Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

POETRY
concerns the origins of astrology and the appearance of the heavens — their
various zones and circles — concluding with a Virgilian finale, on the ability
of the planets to presage the future. Book 2, after a proem which pays homage
to Homer, Hesiod and other didactic poets, is devoted to the signs of the
zodiac; the proem to Book 3 again concerns poetry, this time the difficulty of
his theme compared to those of earlier writers, the bulk of the book being
occupied by a treatment of the twelve athla which correspond to the signs. Book
4 begins in Lucretian vein, inveighing against our mortal cares, then moves on
to the power of fate in history, and thence to the character traits connected
with the signs, the geographical regions which they govern, the ecliptic signs,
and finally, a vindication of the view that the heavens foretell the future. Book 5,
without more ado, launches into a discussion of the paranatellonta, the signs
which appear at the same time as the constellations of the zodiac, but outside
the zodiac itself: it finishes suddenly, after a comparison between the earthly
order and the order of the heavens.
Manilius' stylistic masters are Lucretius, 1 Virgil and Ovid. The old prosaic
connectives are fully in evidence — ergo age, perspice nunc, quin etiam, accipe,
nunc age, but there is a new polish, a new fluency, and a love of point, antithesis
and word play: in terms of the rhetorical qualities of his verse, Manilius
stands half way between Ovid and Lucan. He knows the imagery of the
Callimachean poetic, but when he writes of untrodden paths, trite epic themes,
and the struggle to create, 2 he reflects not the master himself, but the mainstream
Latin tradition: the Callimachean programme was now itself banal. 3
Virgil is most obviously laid under contribution at the end of Book 1, where
Manilius imitates the close of the first Georgic, incorporating echoes of
the Furor &po«7is from Aeneid 1:
iam bella quiescant
atque adamanteis Discordia uincta catenis
aeternos habeat frenos in carcere clausa. (i.22ff.)
Now let wars end and Discord, tied with chains of adamant, be bound forever, coerced
within a prison.
Yet even here there is a suspect facility, a non-Virgilian ease, which is the legacy
of Ovid. Ovidian influence, visible throughout, is clearest in the Andromeda
digression of Book 5. 5496*".:
1
He worries less than Lucretius about using Greek terms, simply prefacing them with an apology,
as at 2.693, 8 3°> 8 97 an ^ 3-4 1 -
2
Note luctanJum, 2.34: cf. the Callimachean TT