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

Ramus, 2014

Abstract

Mud and stars make a strange mixture, yet here in brief is Manilius' universe, in which the rarefied heavens regulate the coarse earth. As shown by the recent spate of critical attention to the Astronomica, his various intellectual resources—astronomical calculation, mythology, astrological lore and Stoic physics—, while not forming a unified dogma, are less muddled than previously thought. He switches between these different discourses (or as it were, idioms) in pursuit of his own cherished goal: an optimistic eulogy to a fatalistic cosmos in which the study of the heavens holds supreme interest and value. Manilius' discipline is the most specialised and mathematical, as well as the most novel, of all Roman didactic poets. He therefore takes a decidedly concrete approach to the inevitable balancing act between technical content and poetic form, as is immediately obvious in his self-portrait as a priest-poet uates tending the twin altar-fires of poem and subject (carminis et...

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