SOURCE: Hutchinson, G. O. “Other Poets: Aratus.” In Hellenistic Poetry, pp. 214-35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

[In the following excerpt, Hutchinson presents a detailed structural, thematic, and linguistic analysis of the Phaenomena.]

We consider first Aratus, whose poetic career overlapped with Callimachus'.¹ The only substantial work of his to survive is the Phaenomena. The poem was praised by Callimachus and others for its elegance; it also contains some elevated passages on the gods.² We should not allow either fact to limit too greatly our approach to the poem. It does have for its core a poetic version of two exceedingly dry works in prose. The first part, on constellations, draws on the Phaenomena of the astronomer Eudoxus (5th-4th cc.); the second, on weather-signs, draws on a work perhaps by the philosopher Theophrastus (4th-3rd cc.). Many sentences of Eudoxus' work survive in quotation; the other work is represented by later adaptations, independent of Aratus, but frequently displaying resemblances in wording.³ Aratus often paraphrased his originals very closely; but we should not view him as simply imposing on his content neatly patterned versification and style. So contentless a conception of his art we shall see to be unrewarding.⁴ For the present we may note that in general even the most conspicuous patterns in his verses serve an expressive end: they highlight the meaning and further the sense of articulate discourse.⁵ The prelude on Zeus and the excursus on the goddess of justice use lofty tones and philosophical conceptions. But they should not obscure the lighter and the more complex tones found in much of the rest of the poem; nor should they impose too grave an air on the actual treatment of the subject-matter. Indeed, the treatment of Zeus himself in the poem deliberately and disconcertingly mingles the notions of a benevolent God, a being of mythology, and a synonym for the sky.⁶ Thus Zeus' son Perseus, translated to the skies, makes his strides ἐν Διὶ πατρί (253) ‘in Zeus his father’. The following lines produce a less strident echo of the bizarre collocation (259 sky, 265 God; cf. 275). The poem is far from monochrome.

One of the work's most salient features is its conjunction of two different areas of subject-matter, taken from two different sources. The transition is smoothly handled, and there are many links between the two parts; but this does not cancel out the fundamental sense of change. The conjunction can hardly be explained positively in terms of style, conceived merely as verbal artifice; nor do positive explanations in terms of thought seem very satisfying. For example, the idea of practical utility has not been insignificant in the first part of the poem, so that the second would be needed to bring it in (cf. 287 ff., 413 ff., 463, 559, 266 f., al.).⁷ We might, perhaps, find a more promising starting-point in the broad contrast between the elevation attaching to the subject-matter in the first part and the lowliness of much of the subject-matter in the second. This contrast between the parts will be developed and much modified in what follows; but we may note here the implausibility of supposing it accidental. To take a particular point, there is no expansive description of storms in the second part, which gives means for predicting them. Such a description, however, appears in the first part, extravagant and forceful (423 ff.); also in the first part appears a sweeping and grimly ironical passage on the perils of the sea (287 ff.). The distribution must surely be associated with the level and colour of each part. Now, the poem clearly presents itself as a kind of imitation of Hesiod's Works and Days [WD]: hence, for example, its prologue on Zeus recalls Hesiod's, and its lengthy digression (98 ff.) on Dike (Justice) recalls most emphatically Hesiod's Dike and his myth of the Ages of Man (WD 212 ff., 256 ff.; 109 ff.). A prime aspect of the Works and Days is its broad movement from grand matter to lowly; the movement would have appeared still more striking to the sensibility of Aratus' time than to that of our own (cf. pp. 11 ff. above). The poetic ‘model’ of the Phaenomena makes it the more plausible that differences of level should be fundamental to the poem. In general, it encourages us to see tone and register as important: for it is not only the more grandiose sides of Hesiod that Aratus evokes. We shall consider separately the handling of material in the two parts of the poem.

Aratus' handling of the constellations derives much of its effect from the interplay between their two aspects: the stars to the eye are points of light, but they were conventionally formed into figures, most of them with a place in mythology. The double aspect is inherent in the most prosaic treatment of the stars: Eudoxus not only uses the names of the constellations but identifies particular stars or groups of stars with physical parts of the imagined figure. But it is only in poetry that this strange union can be exploited and explored.

Aratus emphasizes the splendour of the constellations both as purely visual phenomena and as animated figures. If we consider it as it were in isolation, each type of splendour is straightforward. Thus, as to the splendour of the figures, when the constellations are referred to as μέγαs ‘great’, it is usually in contexts which lay weight on the figures as creatures (as 84, 305, 354, 523). Sometimes the notion is sharpened, as when Pegasus is called πέλωρ ‘a prodigious creature’ (205) or the Great Bear δεινοι̑ο πελώρου ‘a dreadful monster’ (57, cf. 402). Sometimes the word lends grandeur to an image, as in 305 μέγα Τόξον ἀνέλκεται ἐγγύθι κέντρου ¦ Τοξευτήs ‘it is near to the Scorpion's sting that the Archer (Sagittarius) draws his great Bow’; or as, more dramatically, in 83 ff.:

                                                                      ὁ δ' ἐμμενἐs εἐ ἐπαρηρos
ποσσὶν ἐπιθλίβει μέγα θηρίν ἀμϕοτέροισιν,
σκορπίον, ὀϕθαλμοι̑s τε καὶ ἐν θώρηκι βεβηκos
ὀρθόs.

(Ophiuchus), standing firmly fixed, treads and presses with both feet on a great beast, Scorpion; he stands upright on its eyes and its body.

On the other hand, we find a more simply visual splendour when the word is applied to particular stars in the phrase καλόs τε μέγαs τε or the like, ‘both beautiful and large’ (143, 210, 244, 397).⁸ The purely visual magnificence of one particularly impressive constellation is dwelt on warmly (Orion, 323-5), like that of the Milky Way (473 ff., see below). That passage is exceptional, however; generally, the visual splendour of the constellations is kept less separate from the figures. It is when the two ways of regarding the stars come together that the complexities arise.

The two aspects can enrich each other and heighten the general grandeur. A relatively simple example occurs at 141 ff. The Great Bear has already been described as δεινοι̑ο πελώρου ‘a dreadful monster’ (see above); now it is said:

δεινὴ γὰρ κείνη, δεινοὶ δέ οἱ ἐγγύθεν εἰσὶν
ἀστέρεs.

Dreadful is she, and dreadful the stars that are near her.

The epithet overflows from the figure to the other stars, where it would not naturally be appropriate.⁹ The effect is impressive, though the unexpected transference suggests lightly the fragility of the fiction. The splendour of these stars is then described in more physical terms, before the bleak close: they are all nameless, all ‘borne along in namelessness’ (ἀνωνυμίῃ ϕορέονται, 146). The disparity between physical glory and mythological obscurity yields a strange kind of half-pathos for the inanimate in their inanimation.¹⁰ In his treatment of Orion, who is to produce particular grandeur both as a figure and as a visible constellation, Aratus to some degree keeps the two aspects from impinging on one another. At 586 ff., however, the splendour of Orion is conveyed both by Homeric phrases describing the hero and by emphasis on the brightness of particular stars. The lines unite as it were convincingly the heroic figure and the brilliant constellation:

                                                                                                                                            οὐδἐν ἀεικήs,
ἀλλ' εὑ μἐν ζώνῃ εὑ δ' ἀμϕοτέροισι ϕαεινὸs
Ὤμοιs 'Ωρίων, ξίϕεὁs γε μἐν ιϕι πεποιθώs …

(586-8)

That is no unseemly figure: he shines brightly with his belt, brightly with both his shoulders. Orion, who trusts in the might of his sword …

But the passage goes on:

πάντα ϕέρων Ποταμὸν κέραοs παρατείνεται ἄλλου.

(589)

carries up the whole River (Eridanus) from the other edge of Ocean, and is extended in the sky.

The notion of one constellation leading up another below it here gives to the figure a conception so extreme in its heroism as to touch on the absurd. At the same time παρατείνεται ‘is extended’ has a technical sound (cf. παρατέταται, Eudox. fr. 15); it ends the grand description with a slightly chilly stress on the astronomical constellation. Even with Orion here the two aspects exercise a little of their modifying power.

Occasionally the poet uses his concern with the figures as a pedantry which dispels the grandeur of describing the visible stars. Thus in 469 ff. a lavish subordinate clause is accumulated, in which the glory of the Milky Way and the rapt amazement of the spectator are richly expressed. If ever the addressee has marvelled at this sight—Gάλα μιν καλέουσιν ‘they call it Milk’. The dry clause obtrudes abruptly as if the glory of the heavens were subordinate to this essential information.¹¹

Much more often, however, the grandeur of the figures is infringed or modified by emphasis on the stars as objects. Aratus treats together a trio of constellations representing Cepheus and his wife Cassiepeia (who boasted she excelled the sea-nymphs), and their daughter Andromeda (who was consequently chained up for a monster to devour, until Perseus rescued her). He introduces the ‘unhappy race’ in lofty tones, dwelling on their fame (179 ff.). But he immediately follows the description of Cepheus' striking attitude—he is stretching out both his arms—with an account of the equilateral triangle formed by the stars of his feet and the Little Bear's tail. Here he rephrases Eudoxus (fr. 33) with arch and aloof elaboration.

The description of Cassiepeia begins from her folly and evil fortune (δαιμονίη, 188). But it proceeds at once to describe the feebleness of her stars, and to offer a complicated simile from folding doors in order to indicate the ‘W’ those stars describe. Similes are rare in the poem. This impersonal and purely visual comparison is followed by an interpretation of the figure in personal terms. Cassiepeia is stretching out her arms from her ‘little’ shoulders (195 f.); ‘you would think she was grieving for her daughter’ ϕαίηs κεν ἀνιάζειν ἐπὶ παιδί (196). The description of her shoulders makes the union of woman and stars incongruous. The stress on natural inference, in the context of this whole account of her, must play with the artificiality of the identification. The brevity of that last clause heightens the strangeness of the juxtaposition.

The account of Andromeda seems at first to be proceeding in a similar way. The mention of her ‘appalling image’ is followed by a description of the magnificent constellation. There is no fusion here: the poet stresses the magnificence by stressing the ease with which the reader will find the constellation in the sky (199 f.). But the gap between bright stars and suffering maiden is suddenly turned to the manner of pathos:

ἀλλ' ἔμπηs κἀκει̑θι διωλενίη τετάνυσται,
δεσμὰ δέ οἱ κει̑ται καὶ ἐν οὐρανἳ̑· αἱ δ' ἀνέχονται
αὐτου̑ πεπταμέναι πάντ' ἤματα χει̑ρεs ἐκείνῃ.

Yet even in heaven the maiden is stretched out with her arms extended: even there her chains are on her. Her outspread arms are there held high for ever.

This elevated conclusion gains force from, and adds to, the mixture of tones in the whole passage.

The various appearances of the family form a thread to be followed through the poem. The other appearances do not weaken the jarring combinations. Particularly striking is the passage 629-59. Here the poet is describing the relation between the rising of the signs of the Zodiac and the rising and the setting of the other constellations. In this section generally, he exploits the possibilities for bizarreness which the astronomy affords if the figures are treated as more than a mode of reference. In 629 ff. he resumes and elaborates a dramatic scene (cf. 353 ff.). The fearful Monster (Cetus) advances against Andromeda; Cepheus makes a warning gesture to her μεγάλῃ … χειρί (631) ‘with his mighty hand’. Yet the drama is placed in a context which makes it bizarre: the heads of all the protagonists disappear beneath the horizon.

Aratus now turns to the rise of Scorpio and represents Orion as fleeing from that monster, in accordance with the myth, which he relates in detail (637-46). The narrative and its morality are distanced by the nervous piety affected in the introduction (637). But formally the narrative creates a firm and straightforward picture of the constellations as mythical figures: the world and morality of the myth are satisfyingly traditional.¹² But then we are told that ‘all that is left’ of Andromeda and the Monster also flees from the Scorpion with all haste (647 ff.). One myth intrudes grotesquely on another, and girl and pursuing beast alike fly from this new monster. At the same time ‘all that is left’ stresses the physical astronomy, with an effect of bizarre disharmony: the figures are only fragments. The poet proceeds to the sinking of Cepheus, upside-down, to the head. This is presented in markedly astronomical terms, with only a light injection of religious morality and play with other figures. γαι̑αν ἐπιξύει ‘grazes the earth’ sounds decidedly technical, and the specification of the stars has the flavour of Eudoxus.¹³

After this sudden domination of the astronomical, we are still more abruptly confronted with the domination of the mythical. The inversion of Cassiepeia at her setting is presented as a disordered dive into the Ocean:

ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἄρ' ἐμελλεν ἐκείνη
Δωρίδι καὶ Πανόπῃ μεγάλων ἄτερ ἰσώσασθαι.

(657 f.)

Thus she was not to escape a heavy punishment when she made herself the equal of Doris and Panope (sea-nymphs).

The gesture is dramatic, though fitted to the myth with conspicuous ingenuity. The reference to the punishment shows the same grim assertion of morality as in the story of Orion, though the allusiveness, and the lowly status of the deities, produces a fresh sense of archness. The concentration on the figure is complicated and slightly modified by the opening of this account (653 f.). There Aratus suggests a different interpretation in terms of figures.

                                                                      παιδὸs ἐπείγεται εἰδίλοιο
δειλὴ Κασσιέπεια.

Poor Cassiepeia hurries after the image of her daughter.

With ‘poor’ and ‘image’ Aratus removes and affirms the personality of the figures in the same sentence.

Hence this whole passage, which cuts across the formal division of the subject-matter by signs of the Zodiac, produces an elaborate and yet forceful mixture of aspects and tones in the handling of the constellations. The bizarreness does not wholly deflate the grandiosity and the dramatic pathos but incorporates them in a distanced and delectable compound.

The nature of such compounds changes from passage to passage. The grandeur of the figures can be much less radically infringed than in this last passage; but it is always to some extent modified by astronomy. Even when Aratus expands on the myths, the astronomical teaching limits and complicates the effect. Pegasus provides an elaborate example. After listing the stars present in the figure of the Horse, Aratus proceeds οὐδ' ὅ γε τετράποs ἐστίν ‘and he is not four-footed’ (214). This startling and piquant formulation is followed by a more dignified statement of how ‘the sacred Horse’ is shaped. There comes next, firmly marked off, the myth of Pegasus' producing the spring Hippocrene (216-21). Thus far, then, the section consists of two passages of different flavour set side by side, the quality of the second insulated from, and heightened by, the contrary qualities of the first. But Aratus returns to the heavens thus:

ἀλλὰ τὸ μἐν πέτρηs ἀπολείβεται, οὐδέ ποτ' αὐτὸ
Tεσπιέων ἀνδρω̑ν ἐκὰs ὄψεαι· αὐτὰρ ὅ γ' ‘′Ιπποs
ἐν Διὸs εἰλει̑ται καί τοι πάρα θηήσασθαι.

(222-4)

But the Hippocrene streams from a mere rock: you will never see it if you are far from the region of Thespiae. The Horse moves in Zeus' abode, the sky, and so you are able to look at him.

Ostensibly the impressive matter of the narrative is spurned, to make a foil to the glory of the constellation. It is an extravagant gesture: the spring was on Mount Helicon. But the emphasis on the spectator yields a final clause much weaker than the underlying rhetoric leads us to expect. We close, not with an exaltation of the stars, but with a neat, dry reversion to the pupil whom Aratus instructs. The grandeur of the narrative dissolves in the complexities of the close.

By far the most extended narrative tells of Justice, who became more and more disgusted with mankind, and finally left them to become the constellation Virgo (100-36). The account of her alienation progresses with sombre firmness, and with the exciting suggestion of moral passion in the narrator to match that of Justice. The effect is somewhat modified by the neatness with which we also seem to be progressing towards physical catasterism. In the middle stage Justice addresses mankind on the hills, not down in the city, at evening; she then returns to the mountains, with men gazing after her as she ascends. These physical elements are not merely atmospheric; they also suggest a moment of transition, ingeniously poised.¹⁴ But more disquieting is the close. Justice seems to be withdrawing from the sight of men (128, 122). Yet although she leaves them in detestation (133), she then takes up the position in the sky:

ἐχί περ ἐννυχίη ἐτι ϕαίνεται ἀνθρώποισι
Παρθένοs ἐγγὺs ἐου̑σα πολυσκέπτοιο Βοώτεω.

(135 f.)

where to this day she, the Maiden, appears to men at night, near conspicuous Bootes.

Aratus does not present this appearance to men as a palliating qualification to a grim close. Rather he seems to undo the pessimistic close to which his story appeared to be proceeding so inexorably. To be sure, when Justice had warned earlier that she would no more come to man's view (122), the rare word εἰσωπόs ‘visible’ recalled the use of it forty-three lines earlier to refer to stars, and so pointed to the coming surprise.¹⁵ But that only sharpens the sense of strangeness. The conclusion is too closely attached to the narrative for us to make it Aratus' contradiction of the story he retails from others.¹⁶ The final detail of Virgo's position recalls the original introduction of the constellation (96 f.). The link has the sense of drawing us back into the pedantic description of phenomena whose relation to myth is problematic. Again the return to the heavens mingles the prosaic with the subversive. The effect of the narrative it distances and disturbs.

At some points, we saw, the interplay between the astronomy and the figures is heightened by exploitation of the addressee. The first part of the poem frequently delivers its instruction to a spectator in the second person. Most often there is little sense of personal communication, but we have here a latent dramatic fiction.¹⁷ In the Works and Days, Hesiod very frequently addresses his brother Perses, and creates dramatic situations which involve them both.¹⁸ In the Phaenomena, neither poet nor addressee appear as historical persons; but Aratus can suddenly focus our attention on these figures and on the didactic convention, and so enrich the texture and enhance larger effects.

Particularly striking are three passages, connected together. In the first Aratus tells of the severe winds at the summer equinox, and says εὐρει̑αί μοι ἀρέσκοιεν τότε νη̑εs ‘at that time may my pleasure be for broad ships’. The sublunary world is making one of its relatively infrequent appearances in this part. The poet too affects to involve himself in this world and to take a role less distant from personality. We hear in this generalized first person a deliberately mannered echo of Hesiod's emphatically individual advice on a related theme (WD 682 f.). The first person is not so used elsewhere in Aratus' poem. The lines which follow begin on a new constellation, but continue the theme of sailing:

εἰ δέ τοι ‘Ηνίοχόν τε καὶ ἀστέραs ‘Ηνιόχοιο
σκέπτεσθαι δοκέει, καί τοι ϕάτιs ἤλυθεν Αἰγὸs
αὐτη̑s e 'Ερίϕων, οἵτ' εὶν ἁλὶ πορϕυρούσῃ
πολλάκιs ἐσκέψαντο κεδαιομένουs ἀνθρώπουs … (δήειs)

(156-9)

If it is your wish to view the Charioteer and the stars of the Charioteer, and report has reached you of the Goat herself, or the Kids, who have often viewed mortals being scattered in the tumult of the sea, (you will find the Charioteer) …

In this long conditional structure Aratus elaborates the fiction of the inquiring addressee, with no less sense of elegant artificiality. The fiction dominates the structure of the sentence. Into the same condition he introduces an intrinsically elevated confrontation of stars watching in the heavens and violent disaster on earth. The use of the same verb σκέπτομαι ‘view’ for the stars stars and (as often) for the spectator gives a weird sense of reversal which makes piquant the change in tone. In this passage the two types of immediacy conflict: human life too is made more remote by the didactic fiction.

At mention of the winter equinox, Aratus turns again to the sea (and to Hesiod). He presses home a warning to the addressee with a hypothetical picture of him: at that time of year

οὔτ' ἄν τοι νυκτὸs πεϕοβημένῳ ἐγγύθεν ἠos
ἐλθοι καὶ μάλα πολλὰ βοωμένη.

(290 f.)

If the night brought you terror (with its storms), the day would not come near to you, much indeed though you clamoured for it.

The conception is dark, but the grimness has a touch of satirical humour. The sudden dramatization of the second person is startling: we are both alarmed and distanced by the velocity of this movement. The poet then changes to talking of ‘the sailor’ and then to talking to ‘us’, mankind in its foolish eagerness to sail; the terrors of sailing are elaborated still more vigorously. After this he returns to the second person, imagining the addressee ‘enduring much at sea’; he ends the sentence with a witty reversal of Homer.¹⁹ In these lines the intrusion of human life is marked by violence and power in material and in rhetoric. The abrupt alterations of mode both enhance and limit these qualities.

The third and grandest passage on storms at sea changes its sailors in a similar fashion: first mankind (408-12), then the second person (413-17), then simply ‘sailors’ (418-29), then the second person (429 f.). The notion of signs for storms will form the basis of the second half; it is here greatly stressed (408-12, 418 f., 420, 430, 433). But Aratus confers on it here a kind of sublimity, by making the deified Night create these signs out of pity for men (408, 420, 434). The violence and misery of the terrestrial is conjoined in an impressive compound with the kindness of the heavens: the use of Night stresses the physical sky. The handling of the addressee ought formally to heighten the intensity and the sense of reality: the poet says μή μοι … εὔχεο (413 f.) ‘do not, I beg you, pray that this ominous star should appear clearly’. The personal warmth of this phrasing, not found elsewhere in the poem, is offset by the deviousness of the negative request. The sentence feels obtrusively artificial. Possibly the grim wit of the close at 429 is modified by another play with the idea of the spectator. Those who do not heed the sign given by the sight of the star sometimes die, sometimes, after great suffering, πάλιν ἐσκέψαντο ¦ ἀλλήλουs ἐπὶ νηῒ, ‘once more they view one another on the ship’—one another not the stars. But in any case the elevation of the passage is only tinged by such elements. It is less affected by them than the second passage, much less than the first. The addressee furnishes a neat return to the description of constellations (436); with the same verb as in the first passage we recommence astronomical instruction.²⁰

The ordinary world, then, by no means diminishes the grandeur derived from the heavens. The addressee, however, although he can sometimes heighten, also helps to modify and complicate the grandeur of this half. He does so on the one hand by thrusting on us the artificiality of the didactic fiction. On the other hand, he serves to underline the dryness of the physical astronomy by suggesting a half-dramatized image of tuition. Thus fictional elements descending from the poetic model and real elements derived from the prose source unite to produce a sense of pedantry and didactic rigour. This sense contributes to the impact made by the entire first half, that is by the accumulation of textures. We have an impression of elevation continually made distant, playful, fantastic, or tremulously fanciful. But in its own terms the elevation exists, most decidedly; in one's impressions this strange grandeur fills a principal place.

The first half of the poem presents a remote, lofty, and uniform world, complicated by the interplay of conceptions and by the affectation of didacticism. The second returns us gradually to earth, and presents a heterogeneous assemblage of phenomena, connected by a single significance: they indicate changes in the weather. The qualities the second half derives from this arrangement may be considered most conveniently if we separate the phenomena and the weather.

Certainly we start with a section on heavenly bodies (778-908), and move, after a paragraph of less uniform level (909-23), to a passage on sights in the heavens (924-41). But these parts turn out to increase our general feeling of downward movement.²¹ After them the phenomena for the most part involve familiar creatures and objects, often quite unpoetic in their associations. Readers then had a much sharper feeling for ‘low’ material than we have. Such material in similes, as in metaphors, has a very different resonance from such material when it is the direct subject of discourse; and even in similes ancient commentators on Homer found objects ‘low’ and saw Homer as concealing their lowness with epithets (thus Sch. Il. 13. 589, iii. 513 Erbse).²² Aratus is naturally aware of an intrinsic disparity between much of his matter and the dignity of the epic style; but far from concealing it, he exploits it and plays with it.

The section 942-72 illustrates well the richness and the prominence of this play. I will mention the more striking instances only. In 946 f. frogs are denominated μάλα δείλαιαι γενεαί, ὕδροισιν ὄνειαρ, … πατέρεs … γυρίνων ‘most unhappy race, a blessing for water-snakes, the fathers of the tadpoles’. The creatures are generally found too lowly to appear in high poetry.²³ Aratus affects to be dignifying them, with the grandiose γενεαί ‘race’, the epic ὄνειαρ with dative ‘blessing to …’, and the kenning πατέρεs γυρίνων ‘fathers of the tadpoles’.²⁴ But the shift of viewpoint from eaten to eater is amusingly abrupt, and the tadpoles, still more lowly than their seniors, turn the aspiring solemnity into humour. In 958 f. Aratus refers to

                                                                                                                                  σκώληκεs
κει̑νοι τοὺs καλέουσι μελαίνηs ἐντερα γαίηs.

those worms which they call guts of the black earth.

γη̑s ἔντερα ‘earth's guts’ is a title so colloquial that even Aristotle always adds a ‘so-called’; ‘Theophrastus’ does not, and so confirms its currency. Aratus with pleasing incongruousness gives an epic epithet to ‘earth’. His ‘which they call’ in fact highlights the distance of the phrase from epic style. It also provides a degraded form of the recurrent and significant references to mortal names in the first part of the poem.²⁵ Next hens are described as

τιθαὶ ὄρνιθεs ταὶ ἀλέκτοροs ἐξεγένοντο.

(960)

tame she-birds which are born from the cock.

This is a consciously laboured periphrasis; but their action is εὑ ἐϕθειρίσσαντο ‘they have been known to pick off well their lice’. The verb and the notion are strikingly low; the poet's use of ‘well’ adds a bizarre touch of epic colour.²⁶ The whole section ends with a more straightforward and dignified echo of Homer (ὀξὺ λεληκώs (972) ‘crying shrilly’, cf. Il. 22. 141). The language and style of the epic afford Aratus his principal vehicle for play with the low. The effect is sharpened by his earlier play with the grand.

This continual play is by no means incompatible with a sense of diversity in the material. Indeed, particularities or qualities which are low and thus striking offer a major resource for investing phenomena with vivid individuality and enhancing a sense of change. It is seldom possible to ‘prove’ that Aratus intends a contrast between signs or between sections: he seldom calls attention to them explicitly. Conceivably, too, Aratus was bound in detail by the order of his source, although what we can tell of his handling of Eudoxus would assuredly suggest otherwise.²⁷ Yet even if he were so bound, the flavour which signs acquire in Aratus' poem makes such a feeling of difference an inescapable part of the work. And in fact it would be very implausible to suppose that Aratus was unaware of this. One may consider a single type of contrast, that between large creatures and small. ἀλλὰ γὰρ οὐδἐ μύεs (1132) ‘but not even mice’ (have not been a sign) surely invites the reader to make a contrast at least with the wolf that has immediately preceded them (1124 ff.). The description of the wolf combined the understanding dignity of a Homeric simile with a sense of the strange and unnatural. The skipping of the mice is deliciously playful in effect. One contrasts their ‘squeaking more shrilly than usual’ (1132) with the wolf's ‘howling long’ (1124). The intercourse of pigs, sheep, and goats is described in 1069 f. with piquancy and blunt directness.²⁸ By saying that they indicate a storm ‘just as the wasps do’, Aratus surely points to a contrast of flavour with the preceding sentence, on those insects. The small creatures in their ubiquitous swirling multitudes arouse a wholly different response from the large domesticated animals with their homely, half-human action.²⁹

More direct opposition of size comes without explicit indication in 1028-32.

οὐδ' ἂν ἔτι ξουθαὶ μεγάλου χειμω̑νοs ἰόντοs
πρόσσω ποιήσαιντο νομὸν κηροι̑ο μέλισσαι,
ἀλλ' αὐτου̑ μέλιτόs τε καὶ ἔργων εἱλίσσονται·
οὐδ' ὑψου̑ γεράνων μακραὶ στίχεs αὐτὰ κέλευθα
τείνονται, στροϕάδεs δἐ παλιμπετἐs ἀπονέονται.

Nor, if a great storm were coming would the yellow bees continue to pasture their wax far away: they remain and swirl round their honey, round their estate; nor do the long columns of cranes on high then travel along the same path: they turn round and fly back.

The bees appear as charming miniatures of farm animals and farmers, with their pasturing and their estate. The ‘long’ lines of cranes moving ‘on high’ convey a larger and more impressive image of flight. The two signs are made closely parallel and are coupled in a single sentence. The bulls of 954 f. are followed at once by ants, centipedes, and earth-worms. The ants carry all the eggs out from their ant-hill θα̑σσον ‘with some speed’ (957)—this detail of speed is not an intrinsic element of the sign and does not appear in [Theophr.] 22. Their hurried and prodigious activity one may not unnaturally contrast with the large animals' more static and ponderous behaviour.

                                                                                          ὕδατοs ἐνδίοιο
οὐρανὸν εἰσανιδόντεs ἀπ' αἰθέροs ὠσϕρήσαντο.

(954 f.)

Looking up into the heavens they have caught the smell of rain in the sky.

Indeed, the Homeric phrase οὐρανὸν εἰσανιδόντεs ‘looking up into the heavens’ was used before of star-gazing in a grandiose passage (325), and here glances parodically at that act of contemplation.³⁰ These instances, taken together, may serve to indicate the importance of diversity in the texture of this part.

The diversity is all tightly focused on the single object of foretelling the weather (usually bad). In accordance with the character of this half, there are after the introduction no digressions, and no expansions of any size (the most considerable is 1101-3). There is not even a description of the weather that lasts more than two lines. Certainly, Aratus wished to avoid the repetitive monotony of his source; but that aim alone, it appears, will not explain or exhaust the qualities of this part. Grandeur and power might well attach to the designation of wind, rain, storm, and calm. In the early, and more elevated, portions, some of the phrases do come a little nearer to this character than later. In the introduction storms receive an epic epithet at 744 and, at 760, the heightened reference λαίλαπι πόντου ‘tempest of the sea’.³¹ In the section on heavenly bodies οὐκ ὀλίγῳ χειμω̑νι τότε κλύζονται ἄρουραι (902) ‘by no small storm is the earth deluged then’ has a certain impressiveness in its movement from litotes to a forceful verb. But in the earlier οὐδ' … ἄρραντοι γίνονται ἐπ' ἤματι κείνῳ ἄρουραι (868) ‘not unwetted is the earth on that day’, the language is meant to sound too solemn for its content, the ostensible grimness of manner is to sound arch. ἠκαί που ῥαθάμιγγεs ἐπιτροχόωσ' ὑετοι̑ο (899) ‘or indeed, besides wind, sometimes the drops of rain hurry on’ uses an epic word for ‘drops’ and so mingles the distant with the charmingly small and familiar. Finally, the paragraph on signs in the sky employs the sailor's fear for his life to enhance the drama of the storm (935 f., cf. also 763 f.). In the rest of this half, the phrases used to denote the weather do not make even these limited approaches to elevation and force. They are plain and colourless. We feel an increasing sense of division: between the drabness of the unremitting practical instruction we are ostensibly offered, and the colour and variety of the experience in fact presented to the reader's imagination.

This sense of division is furthered by the very structures into which Aratus organizes his material. The opening section on the moon, sun, and Manger, markedly homogeneous in its content, eschews excessive repetition. The instruction σκέπτεο ‘look at’ appeared in the first half (75), but here it is placed at the beginning of five paragraphs, with a heaviness of emphasis foreign to the earlier part. However, the instances are separated by at least twelve lines (778, 799, 832, 880, 892). In retailing here a huge string of what are essentially conditional sentences, Aratus avoids any feeling of insistent sameness in form. But after this section, and before the last one (1044 ff.), large clusters frequently develop in the connection of the signs: six ἤ (‘or’), all at the beginning of the line, in 942-53; five καί (‘and’) in 954-62; six μηδέ (‘and do not’) in 973-87; seven καί in 1021-7 (cf. also 999-1003). These accumulations make the sequences of striking images and striking phrases seem richer and more copious. But they also suggest a pressing zeal to inform in the fictional voice of the author. This function emerges most obviously in 973-87, where the addressee is adjured to ignore none of these signs, and a whole further string is added for him to remember (984). The run of μηδέ here is particularly reminiscent of the latter part of the Works and Days (cf. WD 715-19). The whole section ends by playing with the author's expansiveness. ‘Why’, he exclaims abruptly, ‘should I tell you all the signs there are for men?’, τί τοι λέγω ὅσσα πέλονται … ; (1036 f.).³² The sudden arrest piquantly underlines the relentless flow of the preceding account. Aratus continues the play with delicate wryness: the poet proceeds to illustrate the vast number of signs that exist with a few more, for other types of weather.

It might be contended that all this was meant to produce no complexity of effect: that the writer wishes the stress on the quantity of signs merely to redound to the praise of the gods. Their ample provisions were emphasized in the more grandiose introductory passage (732, 771 f.).³³ Such a view of the effect would make very strange the other complexities of this part, and would be especially hard to reconcile with the handling of the addressee.

The didactic fiction is not exploited with such drama in this half as in some passages of the first; but we have a more continuous sense of its presence. With flatter but more insistent didacticism, the author presses on the addressee the practical importance of the signs and the need for vigour in observing them.³⁴ It would be implausible to make this fiction into Aratus' earnest enlightenment of his reader. But once we acknowledge a sense of division and play, a straightforwardly religious interpretation say of the string of μηδέ (973 ff.) becomes very difficult to maintain. The passage 819-91 (the sun) often uses remarks to the addressee as a variation for ‘it will rain’. We have seen that some of the other variations in this passage contain modifying elements. It would be strange not to find humour in the version at 857. If it has rained in the day and at sunset a cloud overshadows the sun, with broken rays shining all round it, then

ἠτ' ἄν ἔτ' εἰs ἠω̑ σκέπαοs κεχρημένοs εἴηs.

even the next morning you would still be in need of cover.

The swift movement from impressive sights in the sky to the implied discomfort of a soaking derives further force from the immediacy of the second person. In the next sentence the addressee is told that, if such-and-such happens, he ‘certainly need not tremble (περιτρομέειν) at rain that night or the next day’ (i.e. it will be fine); but he should so tremble if something else occurs (860 ff.). The preceding sentence directs our attention, not to any serious consequences of rain, but to the physical unpleasantness: the idea of terror is to seem inappropriately inflated for this subject.

Later, the poet speaks of the different significations of single and of double parhelia (880 ff.). He accordingly urges the addressee, μηδ' αὔτωs σκοπιὴν ταύτην ἀμενηνὰ ϕυλάσσειν (883) ‘do not keep your watch for this with useless feebleness’ (i.e. be sure to distinguish them). The vehement phrasing, with its military suggestion, surely feels somewhat exaggerated. Aratus proceeds to speak of a storm with grandiose language, using the name of Zeus (886); but the final reference to rain is in the variation with raindrops (889, see above p. 231). The play with levels there helps to deflate the portentousness of the command.

The play in 1036 f. (‘Why should I tell you … ?’) involves the didactic fiction too. For the remaining signs (1044-137), the addressee gives place to a series of rustic figures, and the feeling of the poem changes.³⁵ The import of the signs is often linked with the reactions of the ploughman, or the goatherd, and so forth; these reactions become a prime source of interest. Repetition of the word χαίρει ‘is glad’ suggests their structural significance (1073, 1075, cf. 1090; 1095 (negative), 1098). At the same time, vivid detail and unexpected variation remove any sense of obsession or of dryness. Thus the section begins with an emphatic description of the farmer constantly gazing at certain trees (1045 f.). The gaze presents his anxiety in dramatic and concrete form. As for variation, at 1075 f. we are told how the timely ploughman is glad at the timely arrival of the cranes (ὡραι̑οs … ὥριον). The event, and the emphasis on timeliness, remind one of Hesiod, and his moralizing depiction of the untimely farmer's horror at the coming of these birds (WD 451 ff.). But Aratus unexpectedly dwells on the superior pleasure of the untimely ploughman when the cranes are late. Hesiod's unwearying commendation of work is no less pleasingly avoided at 1117. There Aratus speaks of the aged ploughman's eager hopes that bad weather will delay his work. Even apart from this aspect, the section removes us suddenly from the strident tones of pressing instruction. Not that the poet's ostensible voice is straightforwardly distanced from his material. The poet utters wishes which suggest a strange involvement in this third-person context (1049 f., 1086 ff.). He once expands in the manner of the first part on the lot of ‘us mortals’ (1101 ff.), though he then returns with a tinge of pedantry to the signs. Rather, we feel the division between the didactic and the imaginative to be much smoothed over and reduced. Those affected by the signs now themselves become part of the same humble and colourful tapestry as the signs themselves. The voice of the poet bears a different relation to his material: we no longer feel so strongly that his interest, officially, is only in driving home instructions. This is not to say that the didactic sinks from view. Indeed, a particularly delightful exploitation appears in the last paragraph of signs: squeaking, gambolling mice

(οὐκ) ἄσκεπτοι ἐγένοντο παλαιοτέροιs ἀνθρώποιs.

(1134)

have not passed unobserved by the men of former times.

The second half of the line is Homeric (Il. 23. 788, in a different sense); and the conception recalls the first part (442, al.). The pomp here comically set against the lowness of the sign stands far removed from the manner of the preceding section. The whole of the present section (1044-137) shows Aratus, not merely hitting on a new verbal device with which to variegate his exposition, but consciously presenting a marked alteration of tone and poetic quality. The tone and quality of the earlier sections had themselves stood in contrast with those of the first half.

The final paragraph of the work returns us abruptly to the didactic drama. τω̑ν μηδἐν κατόνοσσο, it begins (1142), ‘make light of none of these signs’. The phrasing echoes the τω̑ν τοι μηδἐν ἀποβλητὸν γινέσθω (973) ‘ignore none of these things’ of the section before the one just ended. The same air of urgent exhortation and emphatic completeness again invades the text. This is reinforced by the final couplet, which makes a large condition, but closes austerely with no large promise.

τω̑ν ἄμυδιs πάντων ἐσκεμμένοs εἰs ἐνιαυτόν,
οὐδέποτε σχεδίωs κεν ἐπ' αἰθέρι τεκμήραιο.

If you considered all these signs together throughout the year, you would never interpret the skies offhandedly.

The contrast with the section immediately preceding (1044 ff.) sharpens our sense of the divergence of that section; and it marks the divergence as a limited episode, not a decisive change in the poem. Even while the last paragraph reintroduces the heavens, it seals the unity of the second half in tone.

Our discussion has indicated the fundamental importance in Aratus of differing tones and levels, strangely and strikingly juxtaposed and combined. This concern of the poet's does not merely govern the effect of the individual sequences and paragraphs. It gives each half of the poem its special character, and, through this, gives the whole work its poetic shape. The affinity with Callimachus, Apollonius, and Theocritus is clear and essential. Yet the effects are much more restrained, the movements and combinations much less drastic and disconcerting. Naturally, this is connected with the whole character of the poem, which formally sustains an almost continuous didactic exposition. But it would be implausible to regard such a poet as the slave of his genre, and in any case the choice of genre forms part of his intentions. We should enjoy the poem in the terms it creates for itself; the relative quietness of its play with tone contributes to its air of subtlety and sobriety. …

Notes

1. The only datum on Aratus' life which merits much confidence is that he lived at the court of Antigonus Gonatas (first regnal year 283, died 240/39). See the Lives in J. Martin, Histoire du texte des Phénomènes d'Aratos (1956), 153, 157, 160 f. The claim in one life that Callimachus μέμνηται … αὐτου̑ … ὡs πρεσβυτέρου (fr. 460) deserves little credence: cf. Wilamowitz, HD i. 212 n. 1 (for the form note Sch. Nicander, Ther. 3).

2. Praise of his elegance (λεπτ-): Call. Ep. 27 Pf., a Ptolemy FGE, pp. 84 f., cf. Leon. Tar. CI. For other works of Aratus see SH 83 ff., HE 760 ff.; didactic poems bulk large.

3. The fragments of Eudoxus derive principally from Hipparchus' commentary on Aratus: see for them F. Lassere, D. Fr. v. Eudoxos v. Knidos (1966), 39 ff. The principal adaptation of Aratus' other source is ‘Theophrastus’, περὶ σημείων (Wimmer, Theophrasti Opera, iii. 115 ff.); cf. also C. Wessely, SBAW [Sitzungsberichte. Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften] 112 (1900), 1 ff. (a papyrus probably of the 2nd c. bc). On the problems involved see O. Regenbogen, RE [Reviue Egyptologique] Supp. vii. 1412 ff.

4. The acrostic λεπτη found in Aratus 783-7 need not show that Aratus was aligning himself with Callimachus in his alleged battle for λεπτότηs (J.-M. Jacques, REA [Revue des Edudes Anciennes] 62 (1960), 48 ff.). The significance seen in the acrostic actually derives from, and can hardly survive without, a dubious view of the literary history and of the word λεπτόs as a slogan. (An acrostic πασα appears on the next page.) Even if that significance were present, it could not constrain us to see in the poem nothing but elegance of phrasing.

5. Thus, to take simple examples, the anaphora at 367 (for the significance cf. 370 ff.) or 458 f., or the position of verbs in 1096.

6. The name of Zeus, despite its Indo-European origins, is rarely used of the sky itself in Greek. Aratus will be influenced by Stoic identification of Zeus with the aether (Zeno, SVF i. 169, Chrysippus, SVF ii. 1076. 16, 1077. 5). This provenance heightens the paradox of using ‘Zeus’ for the sky when it produces phenomena hateful to men (294, 936).

7. Cf. M. Erren, D. Phain. d. Arat. v. Soloi (Hermes Einzelschr. 19, 1967), 227 ff., etc.

8. The phrase, which probably answers to Eudoxus' λαμπρόs ‘bright’ (Eudox. fr. 28, cf. Aratus 143), is taken from Homer. μέγαs applied to storms and signs in the second part becomes a much more practical term, with little suggestion of grandeur (1028, 1071, 1086; 1022). It is so used even in ‘Theophrastus’ (39).

9. Contrast δεινόs used of the Dog-star at 330. There the term suits a star traditionally baneful, and introduces a movement from the figure of the Dog (the constellation) to the terrible effect of the star as such upon earth. (More of a disparity between the aspects appears after the grandiose and fantastic description of Sirius' attack on the trees.) δεινόs is naturally apt for Arcturus too at 745.

10. Eudoxus made nothing of their not having a name, fr. 28.

11. The effect is still to some degree disconcerting if one makes the clause a parenthesis (thus Wilamowitz, HD ii. 273); but 477-9 make a much less satisfactory apodosis, and the δή τοι is displeasing after a demonstrative.

12. Aratus' particular version of the myth may or may not have seemed unusual; Callimachus deals with the story too (fr. 570, cf. H. 3. 265). The theology of divine power is conveyed with archaic grimness and wit in 643 f. (cf. 639): one thinks of Hom. Il. 24. 608 f.

13. For ἐπιξύω cf. Euclid, Phaen., p. 1. 23 Menge ξύοντεs τὸν ὁρίζοντα. πόδαs καὶ γου̑να καὶ ἰξύν neatly echoes κεϕαλῃ̑ καὶ χειρὶ καὶ Ὤμοιs of Cepheus at 683.

14. As to atmosphere cf. Bulloch, CHCL i. 602 f.; ‘wistfulness’ seems not quite the word we want for 127 f.

15. The sense ‘face to face’ would not accord with the Homeric passage from which poets take the word (Il. 15. 653). The sense ‘visible’ proceeds naturally from the interpretation of that passage ἐν ὄψει (Sch. A, see Dindorf (not Erbse) ii. 86); and it is probably found not only in Aratus 79 but in Simonides (Adesp. El. 58. 12 West).

16. δη̑θεν in 101 expresses Aratus' usual detachment from the truth of his story rather than any actual scepticism. Cf. Call. SH 288. 23; Apollonius uses the particle as synonymous with δή.

17. The term ‘Fiktion’ is used by W. Ludwig, Hermes, 91 (1963), 448, of Aratus' pretence throughout the poem to instruct common farmers and sailors. The nature of the addressee is not at all so firmly defined as this suggests.

18. Cf. West's edition, pp. 33 ff., 22 ff.

19. πεποιθos οὐκέτι νυκτί, contrast e.g. Il. 7. 282 ἀγαθὸν καὶ νυκτὶ πιθέσθαι. Earlier the lines quoted most likely give a grimmer reversal of Il. 8. 487 αὐτὰρ 'Αχαιοι̑s ¦ ἀσπασίη πρίλλιστοs ἐπήλυθε νύξ.

20. The verb is δήειs ‘you will find’ (163); it occurs in Aratus only in these two lines.

21. This regardless of whether the section on the heavenly bodies came first in Aratus' source, as ‘Theophrastus’ makes plausible. Each of his four main sections, arranged by type of weather, begins with sun, moon (stars): 10 ff., 26 f., 38, 50 f.

22. They see similar processes within the narrative, for example in his description of a fire dying down (Sch. Il. 9. 212, ii. 444 Erbse). For other material on this general subject see e.g. Kroll, Stud. z. Verst d. röm. Lit. 47 f., 112.

23. Xenophanes B 40 DK, probably taken from ‘On Nature’, is obviously a special case.

24. For ὄνειαρ cf. especially Hes. Theog. 871 θνητοι̑s μέγ' ὄνειαρ, with the same appositional role.

25. A bare καλέουσι 66, 245, 315, 399, 476. Cf. Hom. Il. 5. 306. Worms appear once in Homer, in a comparison (Il. 13. 654 f.). (εὐλαί are different: they form part of the imagery of death.)

26. εὑ carries little suggestion of excellence. Cf. especially Hom. Od. 19. 446 εὑ ϕρίξαs λοϕιήν. Lice (ϕθει̑ρεs) do not appear in high poetry; one will disallow an insulting or humorous phrase of Archilochus' (fr. 236).

27. Aratus followed Eudoxus' general arrangement (Hipparchus 1. 2. 17—notably Hipparchus claims no more). But in 480-96 he goes round the circle in the opposite direction to Eudoxus (fr. 66); he interposes stars at 362 ff., cf. Eudox. fr. 52; the differences between 197-247 and Eudox. fr. 34 are probably to the point. There was much more reason to follow Eudoxus in details than the source of the second part.

28. Aratus uses the prosaic stem ὀχ- for the mounting, lightly distancing the effect, as often, by novel forms (ὀχή for ὀχεία, ὀχέω for ὀχεύω). As often the term is probably taken from the source (cf. [Theophr.] 25); naturally Aratus could have described the matter more decorously had he chosen. βιβαζόμεναι is probable in 1074; certainly the word is alluded to.

29. ἑλίσσεται … δι̑νοs (1067) refers to the storm but suggests corresponding behaviour in the wasps. The recurrence of σϕηκ- in this line lays further weight on the change that follows.

30. A prolonged act of looking is suggested by 325 and Homer; the aorist is ‘coincident’. οὐρανόs occurs elsewhere in this half only at 940, 15 lines before, where reminiscence of the first half is obvious. Apart from the last paragraph of the poem (1151, 1154), αἰθήρ occurs only here in the second half; in the first half cf. 390, 461, 720. The word is by no means expected here. The line is piquantly constructed.

31. The disjunction seems to require this sense. Cf. Sch. Hom. Il. 16. 384.

32. The sense ‘how’, i.e. ‘by what means’, would be grammatically impossible, despite Sch. Hom. Il. 4. 31-2. Cf. Alcman fr. 1. 58 Page.

33. The gods and Zeus appear after 941 only at 964, in a sentence whose seeming elevation is by no means without mockery.

34. Aratus' source might have had second-person imperatives, like the papyrus treatise, but unlike ‘Theophrastus’. But the colourless προσδέχου, προδέχου have none of the life seen in Aratus.

35. L. 1138-41 are rightly deleted by Martin. They do not affect the point.

Bibliography

Aratus. There is no really satisfactory text: one should consult both E. Maass (Berlin 1893, with index) and J. Martin (Florence 1956). Scholia: ed. J. Martin (Stuttgart 1974). Translations: J. Martin, at back of edition (French); the translation by G. R. Mair in the Loeb edition of Callimachus, Lycophron, and Aratus (A. W. and G. R. Mair, London and New York 1921) is prone to inaccuracy. Studies: B. Effe, Dichtung und Lehre: Untersuchungen zur Typologie des antiken Lehrgedichts (Zetemata 69, Munich 1977), 40 ff.; M. Erren, Die Phainomena des Aratos von Soloi: Untersuchungen zum Sach- und Sinnverständnis (Hermes Einzelschriften 19, 1967); J.-M. Jacques, ‘Sur un acrostiche d'Aratos (Phén., 783-787)’, RÉA [Revue de Ètudes Anciennes] 62 (1960), 48 ff.; G. Kaibel, ‘Aratea’, Hermes, 29 (1894), 82 ff.; W. Ludwig, ‘Die Phainomena Arats als hellenistische Dichtung’, Hermes 91 (1963), 425 ff. (the best introduction); id., RE Supp. x (1965), 26 ff.

Bibliographic Abbreviations

CHCL.: The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, i. Greek Literature, ed. P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox (Cambridge 1985), ii. Latin Literature, ed. E. J. Kenney and W. V. Clausen (Cambridge 1982)

(Gow-Page), HE.: A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge 1965)

(Page), FGE.: D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams: Epigrams Before A.D. 50, revised by R. D. Dawe and J. Diggle (Cambridge 1981)

RE: Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart 1894-)

SH.: H. Lloyd-Jones and P. J. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum (Texte und Kommentare I, Berlin 1983)

SVF.: J. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Leipzig 1905)

Wilamowitz, HD.: U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Hellenistische Dichtung in der Zeit des Kallimachos (Berlin 1924)