Manilius: Poetry & Science after Vergil
by Mary Pendergraft, Wake Forest University
We can quickly sketch the outlines of the history of ancient astrology. Its beginnings are Babylonian, but the complex and sophisticated form in which it came to Rome largely grew out that Babylonian data in the Greek-speaking cities of the Hellenistic era, and particularly in Egypt. References to astrological ideas appear in Rome by the time of Cicero, for instance, who dismisses it in De Divinatione; Horace of course, before he tells Leuconoe carpe diem, tells her not to bother with Babylonios numeros. At the same time, though, a senator like Nigidius Figulus could cast horoscopes; Varro apparently was interested in this skill and his lost de astronomia may have included astrology as well as what we would call astronomy. And Stoicism provided a philosophical basis for accepting the truth of astrology's claims, with its understanding that the universe is orderly and rational, its parts held together by divine logos; this logos is manifest as creative fire, clearly the constituent of the heavenly bodies but also present in the human soul. The Stoic divinity is well-disposed to humankind and thus willing to reveal the orderly working of the cosmos, particularly, as Manilius urges, through our understanding of how the stars influence terrestrial life.
Now Augustus considered the constellation Capricorn as his lucky star, so to speak, and included its image on coins. Both Suetonius and Cassius Dio tell us that he had his own horoscope published, since it predicted a great future for him. Yet it is with Tiberius and his well-documented interest in the subject that astrology becomes big business. Thus, Manilius found an increasingly receptive climate for the poetic undertaking whose innovative nature he stressed.
Manilius emphasizes his originality in a very traditional way, by surveying a quick catalogue of Greek hexameter poets. In contrast to them, he proposes turn his back on oft-trodden paths and muddy and depleted fonts, and in his own chariot, or ship, embark on a previously unattempted venture. The presence of the Latin poetic predecessors, though unmentioned here, pervades his poem. With his frequent echoes of and allusions to (and corrections of) the great Latin didactic poems of Lucretius and Vergil, Manilius invites us implicitly to accept him as their successor. We will see that he answers challenges set by Vergil, and even corrects him—and that the nature of his corrections has to do with scientific understanding.
A good starting point is the macarismos of Vergil's Georgics, “happy the man”:
Vergil, Georgics 2.490 (ref. to Lucretius?)
Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum
subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.
Fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis,
Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores
Blessed is he whose mind had power to probe
The causes of things and trample underfoot
All terrors and inexorable fate
And the clamour of devouring Acheron;
But happy too is he who knows the gods of the countryside, knows Pan and old Silvanus
And the sister Nymphs.
tr. L. P. Wilkinson
These lines have been read as a particular reference and compliment to Varro, but it's difficult not to understand the first half of the formula in reference to Lucretius, whose great poem did undertake to explain the causas rerum, and did preach contempt for the templa Acherusia. For example,
Lucretius DRN 3.15-37 excerpts, tr. Ronald Melville
nam simul ac ratio tua coepit vociferari
naturam rerum divina mente coorta
diffugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi
discedunt…..
For once your reason, born of mind divine,
Starts to proclaim the nature of the world
The terrors of the mind flee all away,
The walls of heaven open,……..
at contra nusquam apparent Acherusia templa,
nec tellus obstat quin omnia dispiciantur,
sub pedibus quae cumque infra per inane geruntur……
But in contrast nowhere at all appear
The halls of Acheron, though earth no bar
Opposes, but lets all be clearly seen that moves beneath our feet throughout the void.
hasce secundum res animi natura videtur
atque animae claranda meis iam versibus esse
et metus ille foras praeceps Acheruntis agendus,
The nature of mind and spirit by my verses
must be made clear, and headlong out of doors
That fear of Hell be thrown….
In his zeal to explain the world in Epicurean, atomic terms, Lucretius has an ambitious program that touches on a huge range of topics. Yet he is not the man who knows the rural deities, Pan, Silvanus and the Nymphs. Vergil can evoke and praise Lucretian science and immediately praise as well the kinds of traditional belief for which Lucretius has no interest: and it is in this broadness of outlook, or tolerance of ambiguity, that we see a particular characteristic of Vergil in contrast, we shall see, to Manilius.
Back |
Next 
|
