[In the following excerpt, Körte surveys the content of Aratus's Phaenomena, noting its widespread popularity in the classical era.]

Aratus was a contemporary of Callimachus, perhaps an older contemporary, and was descended from a respectable family of Soli, a Greek city of Cilicia. With his brother Athenodorus he went to Athens to study. Both brothers joined the philosopher Zeno, who had at that time founded the Stoic school. Although Aratus' connection with the Stoa does not appear to have been as intimate as that of his brother, its influence on both his inner and his outer life is yet of great importance. It was probably at the recommendation of Zeno that he was invited to Pella to the court of the Macedonian king Antigonus Gonatas, who was devoted to Stoic teaching. Here he recommended himself at once by a hymn to the god Pan, to whom Antigonus ascribed his brilliant victory over the Galatians in the year 277. It is said that it was also at the king's behest that he composed his principal work, the Phaenomena. Macedonia appears to have become his second home; we hear also of a stay at the court of the Syrian King Antiochus.

Aratus was a versatile nature; his wealth of knowledge is praised by Callimachus in a prose writing. A purely scholarly work was his critical edition of the Odyssey, which he, probably, composed in his later years. To the period of his youth, on the other hand, surely belongs a collection of short poems, of which two epigrams have come down to us. The one bemoans in mocking vein the fate of Diotimus, probably a schoolfellow, who wound up as an elementary teacher in a hill town of Asia Minor:

I mourn for Diotimus, who, upon a bleak rock set
Teaches the young in Gargara their endless alphabet.

—R. G. MacGregor

We hear of other poetical works of Aratus, aside from the Hymn to Pan, but his poetic reputation rests exclusively on his great didactic poem on astronomy, the Phaenomena.

The poet's relation to his material is quite different from that of the older philosophic didactic poets. These earlier writers were impelled by an irresistible desire to make their new discoveries known to the world. They were indifferent to the poetic form and chose it only because thus they hoped to speak more effectively. Aratus, on the other hand, had no new wisdom of his own to spread abroad. He simply took his material from a learned prose work of Eudoxus of Cnidus; his own astronomical training was so slight that he often failed to understand his source correctly. Even his ancient commentators noticed these errors, and Cicero could remark pointedly, indicating that it was a well-known fact, that Aratus, “who knew nothing of astronomy,” composed an excellent poem on the starry heavens. Aratus, none the less, was steeped in the greatness and importance of his subject, and this inner warmth of feeling doubtless contributed largely to the success of his poem. His purpose was to introduce to wider circles the majesty of the starry heavens through skillful poetic treatment, and in the attainment of this purpose he succeeded in an extraordinary degree.

The introduction breathes a genuinely poetic atmosphere; following the Stoic conceptions, it celebrates Zeus as the embodiment of the eternal world order. Here Aratus surely had a model in the Hymn to Zeus by Cleanthes, his fellow Stoic, a model which he used without quite comprehending its depth.

Let us begin with Zeus, the power we mortals never leave
Unsaluted. Zeus fills all the city streets,
All the nations' crowded marts; fills the watery deeps
And havens; every labour needs the aid of Zeus.
His children are we. He benignant
Raises high signals, summoning man to toil,
And warning him of life's demands: tells when the sod is fittest
For oxen and harrows; tells the auspicious hours
For planting the sapling and casting every seed.
'Twas he who set the beacons in the sky,
And grouped the stars, and formed the annual round
Of constellations, to mark unerringly
The days when labour is crowned first with increase.
Him therefore men propitiate first and last.
Hail, father, mighty marvel! hail! mighty benefactor!
Thyself and those who begot thee! And ye too, Muses,
Gracious influences, hail! and while I essay to tell of skies
What mortal may tell, guide right my wandering lay.

—E. Poste¹

This outpouring of a piety conceived in purely philosophic colors can be appreciated by a modern reader, but the poem itself will for the most part afford us but little enjoyment. Aratus begins with the constellation of the Great Bear, so important to sailors and peasants, and then describes constellation after constellation, with the closest fidelity to the chart of Eudoxus, which was sketched on the inner side of a metal hemisphere. It is impossible to follow the poet without constant reference to a chart, and even with the chart in hand I have personally been able to find my way only with the greatest difficulty. Myths of the stars find their way into this pure description only sparingly and in quite brief form. The one related with greatest detail is that of Dike, the goddess of justice, who forsook the earth in the Age of Bronze and is now enthroned in heaven as the constellation Virgo. Aratus borrowed the elements of the myth from the Works and Days of Hesiod, but he effected many changes and worked in some Empedoclean ideas. I shall cite at least the show piece of this poem, which is so strange to us:

          Below the Waggoner's feet
Lo the Virgin, in her hand a glittering ear of corn.
Whether born of Astræus, whom they call
The old sire of heaven, or from whomsoever sprung,
Her favour be upon us. The story runs,
That earth was once her home,
And that she mixed in human throngs, nor ever shunned
Society of man or woman of olden times;
But sate among them, immortal though she were,
And bore the name of Justice: and summoning the elders
In solemn senate or wide market-place,
She sang in thrilling strains the notes of equal law.
As yet they knew not baleful strife
Nor parted interests' bitter feud nor battle;
But lived a life all unalloyed, far from the dangerous sea,
And no ships brought their food from foreign lands;
But oxen and the plough and throned Justice
Yielded ten thousandfold to all their needs, with distribution due.
These things were when earth nurtured the golden race.
The silver race she visited more rarely with somewhat altered mood,
No longer finding the spirits of former days:
Yet she consorted with the silver race.
At eve she would come from the echoing mountains
Uncompanioned, nor had she gentle words for any:
But when she hill-ward drew the thronging crowds,
Her voice was stern, upbraiding their crimes.
No more, said she, at their invocations would she meet them face to face.
‘How base a progeny sprang from golden sires!
And viler shall they be whom ye beget,
And wars shall break forth, and unholy blood
Stain the earth, and sin bring penal woe.’
After such speech she would hie mountain-ward, and leave the human tribes
Straining eager gaze on her retiring form.
But when that generation died, and there was born
A brazen generation, more pernicious than their sires,
Who forged the felon sword
For hostile foray, and tasted the blood of the ox that drew the plough,
Justice, loathing that race of men,
Winged her flight to heaven; and fixed her station in that region
Where still by night is seen
The Virgin goddess, near to bright Bootes.

—E. Poste²

The description of the fixed constellations consumes quite half the entire poem. The planets are dispensed with in a few verses. Again in detail are treated the constellations rising and setting together and the signs of the Zodiac. The last third contains the Weather Signs, for us moderns probably the most comprehensible portion of the work. Here the poet does not in any wise confine himself to the heavenly bodies. On the stars, sun, moon, clouds, many remarks are made which are in part current among us today as signs of the weather—for example, the halo of the moon, the formation of the clouds, and the radiation of the setting sun. But in addition he has numerous weather signs derived from animal life and from objects used by man. The behavior of all sorts of birds, of oxen, sheep, goats, mice, dogs, tree frogs, wasps, ants and worms furnishes weather signs. Even trees and garden plants are brought in, as well as the flame of lamps and coal fires. The portion devoted to weather signs could not have been taken from the astronomical work of Eudoxus; the poet is here apparently following a Peripatetic source. The practical utility of the instruction for peasants and sailors justifies the inclusion of this material, which is really an appendix differing from the body of the poem in character and in execution.

The success of the poem was unexampled. The laudatory epigram of Callimachus was outdone by another, by Leonidas of Tarentum. Leonidas shows lamentable taste in placing our poet second only to Zeus himself, because, forsooth, he had given the stars a greater splendor. In the following centuries astronomers, philosophers, and grammarians vie with one another in treating and expounding the poem. The only work we possess from the pen of Hipparchus, the greatest astronomer of the second century b.c., is a critical exposition of Aratus. One of the very few citations from Greek poets in the New Testament is the half verse from Aratus' introduction, “For we also are his offspring,” which the author of The Acts has inserted into Paul's sermon, on the Areopagus, in Athens. In the imperial period his home city engraved the poet's likeness on its coins. The great physician Galen could say, “Who speaks of Soli except to mention Aratus and Chrysippus?” The Romans also translated and adapted our poet time and again. We possess extensive fragments of a free translation which Cicero made is his youth. Versions by the prince royal Germanicus and by Avienus (fourth century) are also extant; and we have occasional references to others. In the Middle Ages Aratus maintained his position as favorite; he was read even in those centuries which had almost lost the memory of Homer himself.

This continued popularity of Aratus is due only in a small degree to his merits as a poet. His language is lucid and simple, as far from labored pedantry, to be sure, as from triviality; his verse technique is graceful and careful. But tasteful and neat technique in verse and language have never yet assured a poet the recognition of many centuries. It is primarily the subject matter, so remote from our interests, which secured the favor of readers for so many centuries. The need for familiarity with the heavenly bodies was much more general in antiquity and in the Middle Ages than in our own day, and nowhere could this familiarity be achieved so easily and pleasantly as through the work of Aratus. Doubtless the pseudo-science of astrology, which had not yet affected Aratus himself, but which was soon to enter upon its triumphant march through the world, helped to make knowledge of the heavenly bodies seem essential to wide circles.…

Notes

1. From The Skies and Weather-Forecasts of Aratus, by E. Poste. Copyright 1880, by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission.

2. From The Skies and Weather-Forecasts of Aratus, by E. Poste. Copyright, 1880, by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission.