Heavenly and Earthly Elements in Manilius’ Astronomica (original) (raw)

Monsters in the Roman Sky: Heaven and Earth in Manilius' Astronomica

Mythical monsters have no place in the physics of an orthodox Stoic universe, but Manilius is a poet as well as didact, and his main concern is astrology, meaning that the signs of the stars must tell stories. Allusions to monsters throughout the poem align them with various earthborn complications which rise to the heavens to interfere with the flawless celestial clockwork. The most obvious example of this is catasterism, the process by which earthly beings become constellations, taking something of their original nature with them. Manilius' portrait of a messy, monstriferous cosmos culminates in the final book with the extensive retelling of Perseus' gory battle with his second foe after Medusa, the biohazardous sea-monster Cetus.

An Image Sublime: The Milky Way in Aratus and Manilius

Teaching Through Images: Imagery in Greco-Roman Didactic Poetry, ed. J. Strauss Clay and A. Vergados, 2022

This paper compares the Milky Way in Aratus (Ph. 469–79) and Manilius (1.684–804), focusing on the role of the sublime in both texts. In Aratus, to gaze at the Milky Way is a sublime experience that constitutes an image for reading the Phaenomena. In addition, the sublimity of the Milky Way transports us to a time when the heavens were not fully understood. To wonder at the Milky Way is a transcendent, spiritual experience that pushes us to study the heavens. Manilius responds to Aratus in ways that have gone unnoticed. The Milky Way fills viewers with sublime wonder and physically compels contemplation of the stars and the divine. Because of its physical power, however, the Milky Way symbolizes the principles and mechanisms of astrology and the sublimity of the astrological poet. Manilius also reminds the reader of an earlier era in the history of stargazing, but this experience plunges us into sublime terror, offering a darker view of the past than Aratus. Manilius’ narrative contains an additional self-referential image. According to some, Phaethon’s fiery chariot ride produced the Milky Way. For Manilius, though, Phaethon is an exuberant stargazer whose daring adventure symbolizes an approach to the heavens that is properly and polemically sublime.

For Whom Hesperus Shines: An Astronomical Allusion in Roman Epithalamic Poetry

Journal of Roman Studies, 2022

This paper reconstructs the history and meaning of a hitherto unexplained astronomical allusion recurring several times in Roman epithalamic poetry: the association of the evening star with Mount Oeta. By examining the iterations of this motif in surviving Latin literature (especially Catullus 62, Vergil's Eclogue 8 and the pseudo-Vergilian Ciris), I propose to explain the original meaning of this association as a mythological reference to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, offering a reconstruction of the Hellenistic epithalamic context where it was probably invented, and an interpretation of its function in each of the poems under consideration. The results of this analysis shed new light on some of the most well-known texts of Latin literature, allowing us to understand how this allusion was used to explore the relations between the genres of epithalamic poetry, bucolic and epyllion.

The Idea of Order at Thebes : Astronomy in Seneca's _Hercules Furens_

Astronomical imagery anchors crucial moments in Seneca's _Hercules Furens_ (e.g. Juno's soliloquy at the play's opening, the eponymous mad scene, etc). But hitherto these passage have been dismissed as rhetorical decoration rather than explained. This paper traces the cosmographic image at the heart of Seneca's play, in which Hercules (the constellation and the hero), rises, falls, and will rise again.