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MANILIUS ON THE IMPERFECT FORMS OF THE CONSTELLATIONS: THE TEXT OF ASTRONOMICA 1.463–5 AND 466

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2024

D. Mark Possanza
D. Mark Possanza*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
*
possanza@pitt.edu
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Abstract

This paper presents two proposals to improve the text of an important passage in Manilius’ Astronomica, 1.456–68, in which the poet explains natura's rationale for arranging the stars in such a way as to create only a partial, rather than a full, representation of the constellation figures. The text of line 464 is repunctuated in order to give proper emphasis to natura's parsimonious disposition of the stars. Scholars have noted that the sentence atque ignibus ignes | respondent in 466–7 is not consistent with the poet's account of how the constellation figures were delineated nor with what an observer sees in the heavens. The conjecture insignibus (neuter plural), for the transmitted atque ignibus in line 466, is offered to indicate that it is the distinctive features (insignia) of the figures to which specific stars correspond and by means of which the figures are described. Attention is also drawn to a striking paronomasia in 466–7, designat … insignibus ignes, which creates a meaningful phonetic constellation of celestial fire (ignis), sign (signum) and insigne (distinctive feature) and thus provides evidence, on the linguistic level, of natura's providentia.

Keywords

ManiliusAstronomicaconstellationsignisstellasignuminsigneparonomasia
Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , December 2023 , pp. 749 - 757
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

In Book 1.456–68 of the Astronomica Manilius concludes his catalogue of the constellations with a natural-philosophical explanation of why the figures are not depicted in full detail by individual stars.Footnote 1

haec igitur magno diuisas aethere sedes
signa tenent mundi totum deducta per orbem.
tu modo corporeis similis ne quaere figuras,
omnia ut aequali fulgentia membra colore
deficiat nihil aut uacuum qua lumine cesset. 460
non poterit mundus sufferre incendia tanta,
omnia si plenis ardebunt sidera membris.
quidquid subduxit, flammis natura pepercit
succubitura oneri, formas distinguere tantum
contenta et stellis ostendere sidera certis. 465
linea designat species, atque ignibus ignes
respondent; media extremis atque ultima summis
creduntur: satis est si se non omnia celant.Footnote 2

464 distinguere Vat. Urb. Lat. 667 (ca. 1470) disiungere codd.Footnote 3

So then, these are the constellations that make their procession
through the whole circuit of the heavens and hold their abodes
in various parts of the spacious ether. Just don't search for shapes
that look like real bodies such that nothing is missing from
all their parts or lies dormant where devoid of light. 460
The firmament will not be able to endure such an inferno
of flame if every constellation blazes with fully illumined
parts. Nature, whatever it withheld from view, was thrifty
with the fires, since it would collapse under the burden, content
with marking off recognizable shapes only, and indicating
constellations by means of specific stars. An outline traces 465
visible forms, fires correspond to fires, the central area is
imagined from the border, the out-facing surface from
the in-facing surface; it is enough if not all is hidden.Footnote 4

The reason, as the poet explains, for only a partial representation of the figures is that the heat generated by completely delineated constellations, that is, figures whose every physical feature was represented by stars, would have been so intense that it would have caused a cosmic conflagration (461–2). This explanation meets the possible objection that divine ratio could not have made a providential arrangement of stars, which humans then devised as constellations, because that providential arrangement actually resulted in imperfect constructions made out of the imaginative associations of spatially proximate stars into figures that took on the identity of the names given to them. Manilius responds to this view by pointing out that if natura, another name for the divine ratio, had produced figures fully represented in all their parts by stars, then the mass of stars would have created such intense heat that the heavens would have suffered combustive ruin. Nature's solution in response to this potential astral catastrophe is a rational one: it marked out the various shapes by representing them only partially with specific stars, an elegant economy of form that prevented disaster. Thus, what might at first be viewed as nature's failure to produce a rational arrangement of the stars for the purpose of constructing fully delineated figures is in fact a proof of nature's ratio and providentia in avoiding a cosmic conflagration.Footnote 5

In support of this explanation of nature's rational and purposeful plan in the arrangement of the stars, Manilius provides details of its method in 463–5: nature was economical in its placement of stars in the heavens and was content to mark off shapes (formas) and to indicate constellations (sidera) by means of specific stars (stellis certis), a phrase which I understand with distinguere as well as ostendere.Footnote 6 Nature clearly understood the basic principle of dot-to-dot construction and, in this case, its tremendous advantage for the cosmos. My repunctuation of line 463, with a comma after subduxit rather than after flammis in the print tradition, is a response to two problems of interpretation. First, Bentley asked the troublesome question about nature's method, ‘Cui, amabo, perpercit?’ and answered by placing a comma after subduxit and conjecturing sibimet for flammis, a proposal which has gained no acceptance.Footnote 7 The unfavourable reception of his conjecture, however, does not provide an answer to his question. And second, the indefinite relative clause, quidquid subduxit flammis ‘whatever it removed from the fires’, may suggest, on a literal level at any rate, that natura initially made a mistake in the construction of the firmament by creating too many stars and then corrected the error by removing some. But providential nature does not make mistakes. Both of these problems can be solved by repunctuating the line, as Bentley did, but without resorting to conjecture. The simplest answer to Bentley's question is that flammis is the object of pepercit; nature's guiding principle was to be thrifty with the stars. With the indefinite relative clause quidquid subduxit ‘whatever it withdrew from view’,Footnote 8 that is, the parts of the constellation figures not delineated by stars, the poet concedes that considerable portions of the figures are not represented in the heavens, but at the same time he affirms the correctness of nature's method with the words flammis pepercit ‘it was thrifty with the fires’, because it avoided a cosmic conflagration; better to mark out figures by means of specific stars than to incinerate the cosmos with overheated constellations fully formed. Nature, in Manilius’ view, was not concerned with what was missing in the figures (quidquid subduxit), but rather with maintaining the necessary economy of stars, the very point which flammis pepercit emphasizes.Footnote 9

Manilius’ description of Orion (1.387–393), uncharacteristically detailed in comparison to his treatment of the other constellations in the catalogue, provides a good illustration of the foregoing discussion about nature's thrift in populating the heavens with stars and its method of disposition:

cernere uicinum Geminis licet Oriona
in magnam caeli tendentem bracchia partem
nec minus extento surgentem ad sidera passu,
singula fulgentis umeros cui lumina signant
et tribus obliquis demissus ducitur ensis,
at caput Orion excelso immersus Olympo
per tria subducto signatur lumina uultu.
Near neighbour to the Twins, Orion may be seen
stretching his arms over a vast expanse of sky and
rising to the stars with no less huge a stride. A single
light marks each of his shining shoulders, and three aslant
trace the downward line of his sword; yet at the same time,
Orion, burying his head high up in the heavens, is marked
by three stars on his remote countenance.Footnote 10

Orion is a large and bright constellation in the night sky, but the figure, in all its impressive anatomical detail, is the product of human imagination, which has superimposed on a handful of stars an order and an arrangement that delineates the mighty hunter. As evidence of natura's economical disposition of the stars, Manilius illustrates the very process by which, as he later explains in 1.463–5, it marked out recognizable forms and indicated constellations by specific stars (stellis certis). In this instance a single star marks (signant) each of the shoulders; the head is marked (signatur) by three stars; and the sword is traced (ducitur) by three stars. According to this description the individual stars function as signa, distinct marks, in a pattern providentially arranged by nature, which the human observer constructs as the figure of Orion. In the night sky there are no arms, no legs, no shoulders, no sword, and no head, just stars that function as signa, as emphasized by the poet's repetition of the verb signare, which are seen and interpreted by the observer who connects the dots, so to speak, and creates the figure with its various parts.

It must be understood, moreover, that after describing nature's method and purpose in arraying the firmament with stars, Manilius then adds, in lines 466–8, the human phase in the formation of the constellation figures. Although he does not specifically mention a human agent in the delineation of the figures, he clearly treats the activity of drawing figures in the night sky to make constellations as a human one. Natura has no need of connecting stellar dots or of observing constellations. Here the poet presents a collaborative effort between natura and humans that is paradigmatic for the whole poem: natura put signa in the heavens; it is up to humans to use their wits to recognize them and understand their meaning.

In this otherwise clear account of how nature disposed the stars in the sky, the sentence in 446–7 ignibus ignes | respondent is not consistent with its parsimonious method of distribution. To say that stars correspond to stars suggests some form of symmetrical arrangement in which there is a correspondence of stars representing limbs for human or animal forms, for example, stars representing Andromeda's two legs and two arms or the forelegs of Pegasus; and in the case of inanimate objects, their various components, for example, the balance beam of Libra or the sides of the triangle Deltoton; all of these parts must be supplied by the imagination. One look in the night sky or at a constellation atlas refutes that notion; there is no symmetrical arrangement of the stars in the figures; symmetry, such as it is, is an effect of the selection and deliberate arrangement of them in a constellation by the observer. If, as an alternative, the phrase ignibus ignes | respondent is interpreted to mean something like ‘the fires are linked to fires’, that statement is redundant and imprecise after linea designat species, which means that the fires are connected in an outline, and adds nothing to the understanding of how nature marked out and indicated the forms of the constellations with specific stars.

A.E. Housman confessed that he did not understand ignibus ignes | respondent and commented that the statement does not correspond to what is observed.Footnote 11 In response scholars have made various proposals. In his review of Housman's first edition Garrod conjectured artubus for ignibus, but this is too restrictive for the great variety of missing parts in the constellation figures, human, animal, and inanimate, and too imprecise since stars correspond only to selected parts, as Manilius’ description of Orion makes clear.Footnote 12 D.R. Shackleton Bailey, reinterpreting the first syllable of respondent as the reflexive pronoun se, proposed ignibus ignes | se spondent, which he translates ‘fires pledge themselves by fires’ and understands to mean that the visible stars act as guarantors for imagining the non-existent stars in the figure, a kind of stellar extrapolation, metaphorically expressed as a guarantee, from the seen to the unseen in order to complete all the components of the constellation.Footnote 13 Manilius, however, is explaining how the figure is fashioned out of visible stars (stellis certis); the outline of the figure is traced through the stars that nature put in place in the heavens; non-existent stars are not part of the process of delineation. Taking a more aggressive approach, A.Y. Campbell (n. 4) rewrote the text: et singula signis. He translates, with explanatory comment: ‘and particular parts, i.e., groups of stars, do correspond (cf. V. Aen. 1.585) to the pictures (figures, objects represented)’. Campbell based his conjecture on two assumptions: first, that ignibus ignes was a scribal error precipitated by words having to do with fire in in 459–63 (though it should be noted that ignis itself does not occur in those lines); and second, that in view of the five neuter plurals in 467–68 (media extremis, ultima summis, omnia), which he understands to refer to parts of the constellations, a neuter plural, singula, was needed in 466 to indicate groups of stars. But the neuter plurals media extremis and ultima summis do not provide a parallel for singula in the sense of ‘groups of stars’ because, as creduntur shows, they refer to the surface areas, not the parts, of the constellations that are bounded by the outline and have to be filled in by the imagination. Moreover, it is highly doubtful that singula in 466 can mean ‘groups of stars’ since there is nothing in its immediate context to support that meaning; the focus of attention is the disposition of individual stars and their delineation as figures. Clearly there has been a feeling on the part of critics that something is not right in the sentence ignibus ignes | respondent, though they fail to identify the problem, namely its inconsistency with the poet's explanation of nature's method in its disposition of the stars, as was discussed above; and, consequently, the proposed solutions are not persuasive.Footnote 14

In addition to the problem of inconsistency, two useful observations can be made. First, the conjunction atque interrupts what is otherwise an asyndetic series: linea designat … media … creduntur … satis est. Second, there is a suggestive paronomasia in linea designat species atque ignibus ignes, i.e. a fire (star) is a mark or sign in the heavens for the delineation of a constellation figure and the word ‘fire’ is graphically a sign of its sign-function as a signum because its stem ign- is embedded in s ignum; an ignis is by nature a signum; by its light it makes itself conspicuous and, in the case of a constellation, it marks a physical feature of the figure and makes it conspicuous, e.g., the star in each of Orion's shoulders; fire and sign are inseparable and thus further evidence of nature's provident reason on both the linguistic and cosmic levels. Any proposal to change the transmitted text should not, in my view, eliminate this paronomasia. Working on the hypothesis of an asyndetic series and a paronomasia of ignis and signum that is meaningful in its context by emphasizing the function of stars as signs that mark out (distinguere) and indicate (ostendere) the figures, I want to propose the following text:

linea designat species, insignibus ignes
respondent
An outline traces visible forms,
the fires correspond to distinctive features …

Here the neuter plural insignia means the features of a constellation which are indicated by individual stars and thus made recognizable to the observer.Footnote 15 As a luminous celestial body in the night sky, a star is a conspicuous object and, as such, in the formation of a constellation figure, it corresponds to, and becomes identified with, a distinguishing feature (insigne) of the figure, for example, head, shoulder, foot, belt, tail, horn, claws. This identification of individual stars with distinguishing features became so complete that in the description of the constellations, following the tradition established by the preeminence of Aratus’ Phaenomena, it was more often the distinguishing features, rather than the stars that correspond to them, that are the essential elements in sketching the figure. To speak of the horns of Taurus or the head of Equus, both of which are highly imaginative shapes largely devoid of stars, is to create a recognizable outline out of a few stars which are thought to suggest those features.

The rationale of nature's thrift in the disposition of the stars is now perfectly clear; the certae stellae by which nature marked out and indicated the figures correspond to the distinctive features (insignia) of the figures, a method which made possible the delineation of the figures without overpopulating the heavens with stars and causing a cosmic conflagration. It is standard procedure in the description of the constellations to identify their distinctive features (insignia) by the stars that represent them. Again, Manilius’ description of Orion shows the intimate relationship between the stars (ignes) and the distinctive features (insignia) of the constellation. The stars by which Orion is recognized are said to mark (signant 390, signatur 393), and thus make distinct and recognizable, the features of the constellation, one star for each shoulder and three for his head; in the case of the three stars that indicate the sword, a different verb is used, ducitur in the sense of ‘trace’, which, nonetheless, indicates that the stars function as signs for the shape of the sword. To cite another example, seven stars mark off (signant) the constellation Helice (Ursa Major, 1.297).

What triggered the substitution of ignibus for insignibus is obvious. In the context of a possible celestial conflagration, an abundance of words for fire (incendia 461, ardebunt 462, flammis 463, ignes 466) and the common attracting influence of the last word in the line on the one immediately preceding, especially when the preceding word contains a syllable or syllables shared with the word that follows, are factors that easily would have ignited the chain reaction that resulted in the substitution of ignibus for insignibus. An additional factor that may have contributed to the change of insignibus to ignibus is the occurrence of ignibus ignes as a hexameter line-ending in Manilius and other poets.Footnote 16 After the substitution took place atque was added to repair the meter, a simple enough addition. The reading insignibus also preserves the asyndeton in 466–8.

With the reading insignibus there results an even more remarkable paronomasia, one which provides additional proof of nature's foresight and reveals the human capacity for understanding celestial signification: linea designat species, insignibus ignes; the fire of celestial light and the sign-function of that fire are made one because the syllable ign- is embedded in designat and insignibus, and, most importantly, in the word for constellation/sign, signum.Footnote 17 As a res manifesta of nature's foresight and the rational order of the world, which is there to be decoded by human intelligence, a celestial ignis indicates an insigne which forms part of a signum, a sequence of meanings, which can be read on the semantic, astronomical and astrological levels, as well as a graphic signum on the writing surface: de signat – ignes – insignia – signum form their own constellation of meanings.

Footnotes

In May 2019 it was my great good fortune to be a Visiting Professor in the Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica at the University of Bologna; during my stay there I was able to make substantial progress on this project. To Francesco Citti, then chair of the department, who extended the invitation, and to his colleagues, Bruna Pieri, Lucia Pasetti, Luigi Pirovano, Daniele Pellacani and Antonio Ziosi, I want to express my deepest gratitude for their unfailing kindness and hospitality. I also want to thank Professor Bruce Gibson and the anonymous reader for criticisms and comments that improved this paper.

References

1 Volk, K., Manilius and his Intellectual Background (Oxford, 2009), 29–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides a detailed discussion of Manilius’ description of the celestial sphere.

2 The text of Manilius is quoted from Goold, G.P., M. Manilii Astronomica (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998 2 [1985])Google Scholar. I have repunctuated line 463; my reasons for doing so will be explained shortly.

3 After being a regular fixture in the early printed editions, distinguere, a humanist conjecture, gave way to the results of recensio and was replaced, in editions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by disiungere, the reading of the primary manuscripts; disiungere was printed by Jacob, F., M. Manili Astronomicon Libri Quinque (Berlin, 1846)Google Scholar; Bechert, M., Marci Manili Qui Fertur Astronomicon Libri Quinque, in J.P. Postgate, Corpus Poetarum Latinorum, fasc. 3 (London, 1900)Google Scholar; Housman, A.E., M. Manilii Astronomicon Liber I (Cambridge, 1937 2)Google Scholar and M. Manilii Astronomica (Cambridge, 1932); Breiter, T., M. Manilius: Astronomica (Leipzig, 1908)Google Scholar; van Wageningen, J., M. Manilii Astronomica (Leipzig, 1915)Google Scholar; and Feraboli, S., Flores, E. and Scarcia, R., Manilio: Il poema degli astri (Astronomica) (Milan, 1996), vol. 1Google Scholar. Housman printed disiungere in both of his editions; in his commentary, however, he expressed the reservation that distinguere seems to be said more appropriately of shapes (formas), i.e. on the implied assumption that disiungere is more appropriate to the stars in general, whereas distinguere is the precise term for marking off with stars the distinct patterns recognized as constellations. As the mot juste for denoting the action of marking off the constellation figures with stars, distinguere has been convincingly defended by Goold, G.P., ‘Adversaria Maniliana’, Phoenix 13 (1959), 93–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 108–9, and Caldini, R. Montanari, ‘Le constellazioni in Manilio, ovvero l'imperfezione perfetta’, in D. Liuzzi (ed.), Manilio fra poesia e scienza (Galatina, 1993), 55–78Google Scholar, at 66–7 = A&R 38 (1993), 18–41, at 29–31, which is an important contribution to the understanding of 1.456–82; she compares Cic. Arat. fr. 33.161 et [natura] uario pinxit distinguens lumine formas (J. Soubiran, Cicéron: Aratea, fragments poétiques [Paris, 19932]). D. Liuzzi prints distinguere in M. Manilio: Astronomica, Libro I (Galatina, 19952).

4 G.P. Goold's indispensable translation, Manilius: Astronomica (Cambridge, MA and London, 1977), was the starting point for my translation. There are two significant differences between the two. First, in 457 Goold translates signa as ‘stars’; this must be a slip for ‘constellations’. Manilius begins his catalogue of constellations by announcing that he will tell of the signa (1.255–6) everywhere in the heavens; he concludes the catalogue by repeating the keyword signa (1.457). The second difference, at lines 463–4, will be discussed above. The rendering of ultima summis | creduntur (466–7) as ‘the out-facing surface [of the figure] is imagined from the in-facing surface’ is intended to represent the two perspectives for viewing the constellations, terrestrial and cosmic, i.e. from outside the celestial sphere looking down on the heavens. In the cosmic perspective, as the representations of the constellations on the Farnese Globe and the Mainz globe show, the figures can be viewed from the backside (ultima) rather than the frontside (summis); for illustrations see Künzl, E., ‘Ein römischer Himmelsglobus der mittleren Kaiserzeit: Studien zur römischen Astralikonographie’, JRGZ 47 (2000), 495–594Google Scholar: on the Mainz globe, Gemini and Orion (plate 36.1), Serpent-Holder (36.2) and Aquarius (36.4); on the Farnese Atlas, Perseus (43.1) and Serpent-Holder (45.1). Dekker, E., Illustrating the Phaenomena: Celestial Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2013)Google Scholar, provides detailed discussions of the astronomical theory and data on which the Farnese globe (84–102, 111–15) and the Mainz globe (69–80, 106–111) were constructed. If, as G. Thiele argued in Antike Himmelsbilder (Berlin, 1898), 45–7, Manilius used a celestial globe, then the poet had good reason to mention both views of the figures; his use of a globe is regarded as probable by Dekker, 77 and 97. This explanation of ultima summis | creduntur makes unnecessary conjectures intended to improve the sense. Ellis, R., Noctes Manilianae (Oxford, 1891), 10Google Scholar, proposed infima for ultima, apparently meaning ‘the lower part is inferred from the top part’. This recommendation would not work very well with a bi-form creature like Capricorn, or with Taurus, which has a top but no bottom; and, in any case, the linea defines the shape of the whole figure, top and bottom. The same proposal was made independently by Campbell, A.Y., ‘Manilius I.466–8 and 515–17’, CQ 7 (1957), 186–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 186. Garrod, H.W., ‘Two editions of Manilius. (With some notes on books I and II)’, CQ 2 (1908), 123–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 130, conjectured intima, meaning the interior of the figure, but it is difficult to see how this differs from media in relation to extremis, i.e. what lies in between the outline of the figure. See also Montanari Caldini (n. 3), 64 n. 37 = A&R 27 n. 37.

5 Manilius’ scenario of a superabundance of stars that would generate excessive heat and cause a universal conflagration appears to be without parallel, with the exception of a similar scenario in 5.740–5, where he imagines a conflagration precipitated by the stars of the Milky Way; see W. Hübner, Manilius, Astronomica, Buch V (Berlin and New York, 2010), 2.449 on 5.744. Scaliger, J., In M. Manili Quinque Libros Astronomicon Commentarius et Castigationes (Heidelberg, 1590), 51Google Scholar, cited Aristotle's Meteorologica 1.35 (340a) to illustrate Manilius’ hypothetical conflagration. But there Aristotle, who maintains that the aether and the stars are not composed of fire, is making the argument that if the celestial bodies and the intervals between them were in fact composed of fire, then the other elements would have disappeared. The story of Phaethon's errant ride in the chariot of the sun and the ensuing conflagration illustrates a different cosmic event, the sun's deviating from its proper course (Man. 1.735–49 and 4.834–7; see P. Glauthier, ‘Repurposing the stars: Manilius, Astronomica 1, and the Aratean tradition’, AJPh 138 [2017], 267–303, at 285–90). Montanari Caldini (n. 3), 76 = A&R 39, suggests that the scenario of a universal conflagration caused by a superabundance of stars is original to Manilius. A related notion is present in Ovid's explanation of Jupiter's decision not to destroy humankind with his thunderbolts for fear that they would set the heavens ablaze: sed timuit ne forte sacer tot ab ignibus aether | conciperet flammas longusque ardesceret axis (Met. 1.254–5).

6 On the meaning of the terms stella, astrum, sidus and signum in Manilius, Housman (n. 3 [19372]), on 1.465 offers a concise and reliable formulation: ‘nam apud Manilium stella corpus lucidum significat, signum figuram e pluribus stellis formatam quam hodie appellamus constellationem, astrum et sidus utrumuis.’ For a more detailed discussion see Liuzzi, D., ‘Stella, astrum, signum, sidus negli Astronomica di Manilio’, CCC 7 (1986), 43–51Google Scholar; and for an overview of the use of these terms in Latin prose and poetry, A. Le Bœuffle, Le noms latins d'astres et de constellations (Paris, 1977), 5–40, and on ignis, 41. In her review of Le Bœuffle's monograph, Caldini, R. Montanari, ‘La terminologia latina dei corpi celesti’, A&R 24 (1979), 156–71Google Scholar conducts an independent analysis of the terminology, with brief mention of Manilius, 1.465 at 166. There can be no doubt that ignes in 1.466 means individual stars; cf. 5.733, where ignes refers to the countless stars that fill the heavens.

7 Bentley, R., M. Manilii Astronomicon (London, 1739)Google Scholar. Housman (n. 3 [19372]) regarded Bentley's punctuation and conjecture as an improvement in sense but offered his own conjecture damnis, for flammis, a more plausible palaeographical modification of flammis that achieves the same sense, i.e. nature spared herself from catastrophe; he first proposed damnis in ‘Emendations in the first book of Manilius’, Journal of Philology 26 (1889), 60–3, at 62 = J. Diggle and F.R.D. Goodyear (edd.), The Classical Papers of A.E. Housman (Cambridge, 1972), 2.492–4, at 493. Without flammis, however, the text does not yield a clear explanation of nature's method of populating the firmament with stars.

8 This interpretation of subduxit is consistent with celant in 468.

9 Goold (n. 4) translates: ‘Whatever nature has removed from such fires she has subtracted from a burden to which she would have proved unequal.’ The translation makes the quidquid-clause the object of pepercit, renders pepercit as a synonym for subduxit and treats oneri as shared between pepercit and the participle succubitura. The chief difficulty here is that ‘subtracted’ is not an accurate rendering of pepercit; ‘to subtract’ is not the same thing as ‘to be sparing with’. In fact, on this interpretation, the meaning would be more accurately represented by the following, ‘Nature was sparing in whatever it removed from the fires for the burden’, i.e. nature's procedure was to be economical in removing stars and was trying to maintain the burden rather than reduce it, a sense opposite to the one required, namely that she was sparing in the number of stars that she placed in the heavens in order to reduce the burden. Nature's minimalist method of stellar distribution is confirmed by 464–5.

10 Goold's translation (n. 4). I have modified his translation of 392–3 to reflect more clearly the syntax; Orion is the subject, caput, an accusative of respect with immersus, and uultu a local ablative, though it is usually treated, together with subducto, as a loosely appended ablative of attendant circumstance. The combination of adversative at and the repetition of Orion's name redirects the observer's view from the large and conspicuous torso to the dimmer and less well-defined head and face, both of which are described in terms (immersus, subducto) suggesting the enormous height of the constellation. For a different view of 1.392–3 see Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, ‘The Loeb Manilius’, CPh 74 (1979), 158–69Google Scholar, at 162–3. In [Eratosth.], Cat. 32, cited by Housman (n. 3 [19372]) on 1.393), the three stars in Orion's head are described as dim (ἀμαυρούς). It is to be noted, however, that in J. Pàmias i Massana and A. Zucker (edd.), Ératosthène de Cyrène: Catasterismes (Paris, 2013), Pàmias i Massana prints L. Robert's conjecture λαμπρούς instead of ἀμαυρούς (Eratosthenis Catasterismorum Reliquiae [Berlin, 1878], 166, in the apparatus), on the evidence of Hyg. De astr. 3.33 and the scholia to German. Arat. (A. Breysig, Germanici Caesaris Aratea Cum Scholiis [Berlin, 1867], 94.1–2, 166.15). The evidence of the Latin Aratus-tradition is not sufficient, in my view, to support the alteration of the Greek text and the astronomical record it represents; see further Kidd, D., Aratus: Phaenomena (Cambridge, 1997)Google Scholar, note on 322–5.

11 Housman, (n. 3 [19372]), on 1.468.

12 Garrod, (n. 4), 130.

13 Goold (n. 3), 108–9, cited respondent (2.414) in defense of respondent at 1.467. The contexts, however, are very different. In 2.414 Manilius is discussing the conjunctions of the zodiacal signs, where the geometrical correspondence between signs is clear; the poet is not discussing the disposition of individual stars as in 1.467. respondent in 1.467 is genuine; the problem lies elsewhere in the sentence. See also Montanari Caldini (n. 3), 64 n. 37 = A&R 27 n. 37.

14 D.A. Sutton, ‘“Something about fire” in Manilius’ Astronomica 1.466 f. and 1.515 f.’, Latomus 74 (2015), 689–98, at 696–7, disagrees with the interpretation of ignis as star; he translates ‘Indeed the fires (relating to the flaming constellations in 462–3) correspond to the fiery flames’; and explains, ‘… the line is addressing a fusion of entities or a type of celestial conjugation’.

15 The noun insigne can also be used of celestial bodies in the sense of ‘recognizable object/form’: Cic. Arat. fr. 2.2, praeclara insignia caeli, here either stars or constellations (Soubiran, n. 3); Nat. D. 1.100 insignia, referring to sun, moon and stars; Lucr. 5.700 radiatum insigne diei, the sun). Cf. Aratus’ use of ἀγάλματα (‘images / figures’, Phaen. 453) for the constellations; Kidd (n. 10) rightly observes that the word emphasizes the recognizability of the constellations. In explaining how the constellations were formed and named, Varro, Ling. 7.73 remarks that in the distant past country peasants identified for the first time certain constellations (signa) in the sky, which were remarkable in appearance (insignia) beyond the rest (arbitror antiquos rusticos primum notasse quaedam in caelo signa, quae praeter alia erant insignia …); for text and commentary see De Melo, W.D.C., Varro: De Lingua Latina (Oxford, 2019), 2Google Scholar vols. Here Varro articulates a basic principle that undergirds attempts at reconstructing the formation and naming of the constellations: the quality of being easily recognizable (insignis) in the sky is constitutive of what is identified as a signum. And, no doubt, Varro was aware of the connection on the linguistic level between a signum and its defining quality as insignis. Verg. Aen. 11.89 has insignibus (‘trappings’) in the same position in the line, post bellator equus positis insignibus Aethon; cf. Ov. Met. 9.776 tuaque haec insignia uidi (prayer to Isis). One may well wonder whether Vergil is slyly giving a veiled Latin gloss, -ignibus, on the horse's Greek name Aethon, ‘fiery/bright one’. If the name Aethon is interpreted as the participle αἴθων, then ignibus αἴθων can be construed to mean ‘burning with fires’. Cf. Verg. Aen. 7.281 semine ab aetherio spirantis naribus ignem, on which see J.J. O'Hara, True names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 20172), 166 and 189; Cic. Arat. fr. 34.88 and De consulatu suo fr. 2.1 (Soubiran, n. 3); and Ov. Met. 1.254, quoted in n. 5.

16 In addition to 1.466, the line-ending ignibus ignes occurs in Manilius at 4.67 and 4.531 (ignis), parallels which might have induced the alteration of the text from insignibus ignes, and it is found several times in other hexameter poets, Lucr. 6.225 (ignem), Ov. Met. 2.313, 4.509, Fast. 6.439, and Trist. 4.3.65; and Il. Lat. 73. Ovid uses twice the line-ending to describe Jupiter's use of the thunderbolt to strike the chariot of the sun and its driver, Phaethon, when it threatened to burn up the earth (Met. 2.313 and Trist. 4.3.65). The Manilian context of cosmic conflagration may have prompted a misguided attempt to harmonize the text of 1.466 with the action of Ovid's Jupiter who fought fire with fire when the occurrence of a similar conflagration was imminent. This process of harmonization can be seen in Met. 11.523 where ignibus is followed by the variants ignes (Marcianus) and undae (cett.). Although editors generally adopt ignes, W.S. Anderson, P. Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoses (Leipzig, 19932) printed undae, a reading forcefully defended by R. Helm in his review of H. Magnus's P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoseon libri XV, in GGA 177 (1915), 505–54, at 542–3. Housman, A.E., ‘Emendations in Ovid's Metamorphoses’, Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society 3 (1890), 140–53Google Scholar, at 151 = J. Diggle and F.R.D. Goodyear (edd.), The Classical Papers of A.E. Housman (Cambridge, 1972), 1.162–72, at 170 conjectured imbres. See further on Met. 11.523, F. Bömer, P. Ovidius Naso: Metamorphosen. Buch X–XI (Heidelberg, 1980), 5.377.

17 This type of didactic paronomasia, in which sound-play is employed as a meaningful part of the argument, has well-known precedent in Lucretius, e.g., mater-materies (1.167–71) and ignis-lignum (1.911–12), on which see J.M. Snyder, Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Amsterdam, 1980), 39–42 and 90–108; for a survey of paronomasia in Latin poetry, J.J. O'Hara (n. 15), 60–4; on wordplay and word patterning in Manilius, Takeshita, T., ‘Symmetrical wordplay in the first book of Manilius’ Astronomica’, AClass 64 (2021), 317–21Google Scholar, and R.M Colborn, ‘Manilius on the nature of the universe: a study of the natural-philosophical teaching of the Astronomica, with select commentary’ (Diss., Oxford, 2015), 107–28 (I owe the latter reference to the anonymous reader). In his description of the nameless stars, German. Arat. 371–8 employs the same word play, inter signa ignes (377), but to different effect; while the phrase inter signa ignes, taken by itself, may be seen as an instruction to the reader to recognize that the syllable ign- is found in the word signa, in the larger context of the nameless stars the poet makes the point that these particular ignes are not organized as constellations because they lack a form and a name, and are recognized by the stars of a nearby constellation ([ignes] per appositi noscuntur lumina signi, 378); thus these ignes, though themselves sources of light, are paradoxically in need of light (lumina) in order to be identified by the observer.