Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition
by Emma Gee
Abstract: This book is a study of a Hellenistic didactic poem, the Phaenomena, written by Aratus in c.276 BC, and of its reception, primarily in the Roman period up to the fourth century AD. Aratus’ poem about the stars and weather-signs immediately acquired a popularity baffling to the modern reader; it was translated into Latin many times between the first century BC and the Renaissance, and carried lasting influence outside its immediate genre. This book answers the question of Aratus’ popularity by looking at the poem in the light of Western cosmology. It argues that the Phaenomena is the ideal vehicle for the integration of astronomical ‘data’ into abstract cosmology, a defining feature of the Western tradition. This book embeds Aratus’ text into a close network of textual interactions, beginning with the text itself and ending in the sixteenth century, with Copernicus. All conversations between the text and its successors experiment in some way with the balance between cosmology and information. The text was not an inert objet d’art, but a dynamic entity which took on colours often conflictual in the ongoing debate about the place and role of the stars in the world. In this debate Aratus plays a leading, but by no means lonely, role. Many texts which have not been considered as part of the repertoire of Aratean studies are also present, with Aratus himself as the harmonizing force between texts and concepts often disparate, even at odds.
Published by Oxford University Press, 2014.