Vergiliae

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Vergiliae is the Latin name of the Pleiades . The word is derived from the Indo-European tribe vergus, verga, vergum = mesh, enclosure and is related to the content of the name formation in other Indo-European languages, such as Indian. No personification or mythical exaggeration has been handed down.

The Vergiliae with its main stars

Lore

The first mention is made by Plautus in his comedy Amphitruo . In order to visualize the duration of the night, the Vergiliae are used next to the moon and the evening star . The star cluster must have been one of the more well-known celestial objects under this name. With the Greek literature in Rome, the term Pleiades became common. Poetry in particular used the Greek loan word. Ovid e.g. B. often mentions the Pleiades and never the Vergiliae in his poetry .
The Latin technical literature, especially the agrarian one, sticks to the Latin term. Marcus Terentius Varro dedicates several sections in his De re rustica to the Vergiliae and never uses the term Pleiades , as does Pliny in the Naturalis historia .

meaning

The Vergiliae play a major role in the agrarian writings Varros and Lucius Junius Moderatus Columellas and also in the agrarian parts of the Naturalis historia of the older Pliny. It determines the timing of numerous farm work. Varro divides the farm year into eight periods; The Vergiliae form two border points through rising ( exortus ) and setting ( occasus ). He sets the rise to 44 days before the summer solstice and the set to 32 days after the autumn equinox .
It remains to be seen where Varro took this idea from. The star cluster is not mentioned in the only older Latin textbook, De agri cultura by the elder Cato . On the other hand, treatments of the Pleiades have been preserved in the Greek specialist literature. Hesiod already used them several times as time markers in works and days .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anton Scherer: star names in the Indo-European peoples. Winter, Heidelberg 1953, pp. 141-142.
  2. ↑ Plautus, Amphitruo 275.
  3. ↑ Roy Joseph Deferrari, Mary Inviolata Barry, Martin Rawson, Patrick MacGuire: A Concordance of Ovid. Catholic University of America Press, Washington 1939, sv
  4. ^ Ward W. Briggs : Concordantia in Varronis libros de re rustica. Olms, Hildesheim - Zurich - New York 1983, sv
  5. ^ Peter Rosumek, Dietmar Najock : Concordantia in C. Plinii Secundi Naturalem Historiam. Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim - New York 1996, sv
  6. ↑ Marcus Terentius Varro, On Agriculture 1, 28.
  7. ↑ Hesiod, Werke und Tage 382, 571, 614, 618.