[In the following excerpt, Fowler describes Aratus's portrayal of animals, the Stoic worldview, and his indebtedness to Hesiod in the Phaenomena.]

Aratus, more obviously than any other Hellenistic poet, shows a scientific interest in animals. He, of course, follows self-consciously in the Hesiodic, didactic tradition. A part of his didacticism is his versification of the works of Eudoxus and Theophrastus. Governing it all perhaps is his Stoicism. The pattern in the skies is perpetuated in the patterns on earth. The same fire that shines through the stars appears in the souls of animals and men. This basic Stoic principle may account for his anthropomorphizing of Zeus' creatures. It is also what, almost accidentally, gives his Weather Signs such ingenuous charm.

Aratus may have versified the work of Theophrastus, but the detail that gives his work the specificity that is its charm is his own. “When oxen,” he tells us, “lick around the hooves of their feet that are beneath the shoulders (i.e., their forefeet) or on their beds stretch themselves on their right sides, the old ploughman expects a delay of ploughing” (1114-17). What Theophrastus (15) says is “an ox licking its forehoof signifies storm or rain.” Aratus writes “licking around,” and his expression for forefoot, ὑπωμαίοιο, is certainly more vivid—if in fact it is not his own coinage—than Theophrastus' προσθίαν. Again, Aratus writes, “Nor when full of lowing the kine gather together coming stallward at the ox-loosing hour, do the heifers, sullen of the meadow and pasture, give notice that straightway they are going, stormless, to fill themselves” (1118-21). The middle form ἀγἐρωνται “gather together” gives a vivid and realistic picture of what cattle actually do before a storm. The startling genitives λειμω̑νοs “meadow” and βουθοσίοιο “pasture,”¹ with σκυθραί “sullen,” are poetic invention, awkward perhaps but effective. Cows before a storm will eat for the next day. There is no model in Theophrastus for this passage. “Neither are goats,” Aratus continues, “in fair weather eager for the holm-oak with its thorns, nor do sows rage furiously over their bedding” (1122-23). This last has a model in Theophrastus (49), who states that a common sign of stormy weather is “when sows fight over (μάχωνται) and carry (φἐρωσιν) their bedding.” Aratus writes μαργαίνουσαι, a Homeric word (Il. V.882). His sows achieve the status of Iliadic warriors. He follows perhaps but intensifies the statement of Democritus, who is reported by Plutarch (Map. 129a) to have said that a sign of rain was sows raging (μαργαινούσαιs) over their bedding.

“When the lonely wolf howls loud, or when taking little heed of farmers, he comes down to ploughed fields of men, like one craving shelter, in order to find a lair there, when the third dawn comes round, expect a storm” (1124-28). That Aratus calls the wolf λύκοs μονόλυκοs gives pathos to the picture. His model Theophrastus (46) writes simply λύκοs, and says only that the howling wolf signals a storm within three days' time and that his approach to the ploughed fields also indicates a storm. He says nothing of his being heedless of men or of his craving shelter. It is Aratus who humanizes him.

“Squeaking and dancing mice,” says Theophrastus (41), “are a sign of storm.” Here too Aratus embroiders a bit. “Nor were mice, if ever they squeaked more than was their wont in fair weather and skipped like dancers, unmarked by men of old” (1132-34). The verb he so colorfully adds is ἐσκίρτησαν “skipped.”

“The dog rooting with its feet,” says Theophrastus (42), “is a sign of storm.” “The dog,” says Aratus, “roots with both its feet, expecting that a storm is coming, and those mice too then prophesy a storm [and from the sea the crab makes its way landward when the storm is about to break, and in the daytime the mice tossing straw with their feet (ποσσὶ στιβάδα στρωφω̑ντεs) are desirous (ἱμείρονται) of a bed, when signs of rain appear]” (1135-41). This last delightful detail about the prophetic mice appears to be Aratus' own.

The detailed observation and the charming naivete of the often awkward language of Aratus' poem does not find its parallel in the visual arts until a century or so later. Then, in a number of mosaics we find the same passion for “le vérifiable” that we see in the Phaenomena. Perhaps the work nearest in spirit to Aratus is the Nilotic mosaic from the House of the Faun at Pompeii. Here are the creatures and plants of the Delta's marshland, done in colorful detail, but set separately and like jeweled toys on a striated and sparkling water that does not seem really to recede into space. Everything is seen at equally close range. It is this together with the very specificity of rendering which gives this scene the somewhat primitive charm of Aratus' Weather Signs. One sees the very seed pods and stamens of plants, the teeth of the hippopotamus, the forked tongue of the snake, the webbed toes of the frog, not to mention the many marvelous shades of the marsh birds' plumage. The mosaic technique in itself lends to the whole a glitter that helps to create a sense of “magic realism” which goes beyond what Aratus has achieved.

.....

Aratus begins his poem with a prologue to Zeus, the god who is Logos, which is the divine fire. He moves on to the heavenly bodies: the constellations, the planets, the circles of the celestial sphere, the risings and settings of the stars, and the signs of the zodiac. All these are composed of the divine fire and are in their orderly movements a perfect example of the “causal nexus which controls cosmic events.”² Aratus then goes on to the weather signs. He begins by showing how the heavenly bodies warn sailors of a coming storm. Man is the next object in the Great Chain of Being. In him nature (physis) takes the form of reason (logos). From there Aratus moves to a description of the behavior of creatures that heralds rain. These, the birds, the animals, the insects, are next in the Stoic hierarchy. The divine fire in them takes the form of “soul” as opposed to “reason.” Plants, which have only “nature” (physis), are mentioned but briefly (1044-63) and not last, which would be their natural place in a Stoic design.³ The disorder of the end of the poem may be, as Couat suggests, an imitation of the disordered end of Hesiod's Works and Days, in other words, a piece of deliberate archaizing.⁴ In general, however, the poem does preserve the Stoic conception of the universe: God, Stars, Man, Creatures, all of them sharing in diminishing power the Divine Fire which is Logos.

The Phaenomena may be seen as Stoic in another sense too. Stoic philosophy was “rooted in the observation of particular phaenomena.” It maintained “that all existing things are particulars.”⁵ Nothing could be more particular than the Weather Signs. It may well be the Stoic notion that animals have souls, irrational though they may be, that accounts for the anthropomorphizing treatment of the creatures in Aratus' poem and in the Hellenistic mosaicists as well. Those octopi look at us out of human eyes.

Aratus begins his poem: “From Zeus let us begin. Him never let us men leave unnamed. Full of Zeus are all the paths, all the markets of men, full the sea and the harbors” (1-4). Both the word ἄρρητον “unnamed” and the repetition in μεσταί … μεστή “full” are reminiscent of the prologue to the Works and Days. Hesiod invokes the Muses but then asks them to tell of Zeus and chant his praise. Through him men are famed and unfamed (ἄφατοί τε φατοί τε 3), named and unnamed (ῥητοί τ' ἄρρητοι 4). Easily (ῥἐα 5) he makes a man strong, easily (ῥἐα 5) he crushes the strong man, easily (ῥει̑α) he humbles the conspicuous and raises the obscure, easily (ῥει̑α 6) he straightens the crooked and withers the proud—Zeus who thunders on high. Aratus imitates the repetitions and borrows vocabulary (ἄρρητον 2). Hesiod's prologue enters immediately upon the archaic view of the world. Life is hard; prosperity is precarious; guilty men abound but receive their just deserts sooner or later. “Hear, see, and listen,” he tells Perses, “and give straight judgments with justice” (9). This presages the moral tone of his poem. Aratus, on the other hand, proceeds from his opening to say that Zeus has given signs to men to tell them when the soil is best for the ox and the mattock, and when the seasons are favorable for planting trees and casting all manner of seeds. This tells us that he intends to write a poem like Hesiod's and can be taken as a piece of archaizing. Next he makes a statement that sounds Stoic: “For he himself set the signs in heaven, marking the constellations, and determined for the year what stars should most of all mark for men signs of the seasons that all things might grow unfailingly” (10-13). This is Zeus setting up his causal nexus: god, stars, man, animals, plants. Aratus' prologue, then, is a Stoic preamble decked out in Hesiodic trappings. It is his form of archaizing.

Since in the Weather Signs Aratus is following Theophrastus, there are no verbal echoes of the Works and Days. Aratus never rises to the lyricism of Hesiod describing the cuckoo when it first calls in the leaves of the oak and gives joy to man over the boundless earth (ἠμοs κόκκυξ κοκκύζει δρυὸs ἐν πετάλοισι / τὸ πρω̑τον, τἐρπει δὲ βροτοὺs ἐπ' ἀπείρονα γαι̑αν 486-87), or the winter winds that roar so that “beasts shudder and put their tails between their legs, even those whose hides are bound with fur” (511-14), or again spring, “when the artichoke blooms and the shrilling cicada sits in the tree and sheds his high-pitched song from under his wings in the season of wearying heat when goats are fattest and the wine best, women most wanton but men feeblest, since Sirius parches head and knees, and the skin is dry from the heat” (582-88). Still, the spirit and the intent of Aratus' signs are similar to Hesiod's. “Note,” says Hesiod, “when you hear the voice of the crane crying year by year from the clouds above, for she gives the sign to plough and shows the season of rainy winter”:

φράζεσθαι δ', εὑτ' ἄν γεράνου φωνὴν ἐπακούοοs
ὑψόθεν ἐκ νεφἠων ἐνιαύσια κεκληγυίηs·
ἥτ' ἀρότοιό τε ση̑μα φἐρει καὶ χείματοs ορην
δεικνύει ὀμβρηρου̑.

(448-50)

The sweet simplicity of this is lost in Aratus' awkward Greek:

χαίρει καὶ γεράνων ἀγἐλαιs ὡραι̑οs ἀροτρεὺs
ὥριον ἐρχομἐναιs, ὁ σἀώριοs αὐτίκα μα̑λλον·
αὕτωs γὰρ χειμω̑νεs ἐπἐρχονται γεράνοισιν,
πρώïα μὲν καὶ μα̑λλον ὁμιλαδὸν ἐρχομἐνῃσιν
πρώïοι·αὐτὰρ ὅτ' ὀψὲ καὶ οὐκ ἀγεληδὰ φανει̑σαι
πλειότερον φορἐονται ἐπὶ χρόνον, οὐδ' ἅμα πολλαί,
ἀμβολίῃ χειμω̑νοs ὀφἐλλεται ὕστερα ἔργα.

(1075-81)

Mair translates this crabbed passage as follows: “In seasonable flight of thronging cranes rejoices the seasonable farmer: in untimely flight the untimely ploughman. For ever so winters follow the cranes: early winters, when their flight is early and in flocks: when they fly late and not in flocks, but over a long period in small bands, the later farming benefits by the delay of winter.”⁶ The passage is based on Theophrastus 38, but it is hard not to believe that Aratus had Hesiod also in mind. If so, his archaizing here is indeed like that on the tripod base, of which Mitchell says, “First, in order to imitate the clear patterned character of archaic relief, the sculptor purposely swelled the muscular outline and as a result the shape within would be emphasized. Secondly, since the linear and the naturalistic are opposed to each other at the outset, the battlefield would have to be precisely at their point of meeting—along the contours.”⁷ One sees in Aratus' lines the swelling and the exaggeration, the battle between Hesiod's linearity and his own naturalism. The result may be awkward, but it is not altogether unattractive.

Notes

1. If that is indeed the construction. J. Martin, Arati Phaenomena (Florence, 1956) 150 on line 1120, writes: “Tout le monde accepte sans broncher la construction étonnant de σκυθραί avec deux génitifs: ‘Regrettant avec tristesse le pré et la pâture.’ Il y a pourtant au vers suivant un mot auquel les deux génitifs se rattacheraient avec infiniment plus de naturel: ἐμπλήσεσθαι.” There is also the possibility that they are simply genitives of place.

2. A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy (London, 1974) 130.

3. Ibid. 148.

4. A Couat, Alexandrian Poetry under the First Three Ptolemies, 324-222 B.C., trans. J. Loeb (London, 1931) 485.

5. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy 119, 141.

6. A. W. Mair, Aratus, Loeb Classical Library (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1921; repr. 1960) 293.

7. C. Mitchell, “Stylistic Problems in Greek and Roman Archaistic Reliefs,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 61 (1953) 75-76.