Aratea of Cicero
Aratea des Cicero is a translation of the astronomical didactic poem Phainomena des Aratos von Soloi into Latin by Cicero .
Author and date of origin
It is a work of Cicero's youth. In his much later dialogue De natura deorum it is introduced by the interviewee Quintus Lucilius Balbus with the words:
"I will use the poem of Aratos, which you translated as a very young man (= adulescentulus )"
Cicero becomes the Aratea about 85 BC. Have written. However, Cicero promises in 60 BC. In the Atticus letter II, 1 the sending of the Prognostica mea , the second part of the Phainomena . It remains to be seen whether Cicero is referring to another revision or whether he understands this second part as an independent book that he is tackling for the first time.
Content and language
Following his example, Cicero first describes the constellations of the northern part of the celestial sphere , starting with the big and small bear and how they follow one another. Then the Milky Way , the equator , the tropics and the zodiac , and finally the rising and setting of the constellations are shown. Only small remnants of the subsequent Prognostica have been preserved.
Cicero follows his model closely without embellishment or accompanying explanations from the Roman imagination and forms the work in hexameters . Some factual errors suggest that he was not entirely familiar with the subject. So in verse 435 he transmits the εϋρος = east wind with Fauonus , but that is a west wind.
The terms are often translated into Latin, such as B. dog, wreath. Many proper names like Orion are adopted. But there are also constellations in which Cicero retains the Latin name, for example verse 255: Pleiades is called Vergiliae , as is also found in Marcus Terentius Varro . Later translators kept the Greek term.
Living on and tradition
Cicero's early work may have inspired the later translations, the Aratea of Germanicus , the Phaenomena of Avienus . There are no direct text references.
Aratea occupies a modest place in Cicero's oeuvre . As the only work by Cicero, a copy was never made together with other works by Cicero. There is also no complete reproduction. Rather, some medieval manuscripts have survived, all of which are structured according to the same scheme, contain only part of the script and probably go back to a single archetype.
In these manuscripts the Aratea is reproduced together with thematically related writings such as the Aratea of Germanicus , the De astronomia of Hyginus Mythographus , excerpts from the works of the older Pliny and others. The manuscripts contain numerous representations of constellations and skies, which the texts serve to explain. Only verses 229–701 of Aratea are used. Verses 702–732 are completely absent. The following verses as well as the opening verses are partly preserved through quotations from Cicero. In his dialogue De natura deorum , our interlocutor Quintus Lucilius Balbus praises the beauty of the starry sky by quoting verses 1-450 of Aratea in excerpts. In the dialogue De divinatione , Cicero's brother quotes two smaller groups of verses from the final part of the didactic poem, the Prognostica .
Text output
- Aratos: Phainomena. (Greek-German) Edited and translated by Manfred Erren. In: Tusculum Collection. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-538-03517-1 .
- Cicéron: Aratea, Fragments Poétique , texts établi et traduit par Jean Soubiran, Paris 1972.
- M. Tullius Cicero: On the essence of the gods , edited, translated and explained by Wolfgang Gerlach and Karl Bayer, Munich 1978.
literature
- Victor Buescu: Cicéron, Les Aratea , Introduction, Hildesheim 1966.
- Jean Soubiran: Cicéron, Aratea, Fragments Poétique , Introduction, Paris 1972.