Blackwell Reference Online

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Students are often surprised to learn that Aratus of Soloi was one of the most popular writers of antiquity. His Phaenomena was hailed by contemporaries, quickly became a school text, gave rise to an extensive commentary tradition, and continued to be widely studied into the Middle Ages. It also engaged the imagination of Roman writers like no other Greek work, inspiring an unparalleled number of Latin translations and imitations. To modern tastes this success is hard to understand. How is it possible that readers from Callimachus to Cicero and beyond were so fascinated by a poem on constellations and weather signs, a subject matter that, as Quintilian observed, “is without liveliness, variety, emotions, characters, or a single speech” ( Inst . 10.1.55; not entirely correct: the character Dike delivers a short speech in 123–6)? The fact that we are so well informed about the Phaenomena's reception makes it harder for us to look at the poem without prejudice; how can we abstract from what we know about the reactions of, say, Hipparchus or Ovid? As far as his modern readers are concerned, Aratus is a poet undone by his own success. If we try to understand not what became of Aratus but where he was coming from, we also run into problems. The ancient biographical evidence (surveyed by Martin 1998 : xi–xlviii) does not allow us to construct a coherent picture of the intellectual ... log in or subscribe to read full text