

24. 25.

26.

Cat. 148; "Sternbilder" 972-973. Other examples in the poem: (Helice and Cynosura) moderator Olympi / donauit caelo. meritum custodia fecit (32-33); (corona Borealis) hunc illi Bacchus thalami memor addit honorem (72); (Capra) sidere quae claro gratum testatur alumnum (168); (Aquila) habet miracula nulla, / si caelum ascendit Iouis armiger (316—317): see Santini (1977) 71. The same theme is found in Ovid's Fasti: miluus meritis uenit in astra suis (3.808); caelum praemia (5.114); meriti praemia (5.544). Manilius 2.28-34, presents a catalogue of catasterisms that came as a reward for meritorious services; see Feraboli, Flores, and Scarcia (1996-2001) vol. 1.293-294. Cic., Rep. 6.13: omnibus qui patriam conseruauerint, adiuuerint, auxerint, certum esse in caelo definitum locum, ubi beati aeuo sempiterno fruantur; nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui omnem mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat acceptius quam concilia coetusque hominum iure sociati, quae ciuitates appellantur; harum rectores

et conseruatores hinc profecti huc reuertuntur. Note in particular the reference to the celestial origin and, after death, the celestial abode of these benefactors (hinc pro-

fecti huc reuertuntur). On the history of this belief, which goes back to Pythagoras, 27.

see Ronconi (1961) 78-79. Cicero, Rep. 6.15: iisque [hominibus] animus datus est ex illis sempiternis ignibus quae sidera et stellas uocatis. On the cognatio between man and stars compare Pliny

the Elder 2.95, idemque Hipparchus numquam satis laudatus, ut quo nemo magis adprobauerit cognationem cum homine siderum animasque nostras partem esse caeli; Seneca the Elder, Suas. 6.6, animus uero diuina origine haustus, cui nec senectus ulla nec mors, onerosi corporis uinculis exsolutus ad sedes suas et cognata sidera recurret; Quintilian 12.2.28, animumque caelestem «cognatis sideribus admoueat» (with Austin's commentary (19542) 89-90. For additional sources and discussion of these

astral beliefs see Cumont (1949) 142-188 and (1923) 91-109; Pfeiffer (1916) 113-130; and “Sternbilder” 1062-1065. 28.

Capelle (1917);

Germanicus’s picture of the numen Augusti returning to the stars on its natal sign

may have been inspired, in part, by Ovid, Met. 15.843-851 where Venus, after the assassination of Julius Caesar, carries his anima back to the stars. In the lines pre-

29.

ceding the transfer of Caesar’s anima it is foretold that Augustus too will be placed among the stars (15.839): aetherias sedes cognataque sidera tanget. For an astrological interpretation of materna astra see Montanari Caldini (1976) 48 and (1981) 96-103; she thinks that materna astra refers to Libra. Barton (1995) 36

212

Translating the Heavens and passim thinks it refers to Capricorn. See also Domenicucci (1996) 109-110. On the numen Augusti see Fishwick (1969) 356-367, revised version in Fishwick

(1987-1991) 30. 31.

2.1.375-387.

Manilius 1.385, sidus nostro qui contigit orbi; translated by Goold (1977).

Cat. 128-129; Hyg. 2.30; Gundel (1950); "Sternbilder" 974—977. The Cat. gives no mythological catasterism to explain the appearance of the constellation. On Dea Syria see Cumont (1901) 2241. In Ovid's account, Fast. 2.458—474, the reader is given a double aition: the origin of the constellation and the reason for the Syrians' abstinence from eating fish.

32.

33.

Ovid calls Aquarius puer Idaeus (Fast. 2.145): see Bömer’s note. Cat. 144-147; Hyg. 2.29; Tümpel (1903); "Sternbilder" 974—977; Roscher's Lexikon, "Deukalion," 1.994—997. Although no ancient author derives Deucalion's name from δεύω, modern scholarship hit upon the same etymology (cited in Roscher's Lexikon 1.996-997) in the hope of finding a significant name relevant to the scenario of the deluge myth. It is very probable that the ancient authors' fondness for etymological word-play detected a meaningful similarity in the first syllables of δεύω and Δευκαλίων which provided an etymologically significant explanation of the name in the context of the deluge myth. Moreover, that etymological explanation, in addition to the details of the myth, may lie behind the regular combination, in Latin poetry, of the name with unda or aqua: Prop. 2.32.53, Deucalionis aquae; and 54, Deucalionis aq-

uas; Ovid, Met. 7.356, Deucalioneas...undas; Fast. 4.794 Deucalionis aquas; Lucan 1.653, Deucalioneos...imbres. The most recent and the most plausible suggestion on the etymology of Deucalion is that of Janko (1987) who connects the name with *dl(e)uk-'sweet'.

34. 35.

36.

37.

Cf. Manilius 1.272-273: defundit Aquarius...undas. Marcus Cicero, Aratea 327, umidus Aquarius; Quintus Cicero, de duodecim signis, 13 (Courtney p. 179 = Blünsdorf p. 182), nebulas rorans liquor altus Aquari, Germanicus, Aratea fr. 4.28, imbris fusor, fr. 4.70, umidus at gelidos portendit Aquarius imbris. On the techniques and stylistic mannerisms of the aetiological poet (1982), and Myers (1994) 61—94. For a formal narratological analysis

see Miller see Harder

(1990) 287—309. Cat. 98-105; Hyg. 2.13; Rehm (1913); "Stembilder" 915-920; Steinmetz (1966) 467; and Maurach 78—82, 160—164. On variant identifications, which occur elsewhere in the poem, see below. Germanicus's treatment of the Myrtilus catasterism is discussed in detail by Mantero (1981).

Roscher's Lexikon, "Ericthonius," 1.1303-1308. Roscher’s Lexikon, "Myrtilos," 2.3315-3320. Cf. also 710, sine curribus ullis. Mantero (1981) 215: "L'interesse precipuo per l'elemento erotico caratteristica tutta alessandrina." See the sources in n. 37 above.

nel mito

e uno

Mantero (1981) 205 speaks of "la scarsa cura di Germanico" and "la mancanza di interesse del principe" for the Ericthonius catasterism. Terra natus is a translation of the epithet γηγενής: cf. Eur., Jon 20-21, γηγενοῦς Ἐριχθονίον.

On the legend of Ericthonius's

Hollis (1990) 226-229.

birth

see Bómer,

Met.

2.553,

and

Doctus Poeta 45. 46. 41. 48. 49. 50.

51.

Le Boeuffle and Maurach cite Ovid's Ibis 367-368:

213 proditor ut saeui periit auriga

tyranni / qui noua Myrtoae nomina fecit aquae. Mantero (1981) 219.

Cat. 158-161; Hyg. 2.17; "Sternbilder" 926—928. Ovid refers briefly to this myth: seu fuit occultis felix in amoribus index, Fast. 2.81,

but prefers the story of the dolphin and Arion. Cat. 142-144; Hyg. 2.8; Gundel (19229); "Sternbilder" 906-908. Germanicus has a fondness for this word as an economical means of erotic suggestion in a catasterism myth: hunc illi [coronae] Bacchus thalami memor addit honorem (72); in thalamos, Neptune, tuos, miseratus amantem (323); thalamis et

uirginitate relicta (537). McKeown (1989), commenting on thalamus in Ovid's Amores 1.5.11, writes “It is a grand word, used with particular frequency in reference to goddesses, heroines and queens." Falsa sub imagine and similar expressions are frequent in Ovid: see Bómer, Met. 2.37 (here not of adulterous disguise), and 3.1 (fallacis imagine tauri), Europa and

the bull. In Met. and Fast. furta "secret tryst" is the vox propria for Jupiter's adulterous relationships: see Bömer, Met. 1.606 (furta mariti) and note also furta Iouis at Met. 3.7; at Fast. 2.183 Arcas, the son of Callisto and Jupiter, is described as puer furto conceptus.

52. 53.

54.

Cat. 156-157; Hyg. 2.16; "Stembilder" 924—926; Roscher's Lexikon, “Ganymedes," 1595-1603. In 317 I read altum, predicate adjective, for the corrupt ardum of the manuscripts. It will serve as a diagnostic conjecture at least. It answers to sublimem in Aen. 5.255, sublimem pedibus rapuit louis armiger uncis. Gain's conjecture ardens, as noted by Maurach 122-123, produces an awkward repetition since arsit occurs in 319 to deScribe Jupiter's passion. Cf. Met. 10.155—156, rex superum Phrygii quondam Ganymedis amore / arsit. Ovid uses miraculum of metamorphosis;

see Bómer,

Met.

2.193.

Bómer

observes

that the occurrence of miracula at 2.193 is the one example in the poem in which the word is not usedof metamorphosis. However, it should be pointed out that since it there refers to the constellations, sparsa quoque in uario passim miracula caelo, it must denote their nature as transformed beings and is therefore consistent with Ovid's use of the word for metamorphosis. Cf. also Verg., G. 4.441. According to TLL 8.1059.7 miracula in our passage means ‘wonder’, ‘amazement’, but in the context of a catasterism myth I would not care to distinguish between the object of won-

der and the feeling of wonder that it inspires. In the phrase habet miracula nulla Germanicus is also playing with didactic formulas (cf. the Lucretian non est mirandum or non est mirabile) for introducing a presumably surprising phenomenon for which there is a “scientific” explanation: Germanicus presents the miraculous as if it were something quite natural. The mock-serious tone of the didactic formula presents the catasterism as a phenomenon

that admits “scientific” explanation;

the science

in this instance, however, is that of transformation caused by love, the science perfected by of Aquila caused by raculous”

Ovid. There is, the poet asserts, nothing miraculous about the catasterism because it took place in the heavens where such transformations, often a love affair, are a regular occurrence. On Lucretius’s “negations of the misee Myers (1994) 158-159.

214 55.

56.

Translating the Heavens Germanicus's use of furor here in the concrete sense "the object of passion" is noteworthy. Vergil uses it in the same sense at Ecl. 10.38 where Clausen (1994) comments: "furor: here first and virtually unique in this sense (TLL s.v. 1632.80)." Ovid too, in an astronomical context, juxtaposes love and war in a way that takes

the reader by surprise. At Fast. 4.169-178 the poet observes that although the Pleiades are said to be seven in number, only six are seen. He then offers two explana-

57.

tions for this phenomenon: the first explanation is that six of the sisters were loved by gods but the seventh was married to a mortal and lies hidden because of her shame; the second explanation is that one of the sisters could not bear to look upon the ruins of Troy and covered her eyes with her hand. Cat. 162-166; Hyg. 2.34 and 2.26; “Sternbilder” 983-989; Roscher's Lexikon 1040-1045; Fontenrose (1981) 5-32; and Martin, Com., 96-114.

58.

59.

Earlier in the Phaenomena the Scorpion was called μέγα θηρίον (84). Throughout the poem Aratus has an unfailing awareness of the relation of the part to the whole. See also Gee (2000) 84-87. Note in particular his elaboration

of the scene (426-428)

in which

Diana splits

open the earth; he adds the detail of her striking the ground with her feet, pedibus...percussa [insula] Dianae, to open the eerie depths, caecas lustrauit luce lacunas; see Introduction p. 11; and he elaborates the actual combat in 429-433, five lines which rewrite Aratus’s spare account into the expansive, alliterative phraseol-

ogy of Latin epic well illustrated by lines 431-432: hic ualido cupide uenantem perculit ictu, / mortiferum in uenas figens per uulnera uirus. See the fine analysis of Kubiak (1981); additional comments, with important observations on the text of Cicero’s Orion episode, in Clausen (1986).

60.

coeli tpoenet is transmitted at the beginning of 659. This is the reading of the Z branch of the tradition; the O branch leaves off after 582. Coeli may also be corrupt. No persuasive emendation has been proposed. Le Boeuffle, following Breysig (1899), prints Grotius’s paene. In light of Aratus’s φοβέει and φεύγειν and line 645 of the Latin, Scorpios Oriona fugat; pauet ille sequentem, it is difficult to see the point of paene modifying fugit. Gain prints et tamquam parte relicta / poenae

tela fugit; tamen altis mergitur undis... and translates "and, as if part of his punishment were still to come, flees its weapon; nevertheless

he is already setting...”;

see his note. However, "as if part of his punishment were still to come" is a translation of parte futura poenae (cf. poenae futurae 650); parte relicta poenae, on the other hand, would suggest that he had in fact escaped the threat of the Scorpion's sting. The general sense of the lines seems to be that although Orion has relinquished a part of the sky and flees from the Scorpion, nonetheless his effort to save himself still results in his disappearance from the sky, i.e., in setting he suffers a

kind of "death." Thus the Scorpion vanquishes Orion even without actually stinging him. On the basis of this interpretation I have adopted Gain’s conjecture tela to61.

gether with the transmitted caeli in 659 and quamquam in 658. I retain the transmitted text, non ego, non primus, with Le Boeuffle, Baehrens, and Orelli. Gain's emendation haec ego weakens the urgency of the statement by removing the anaphora and asyndeton. His argument that the transmitted text contains “a

non too many" overlooks the intensifying force of the gemination of non: non ego, non primus = "I'm not the one, I'm not the first who told in song...” Cf. Hor., Carm. 2.20.5-6, not an exact parallel; and for the disclaimer see the parallels cited by Kidd, Com., on 647.

Doctus Poeta 62.

See Cat. 162-164 and Hyg. 2.34.2 (to be read was present with Orion and Diana (Artemis) 2.26. On the variant accounts explaining why was sent (Diana or Earth) see Bómer, Fast. on

215

in conjunction with 2.26). That Leto is recorded by Cat. 164 and Hyginus the scorpion was sent and by whom it 5.537; Kidd, Com., on 636; and Mar-

tin, Com., 96-114. Nagle’s translation (1995), modified.

Similarly in Ovid’s accounts of the catasterism of Callisto and her son Arcas (Met. 2.496-507;

Fast. 2.187-190)

mother and son are snatched up into

heaven

at the

critical moment when Arcas is unknowingly about to kill Callisto. 65.

Aen. 11.557, Latonia

66.

soror, and Bömer, Met. 5.330. Cicero follows Aratus in using the goddess’s name: Dianam (420) and Dianae (426). The fate of Dido is foreshadowed with the words pesti deuota futurae at Aen. 1.712.

uirgo (Metabus invokes

Diana); cf. also Aen.

1.329,

Phoebi

The punishment that Diana has in store for Actaeon is described as cladis...futurae at

Met. 3.191. 67.

Ovid calls the Calydonian boar, sent by Diana to ravage the land of Oeneus, an ultor,

68. 69.

Met. 8.281 and a hostis 368. Aen. 10.140, uulnera derigere et calamos armare ueneno. τοὔνεκα introduces an aetiological explanation in Callimachus's Aetia 63.9 Pfeiffer (1949-1953) and Hecale 278.1 Pfeiffer (1949-1953) = Hollis (1990) 99.1. Hollis gives additional references in his note; so also in Cicero's Aratea, quare (434). that same line he omitted φασι but had added dicitur earlier in 421.

70.

In

Cicero gives heavy emphasis to Orion's frenzied state, in which he feels that his prowess has no limits: errans in collibus amens (421); uaecors amenti corde (424), the figura etymologica in uaecors corde underscoring his madness. Orion has de-

scended to the level of his prey, feras (424). Despite the similarities of Cicero's description of Orion's condition to that of forlorn lovers found later in elegy, it is unlikely that Cicero's language is intended to suggest that Orion's madness is the result of an unrequited passion for Diana. Vaecors and amens refer to Orion's frenzy

71.

of killing on the hunt, comparable to a warrior's frenzy on the battlefield; it is the hunt and not a wild passion for the goddess that induces his madness, and his madness precipitates his attempted rape of the goddess. In the phrase horret uulnus adhuc Germanicus cleverly modifies the conventional use, at the conclusion of an aition, of a temporal adverb which indicates the continuation into the present of the phenomenon whose origin has just been explained, by relating it to an external reality: see Myers (1994) 66. In this instance,

the psychologizing the hunter and his expect the poet's Orion's setting as

however,

description horret uulnus adhuc keeps alive the fiction of Orion fear of the Scorpion at a point in the narrative where one would language to reflect the movement of the constellation, i.e., Scorpio rises, rather than the emotional state of the hero. The

significance of Germanicus's modification of this aetiological mannerism is brought out by comparison with Ovid's handling of the conclusion of the Callisto-

Ursa Major catasterism (Fast. 2.191-192): saeuit adhuc canamque rogat Saturnia Tethyn / Maenaliam tactis ne lauet Arcton aquis. Here the poet explains the astronomical phenomenon of Ursa Major's perpetual visibility as the result of Juno's undying anger, caused by Jupiter's rape of Callisto, which prevents the constellation from setting in Ocean. Saeuit adhuc is indeed appropriate to the character of Juno at

216

Translating the Heavens the conclusion of the story and ne lauet...aquis is appropriate to the observed course

72. 73.

74.

of the constellation. See Miller (1992).

Gain and Maurach understand pensauit with Icarus alone as subject, an interpretation which results in a breakdown of the syntax since Arctophylax is left without a verb in the main clause, and one is not easily supplied from the context. In fact, Arctophylax, as well as Icarus, “made up for a life snatched away with a constellation.” The explanation is that Arctophylax is to be identified as Arcas, the son of Callisto and Jupiter, who, as Ovid tells the story (Met. 2.496-507; Fast. 2.153-192), was snatched away along with his mother into the heavens by Jupiter when Arcas was about to kill her (raptos, Met. 2.506; raptus uterque, Fast. 2.188); he did not recognize her, of course, because she had been changed into a bear. Germanicus is playing on the two possible interpretations of ereptam in this context: snatched away (by Jupiter) in the case of Arctophylax; snatched away (by death) in the case of Icarus. Cf. also Hyg. 2.1.2, ereptam Callisto cum filio; 2.4.1; ereptos inter sidera (of Callisto and Arcas). Other references to variant versions in the Aratea: Auriga (157-160), est etiam Aurigae facies, siue Atthide terra / natus Ericthonius, qui primus sub iuga duxit / quadrupedes, seu Myrtoas demersus in undas / Myrtilos; Cycnus (275-277), contra spec-

tat Auem, uel Phoebi quae fuit olim / Cycnus uel Ledae thalamis qui illapsus adulter/ furta Iouis falsa uolucer sub imagine texit; Ara (418—420), dextra / seu praedam e siluis portat seu dona propinquae, / placatura deos, cultor louis admouet Arae; in the

Fasti: Delphin, 2.81-82; Taurus, 4.719-720 (Jupiter), and 5.605-606

(Io); Hyades

5.165-168. In the case of the Taurus catasterism, identified as either Jupiter's disguise or Io, Ovid neatly gives relevance to both versions when he links them to the topic of Jupiter's philandering and Juno's jealousy: seu tamen est taurus siue est hoc femina signum, / lunone inuita munus amoris habet, 4.719-720. See Santini (1977)

75.

72. Multiple identifications, although they demonstrate the poet's learning, can result in minor inconsistencies. When Aratus observes that Aries moves as fast on its larger circuit of the equator as Ursa Minor (Kuvocoupl80s "ApkTou) does on its much smaller circuit around the pole (225-227),

Germanicus (226) substitutes

Ly-

caonis Arctos (Ursa Major, daughter of Lycaon) for Κυνοσουρίδος "Apkrov, Ursa Minor. The identification Lycaonis Arctos is, however, a mistake: the daughter of Lycaon is Callisto, who became the constellation Ursa Major (see Maurach). Moreover, Ursa Major was earlier identified as the nymph Helice who plays a part in the legend of Zeus's infancy on Crete. The story of Callisto is an altogether different

catasterism myth which Aratus could not mention because it represents a much less appealing aspect of his providential Zeus. Here the poet was probably misled by the line-ending Lycaonis Arcton in Vergil's G. 1.138 (on which see Thomas (1986] 193-194 = Thomas [1999] 136), and by the vocative Lycaoni in Ovid's account of the catasterism (Fast. 2.173).

76.

71.

At Fast. 5.1-6, the poet compares himself to a traveler who doesn't know which way to go (note especially in 5, quia posse datur diuersas reddere causas; cf. 4.784 where the poet is in doubt about the correct explanation. Multiple explanations are of thematic importance in the Fast.; see Miller (1992). Germanicus does mention the nameless stars (Aratea 371—378) which occasion Aratus's disquisition on the naming of the constellations, but of Phaenomena

Doctus Poeta 370-382,

217

in which Aratus describes the invention of the constellations,

there re-

mains not a trace in the Aratea. Cicero compresses the passage but repeats its most important point; a man devised the constellations and assigned them names

78.

(160-163). The omission of Phaenomena 370-382 is also consistent with the statement in fr. 5.1-3 that Atlas taught mankind astronomy: Astrorumque globos et sidera maximus Atlas / protulit in populos, numeris uersutus, et omnes / stellarum motus certa ratione notauit. For Atlas, the father/founder of astronomy, see Pliny the Elder 2.31

and 7.203, with Beaujeu's commentary (1950) on the former passage; his reference to Vitruvius, 6.10.6 should be to 6.7.6. For an expression of the rationalistic point

of view see Cic., Tusc. 5.8. 79. 80.

For a different point of view see Le Boeuffle (19835). On the structure and interpretation

of this passage see Kidd, Com., with bibliogra-

phy, and Kidd (1967); see also Gee (2000) 84-90. 81.

One ancient commentator (Maass [1898] 75) refers to them as a joke (γελοῖον), and points out, with irrefutable logic and utter lack of imagination, that there were al-

ways stars before Perseus and Orion. 82.

The

83.

zwischen ἄστρον einerseits und εἴδωλον oder εἶδος andererseits," imposes too static a perspective on Aratus’s constantly shifting lens, but the distinction is still a useful one; full discussion (at times unduly subtle) of Phaenomena 367—385 on 145-151. In my discussion of the passage I try to show how this distinction operates on a linguistic level. For a different view of the relation between catasterism and first namer see Pender-

84.

neat

formulation

of Erren

(1967)

146,

graft (1990). Hence Attalus's complaint (apud Hipparchus, writing is repetitive and confused.

“Dann

Manitius

kónnen

[1894]

wir

unterscheiden

1.8.9) that Aratus's

85.

εἴδωλον 64, 449, 455, 616, 653; ἐοικώς 58, 63—64, 67, 91-92, 168, 183, 278, 340, 437, 439, 444, 449, 512; ἄγαλμα 197; καλέω (and related words) 27, 36, 66, 164, 217, 245, 261, 315, 331, 388, 399, 442, 444, 476, 544, 645, 898; λόγος 100, 163, 637.

86.

There is in Latin epic poetry an equivalent phrase, similis * present participle: Aen. 5.254, anhelanti similis, and 8.649, indignanti similem similemque minanti; both

phrases occur in an ecphrasis. Ovid uses the same form of expression in the Met. to attribute to a transformed body a capacity from its former existence; see Bömer, Met. 1.406. For additional examples and discussion see Traina (1969) -- Traina (1981) vol. 2, 91-103; Germanicus avoids this form of comparison with similis in

order to create the impression that what he is describing is real and not a representation. The one exception, oddly enough, comes in his description

of the position

of

Perseus's right hand (252): dextera sublatae similis, "his right hand, like a hand upraised." Aratus simply says that Perseus's right hand (δεξιτερή) lies extended in the direction of Cassiopeia's

chair (Cicero's translation

is dextram 23). The change is

difficult to explain but it does appear to be consistent with changes of a similar nature in Germanicus's treatment of Perseus: the constellation is called an "image" (ef-

figies) of Perseus, and Perseus "seems" (uidetur) to be cleaving winged feet.

the upper air on

Appendix A Authorship and Date

Authorship: Manuscripts and Indirect Tradition Germanicus Caesar’s authorship of the Aratea has been questioned, and with good reason, because the name Germanicus is not found in any of the primary manuscripts, but only in some of the recentiores of the fifteenth century whose tituli have no value as independent testimony.' The name Germanicus Caesar found its way into the recentiores, as I will explain below, through Coluccio Salutati. The attribution to Germanicus depends ultimately on references made by Lactantius (ca. 240—ca. 320) and

Jerome

(ca.

348—420):

Lactantius

attributes

quotations

from

our

poem to a Germanicus Caesar and Jerome attributes a translation of Aratus to a Germanicus Caesar. Their testimony must be given careful consideration in connection with the name found in the inscriptiones and subscriptiones of the primary manuscripts. The purpose of the following analysis is first to establish the names transmitted by the direct and indirect traditions; then to identify the historical persons that belong to those names; and finally to determine whether the conflicting evidence can be reconciled to yield a highly probable identification. I begin with an examination of manuscript inscriptiones and subscriptiones. The manuscripts of the poem are divided into two families, O and Z: O, the larger family, is divided into two branches, v (O! in Breysig [1899])

and u (02 in Breysig

[1899]).

Both branches

of the O

family

offer, with minor variations in orthography, the same title, Arati Phaenomena, and the same author, T. Claudi(i) Caesaris? Since T. for Titus is not a praenomen of the Claudii, it must be a mistake for T«i»., Tiberius, as von Winterfeld conjectured,‘ a common praenomen of the

220

Translating the Heavens

Claudii Nerones who became Caesars either by adoption or imperial title. The two main witnesses of the Z family, Leidensis Voss. Lat. Q 79 (ninth cent.) = L, and Einsidlensis 338

(tenth cent.) = E, lack both

in-

scriptiones and subscriptiones. Another member of the Z family, however, Bernensis

88

(tenth cent.) = Bern.

(a copy

of Bononiensis

188

[tenth

cent] = C) does have an inscriptio: CLAUDII CAESARIS ARATI PHOENOMENA. This inscriptio, according to von Winterfeld, was taken over from P of the O family. Hence there is no evidence upon which to build a reconstruction of the inscriptio of the Z family.‘ According to the reconstructed inscriptio of O, the author of the poem, if the conjecture T«i». is accepted, is a Tiberius Claudius Caesar. The name is ambiguous. At first sight it appears to designate a Claudian member of the Julio-Claudian family: the emperors Claudius and Nero are theoretical possibilities, although Nero, at any rate, can be eliminated because the poem is dedicated to the reigning Augustus, as I will argue below, and therefore must have been composed before the emperor's death in 14. The emperor Tiberius and his adopted son Germanicus Caesar are both ruled out if one requires strict observance of the rules of Roman nomenclature. When in 4 Tiberius Claudius Nero was adopted by Augustus, he became Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus; and when in the same year Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus

(Mommsen's

conjectural

recon-

struction of Germanicus's name before adoption) was adopted by Tiberius, he became Germanicus Julius Caesar. Although both Tiberius and Germanicus assumed the nomen Julius, neither made much use of it. Even so, Tiberius Caesar and Germanicus Caesar were no longer Claudii. When, however, one realizes that authors' names easily suffer alteration in the process of transmission, it does not strain credibility to suggest, especially since these candidates for authorship had well established identities as Claudii before they became lulii, that the name in the inscriptio could refer to Tiberius or Germanicus. In any case, the manuscript evidence is inconclusive and we must turn elsewhere for enlightenment. Lactantius takes our search for the author as far back as the early years of the fourth century, ca. 305-311, during which he composed and published the Diuinae institutiones. In that work Lactantius twice mentions the author's name when he quotes lines from the poem: Germanicus Caesar in Arateo carmine sic ait (1.21.38); ut Germanicus Caesar in Arateo loquitur carmine (5.5.4). There is a third notice in an abbreviated

form: Caesar quoque in Arato (1.11.64), which introduces material contained in a commentary on the poem, now known as the Scholia Basileensia. In this last reference Lactantius refers to the author only as Caesar,

Authorship and Date

221

but there is no doubt that Lactantius means the same Germanicus Caesar and his carmen Arateum mentioned in the fuller references at 1.21.38 and 5.5.4. This is the earliest testimony that supports Germanicus’s authorship, or, as we ought to say, a Germanicus’s authorship. The first step in evaluating Lactantius’s testimony is to determine what person we are to identify with that name. In order to do that we must pay close attention to the form of the name as it is reported by Lactantius. He gives Germanicus as the praenomen and Caesar as the cognomen. In prose usage the name Germanicus Caesar, written without a nomen gentile, is most naturally taken as referring to Germanicus Julius Caesar, son of Drusus and adopted son of Tiberius, because he was the only Caesar who used Germanicus as a praenomen rather than as a cognomen" and also because in Latin prose he is invariably called Germanicus Caesar or simply Germanicus, the nomen gentile of his adoptive family almost always being omitted." The agreement between ancient nomenclatural practice and Germanicus’s name as it is written in the Lactantian notice, taken together with the fact that his poetic talents are well attested in the ancient sources,” precludes the possibility that we are guilty of mistaken identity when we say that Lactantius’s Germanicus Caesar is none other than Germanicus Julius Caesar. Now we must consider what weight we will give to Lactantius’s testimony. At the very least Lactantius has chronological proximity in his favor, being six centuries closer to the poem and its author than the earliest manuscript. In all probability he read this poem and Cicero’s Aratea in school to study descriptive astronomy and to understand how it was employed in the works of Roman poets." In his native Africa he would have had access to libraries at Carthage and Timgad, as well as to the libraries he encountered on his travels, especially at Rome, Trier, and Nicomedia." And although one cannot speak with certainty in such matters, it would be odd if none of the libraries had a copy of the poem. To proceed to solider evidence, it is clear from Lactantius's references to Germanicus Caesar and his Arateum carmen that he was not quoting from memory or from some type of anthology or grammarian's compilation but rather that he was drawing his knowledge of the poem directly from a text with commentary. There are three clear instances where Lactantius has mined the commentary for star lore. The source from which Lactantius took his quotations of the poem and his references to material contained in the scholia must have been, as J. Martin, the historian and editor of Aratus’s text, has suggested, an edition with commentary." Martin has dated this commentary to the end of the third century. It cer-

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tainly can be no later than that since the Diuinae institutiones was written ca. 305-311. So there is the possibility that it may be older. We can now see that behind Lactantius’s testimony lay a most valuable source, a text of the poem and commentary dated to the end of the third century and possibly earlier." And that is as far back as we can go. Lactantius's testimony receives corroboration from another reliable source, Jerome, who attributes a Latin translation of Aratus to Germanicus Caesar: In Actibus quippe apostolorum, cum concionaretur ad populum, et in Areopago, quae est curia Atheniensium, disputaret, inter cetera ait: “Sicut et quidam de uestris poetis dixerunt, ‘Ipsius enim et genus sumus’” [Act.

17, 28], quod hemistichium in Phaenomenis Arati legitur; quem Cicero in Latinum sermonem transtulit; et Germanicus Caesar et nuper Auienus, et

multi, quos enumerare perlongum est.

The passage is interesting not only because Jerome mentions Germanicus Caesar, but also because he mentions him specifically in the company of other translators of Aratus—Cicero, Avienius, and persons unnamed. Again it is fairly certain that Jerome, like Lactantius, read Germanicus's and Cicero's translations of Aratus during his school days; and like Lactantius he had access to libraries, especially at Rome, in addition to his own private collection of books.” Moreover, in the passage quoted above, Jerome displays a familiarity with Latin translators of Aratus: he knows translations by Cicero and by his own contemporary Avienius, as well as the author in question, and he is aware that the list of Aratus's translators is a long one. Presumably then, had he wanted to, Jerome could have named not a few translators of the Phaenomena. Of these, Cicero, Germanicus Caesar, and Avienius appear in his judgment to be the ones most worth mentioning, perhaps for their personal notoriety as well as for the quality of their poetry. Since Jerome is correct in attributing versions to Cicero and Avienius, and since he demonstrates a familiarity with that particular species of poetry (he identifies the source of the Apostle's quotation), I find it hard to imagine why the attribution to Germanicus would be false. In terms of access to and availability of books, in terms of his education and his wide reading, spanning a lifetime, in the Latin classics, Jerome's attribution offers excellent, independent confirmation of Lactantius's testimony. We get another glimpse of the peregrinations of our poem when in the early sixth century the grammarian Priscian quotes from it in his Institutiones grammaticae.

He twice refers to a Caesar who

wrote

an Aratus:

Authorship and Date

223

Caesar in Arato (Keil [1857-1880] 3.351.4), introducing a quotation of verse 345, and Caesar in Arato (Keil [1857-1880] 3.417.1), introducing

a quotation of Prognostica 6, as it is now labeled, which is not preserved in the manuscript tradition. The reader will recall that in one of his references to the poem Lactantius uses the same phrase of introduction as Priscian, Caesar in Arato. It is quite clear from Lactantius’s other two references to the poem that this phrase is merely an abbreviation of Germanicus Caesar in Arateo carmine. When Priscian quotes from Cicero’s Aratea he uses an identical formula, cognomen + title, Cicero in Arato.

Although the all-important name Germanicus is missing from Priscian’s references, it is obvious from his quotation of 345 that he is referring to the same poet and the same poem to which Lactantius referred, and that the phrase Caesar in Arato is shorthand for Germanicus Caesar in Arateo carmine?! Whether Priscian himself or his source actually consulted a text of the poem and knew that Germanicus Caesar was the author is an entirely different question that cannot be answered."

To summarize the results of the analysis of the indirect tradition, i.e., Lactantius, Jerome, and Priscian: at the end of the third century and possibly earlier there existed an edition with commentary of a Latin translation of Aratus's Phaenomena whose author was identified as Germanicus Caesar. Lactantius, when he was writing the Diuinae institutiones between about 305 and 311, used this edition of the poem for quotations of the text and for information on stellar mythology contained in the commentary. He calls the poem carmen Arateum and identifies the author as Germanicus Caesar. Lactantius also refers to the same author and the same poem with the phrase Caesar in Arato (and after him Priscian does likewise): this abbreviated expression was a shorthand way of referring to author and poem.

From this evidence one may reasonably infer that at a

very early date Aratus became a specialized form of reference, along with carmen Arateum, for Germanicus's Phaenomena, and that when the cog-

nomen Caesar was mentioned in connection with an Aratus-poem, it was understood to mean Germanicus Caesar. Jerome mentions Germanicus Caesar in the company of Cicero and Avienius and other unnamed translators of the Phaenomena. His source is unknown, but it is reasonable to assume that since he was familiar with Latin translations of Aratus, to judge from his comment that it would take a long time to name them all,

he had read the poem

himself. When one considers the combined

evi-

dence of Lactantius and Jerome and the historical factors that urge us to

believe their testimony—the early date of their sources, access to libraries, availability of books, their reading of and familiarity with Latin literature

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throughout their lifetimes, and the use of Latin translations of Aratus as school texts—when one considers all of this, one can hardly dismiss their reports without positive proof to the contrary. The question that must now be asked and, if possible, answered is whether or not the name found in the manuscripts is an interpolated form of the name Germanicus Caesar. In attempting to answer this question we must account for the absence of the praenomen Germanicus and the interpolation of both the nomen Claudius and the praenomen Tiberius. It is not difficult to understand why the gentilicial name Claudius should turn up in Germanicus’s titulature, since his name was usually written without his proper gentilicial, Julius, and since he was originally a member of the famous Claudian gens. Moreover, there is good evidence to indicate that even after his adoption Germanicus could be called Claudius: in an inscription from the Greek East he is referred to as Germanicus Claudius.” In order to explain how the name was corrupted from Germanicus Caesar to T. Claudius Caesar, it is necessary to construct the following scenario for the transmission. In the first stage of transmission the original titulus read Germanici Caesaris Phaenomena: this represents a combination of the author’s name as it is most frequently attested in the ancient sources and the title that is confirmed by manuscripts of Aratus’s poem and the manuscripts of Germanicus’s translation; and it is what undoubtedly lies behind the Lactantian references to Germanicus Caesar in Arateo carmine. Jerome, although he does not give a title for the poem, does mention Germanicus Caesar as a translator of the Phaenomena. In the second stage of transmission the author’s name became obscure. Although famous in his own day and idealized in Tacitus’s portrait of him in the Annales, Germanicus was in truth a figure of minor literary and historical importance whose fame probably began to decline after the eclipse of the Julio-Claudian house. And so it is not difficult to imagine that in late antiquity, ca. 450—550, i.e., in the period after Jerome and before the great cultural collapse of the western empire, Germanicus's name no longer commanded the recognition that it had had for Lactantius, Jerome, and their contemporaries: the words Germanicus Caesar may have seemed nothing more than a fragment of imperial titulature. As a result of the ancient titulus’s obscurity, a learned interpolator reconstructed it in order to identify clearly the author as well as the text that he translated. The result might have been something like Ti. Claudi Caesaris Germanici (or Germ. if Germanici was abbreviated) Arati Phaenomena.

The special circumstances surrounding the composition and transmission of Germanicus’s name, his adoption from the Claudian into the Jul-

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225

ian gens, the absence of the nomen Julius in the customary form of his name, and the potential ambiguity of the name Germanicus Caesar in the latter ages of the empire, were conducive to the expansion of the name in the titulus to ensure proper identification. The interpolator’s faulty reconstruction of the name was due to two factors, the knowledge that Germanicus was originally a member of the Claudian gens and Tiberius’s adoption of Germanicus. Since Germanicus was adopted by Tiberius, it was only natural to assume that his praenomen was also Tiberius; and since neither used the nomen Julius and both were Claudians by birth, the interpolator chose the nomen Claudius. Thus to ensure proper identification of the author as the son of the emperor Tiberius, Germanicus Caesar was expanded, incorrectly, into Ti. Claudius Caesar Germanicus, the name Germanicus being peculiar to the son. And the name of Aratus was added to make it clear that Germanicus’s poem was a translation of the most famous of astronomical poems: Arati Phaenomena. Indeed the addition of the illustrious name of Aratus may have been decisive for the transmission

of the poem from late antiquity into the early middle ages. The fame of Aratus, who had become the literary astronomical guide par excellence, enhanced

the poem’s

chances of survival much

more than it would oth-

erwise have had if the less familiar Ti. Claudius Caesar Germanicus alone had been given as the author. The third and final stage in the transmission of the author’s name comes during the Carolingian revival of learning when there was an increased demand for texts on astronomy, one of the seven liberal arts. Renewed interest in the text, attested by the Carolingian manuscripts themselves, provided new opportunities for accidental or deliberate altera-

tion of the author’s

name.

It was during

this stage that Germanicus’s

name, written as a cognomen, could have been accidentally or deliberately omitted from the poem’s inscriptiones and subscriptiones. Of the three

elements of the Roman name, the praenomen was most susceptible to corruption and omission, and after it the cognomen; the nomen is the most stable element: as a result it sometimes happens that part of an author's name must be retrieved from sources other than the manuscripts.” In general, the hazards to which the elements of the Roman name were subjected at each stage of transmission lend strong support to the conclusion that the Germanicus Caesar of the indirect tradition and the T. Claudius Caesar of the manuscripts are one and the same. To

sum

up, the original

titulus of our

poem,

Germanici

Caesaris

Phaenomena, was altered in late antiquity, when the author's identity had become

obscure,

to Ti. Claudi

Caesaris Germanici

Arati

Phaenomena.

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During the Carolingian revival of learning, when new copies of the poem were produced, the cognomen Germanicus was omitted. And thus we are left with the inscriptio that can be reconstructed from the manuscripts of the O family: T«i.» Claudi Caesaris Arati Phaenomena. When we approach the problem of authorship as primarily a problem of nomenclature, an approach justified by the nature of the evidence, the weighing of testimonia about the literary attainments of various members of the imperial family who qualify as respectable candidates for authorship becomes a pointless exercise. It was incumbent upon us to follow up the lead provided by Lactantius and Jerome. Germanicus Caesar was a poet, and we are informed by very reliable sources that he wrote a Phaenomena. After sifting through the available evidence, I see no cogent reason to reject or impugn the conclusion that Germanicus Caesar is the author of the poem. To complete our picture of the transmission of the author’s name we turn to the recentiores of the fifteenth century which are the first manuscripts to use the name Germanicus for the author of the poem. The following manuscripts, all of which belong to the O family, are derived from a lost exemplar, x in Gain’s stemma (1), which was probably written in Florence,” whose chancellor, Coluccio Salutati, was instrumental in reintroducing Germanicus’s name into the manuscript tradition: Additional 15819 (ca. 1470), Arati Phaenomena per Germanicum Caesarem in Latinum conuersa cum commentario et figuris, Laurentianus Gad. plut. 89 sup. 43 (15th cent.) fragmentum

Arati Phaenomenon

ad Germanicum

in

latinam conuersum cum commento nuper in Sicilia reperto; Montpessulanus H 452 (15-16th cent.), de astronomia Germanic. ex Arato Ciceron.

ex eodem; Egertonensis 1050 (ca. 1480), Arati Romani Phaenomena per Germanicum

Caesarem in Latinam conuersa cum

expositione

in eadem;

Germanici Caesaris Prognosticorum fragmentum cum scholiis.* None of these tituli bears the stamp of antiquity, being too verbose and descriptive, identifying the author and his model Aratus, and notifying the reader that there is a commentary, and in one instance illustrations, attached to the poem. There is always the possibility, however remote it may appear to be, that these tituli preserve the remnant of a lost tradition. But since all of these manuscripts belong to the O family and the titulus of that family's archetype was T. CLAUDI CAESARIS ARATI PHAENOMENA, that possibility can justly be ruled out. Effectively, the one source from which these manuscripts could have derived the author's name was Lactantius. And the connection between these manuscripts and Lactantius is visible in the person of Coluccio Salutati, who wrote the following marginal note in his copy of the Aratea, Strozzianus 46, the inscriptio of which identifies

Authorship and Date

227

the author as 7. Claudius Caesar:" Inveni quod huius libelli auctor fuit Cesar Germanicus et dicitur arateum carmen.

Testis Lactantius Firmianus

libro I capitulo xxv et libro V capitulo v. As a result of Coluccio's identification of the T. Claudius Caesar in Strozzianus 46 with the Germanicus Caesar quoted by Lactantius, the name Germanicus reentered the manuscript tradition of the Aratea. Three of the recentiores listed above were written in Italy, the Laurentianus and Additional at Florence, the Egertonensis at Rome, and the Montpessulanus is a copy of a Florentine manuscript, Matritensis 8282. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, all of them probably go back ultimately to a Florentine exemplar. Now there was one man in Florence, Coluccio Salutati, who had read the passages in Lactantius that identified the author

as Germanicus Caesar and recorded his discovery in the Strozzianus. Salutati was in a very good position to communicate that information to others: he had the interest, the incentive, and the ability. In addition, in his De Laboribus Herculis, written in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, he refers to the Aratea 21 times, introducing it with such phrases as these: Germanicus in Arato siue Arati Phenomenia; Germanicus Cesar in Arato; Germanicus Cesar super Arato; he also refers to the same author as

Claudius Caesar or simply Claudius.” Clearly, Salutati was, through his note in the Strozzianus or his references in De Laboribus Herculis, the source for the author's name as it appears in the fifteenth century manuscripts.”

The Poem: Internal Evidence The poem itself offers no conclusive evidence on the question of authorship but does offer some useful clues in the first sixteen lines which help to confirm Germanicus’s authorship. (See Chapter 3, 106 for text and translation). From a first reading of the passage three general conclusions emerge. First, the dedicatee, referred to as genitor (2) and auctor (2) is the

emperor.” The identification of the genitor with Jupiter, the peace which under his stewardship prevails on land and sea, his divine presence (numen

16) and the invocation

of him

in the hymnic

proem

of a didactic

poem in place of one of the more common members of the Olympian household—all of this points to the emperor. Second, this emperor/dedicatee maintained peace on land and sea. And third, because the emperor/dedicatee is said to have a son, these lines must have been written no earlier than 4 when the first emperor, Augustus, adopted a son, Ti-

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berius, to be his successor. Now it is possible to go further and refine these conclusions. A correct understanding of these lines has long been bedeviled by the distortions of a strictly literal interpretation which says that it is necessary to conclude from genitor and natus that the author is the son of the emperor. That an emperor is the dedicatee of the poem is indisputable. But the conclusion that the author must be his son is truly without foundation: itis based solely on a literal interpretation of genitor, which can be used merely as an honorific title, and on the reading of natus as an appositive to an understood mihi (“to me, your son”). Long ago E. Maass rightly called attention to the use of genitor here in a figurative sense." Both genitor and auctor represent a recasting in Roman terms of Aratus's invocation of Zeus as the source of his poem (ix Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα 1 = car-

minis auctor 2) and

as a "father"

(τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος

elu£v 5, πάτερ

15 = genitor 2).” The poet's use of genitor was no doubt also inspired by its use in invocations of Jupiter, with whom the dedicatee is associated." As for natus, the easiest assumption is that it refers not to the author but to an unnamed person who is in fact the emperor's son. On this interpretation the poet is saying “while I assay to proclaim this in Latin verse, may you and your peace abide for your son" (15-16), rather than "for me, your son." It is a prayer both for the continuation of the emperor's peace and his continued presence as a divinity on earth: his peace and his divine presence will be a boon to his son and successor as well as to the people whom he rules.” There is, therefore, no compelling reason to assume that natus is the poet; it is a possible but not a necessary interpretation. The identity of the genitor invoked in line 2 is controversial, Augustus and Tiberius being the favored candidates. The controversy is due to the misconceived argument that the author must be the emperor's son: if Augustus is the dedicatee, then Tiberius is the author; if Tiberius is the dedicatee, then Germanicus is the author. The possibility that Germanicus is the author and Augustus the dedicatee is regarded as extremely doubtful on the ground that Germanicus is nepos Augusti and not natus Augusti. The problem of the genitor's identity is easily solved if the variant parta quies, instead of tanta quies, is read in 9. Only Augustus could be praised for having established peace on land and sea after prolonged civil war. Moreover, terra marique parta pax was the key slogan of Augustus's regime. Parta is, in my judgment, the genuine reading, supported by both transmissional probability and stemmatics. Since, however, it would be highly tendentious to appeal to a controversial reading to settle another

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229

controversy, I will leave aside parta quies and analyze the encomiastic topics employed in the proem which, being as distinctive as a name, are sufficient to identify the dedicatee/emperor. Our author has carefully constructed the proem out of two encomiastic topics: 1. Jupiter-emperor topic, the identification of the dedicatee as Jupiter’s co-regent on earth and the invocation of him as a superhuman figure who is humankind’s great benefactor; 2. pax topic, praise of the dedicatee as guardian of worldwide peace which fosters agricultural and maritime activity. These two topics, working in concert, point unmistakably to the reigning Augustus as the dedicatee.”* 1. Jupiter-Emperor Topic. Jupiter and the emperor divide the world between them; the emperor holds sway over land and sea, in this instance through his pax, while Jupiter rules the sky. Ovid provides a straightforward example in Metamorphoses 15.858-860:" luppiter arces

temperat aetherias et mundi regna triformis, terra sub Augusto est; pater est et rector uterque.

Although Augustus was not the only emperor to be identified as Jupiter's earthly counterpart, he was the emperor for whom this topic was most of-

ten and most artfully employed. Germanicus's encomium, effected initially through the transposition of the emperor into Zeus/Jupiter's role of beneficent deity, is dignified and elegant, and harmonizes well with the Augustan panegyric of Vergil and Horace. Through his open dialogue with Aratus's proem Germanicus artfully sets Augustus up not only as Jupiter's earthly counterpart but also as his rival whose peace ultimately restores order to the world of nature, without explicitly saying that the two divide the world between them as Ovid does. In addition, the dual function of the dedicatee as both beneficent ruler and source of poetic inspiration (auctor carminis) is well suited to Augustus. For Tiberius

there is

no comparable body of poetical panegyric that transforms him into a temporal Jupiter, no doubt because, as one scholar has observed, "Tiberius most directly influenced literature by inhibiting it.’”* Although at this stage the possibility that it is Tiberius who is thus identified in the proem as Jupiter's co-regent cannot be denied, that possibility will be ruled out when we consider the next topic.

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Translating the Heavens

2. Pax Topic. There can be no doubt that the most important achievement of our unnamed emperor, in the opinion of the poet, is worldwide peace. The peace which exists under the emperor’s stewardship fills the earth just as Zeus fills the earth in Aratus’s proem: it is his pax which, more than anything else, fosters agriculture and navigation. Jupiter’s control of the heavens becomes a matter of secondary importance. Moreover, peace allows the poet to get on with the business of writing his poem: nunc uacat audacis ad caelum tollere uultus sideraque et mundi uarios cognoscere motus. (11-12)

Manilius, after invoking Augustus, proem of the Astronomica:

says something

very

similar in the

hoc sub pace uacat tantum. iuuat ire per ipsum aera et immenso spatiantem uiuere caelo signaque et aduersos stellarum noscere cursus. (1.13-15)

As both Maass and von Winterfeld noted," Germanicus's praise of the benefits of peace would most naturally evoke thoughts of Augustus, especially in a context where the Jupiter-emperor topic, characteristic of encomia of Augustus, introduces specific mention of peace on land and sea, the greatest achievement of the Augustan regime.” Tiberius too presided over a peaceful empire but by the beginning of his principate pax had become the norm, an expected part of daily life. Velleius Paterculus in his panegyric of that emperor poses the rhetorical question quando pax laetior (2.126.3), although he immediately follows up with a reference to the peace which Tiberius has preserved as the pax augusta. One cannot deny that pax is a significant feature of Tiberius's principate. However, Germanicus's treatment of the emperor's pax contains a distinctive element that is peculiar to encomia of Augustus; and that element is the intimate connection of peace with agriculture and seafaring. This particular nexus of ideas—peace fosters agriculture and seafaring— reveals that the historical situation of the emperor's pax is peace restored after civil war. Roman authors do not pray for peace or extol its blessings in the context of foreign wars; they expect victory over Rome's enemies. It was accepted that citizen-soldiers were to shed their blood in order to expand and maintain the empire. Conquest and the killing of foreign foes were constructive enterprises. Civil war, on the other hand, was an abomination to man and god alike, a self-destructive enterprise. In

Authorship and Date

231

response to civil war Roman poets pray for peace, i.e., the restoration of civil concordia to avert the indiscriminate slaughter of fellow citizens and the dissolution of the institutions of government. Thus citizens want concordia for themselves but submission to the imperium Romanum from foreign nations." The importance of the restoration of internal peace explains why Augustus was able to close the temple of Janus at the end of the civil wars while Rome was still prosecuting foreign wars.” To the Roman mind the civil wars fought by Julius Caesar and Augustus convulsed the whole world: every land and sea bears witness to Rome’s fratricidal slaughter.” If every land and sea was stained with Latin blood in the civil wars, it was Italia that suffered most, enduring the loss of her sons who had taken up arms, and the devastation of her fields.“ For the poets the calamity of civil war was most manifest, apart from the actual slaughter, in the desertion of farms and the deliquescence of agriculture, an activity which in Roman literature was regarded as the wellspring feeding the greatness of the Roman character—the simple virtues and pristine strength of the rugged yeoman. Hence the disruption and disintegration of agriculture due to protracted civil war meant, at least on a literary level, a degeneration of the moral life of the community; the plow lay idle, plowshares were hammered into swords, and citizens took up arms against citizens." So it is only natural that poets represented Augustus’s restoration of peace as the return of the farmer to the soil.“ And since the revitalizing effects of the newly won peace and stability were not confined to the land alone, there are references to the return of safe navigation on the sea. In this connection von Winterfeld rightly pointed out that Germanicus's reference to seafaring is inappropriate to Tiberius because Augustus alone pacified land and sea." Augustus was thus acknowledged by his contemporaries as the savior of Rome, Italy, and the empire under whose rule, sanctioned by Jupiter himself, peace was established on land and sea: his very presence promoted the fertility of crops and made safe the sea lanes. This poetic complex of associations, peace-agriculture-seafaring, signifying the return of agricultural prosperity and safe navigation of the sea after civil war, is exactly what we find in Germanicus's proem. Restoration of peace after civil war (parta quies)," the return of agricultural productivity (cultor/terra) and of safe navigation (puppis/aequor), and the removal of the threat of civil war (arma/silere), accomplished under the stewardship of a man (praeses) who is like Jupiter on earth—these are the distinctive elements of Germanicus's proem which reveal Augustus as the dedicatee.

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Translating the Heavens

Since it is Augustus who is invoked in the proem, it follows that natus must refer to Tiberius, his adopted son and designated successor, as C. Santini has argued." Augustus’s dynastic plan had repercussions in the world of poetry as well as politics; panegyric of the first princeps had to extoll his son and successor and thereby sanction his future role as ruler with an established place in the natural order of things. When at the end of Ovid's Metamorphoses (15.832-839) Jupiter prophesies the apotheosis of Augustus, he mentions that Tiberius will be ready to take up the reins of the empire; and Tiberius, being the son and grandson of gods, is eminently suited to the post. Similarly our poet makes reference to Tiberius as successor to the ruler who restored order to the world of nature and the world of man and he prays that the peace which Augustus has won may continue undiminished into the reign of his son.” The most serious obstacle to identifying the reigning Augustus as the dedicatee is found in 558-560, which describe the astral apotheosis of his numen:

hic, Auguste, tuum genitali corpore numen attonitas inter gentis patriamque pauentem

in caelum tulit et maternis reddidit astris.

At first sight this piece of evidence seems to support the conclusion that the dedicatee is the deified, and not the reigning, Augustus. That conclu-

sion, however, strikes me as improbable for the following reasons. If the poem was written after the death of Augustus, then surely Tiberius would merit considerably more attention than mere mention as Augustus's natus. His military achievements in particular would have provided an abundance of material for panegyric. As Housman observed, the reigning emperor is always treated as superior to his predecessor. Furthermore, it would be an event without parallel in Latin literature to dedicate a poem to an emperor who was dead at the time of composition. To illustrate how expendable deceased literary dedicatees were, Ovid rededicated the Fasti to Germanicus after the death of its original dedicatee, Augustus; and Manilius turned to Tiberius as the ruling power after the death of Augustus.” Another argument against the deified Augustus as dedicatee is the poet’s use of the Jupiter-emperor topic. In the proem Augustus is presented as Jupiter’s co-regent on earth whose peace pervades land and sea; his power is manifest on earth in a world order that fosters agriculture and navigation. There is no indication that Augustus has been translated to the

Authorship and Date heavens, which would be his new domain

if he had

233 been

deified, as the

following text illustrates (Manilius 1.798-800): descendit caelo caelumque replebit quod reget, Augustus, socio per signa Tonante.™

It was assumed that after his death Augustus would rule the mundus, not just the earth, in partnership with Jupiter; but of this new realm there is no hint in the proem. When Germanicus wrote, Augustus was still among the living." No weight as a counter argument can be given to the poet's reference to Augustus’s numen in 16 because the notion that Augustus possessed numen while he was alive is well documented.* And there is the additional consideration that the poet's invocation of him is a rewriting of a hymnic proem addressed to a divinity; Augustus by association must take on a divine aspect. The possibility that the deified Augustus is the dedicatee creates more problems than it solves. If it is agreed that the reigning Augustus is the dedicatee, then we must conclude that lines 558—560 were inserted by the poet after the poem was completed and circulated among readers, in order to celebrate the deification of the emperor: three lines of verse, not integral to the context, one of which, 559, is closely modeled on 132, did not require much effort of the poet. It is also possible that these lines were in the poem from the start, but in a different form; they might originally have been cast in the form of a prophecy, as in G. 1.32-35, and then were altered when the prophecy of Augustus's immortality was fulfilled. In either case dynastic politics would have inspired the change since Germanicus had become the grandson of a god. Whether lines 558—560 are a revision of what was originally a prophecy of astral apotheosis, or are a completely new addition, they were obviously written after the proem; and since the proem was probably the last part of the translation to be written, Germanicus must have inserted these lines after the poem was put into circulation."

Date of Composition As I have argued above, the reigning Augustus is the genitor invoked by the poet and Tiberius his natus.^* It follows from this conclusion that 4, the year of Tiberius's adoption, must be the terminus post quem and that 558—560 were added after the poem was finished to commemorate the deification of Augustus. The subject matter of the poem easily accommo-

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Translating the Heavens

dated a reference to the astral immortality of the emperor. Conflicting chronological indications in the same text are not unprecedented. In

Book 1 of Ovid’s Fasti we find, as a result of the author's revision, passages that are datable to the lifetime of Augustus and to the period after his death. Ovid even went so far as to rededicate to Germanicus the poem which was originally dedicated to Augustus." So it is not at all an extraordinary thing that Augustus is the living dedicatee of the proem and the dead and deified emperor of 558—560. An early date of composition, not long after 4, is suggested by the nature of the work itself: a translation of lines 1-732 of the Phaenomena, followed by a treatment of astrometeorology which was based in all likelihood on a prose source and was comparable in length to Aratus's "Weather Signs," is not a work that engages the talents of the mature poet. Germanicus himself describes the work as an early effort in poetic composition

(primitiae docti laboris): it would

be absurd

to think

that

with these words the poet is referring to a fledgling career in astronomy. The difficulties of the task were considerably lightened by the existence of Cicero's and Ovid's translations (and perhaps others that have disappeared without a trace) and by the existence of commentaries, both technical and literary, on the Phaenomena, which could have guided Germanicus's reading of the poem. Translating Aratus was clearly not the work of a poet's maturity but of his apprenticeship. So it is easy to imagine our poet, while still in his school days, undertaking the translation and adaptation of a classic text that had become part of the reading list. In the year 4 Germanicus was eighteen, roughly the same age as Cicero when he produced his translation of Aratus, a point rightly emphasized by Fantham;* and in that same year he became the son of Tiberius and grandson of Augustus with excellent prospects for becoming Tiberius's successor, a set of circumstances which may have inspired the opening panegyric of Augustus as a terrestrial power that rivals the cosmic Zeus. This new and promising relationship would have provided, as Santini has argued, a strong motive for Germanicus to affirm through the medium of

poetry the ascendancy of the ruling house, notable both for its literary attainments and its interest in the stars, and to it.” As for the terminus ante quem I agree with year 7 when Germanicus’s student days came take up his responsibilites as a member of the under Tiberius in Pannonia. Moreover, since phoses provided the models for Germanicus’s

promote his connection with Fantham in putting it in the to an end and he began to imperial house with service Ovid’s Fasti and Metamorhandling of erotic elements

Authorship and Date

235

in many of the catasterism myths, Ovid’s exile in 8 would have certainly dampened the enthusiasm of an aspiring poet who wanted to follow in Ovid’s footsteps by giving prominence to the theme of illicit love, especially since that poet was going to dedicate his poem to the ruler who sent Ovid into exile. Germanicus’s Ovidian treatment of catasterism myths would, I think, have been very much out of place if he had written his poem in the less congenial literary atmosphere of a Rome that had witnessed the banishment of its leading poet and with him the playful Muse of love’s transforming powers. On the basis of these considerations, I conclude that Germanicus composed his translation sometime between 4 and 7 before he entered fully into the military and political responsibilities of his station and before Ovid suffered relegation to Tomis. In short Germanicus’s Aratea is an Augustan poem. To sum up this discussion of authorship and date, Germanicus Julius Caesar, the adopted son of Tiberius, composed his Aratea, to give the broadest limits, sometime between the years 4-14, a period delimited at one end by Augustus’s adoption of Tiberius and Tiberius’s adoption of Germanicus, and at the other end by the death of Augustus. In the proem it is the reigning Augustus who is addressed and the natus in 16 is his adopted son Tiberius. I myself would delimit the period further to 4—7, mainly on the ground that Germanicus’s translation and adaptation of Aratus was a work of the poet’s apprenticeship, as it was with Cicero, and that he refers to it as such with the phrase primitiae docti laboris. He dedicated the poem to his adoptive grandfather Augustus Caesar, and, not long after the death and deification of the princeps in 14, he added lines 558-560 to the description of the Zodiac to honor the entrance of the princeps’s numen into its heavenly abode.

Notes

1.

Maurach (11-13) recognizes a problem of attribution; after consideration of probable and improbable candidates, he decides that the traditional attribution to Germanicus Caesar is correct. Serious doubts get the better of Gain when he concludes his discussion of the authorship with the provocative statement that “the evidence does not allow one to say whether the author was Tiberius or Germanicus” (20). In response to this conclusion one reviewer, Hall (1978) 45, commented that the evidence in favor of Germanicus is overwhelming. Another critic of Gain's position, Baldwin (1981) 166-167, believes that it is all a guessing game in which Germanicus is a better guess than most. In the following discussion all dates are AD unless otherwise indicated.

236

Translating the Heavens Inscriptiones and subscriptiones are taken from Breysig (1867) xiii-xxii sig (1899) xix-xx;

see also Munk Olsen (1983) 403—409.

and Brey-

Unless otherwise

indi-

cated, manuscripts of the Aratea are dated according to Reeve (1983) 20-22,

with

supplementary discussion in Reeve (1980) 511—517. The reader ought to consult the stemma in Reeve (1983) 20-21 or in Gain |. Mss. of the v branch, B = Basileensis A.N.IV.18 (ninth cent.): inscriptio: none;

subscriptio CLAUDI CAESARIS | Arati phenomena | explicit feliciter | deo gratias. P = Parisinus

Lat.

5239

(ninth

cent.)

inscriptio:

CLAUDII

CAESARIS

ARATI

PHOENOMENA,; subscriptio: CLAUDII CAESARIS ARATI PHOMENA EPL. Mss. of the „branch, S = Laur. Strozzianus 46 (fourteenth cent., owned by Coluccio Salutati): inscriptio: T. CLAUDII caesaris arati phenomenia Incipit feliciter. Item de celi

positione et quinque circulis mundi; subscriptio: T. Claudii caesaris arati phenomena explicit. V = Vaticanus Lat. 3110 (ca. 1385, the following inscriptio and the text of the Aratea, excerpts only, were written by Salutati): inscriptio: Inueni librum metricum et prosaicum cui titulus erat T. Claudii Cesaris Arati Phenomenia de celi positione et quinque circulis mundi. Ex hoc libello excerpsi solum modo carmina. sed in alio uolumine tam uersus quam prosae scripta sunt. subscriptio: none. According to A. C. de la Mare (1973) 1.1.41, “sed...sunt is apparently a later addition, presumably referring to Laur. Strozzi 46...” On the basis of her analysis it appears that Salutati copied excerpts into V from its lost exemplar before he found Strozzianus 46, S. Sa-

lutati’s note in V also shows that when he wrote it, he still had not discovered from Lactantius that T. Claudius Caesar was Germanicus Caesar. Formerly, on the evidence provided by BP and SV, it appeared that v and p were divided by one significant variant in the author's name, the praenomen T.; it is lacking in BP (the v branch) but is present in SV (the u branch). It was therefore legitimate to conclude that the inscriptio of v had the name Claudi Caesaris and the inscriptio of μ᾿ had T. Claudi Caesaris. See von Winterfeld (1900) 397 n. 1. Since v and. were thus divided, one could only guess whether or not O, their common ancestor, had the praenomen T. Breysig (1867) xix-xx opted for Claudi Caesaris. New evidence, however, has changed the situation. Aberystwyth 735C (= Ab), brought to light by McGurk (1973) 206, belongs to the v branch and has the name T. Claudii Caesaris in its inscriptio and subscriptio; see also Munk Olsen (1983) 404—405. That Ab came by the praenomen through contamination with the inscriptio and

subscriptio of u seems unlikely on the ground that Ab's spelling Phoenomena in the inscriptio and Phenomena in the subscriptio matches exactly the spelling in P and B (subscriptio only), whereas the inscriptio of S and of V have the spelling Phenomenia and add de celi positione and quinque circulis mundi. The new evidence

un

provided by Ab weighs heavily in favor of T. scriptio and subscriptio of O. The praenomen catalogued c. 1049-1160 at Lobbes" (Reeve sent in the listing for a now lost section of Paris 7418, Claudii Cesaris Arati phinomena

Claudii Caesaris as the name in the inT. also turns up "in a lost manuscript [1980] 513 n. 28): it is, however, abtext given in the table of contents of (Lott [1981] 152-153).

Von Winterfeld (1900) 400. Von Winterfeld (1900)

395 n. 4. His reasons are that both

manuscripts

share the

same peculiar spelling Phoenomena and that there was no ruled line in Bern. 88 for the writing of an inscriptio.

Phaenomena was probably the original title of Germanicus's poem, the addition of Aratus's name being a later interpolation to identify the author of the Greek origi-

Authorship and Date

237

nal: the identification would not have been necessary for Germanicus’s contemporaries. The use of Aratus’s title atvépeva, in of course the Latin alphabet, is ensured by the canonical status of the poem: the title Phaenomena in conjunction with the name of a Latin author is the most economical way to indicate that the work is a Latin translation or adaptation of Aratus’s classic poem. What point would there be

in altering the title? Other forms of reference, carmen Arateum and Aratus, are not alternate titles in the strict sense. When grammarians use Aratus to refer to Cicero’s

and Germanicus’s translations, they are employing

the common metonymic substi-

tution of author’s name for work. In the case of Aratus’s poem this was easy to do

because his Phaenomena was the Phaenomena. The phrase carmen Arateum or carmina Aratea is likewise formed by substitution of author’s name, now in adjectival form, for the work (singular or plural may be used in reference to the same poem according to the author’s perception of the work as a whole or as parts constituting a whole). Although they are not technically titles, carmen Arateum and Aratus obviously served as handy expressions

for “Latin translation

of Aratus’s Phaenomena.”

Manuscript evidence is lacking for the titulus of Cicero’s translation.

When Cicero

refers to it (Div. 2.14; Leg. 2.7; Nat. D. 2.104), he calls it carmen Arateum, carmina

Aratea, or Aratea; and the long continuous

fragment, which has its own manuscript

tradition, lacks both a sirulus and a subscriptio as a result of physical damage to the source of the tradition. However, Hyginus introduces a quotation of Cicero's translation with the words "Cicero in Phaenomenis..." (Fab. 14.33). And Probus (In Verg.

G. 1.138) quotes from "Ovidius in Phaenomenis..." It seems safest to conclude that the translations bore the same title as the original, Phaenomena, but among Latin authors the translations were distinguished from the original by the expressions carmen Arateum or Aratus justas in English one may say Golding’s Ovid or Pope's Homer as well as Golding's Metamorphoses or Pope's Iliad. For further details see: (Cicero's translation) Ewbank (1933) 22-24; Buescu 28-30; Soubiran 10-12; Traglia (1950) 11 n. 1; (Germanicus's translation) Gain 16-17; Maurach 16; Maass (1893) xii and Maass (1896) 418—419; (Avienius's translation) Soubiran (1981) 40

on

n. 1; Horsfall (1981) 106. T. Mommsen (1878) 262 n. 3.

These are the dates given by Ogilvie (1978) 2-3; Lietzmann (1925) 353 dates the work between 307 and 317. References are to Brandt's edition (1890). T. Mommsen (1878) 262—263 and Kneiss] (1969) 27—32. Kneissl (28) is skeptical of Dio Cassius's report (57.82) that Tiberius was called Germanicus. Because Dio is the sole source of this information, Gain’s statement (17) that “Jerome’s and Lac-

tantius' Germanicus Caesar could refer to Tiberius" is dubious. That Germanicus Caesar is the customary form of the name, with a recognition value of its own, is clear from its use in inscriptions. It is therefore unsound to proceed on the premise that anyone bearing the cognomen Germanicus Caesar of Lactantius and Jerome.

11. 12. 13.

can be identified with the Germanicus

See Stern and Petersen PIR? J 212. Schanz-Hosius (19274) 2.438. On the place of Aratus's Phaenomena in the history of education from Hellenistic times to the Carolingian age see Weinhold (1912); Marrou (19659) 277-278, 410, with n. 33 on 603; Laistner (19572) 218-219, 255; McGurk (1981) 318-320.

238 14.

Translating the Heavens Ogilvie (1978) 4—5. On the preservation of Roman literary culture in the provinces

see Clift (1945) 32-39. 15.

16. 17.

Div. inst. 1.11.64 = ZGer. 91.19; Div. inst. 1.21.28 = 2Ger. 70.11; Div. inst. 1.21.39 z ZGer. 73.16. See the discussion in Martin (1956*) 41, where the relevant texts are reproduced; cf. also Robert (1878) 9 n. 11. Martin (1956*) 41 and Le Boeuffle xlviii. Ogilvie's contention (1978) 13-14 that Lactantius took his quotations from a

commentary on Germanicus's Aratea is not persuasive. His conclusion is based on the assumption that because the scholia on the Aratea contain two isolated references to Musaeus, “there was an ancient commentary on Germanicus's Aratea which

contained parallels from Musaeus" (14). On the contrary, the more likely inference is that references to Musaeus were to be found in katasterismoi and commentaries on Aratus from which the Germanicus scholia are ultimately

derived.

Moreover,

it is

evident, as comparison of the scholia with any extant commentary on a Latin poet will show, that the Germanicus scholia were not written specifically for the elucidation of Germanicus's text: they are rather a patchwork stitched together from Greek exegetical material on astronomy and stellar mythology. For the complex relationships among these sources see Martin (1956*) 38—41, 58-115, 143-150. Ogilvie (1978) 66—68 also concludes that Lactantius's quotations of Cicero were derived from a commentary, but again the easiest explanation is that Lactantius took his

quotations of Cicero's Aratea from the De Natura Deorum where the passages in ques18.

tion may be found. "Commentarius in epistulam ad Titum." Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris 1844-1864) 26.606.706b. Jerome's commentaries on the Pauline epistles were

written ca. 386: Schanz-Hosius (19274) 4.1.470. 19. 20. 21. 22.

On the extent of Jerome's reading see Hagendahl (1958) 269-297.

Clift (1945) 35-36 and Jerome, Ep. 22.30.

On Priscian's sources see Schanz-Hosius (19274) 4.2.225. Roughly contemporary with the earliest extant manuscripts of the poem is the opus

prosodiacum of Micon, monk and deacon in the cloister of St. Riquier in northeastern France, in which he quotes two lines of Germanicus's Aratea (239 and 332). This work, written in 825,

is a handbook

containing

one-line quotations of Latin verse

selected from pagan and Christian authors to illustrate the quantities of syllables for the composition of correct Latin verse: see Manitius (1959) 1.469—472, and Traube's edition in MGH 3.279—294. The author provides a lemma, consisting of

the word in question,

then a line of verse containing

that word, and finally the

author's name. Micon's quotations of Cicero's and Germanicus's Aratea, according to Manitius (1895) 317 and above, are his own contribution to the original contents of an earlier prosodical florilegium. For the quotation of 239 the author's name is given as ARATUS and for the quotation of 332 as CESAR IN ARAT. Distinctive readings in Micon's text, hunc in the quotation of 239 (huc vel huic Z) and pernici in the

lemma for 332 (pernicis Z) indicate that Micon's source belonged to the O family and may have been O itself, which made its home in northeastern France in the second half of the eighth century (Reeve [1983] 23). If that is the case, then Micon

knew the author as T. Claudius Caesar, the name found in the inscriptio of O. His testimony therefore has no independent authority and does not provide any positive

23.

evidence for the authorship. See also Le Boeuffle xlviii-xlix. See Ehrenberg and Jones (19552) 76, no. 94: Γερμάνικον KAa[08tov.

Authorship and Date 24.

239

The following examples will serve to illustrate how vulnerable praenomina and cognomina were to corruption and loss. In the codex Mediceus of the Annales the cognomen Tacitus is omitted in the inscriptiones and subscriptiones. Petronius’s praenomen Titus is preserved by Pliny the Elder and Plutarch (Rose [1971] 47-49). The name Propertius Aurelius Nauta combines two gentilicial names, Propertius and Aurelius, with the false cognomen Nauta. The lone source of his praenomen is Donatus’s Life of Vergil, 30: see Haupt (1875) 280-286. Tibullus's praenomen has not survived. In the mss. of Manilius's Astronomica the author's name is written with or without à praenomen and sometimes with a false cognomen; and in one branch of the tradition his name has disappeared completely: see Ellis (1891) 217-233; Garrod (1911) Iviii-Ixi; Housman (19372) vol. Llxix, with addenda (90-93); and Goold (19982) xii. In a 10th century manuscript of Postumius Rufius Festus Avienius's

translation of the Phaenomena, the cognomen Avienius is omitted. We are also ignorant of the praenomen of Cornelius Nepos whose Vitae is attributed in the manuscripts

to Aemilius

Probus

(Marshall

[1977*]

1-3,

and the inscriptiones

in his

edition [1977*]). The praenomen of Velleius Paterculus is variously given as Marcus or Gaius: see Hellegouarc'h (1982) vol. 1, vii. It is clear from these examples that praenomina and cognomina were subject to alteration. and omission and that an author's name, although corrupted in the manuscript tradition, could be preserved in the indirect tradition. Therefore, it would by no means be an odd occurrence that the name Germanicus disappeared from the medieval manuscripts while at the same time it was preserved by Lactantius and Jerome. See also Daly (1943) 27. 25.

26.

Reeve (1980) 512 and n. 21. It would have taken me too far afield to track down the

inscriptiones and subscriptiones of all the ones which I have collected here will, I hope, have no independent value. For descriptions of these manuscripts see the written ca. 1470, in Saxl and Meier (1953)

15th century Italian manuscripts. The be sufficient to show that their titles following: 3.1.51—53,

Codex Additional 15-819, and Catalogue (1864) 35;

Laur. Gad. plut. 89 sup. 43 in McGurk (1966) 26-27; Montpessulanus H 452 in Buescu 80-82; Egertonensis 1050 in Saxl and Meier (1953) 3.1.140-142, and Catalogue (1850) p. 152 of the section 1844.

27.

On Salutati's reading of Lactantius, as well as Ovid and Suetonius, in whom he would have

found references to Germanicus

Caesar,

see

Ullman

(1963)

234,

238

and

251-252, respectively. Ullman (Pl. VII) gives a reproduction of Salutati's note and 28.

29.

the titulus of S. On the De Laboribus Herculis see Ullman (1963) 21-26.

Ullman

points

out (26),

however, that the work was very little read. For a complete list of references to the Aratea and its scholia see the index auctorum of Ullman's edition (1947-1951) 2.647. The fourth-century writer Firmicus Maternus, in his handbook on astrology entitled Mathesis, written ca. 334—337, makes reference to a Julius Caesar, presumably the dictator, who wrote a few verses, borrowed from another's work, which are useful for

the astrologer's art (2 praef.); in this passage he also states that Cicero wrote briefly on the same subject in "heroic verses." In a second passage (8.5.3), which helps to clarify the first, Caesar's and Cicero's meager contributions to the literature in Latin on astrology are mentioned in the company of Aratus. The context of the second passage makes it clear that the part of the Phaenomena that contains information useful to the astrologer is the description of the constellations, called paranatel-

240

Translating the Heavens lons, that rise and set with the zodiacal constellations (Phaen. 559-732); Aratus, Caesar, and Cicero, according to Maternus’s report, wrote poetic descriptions of the

paranatellons.

Although Maternus does not state explicitly that Caesar and Cicero

translated Aratus, we know that Cicero did; and from that knowledge and from Maternus’s association of Aratus, Cicero, and Caesar in the context of poetic descrip-

tions of the paranatellons,

we may confidently

infer that

Maternus

attributed

a

translation of Aratus to Julius Caesar as well. Since, however, an Aratea by Julius Caesar is not elsewhere attested (except in the Byzantine encyclopedia known as the Suda [K 1196 Adler]), and Caesar's genuine work, De Astris, undertaken in connec-

tion with the reform of the Roman calendar, cannot be the work to which Maternus

30. 31. 32.

refers in either passage, I accept the view that Maternus confused Germanicus Julius Caesar, the author of an Aratea, with Gaius Julius Caesar, the author of De Astris and that the Suda's attribution of an Aratea to Julius Caesar is ultimately the product of the same confusion. For other views see Baldwin (1981) 164-165; and Courtney (187-188), who thinks that the first passage (2 praef.) refers to Julius Caesar's De Astris, and the second (8.5.3) to Germanicus's Aratea. Such praise could not be bestowed on anyone else; see Maybaum (1889) 17-18.

Maass (1893) viii and Baldwin (1981) 166. Compare

the

proem

of Valerius

Flaccus's

Argonauticon

in

which

the

emperor

Vespasian is invoked as pater (1.11) and genitor (1.16), both words clearly being 33. 34. 35. 36.

used as honorific titles. The usage is at least as old as Ennius: o genitor Ann. 444 Sk.

noster,

Saturnie,

maxime

diuom,

Compare Ovid's prayer in Fast. 1.721—722 that the imperial house endure in peace. See Appendix B. The purpose of the following discussion is to provide literary-historical confirmation of von Winterfeld’s identification (1903) 51—52 of the dedicatee as the reign-

ing Augustus; he has been followed most recently by Montanari

Caldini (1976)

102-108, and by Traglia (1984) 330 n. 26. Maass (1893*) vii argued in favor of the deified Augustus; so also Steinmetz (1966) 454 = Steinmetz (2000) 312, Le Boeuffle xi-xiii, and Santini (1977) 22-28. The now generally accepted identification of Ti-

berius as the dedicatee has been argued by Maybaum (1889) 17-27; Kroll (1905) 556 n. 1 and (1919) 461; Leuthold (1942) 51—52; and Ludwig (1968*) 217-221. 37.

See also Hor., Carm. 1.12.49--60,

associated 2.131-132,

with 138.

the

triad,

3.5.1-4;

Jupiter,

It is impossible

Verg., G. 1.24-39,

Neptune,

and

Pluto;

where Octavian is

Ovid,

here to examine the nuances

Fast.

1.608,

of individual

pas-

sages, although clearly with Vergil and Horace the same notion underlies their panegyric of Octavian/Augustus: Octavian/Augustus, under the protection of Jupiter and dependent upon him, will carry out a divinely sanctioned mission to revitalize the Roman state; he therefore partakes of the divine majesty and power of his protector. With Ovid the idea has become a cliche: good, brief discussion in Little

(1982) 284—286; more detailed treatments in Doblhofer (1966), especially Ch. 3; Pietrusinski (1980); and Fears (1981) 56—69. On the artistic representation of Augustus as Jupiter see Zanker (1988) 230-238. Noteworthy is an anonymous Greek dedicatory epigram of the first century, addressed to a statue of Actian Apollo, in which Augustus is explicitly identified with Zeus: Page (1941) no. 113, p. 468 (Greek text, translation, commentary); Page (1981) 483—486 (Greek text and commentary); brief discussion in Williams (1978) 124-125.

Authorship and Date 38. 39. 40.

241

Goodyear (1984) 63.

Maass (1893*) vii-viii, and von Winterfeld (1903) 51-52. On the political, moral, and religious capital to be gotten out of pax, Augustus's Res Gestae remains the most instructive document. See also Weinstock

(1960); Zanker

(1988) 101—192; and Appendix B. 41. 42. 43.

Weinstock

(1960) 45—46.

Syme (1939) 303-304. Extent of the civil wars: Verg., G. 1.511, saeuit toto Mars impius orbe, and cf. Aen. 6.828-829;

Hor., Carm. 2.1.29-36

and Epod.

7.3-4;

Augustus, Res

Gestae 3.1:

bella terra et mari ciuilia externaque toto in orbe terrarum saepe gessi; Seneca the Elder, Controv. 1. Praef. 11, bellorum ciuilium furor, qui tunc orbem totum peruagabatur, Suas. 6.6, uidimus furentia toto orbe ciuilia arma; Silius Italicus, Pun. 13.864—866 (Caesar and Pompey), quantas moles, cum sede reclusa / hinc tandem erumpent, terraque marique mouebunt! / heu miseri, quotiens toto pugnabitis orbe!

See further Jahl (1963) 257-359. Asinius Pollio speaks of the uastitatem Italiae (Cic., Fam.

10.33.1).

Verg., G. 1.505-508. The fact that Vergil mentions in the following lines the Parthians and the Germans does not mean that he is primarily concemed with externa bella. As T. E. Page astutely observed in his commentary (1898) on 509~514, “the Parthians and the Germans are merely mentioned as the notorious enemies of Rome ever ready to take advantage of her divisions.” Horace does the same at Carm.

2.1.31-32. Cf. Ovid, Fast. 1.697-700; and Lucan 1.28-29. 46.

Peace and agricultural

4.15.4-5, 47.

17-20;

prosperity:

Ovid, Fast.

Verg.,

G. 2.458-460;

1.701-704;

and Tib.

Hor.,

Carm. 4.5.17-19,

1.10.45-50

(with Smith's

commentary [1913]). Von Winterfeld (1903) 51-52. Appian (B. Civ. 5.130) reports the following

titulus

on the pedestal of a statue of Octavian in the Forum: τὴν εἰρήνην ἐστασιασμένην ἐκ πολλοῦ συνέστησε κατά Te yfp καὶ θάλασσαν: similar language in an inscription from Halicarnassus, εἰρηνεύουσι pip yàp yh kal θάλαττα, in Hirschfeld (1893) Part IV, Sec. 1, p. 64, inscr. no. 894 = Ehrenberg

and Jones

(19552)

p.83, 98a. “The praises assigned to the emperor, although couched in extravagant language, were by no means unmerited, since under his reign the cities of the East

had, after so many vicissitudes, come to enjoy the blessings of peace and order” (Hirschfeld 65). Augustus claimed to have cleared the sea of pirates, a euphemism for Sextus Pompey and his followers (Res Gestae 5.1). Suetonius reports (Aug. 98) that sailors from an Alexandrian ship bestowed the following praise on Augustus: per il-

lum se uiuere, per illum nauigare, libertate atque fortunis per illum frui. On the slogan terra marique parta pax see Appendix B. For a representation of Augustus as Neptune in a chariot drawn by hippocamps see Zanker (1988) 97. The poets are more interested in agricultural prosperity than safe navigation (n. 46 above) but cf. Hor., Carm. 4.5.19, pacatum uolitant per mare nauitae.

48. 49. 50.

In light of the foregoing discussion and the evidence presented in Appendix B I think it is now legitimate to adopt parta as the genuine reading. Santini (1977) 28-29. Ovid regularly refers to Tiberius as proles or natus of Augustus: in addition to Met. 15.836 see Fast. 1.533, Tr. 2.165-166, Pont. 2.8.31, 4.5.23, 4.9.107. Another link between Ovid’s Augustus-panegyric at the end of the Metamorphoses and Ger-

242

51. 52. 53. 54.

Translating the Heavens manicus’s poem is the use of the word praeses in reference to Augustus (praeside rerum, Met. 15.758; te praeside, Aratea 9). Housman (19372) vol. 1, Ixx; see also White (1988) 348. For Augustus as the original dedicatee see Tr. 2.551-552 and Bömer, Fast., pp. 17-19. On the complex chronological problems of the composition of Manilius's Astronomica see Chapter 2, n. 34. The futures are conjectural (replebit Housman -uit codd. | reget Woltjer -it codd.) but that does not affect the argument. Cf. also ILS 137 (4-5) Ξ CIL X. 3757: nam quom te, Caesar tem[pus] exposcet deum / caeloque repetes sed[em, qua] mundum reges.

55.

Compare the language of Ovid's prayer to the deified Augustus who is ensconced in the heavens (inter conuexa / sidera locatus) and looks down upon the earth (Pont. 4.9.127-130), and his picture of Augustus’s departure from earth at Met. 15.869—870: orbe relicto / accedat caelo faueatque precantibus absens. There is nothing in Germanicus's invocation to suggest that the emperor is no longer on earth (mention of pax on land and sea indicates quite the opposite) or that he has ac-

quired the supernatural power of an Olympian deity. See Fishwick (1991). 56.

See Scott

(1930);

L. R. Taylor (1931)

142-180;

Pietrusinski

(1980);

Fishwick

(1987) vol. 1.1.83-93 and (1991) vol. 2.1.375-387, with full bibliography. It seems futile to inquire whether contemporaries thought that Augustus himself was a 57.

god or a mortal possessed of a divine power, a distinction not easily observed. Von Winterfeld (1903) put forward the hypothesis that Germanicus published his poem in two installments: first he published a "Phaenomena" poem, i.e., a translation of Aratus’s Phaenomena 1-732, before Augustus's death; and then after Augustus's death he wrote a "Prognostica" poem on astrometeorology, which he then published together with a revised version of the "Phaenomena," "revised" meaning

that the lines on Augustus's apotheosis had been added. This hypothesis strikes me as needlessly complicated and as inconsistent with the poet's references to the “Prognostica”

58.

in the proem (12), mundi uarios cognoscere motus,

i.e.,

the move-

ments of the planets, and with the reference at 444—445 to a discussion of the planets. The fragmentary state of the "Prognostica" cannot be used as evidence that the poem was published posthumously in an unfinished state. Cicero's Aratea survives only in fragments but we know that he wrote a complete translation of Aratus. The current consensus is that Tiberius is the dedicatee, Germanicus is the natus, and lines 558-560 indicate that the poem was written, or at least published, after 14, and furthermore, that the period of composition is broadly defined by 14 and 19, the year of Augustus's death and the year of Germanicus's death respectively. See n. 36 above.

Cicu (1979)

139—144

relies too heavily

on the ambiguous

testimony

of

Ovid's Fasti and Ex Ponto. Maybaum (1889) 28 long ago pointed out the ambiguity of Ovid's testimony for determining the date of composition. Maurach (20) cautions

59.

that although the period 14—19 is a plausible one for the poem’s composition, it remains quite possible that Germanicus began work on the poem before 14. See also Lausdei (1987). At 1.613-616 the poet prays that Augustus may enjoy long life: yet at 283-288 Ovid mentions Germanicus's triumph which was voted in 15 and celebrated in 17; at

533-536

he alludes to Livia's adoption

into the Julian family,

an adoption

which Augustus made provision in his will. See Bómer's commentary.

for

Authorship and Date 60.

243

Rightly paraphrased by Maybaum (1889) 28: “primum carmen, quod confecerit po-

eta e Graecorum studiis et imitatione.” 61.

Fantham (1986) 254. Cicero is described as admodum adulescentulus (Nat. D. 2.104)

when he produced his translation.

It is impossible

to determine Cicero’s exact age

on the basis of adulescentulus, but we will not be far from the mark if we conjecture that Cicero wrote the translation sometime during his late teens or early twenties,

ca. 90-86 BC. Note also that in the “Life of Gordian” (Scriptores Historiae Augustae 20.3.2) the biographer reports that Gordian translated Aratus “adulescens cum esset.” And Ovid, it is reasonable to assume, produced his abbreviated translation of the Phaenomena in his youth as well. Although I agree with Fantham’s dating of the poem to Germanicus’s “student phase," I do not agree that the proem to Fasti 1 can be used as corroborative evidence to confirm that conclusion, or that the Aratea was unfinished when the author died in 19.

62.

Santini (1977) 9-22.

Appendix Β A Disputed Reading: Parta or tanta?

si non fanta/parta quies te praeside puppibus aequor cultorique daret terras, procul arma silerent? (9-10)

Gain prints parta, Le Boeuffle tanta. Editorial judgment came to the same split decision in the last century when Baehrens printed parta and Breysig (1867, 1899) tanta. Maurach and Ludwig defend tanta because it has the

support of the three main witnesses of the O family (ABP in Le Boeuffle's notation, which is used throughout), the so-called "better family," and because they believe, following Breysig's suggestion, that Vergil's G. 2.344 si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque inspired si non tanta

quies in line 9 of the Aratea. They also believe that Tiberius is the dedicatee and that tanta is better suited to him than to Augustus. However, the discussion in Appendix A presents ample evidence to demonstrate that Augustus is the dedicatee. Therefore, the argument that tanta ought to be read because it is more appropriate to the reign of Tiberius can be discarded. There remain, then, two arguments in favor of tanta, manuscript authority and a conscious or unconscious reminiscence of Vergil.

Haggling over manuscript authority will get us nowhere. Both readings have the support of important manuscripts in the tradition (parta RSWH

ELG, tanta ABP manuscripts is a argument: tanta O family (ABP);

N?). In fact any preference for tanta based solely on the misguided preference based on the following fallacious is the reading of three ninth century manuscripts of the parta is preserved in three manuscripts of the Z family

(ELG, one of the ninth, two of the tenth century) and

in the recentiores

RSWH of the O family; the combined testimony of ABP is older and better than that of ELG and the recentiores; therefore, tanta is the true reading. The argument has two flaws: there are so many exceptions to the rule

246

Translating the Heavens

"O is better than Z” that it cannot be applied here and, more importantly, according to the rationale of traditional stemmatics parta must have been the reading of the archetype, as Montanari Caldini pointed out, because it appears in both Z and also in a branch of O.’ Hence there is no evidence to support the claim that tanta is the better attested reading and has greater manuscript authority.’ So the question still remains whether tanta or parta is the genuine reading. The point of departure for finding an answer is, as Breysig pointed out, Vergil's G. 2.344, which begins si non tanta quies.‘ Now if tanta is read in line 9 of the Aratea, then we have a reminiscence of Vergil’s line. So Breysig thought. The similarity of the two lines does not, however, prove that tanta is genuine. All one can say at this point is that the greater probability appears to lie with tanta, a superficial attraction and nothing more. The mere calling of attention to an apparent similarity is not in itself a cogent argument in favor of tanta: one must also explain what the point of the reminiscence is and how it works in context. If one falls back on the argument that si non tanta quies is the poet’s unconscious reminiscence of Vergil, it is still necessary to show that in the context of the proem tanta is superior in sense to parta and also to explain how parta entered the tradition. As we will now see, Breysig’s suggestion can be applied to the problem in a completely different way and, I think, with better results. Von Winterfeld turned Breysig’s suggestion on its head.’ He believed that parta was the original reading and that tanta slipped into the text through a scribe’s unconscious remembering of the Vergilian line triggered by the identical wording si non...quies. A reconstruction of the error’s genesis which attributes an unconscious reminiscence of Vergil to a scribe and not to the poet is not so strange as it may seem. Examples of similar corruptions were collected by Housman, and the evidence presented by him shows conclusively that unconscious grafting of remembered words and phrases onto the wrong text could and did occur.‘ Von Winterfeld’s explanation of the error also has the advantage of identifying the origin of the variant tanta whereas Breysig’s explanation that si non tanta quies is a reminiscence of Vergil does nothing to help us discover the origin of parta. I want now to take up the most important consideration in the discussion of any textual problem, the sense of what the author is saying and the manner in which he says it. This must be the ultimate criterion in making a choice between two or more variants. As I explained in Appendix A, the author deliberately intends an evocation of Rome’s civil war and the Au-

A Disputed Reading

247

gustan peace in lines 9-10 where pax terra marique is visualized as the return of the farmer to the soil and the sailor to the sea. Also, as the poetry and prose of the period demonstrate beyond any doubt, Augustus is the person most closely associated with the renewal of agriculture and safe traffic on the seas. Does the fact that Augustus

is the dedicatee influence

our choice of reading more than the manuscripts or the possibility of a reminiscence of Vergil’s Georgics? The answer is “yes” if we are trying to reconstruct the poet’s thought and to respond in an informed way to the words with which that thought is expressed. Montanari Caldini provided what 1 consider to be conclusive evidence to vindicate parta when she brought the words of Augustus himself to bear on the problem: cum per totum imperium populi Romani terra marique esset parta uictoriis pax (Res Gestae 13); similar language in Livy (1.19.3): Post bellum Actiacum ab imperatore Caesare Augusto pace terra marique parta; and in Suetonius (Aug. 22): lanum Quirinum...terra marique pace parta ter clusit; and also in Augustus's Nicopolis inscription: pace parta terra marique.' These texts lead us to two important conclusions. First, at a time contemporary to the composition of our poem the Augustan slogan pax parta terra marique was current in the political and literary life of Rome.’ This slogan passed into the poetry of the age in forms of expression which equate pax terra marique with the return of the farmer to the soil and the sailor to the sea, as documented in Appendix A. And second, lines 9-10 of the Aratea, which are unquestionably a restatement of the Augustan slogan, require parta to give full force to the poet’s evocation of the civil strife that Augustus brought to an end and the internal peace and prosperity that attended his reign. The word is apt not only in the context of the Aratea’s proem but also in the much larger context of the Augustan peace and its impact on contemporary literature.

wy

—_ .

Notes

Maurach, 15-16, 28-29; Ludwig (1968) 217-221; Breysig (1893) 1136. Montanari Caldini (1976) 106. Housman (1900) 28 = (1972) 2.498 thought there was nothing to choose between parta and tanta; in his view the two variants form one of ten examples in which “there is either no decisive reason or else no reason at all for preferring Zto O or O

mau»

to Z.” N. 1 above. Von Winterfeld (1903) 50 n. 2.

Housman (1897) 243-245 = (1972) 2.436-437. Montanari Caldini (1976) 106-108 with bibliography in n. 4 on 107.

248 8.

Translating the Heavens Momigliano (1942) 53-64, esp. 63 n. 44. On the Nicopolis inscription see Murray and Petsas (1989) 62-77, with the earlier studies of Oliver (1969) and Carter (1977).

9.

For epigraphical, numismatic, and literary material on the pax Augusta see Weinstock (1960) 47-50.

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Index of Passages

Aeschylus Fragmenta (Radt)

fr. 273 A: 165 n. 83 fr. 312: 16 n. 8 Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica

2.712: 71 n. 47 Appian Bella civilia 5.130: 241 n. 47 Aratus Phaenomena

1: 107, 228 1-18: 105-112 2: 61, 157 n. 6, 5: 228 5-6: 114 12-13: 107 15: 228 21-44: 83-86 26-30: 117-119 30: 159 n. 28, 160 n. 29 30-35: 120-125 31: 157 n. 32 32: 161 n. 39 36-37: 206 36-44: 125-127 45: 165 n. 83 45-62: 146-152 54-57: 150-151 54-55: 166 n. 90 65-67: 39 70: 58

84: 18 n. 19, 214 n. 58 92-95: 70 n. 40 96-97: 128-129 98-99: 162 n. 47, 162 n. 48 98-100: 131-132 98-102: 129-131 100-107: 133 105: 130 108—109: 160 n. 56 108-114: 135-138 113: 159 n. 50 115-128: 138-141 129-136: 142-144 130-131: 165 n. 78 147-148: 40-41 179-204: 22-23 188: 158 n. 15 225-227: 216 n. 75 239-247: 65 n. 1 248: 65n. 1 248-253: 21-23 253: 23 250: 65 n. 1 252-253: 65 n. 2 262-263: 4 264-267: 96-97 265: 6 268: 76 n. 87 268-271: 76 n. 87 313-315: 39-40 329-332: 60 338: 70 n. 40 359-360: 152

AM 165 n. 83 367-385: 203-208 370-382: 216 n. 77, 217 n. 78

Translating the Heavens

264 392-394:

185

436-442:

3

460-461:

110

468: 69 n. 39 490-491: 69 n. 39 528: 69 n. 39 545-552: 175 559-732: 240 n. 29 634-646: 192-193 641-643: 10-11 644: 18 n. 19 653-654: 69 n. 39 783-787: 88 947: 58 951: 70 n. 42 954—955: 43-45 955: 70 n. 42, 70 n. 47

Epigrammata 27: 86-88,

101 n. 16

Fragmenta fr. 398: 88 fr. 460: 99 Hecale 278.1: 215 Hymns 1.46: 161 1.46-54: 1.53: 123 1.54: 161

n. 1 n. 69 n. 37 122-123 n. 39

Catullus 51: 33 51.7: 61 61.211: 76 n. 87

62.42: 70 n. 42

Aristophanes

64.384: 164 n. 72 64.398: 162 n. 45 65: 77 n. 92 65.12: 77 n. 92

Frogs 211: 58 Attius Labeo

Fragmenta (Blansdorf) 315: 31 Augustus Res Gestae 3.1: 241 n. 43 5.1: 241 n. 47 13: 247 Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae 2.23: 68—69 n. 36 Avienius

Phaenomena 53-54: 157 n. 6 64-66: 157 n. 6 67: 157 n. 6 341: 165 n. 78 566-567: 66 n. 13 Callimachus (Pfeiffer)

Aetia 1.24:

63.9: 215 n. 69

88

65.16: 77 n. 92 65.20: 77 n. 92 66: 74 n. 82, 77 n. 92 Cinna (Blünsdorf) fr. 11: 102 n. 19 Ennius Annales (Skutsch) 139-140: 74 n. 74 167: 73 n. 65 211: 74 n. 74 333: 70 n. 43 444: 50, 240 n. 33

Tragicorum Fragmenta (Jocelyn) 140: 30 188-191: 70 n. 40 301: 66 n. 10 incerta clxi: 76 n. 88 Eratosthenes Catasterismi

50-54:

160 n. 31

Index of Passages Euripides

265 60-61: 165 n. 84

Andromeda (Nauck) 124: 66 n. 11 Erechtheus (Diggle) fr. iv.44: 29-30 Hippolytus 735-741: 167 n. 98 738—741: 76 n. 87 Ion 20-21: 212 n. 44 Festus (Paul.-Fest) p. 20L: 39 Firmicus Maternus Mathesis 2 praef.: 239—240 n. 29 8.5.3: 239-240 n. 29 Germanicus Aratea 1: 59, 60-61, 107, 157 n. 5 1-16: 106-115 2: 61, 107,

157 n. 6, 227, 228

63-64: 165 n. 84 69: 58 72: 211 n. 25, 213 n. 50 90-92: 202, 207 92: 213 n. 73 96-102: 129-130 98—102: 200 98-104: 162 n. 46 103-107: 132 107-111: 133-134 110: 159 n. 50 112-115: 163 n. 56 112-119: 135-138 120-132: 139-141 121: 161 n. 70 131-132: 163 n. 62 133-139: 142-144 157-158: 188—189 157-160: 216 n. 74 157-162: 186-189 159: 189 165: 158 n. 15 168: 211 n. 25

3-4: 108, 111, 240 n. 60 4: 108 5: 107, 157 n. 7 5-10: 108, 115 9: 228-229, 241 n. 50 9—10: 245-247 11: 111 11-12: 230 12: 110-111, 240 n. 57 13-15: 110-111 15: 59, 111, 156 n. 2 15-16: 228 16: 109, 157 n. 2, 157 n. 3, 227 24-31: 117-119 31: 159 n. 28 31-38: 120-125 32-33: 211 n. 25 34: 160 n. 32 36-38: 161 n. 39 38: 159 n. 27 39-47: 126-128 48—64: 147-152

180: 158 n. 15 218-223: 76 n. 89 226: 160 n. 30, 216 n. 75 234: 158 n. 15 248-254: 24-27 249: 27 251: 66 n. 10 252: 217 n. 86 253: 65n.1 254: 26 262-265: 4—6 264-265: 5-6 267: 6 275-277: 190, 210 n. 17, 216 n. 74 315-320: 190—191 316: 213 n. 54 316-317: 191, 209 n. 25 316-320: 184 317: 213 n. 53 319-320: 191 321-323: 190 323: 213 n. 50

58-59:

333-335:

150-151

60

266

Translating the Heavens 362-366:

364: 167 371-378: 399—400: 418-420: 421-422: 441: 158 444—445: 531-564:

153-156

n. 101 216-217 n. 77 158 n. 16 216 n. 74 3-4 n. 15 240 n. 57 173-176

Prognosticorum Fragmenta

fr. fr. fr. fr. fr.

4.28: 212 n. 35 4.70: 212 n. 35 4.130: 211 n. 23 5.1-3: 217 n. 78 6: 223

Hesiod Fragmenta (Merkelbach and West)

532-535: 180, 209 n. 3 534—561: 186 536-539: 171-172 536-546: 178-179 537: 213 n. 50 542: 183 543-545: 183 547-550: 181 550: 171 551-553: 181-182

fr. 169: 5 fr. 293: 166 n. 86 Shield 220: 26 Theogony 53-54: 51 338: 167 n. 98 517: 5 901-903: 164 n. 64 915-917: 51

553:

Works and Days

183

554-560: 182-184 556—557. 183 557: 211 n. 23 558-559: 163 n. 62 558—560: 182—183, 232, 233-234 560: 211 n. 29 561—562: 184-186 563: 158 n. 15 601: 158 n. 15 617: 167 n. 98 644—660: 194—201

646—647: 200-201 646-649: 194—195 646-657: 197 647: 198, 214 n. 61 648: 59 650: 195, 196-197, 198 653-655: 11-12 655: 18 n. 19 656: 199 657: 215 n. 71 657-658: 198 657—660: 195-196 658—659: 214 n. 60 707: 66 n. 10 710: 212 n. 40

116-118: 137, 164 n. 64 127: 164 n. 69 222: 161 n. 72 256: 130 383: 5 383-387: 96 481: 66 n. 13 517: 5 619—620: 193 Hipparchus Commentary

1.1.3-4: 90 1.1.5-7: 90-91 1.1.8: 91 1.2.1-1.3.1: 99 n. 2 1.3.1-4: 91-92 1.4.9: 102 n. 23 1.8-9: 215 n. 84 Homer Iliad 1.9: 51 1.69: 67 n. 25 1.106: 67 n. 25 2.299-330: 32-33 4.35: 31

Index of Passages 5.721: 51 7.39: 166 n. 90 7.226: 166 n. 90 8.552: 66 n. 14 11.832: 3-4 13.70: 67 n. 25 16.775-776: 69 n. 39 16.849: 51 18.483-489: 159 n. 21 21.541: 66 n. 13 24.307: 71 n. 44 Odyssey 1.52: 51 4.513: 51 4.557: 51 6.41—47: 66 n. 14 7.245: 51 8.137: 54 8.138-139: 54-55 8.378-379: 53, 73 n. 74 12.256: 71 n. 47 21.415: 50 Horace Ars poetica 133-134: 77 n. 93 Carmina 1.12.49—60: 240 n. 37 1.16.8: 124 2.1.29-36: 241 n. 43 2.1.31-32: 241 n. 45 2.16.38: 2 3.5.1-4: 240 n. 37 3.6.46-48: 164 n. 74 3.24.25-26: 163 n. 58 4.1.21-22: 70 n. 43 4.5.17-19: 241 n. 46 4.5.19: 241 n. 47 4.5.21: 164 n. 72 4.15.4—5: 239 n. 46 Epodi 7.3—4: 241 n. 43 Hyginus Poetica astronomica 2.1: 160 n. 31 2.1.2: 216 n. 73 2.4.1: 216 n. 73

267

3.11.2: 66 n. 13 Fabulae 14.33: 237 n. 6 Jerome Com. in Ep. ad Tit. 222 Juvenal 15.168:

163 n. 57

Lactantius Divinae

institutiones

1.11.64: 220, 238 n. 15 1.21.28: 238 n. 15 1.21.38: 220-221 1.21.39: 238 n. 15 5.5.4: 220-221 Laevius (Blänsdorf) fr. 20: 72 n. 63 Leonidas (Gow-Page) Epigrammata

101: 88-89 Livius Andronicus Odussia (Blänsdorf) fr. 1 (= Od. 1.1): 47, 50-53 fr. 2 (= Od. 1.45): 48, 50 fr. 3 (= Od. 1.64): 49 fr. 4: 50 fr. 10 Od. 3.110): 49 fr. 11: 48 fr. 12: 51 fr. 13: 51 fr. 18: 55 fr. 19 (= Od. 8.323): 48, 51 fr. 20 (= Od. 8.378-379): 53-54 fr. 21: 48-51 fr. 23 (= Od. 3.238): 48 fr. 30 (= Od. 5.297): 48, 49, 72 n. 63 Livy Ab urbe condita 1.19.3: 247 45.25.2-3: 77 n. 95

Translating the Heavens

268 Lucan Pharsalia 1.28-29: 241 n. 45 1.653: 185, 212 n. 33 Lucilius fr. 394: 73 n. 65 Lucretius De rerum natura 1.741: 69 n. 39 2.633—635: 161 n. 39 3.19-22: 66 n. 14 3.1034: 73 n. 65 4.993: 70 n. 43

Nicander Theriaca 16: 58—59 Ovid Amores 1.5.11: 213 n. 50 Ars amatoria 2.425-428: 162 n. 44 3.8.42: 160 n. 60

Ex ponto 2.8.31: 241 n. 50 4.5.23: 241 n. 50 4.9.107: 241 n. 50 4.9.127-130: 242 n. 55 Fasti

Manilius Astronomica

1.124: 157 n. 5 1.6: 157 n. 7 1.13-15: 230 1.272-273: 212 n. 34 1.384-386: 157 n. 6 1.385: 212 n. 30 1.798-800: 233 2.15: 160 n. 32 2.2834: 211 n. 25 5.20: 188 5.22: 65 n. 5 5.68-69: 188 5.567: 65 n. 5 5.571: 65 n. 5

Matius (Blansdorf) fr. 2: 67 n. 25 Menander Fragmenta (Korte) fr. 111: 32 Naevius Bellum fr. fr. fr. fr.

Poenicum 1: 72 n. 65 8.3: 72 n. 65 22: 72 n. 65 24: 72-73 n. 65

1.249-250: 162 n. 45, 162 n. 49 1.283-288: 242 n. 59 1.529-534: 109 1.533: 241 n. 50 1.533-536: 242 n. 59 1.608: 242 n. 37 1.613—616: 242 n. 59 1.697—700: 241 n. 45 1.701-704: 241 n. 46 1.721-722: 240 n. 34 2.81: 213 n. 48 2.81-82: 216 n. 74 2.131-132: 240 n. 37 2.145: 212 n. 32 2.153-192: 216 n. 73 2.173: 216 n. 75 2.183: 213 n. 51 2.187-190: 215 n. 64 2.191-192: 215 n. 71 2.458-474: 212 n. 31 2.459-474: 210 n. 12 2.462: 66 n. 10 2.472: 76 n. 89 3,57-58: 210 n. 10 3.405: 202 3.808: 211 n. 25 3.857-876: 210 n. 12 4.169-170: 17 n. 10 4.169-178: 214 n. 56

Index of Passages 4.199-214: 123-124 4.719-720: 216 n. 74 4.784: 216 n. 76 4.794: 212 n. 33 5.1-6: 216 n. 76 5.7: 76 n. 89 5.83: 5 5.83-84: 5 5.114: 211 n. 25 5.165-168: 216 n. 74 5.379-414: 3-4 5.537—544: 196, 210 n. 12 5.541-544: 196 5.544: 211 n. 25 5.603--620: 209 n. 4, 210 n. 12 5.605—606: 216 n. 74 5.693-720: 210 n. 12 5.723-724: 210 n. 10 6.586: 162 n. 44 Heroides

8.67: 209 n. 6 9.95-96: 209 n. 9 11.71-72: 161 n. 36 Ibis

367—368: 213 n. 45 Metamorphoses

1.81-112: 163 n. 57 1.99: 163 n. 57 1.125-127: 165 n. 77 1.135-136: 163 n. 61 1.138-140: 165 n. 77 1.141: 165 n. 78 1.141-142: 165 n. 77 1.149-150: 162 n. 45, 165 n. 76 1.554: 167 n. 103 1.202-203: 163 n. 62 1.406: 217 n. 86 1.606: 213 n. 51

fr. 1-2: 101 n. 34 Tristia

2.37: 213 n. 51 2.161-165: 167 n. 101 2.193: 213 n. 54 2.211: 71 n. 44 2.293: 160 n. 28 2.296: 16n. 8 2.340-360: 167 n. 2.364—365: 167 n. 2.364—366: 167 n. 2.496-507: 215 n.

2.528: 161 n. 40 2.833-875: 209 n. 4 2.873: 171 3.1: 213 n. 51 3.7: 213 n. 51 3.33-34: 166 n. 88 3.191: 215 n. 66 3.317: 160 n. 32 4.667: 26, 66 n. 11 5.509-510: 161 n. 34 6.103-114: 210 n. 16 6.174-175: 16 n. 8 6.376: 75 n. 87 7.350—390: 209 n. 10 7.356: 212 n. 33 8.99: 160 n. 32 8.209: 167 n. 103 8.281: 215 n. 67 8.368: 215 n. 67 8.372: 210 n. 12 9.70: 209 n. 9 10.155-156: 213 n. 53 10.159: 209 n. 6 12211: 16 n. 4 12.541: 16 n. 4 12.581: 167 n. 102 15.30: 127 15.758: 241 n. 50 15.832: 109 15.832-839: 232 15.836-837: 109 15.839: 109, 211 n. 28 15.843-851: 211 n. 28 15.858--860: 229 15.869-870: 242 n. 55 Phaenomena (Blünsdorf)

2.165-166: 239 n. 50 2.551-552: 240 n. 52 Pacuvius (Ribbeck) fr. 89: 74 n. 74

102 103 102 64, 216 n. 73

Plautus Bacchides 816—817: 32 925: 73 n. 65

269

Translating the Heavens

270 946: 72 n. 63 Curculio 96: 70 n. 43 Epidicus 604: 73 n. 66

Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia 2.31: 217 n. 78 2.105-106: 17 n. 15 7.203: 217 n. 78 18.209-210: 157 n. 9 Pliny the Younger

Epistulae 7.9: 77 n. 93 Priscian Institutio de arte grammatica 3.351.4: 223 3.417.1: 223 Probus

In Verg. ad G. 1.138: 237 n. 6

79.14-15: 159 n. 26 80.9-10: 160 n. 29 96.7-9: 151 102.16-18: 102 n. 23 103.8-11: 102 n. 23 201.5-7: 26, 66 n. 13 254.1-4: 166 n. 94 254.5-8: 166 n. 93 461.11-12: 71 n. 46 Scholia in Germanicum 58.5-19: 160 n. 31 70.11: 238 n. 15 73.16: 238 n. 15 91.19: 238 n. I5 Scriptores Historiae Augustae

“Life of Gordian” 20.3.2: 243 n. 61 Seneca the Elder Controversiae 1, Praef. 11: 241 n. 43 9.1.(24).13: 77 n. 93 Suasoriae

6.6: 211 n. 27, 241 n. 43 Propertius Carmina 2.28.21-22: 25 2.32.53-54: 212 n. 33 4.3.72: 65 n. 9 Ptolemy Aratus-Epigram

102 n. 19

Seneca the Younger Epistulae 90.7: 163 n. 56 Servius ad Aen. 3.111: 124 Silius Italicus Punica

13.864—866:

Quintilian

241

Institutio oratoria

10.5.2-3: 77 n. 93 10.55: 93-94 12.2.28: 211 n. 27 Scholia in Aratum

72.8-75.6:

160 n. 31

Suetonius De grammaticis 1.1: 72 n. 74 Divus Augustus 22: 247 98: 241 n. 47

77.5-7: 101 n. 10, 159 n. 23 77.8-12:

159 n. 24

78.1-3: 159 n. 23 79.10-13: 119

Tacitus Annales

11.24: 77 n. 95

n. 43

Index of Passages 15.63: 77 n. 95 Terence Adelphoe 11: 67 η. 21 Andria 21: 67 n. 21 Eunuchus 7-8: 32 590: 76 n. 88 Theocritus Idylis

15.103-104: 76 n. 87 Tibullus 1.3.35-50: 165 n. 75 1.3.4344: 163 n. 61 1.3.47: 163 n. 57 1.10.45-50: 241 n. 46 Tullius Cicero, M. Academicae quaestiones 1.10: 77 n. 93, 77 n. 94 Aratea 20: 66 n. 10 20-26: 23-24 21-22: 65 n. 1 22: 65 n. 4, 66 n. 10 24-26: 27 25: 25 42-44: 76 n. 87 86-87: 39-40 88: 70 n. 40 121: 70 n. 40 137: 161 n. 75 145-148: 152-153 146: 164 n. 96 146-148: 166 n. 93 147-148: 75 n. 87 160-163: 216 n. 77 244: 69 n. 39 260—261: 69 n. 39 300: 69 n. 39 317-319: 59—60 320-333: 176-178 327: 212 n. 35

271

420: 215 n. 65 421: 215 n. 70 424: 215 n. 70 426: 215 n. 65 426-430: 11 426-433: 214 n. 59 428: 18 n. 18 429-430: 18 n. 19 430: 198 434: 215 n. 69 442-443: 69 n. 39 Aratea: Fragmenta fr. V: 161 n. 40 fr. VII: 125-127 fr. VIII: 148—150 fr. VIIL1: 166 n. 96 fr. IX.1-4: 151 fr. XII: 39 fr. XVL1-4: 70 n. 40 fr. XVIII: 143 fr. XXII: 40-41 Aratea:Prognosticorum Fragmenta

fr. IV.10: 70-71 n. 44, 76 n. 87 fr. IV.10-11: 43 fr. IV.11: 70 n. 42 De divinatione

De

De

De

De De De

2.14: 237 n. 6 finibus 1.4: 77 n. 94 3.15: 63, 77 n. 93 legibus 1.8.26: 163 n. 56 2.7: 237 n. 6 natura deorum 2.4: 66 n. 10 2.95: 97-98 2.104: 237 n. 6, 243 n. 61 officiis 2.15: 163 n. 56 opt gen 14: 77 n. 93 oratore 1.69: 92-93 1.155: 77 n. 93

De republica 1.2122: 100 n. 5 6.13: 211 n. 26

Translating the Heavens

272 6.15: 211 a 27 Epistulae ad familiares

10.33.1: 239 n. 44 Iliad fr.2: 33 fr. 11: 33

fr. 12: 33 fr. 16: 33 fr. 26: 33 Protagoras (trans.): 68 n. 33 Tusculanae disputationes

5.8: 16 n. 8, 217 n. 78 Tullius Cícero, Q. (Courtney, p. 179)

1-20: 178-179 13: 212 n. 35 Valerius Flaccus, Argonauticon

1.11: 240 n. 32 1.16: 240 n. 32 5.429430: 167 n. 102 Varro De lingua latina 5.20.101: 70 n. 40 7.73: 70 n. 40 De re rustica 3.1.4-5: 164 n. 66 Varro of Atax Fragmenta (Blánsdorf) fr. 5: 71 n. 47 fr. 22.5—6: 44 Velleius Paterculus 2.126.3: 230

Vergil Aeneid 1.329: 215 n. 65 1.712: 65 n. 8, 215 n. 66 3.111: 124 4.247: 16 n. 8 4.259: 26 4.481-482: 16 n. 8 5.254: 217 n. 86 5.255: 213 n. 53 5.277: 166 n. 88

6.14: 160 n. 29 6.663: 163 n. 56 6.796:

5

6.828-829: 241 n. 43 6.843. 73 n. 65 7.48: 160 n. 29 7.259-260. 157 n. 2 7.480- 70 n. 43 7.674: 16n. 4 8.134-141: 17 n. 10 8.293: 16n. 4 8.313-325: 134-135 8.314-323: 163 n. 56, 164 n. 67

8.314-327: 163 n. 59, 165 n. 75 8.326: 164 n. 70 8.649: 217 n. 86 10.140: 215 n. 68 10.189-190: 167 n. 102 11.753: 166 n. 87 11.557: 215 n. 65 Eclogues

1.71-72: 163 n. 4: 165 n. 75 4.6: 134, 162 n. 4.17: 163 n. 55 4.31: 164 n. 71 4.39—40: 164 n. 6.62-63: 167 n. 10.38: 214 n. 55 Georgics

57 49

67 102

1.24-35: 113-114 1.24-39: 240 n. 37 1.40: 162 n. 44 1.125-127: 163 n. 61 1.125-146: 165 n. 75 1.125-159: 134 1.127-128: 164 n. 62 1.136-138: 163 n. 59 1.138: 216 n. 75 1.145: 163 n. 56 1.245: 165 n. 86 1.351-463: 17 n. 12, 157 n. 7 1.373-374: 71 n. 47 1.375-376: 44-45 1.505-508: 241 n. 45 1.511: 241 n. 43

Index of Passages 2.59: 164 n. 74 2.176: 112 2.344: 245, 246 2.458-460: 241 n. 46 2.458474: 134 2.473-474: 162 n. 49, 164 n. 66 2.474: 162 n. 45 2.475-477: 157 n. 7 2.496: 163 n. 58 2.524: 164 n. 72 2.540: 163 n. 57 2.541—542: 162 n. 44 3.147-148: 74 n. 74 3.381: 161 n. 40 4.150-151: 161 n. 39 4.152: 160 n. 33 4.441: 213 n. 54

273

Index of Subjects

aetiological explanation, 124 aetiological poetry, 212 n. 36, 215 n.

translations of, 17 n. 12, 99, 103 n. 34, 243 n. 61 “Weather Signs”, 7, 110-111

69, 215 n. 71 Aratus

Aristophanes, 58

Phaenomena,

Attalus of Rhodes

14-15

acrostics in, 88, 102 n. 18 ancient division of, 17 n. 17 as catalogue poetry, 81-83, 100 n. 9 catasterisms, 205-206, 217 n. 81; number of, 172-173; treatment of, 121, 152, 170

constellations: description of, 21-23, 40, 83-86, 147-148, 206-207, 217 n. 82, 217 n. 85; naming of, 204—207; zodiacal,

175 etymologizing word-play in, 85

Commentary on Aratus, 91, 102 n. 25, 217 n. 84 Augustus

and Capricom, 183-184, 210 n. 23, 211 n. 29 and Jupiter, 229, 239 n. 27 and pax, 108, 115, 230-231, 241 n. 47, 247

apotheosis of, 109 as dedicatee,

107-109, 227—233

astral immortality of, 183-184

145

numen of, 156 n. 2, 183-184, 210 n. 23, 211 n. 28 Avienius, 18 n. 21, 165 n. 78, 222 bilingualism, 63-64 Caecilius Statius, 68 n. 36 Callimachus

hymn to Zeus in, 105, 114

Aratus-epigram, 87-88, 89, 94-95,

modern interpretation of, 95-97

101 n. 16 Hecale, 208 n. 1 Hymn to Zeus, 122-123

(see also etymologies: Aratus)

form and content of, 95 Hesiodic elements in, 112,

130-132,

myth of metallic races in,

128-145; Bronze Age, 142-144; Golden Age, 133-136; Silver Age, 138-140 reception of, 35, 87-99, 102 n. 19

“refined style” in, 35, 88-89, 101 n. 14, 102 n. 19 structure of, 8—9, 80

theistic perspective of, 114-115 themes of, 85, 86-87, 97-98

See also Catullus; etymologies; Julius Caesar, Germanicus: Aratea: Callimachean elements in Callisto, 121, 160 n. 31, 215 n. 64, 215 n. 71, 216 n. 73 catasterism as reward, 170, 183, 211 n. 25 Catullus Callimachus translation, 74 n. 82, 77 n. 92

276

Translating the Heavens

Sappho translation, 33, 61, 74 n. 82, 76 n. 91 Cicero, Marcus. See Tullius Cicero, Marcus Cicero, Quintus. See Tullius Cicero, Quintus Cleostratus, 81 commentaries use of, 48, 53, 65, 73 n. 74 constellations illustrations of, 17 n. 16, 81 individual: Andromeda, 22-25 Aquarius, 184—185 Aquila, 190-191

Erigone, 208 n. 1 Hermes, 76 n. 87, 208 n. 1 Erichthonius, 187-188 etymologies Aratus, Phaenomena:

'AnTós, 39 “Apatat,

118

Δίκη, 162 n. 51 ἐν γόνασιν, 39

Κούρητες, 161 η. 39 Σείριος, 60 Ὑδροχόος, 185 Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus:

Κούρητες, 161 n. 39

180

Cicero, Aratea: aether, 70 n. 40 Aquila, 39-40

Auriga, 186-189

Engonasin, 39

Arctophylax, 216 n. 73 Aries,

Cancer, 40, 180

Capricorn,

182-184

Cassiopeia, 22-24 Centaur, 3-4, 16 n. 4

Cepheus, 22-23 Cycnus,

190

Cynosura,

120-122,

125-127

Delphin, 189-190 Draco, 146-151 Eridanus, 152-155 Gemini, 40, 180 Helice, 190-122, 125-127 Leo, 40-41, 180 Orion, 181, 192-199 Perseus, 21-29, 65 n. 1, 65 n. 2, 66 n. 13 Pleiades, 4—5, 96-97 Sagittarius, 181-182 Scorpio, 10-11, 181, 192-199 Taurus,

171, 180

Ursa Major, 83-86, 117—128 Ursa Minor, 83-86, 117-128 Virgo, 128-145, 181 zodiacal, 173-186 Curetes, 121 Deucalion, 184 dominant poetics, 35-36 Ennius, 1, 30 Eratosthenes Catasterismi, 210 n. 11

Lepus, 70 n. 40 Zodiacus, 59 Germanicus, Aratea: arista, 129 Atlas, 5-6, 16 n. 8 Augustus 157 n. 6 Corybantes (?), 124-125 Deucalion (?), 184—185, 212 n. 33

Hippocrene, 76 n. 89 Iustitia, 162 n. 51

Myrtoas undas, 189 Sirios, 60 Lucretius, De rerum natura Curetes, 161 n. 39 Ovid, Fasti:

Heliespont, 210 n. 15 Pleiades, 17 n. 9 Eudoxus and celestial globe, 100 n. 5 as source of Phaen., 79, 90-92, 99 n. 2 Firmicus Maternus, 239 n. 29 Ganymede, 190-191 Gellius, Aulus, 68 n. 36 Germanicus Caesar. See Julius Caesar, Germanicus glosses, 73 n. 74,

Heliades,

154—155

188, 212 n. 44

Index of Subjects Hesiod, 5, 81-82, 95-96, 193 See also Aratus: Phaenomena: Hesiodic elements in

Hipparchus, 58 on Aratus as astronomer, 90-92, 94-.95 on Attalus of Rhodes, 91-92

Hippodameia,

187-189

277 172-173, 209 n. 8; syntactic pattern in, 209 n. 3; treatment of, 121-128, 153-155, 170-172, 198—199, 202-203; variant aetiologies

in, 201—202,

216 n.

74 constellations: description of, 217 n. 86; multiple identifications of, 216 n. 75; view of,

Homer, 3 Horace, 2

Housman, A. E., 30-31 Hyginus catasterisms, 66 n. 13, 210 n. 11 Icarus, 216 n. 73 Jerome, 219, 222, 223-224 Johnson, Samuel, 63 Julius Caesar, Gaius, 239 n. 29 Julius Caesar, Germanicus Aratea:

aetiological poetry in, 180, 186 aetiology as theme in, 169-173 Ages-myth in, 129-145; Bronze Age, 142-145; Golden Age,

114-116, 200; zodiacal, 173186 date of composition, 15-16, 18 n. 22, 103 n. 34, 233-235, 242 n. 57 didactic formula in, 213 n. 54 dynastic politics in, 108—109 etymologizing word-play in (see etymologies:

Germanicus)

importance of, 13 intertextual equivalence in, 111,

145 key omissions from Phaen. in,

207-208, 216 n. 77 metrical technique of, 158 n. 19

133-138; Golden Age, contra-

narrative voice in, 111, 200-202

diction in, 137-138; Silver Age, 139-141; Silver Age, elaboration of 140-141; sincerae artes in, 163 n. 56;

Ovidian elements in, 3-4, 5-6, 13, 26, 123-124, 154-155, 163 n. 62, 166 n. 88, 167 n. 101, 167 n. 102, 167 n. 103, 171, 196, 210 n. 16

Vergilian elements in,

134-137

as title, 17 n. 12, 236 n. 6

paranomasia in, 185

astrometeorology in, 110

planets in, 110

Augustan Augustan authorship 219-233,

poetic self-reference in, 198 poetic self-revelation in, 181

ideology in, 36 poetics in, 36 question, 15, 235 n. 1;

and identification of genitor, 227-232; and identification of natus, 232; internal evidence for

227-232; manuscript evidence for, 219—220, 224-227, 236 n. 3; Callimachean elements in, 122-123 catasterisms, 208 n. 1;

erotic elements in, 169, 181, 187-191, 194-195, 213 n. 50, 213 n. 51, 214 n. 55; novel retelling of, 195-197; number of,

poetic style of, 10, 11—12, 28, 150-151, 197-199 proem of, 106-115, 227-232; interpretation of, 156 n. 1 parta quies in, 245-247 Prognostica, 7 structure of, 7-10 translation strategy, 127-128 Vergilian elements in, 4, 13, 28,

112-114 as translator, 15, 119

reinterpretation of Phaen., 111, 199-200 Lactantius, 219, 220-222, 223-224, 238 n. 17

278

Translating the Heavens

Latin translation ancient discussions of, 62-63, 77 n.

93 and dominant poetics, 42-45 and Roman nationalism, 48 as rewriting, 32-34 literal, 31-32 literalism in, 62-63 metrical imitation in, 71 n. 47 of Greek poetry, 1-2

poetics of, 6-7, 12-13, 14, 56-64, 145, 155-156 assimilative. 47—49,

58

variant aetiologies in, 201— 202, 216 n. 74 zodiacal constellations in, 210 n. 12 Metamorphoses

date of composition, 18 n. 23 panegyric of Augustus in, 109 See also Julius Caesar, Germanicus: Aratea: Ovidian elements in Parthenos identification of, 130-132, 161 n. 41, 162 n. 48

incorporative, 58-59, 75 n. 87, 76 n. 88

Pelops,

self-referential, 59-61, 107 subjective and innovative, 57,

Pliny the Younger

74 n. 82 variable in mode, 41-42, 61-

62, 67 n. 21 transmission of texts, 67 n. 22

Leonidas Aratus-epigram, 88-89, 94-95 Livius Andronicus, 1, 13, 46 and literary translation, 46-47 method of translation, 55-56

Odyssey translation, 37, 46-55 diction of, 49-51 Homeric exegesis in, 53-54

patronymic phrases in, 50, 72 n. 63, 72 n. 66 Saturnian verse, 52—53 Lycaeon, 216 n. 75 Manilius Astronomica

date of composition, 103 n. 34 paranomasia in, 212 n. 34 Menander, 32, 59, 68 n. 36 Micon, 238 n. 22 Myrtilus, 187-189 Nicander, 58—59

Octavian, Oenomaus,

112-113 187

Ovid, 3-4, 234—235 Fasti

date of composition, 18 n. 23

187-189

Plautus, 32 on translation, 62 Pound, Ezra, 37-38 Priscian, 222-223 Quintilian on Aratus, 93-94 on translation, 62 Roman names transmission of, 239 n. 24 Salutati, Coluccio, 219, 226-227 Sappho, 33, 61 stars as celestia] abode, 211 n. 26 as divinities, 158 n. 15 as source of animus, 211 n. 27 syllepsis, 209 n. 5 Terence, 32, 59, 67 n. 21 Thales, 81

Tiberius, 109, 230, 232, 241 n. 50, 242 n. 58 translation and cultural ideology, 68 n. 33 as rewriting, 32-34, 38-39 definition of, 66 n. 16 equivalence in, 38-42, 70 n. 41 independent status of text, 68 n. 36 literal, 30-31 literary, 29-30 reception in, 35-36 stylistic equivalence in, 35 Translation Studies, 14, 34~38, 68 n. 28

Index of Subjects Tullius Cicero, Marcus Aratea catasterisms: treatment of, 152-153, 215 n. 70 constellations: description of, 40-41, 126-127; zodiacal, 176-178 date of composition, 13, 18 n. 20, 243 n. 61 Iron Age in, 143 negative influence of, 115-116 poetic style of, 10-11, 28, 40-41, 43-44, 149, 151, 178, 214 n. 59 Aristotle translation, 97-98 Iliad translation, 32-33, 67 n. 25 on Aratus, 92-93, 94-95 on translation, 62-63, 77 n. 94 Tullius Cicero, Quintus zodiacal constellations, 178-179 Varro of Atax, 4445, 64 Vergil, 4, 4445 treatment of Ages-myth, 134-135

“Weather Signs”, 157 n. 7 See also Julius Caesar, Germanicus: Aratea: Vergilian elements in Virgo identification of, 132 invocation of, 129-130 word order, 53, 69 n. 39

279

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