[In the following review, Lewis evaluates Douglas Kidd's prose translation of the Phaenomena, emphasizing its status as the new standard critical edition of the poem in English.]

Douglas Kidd is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He was first inspired to undertake an edition of the Phaenomena of Aratus over thirty years ago (as he mentions on page xi of his preface) and has written, since 1961, three articles dealing with Aratus and the Phaenomena.¹

Kidd's edition of the Phaenomena of Aratus will greatly assist scholars who do research on Aratus and on Hellenistic poetry, and it will also serve as an excellent introduction to Aratus for the non-specialist. Kidd's edition supplements, updates, and consolidates the four editions that have been in common use up to this point: (1) the 1893 edition of Ernest Maass, second edition in 1955; (2) the 1955 edition of G. R. Mair for the Loeb Classical Library, first printed in 1921; (3) the 1956 edition of Jean Martin; and (4) the 1971 edition of Manfred Erren. Kidd's edition is the most thorough and useful compilation to date of informative data on the author and his work in conjunction with a text and commentary. It contains a bibliography listing editions of the Phaenomena, editions of commentaries and translations, texts relevant to the astronomy and weather signs, other texts, and general works; an introduction; Greek text; fontes and testimonia; apparatus criticus; facing English translation; line-by-line commentary; and three indices (Greek words, passages discussed, and subjects).

Kidd's introduction to the volume expands and develops further the supplementary discussion of Erren and introductory discussion of Mair. It provides detailed information on topics such as the life of Aratus; the structure of the poem; the Hesiodic Works and Days as the model for the Phaenomena; the Stoic element in the poem; the authors of works on astronomy and weather signs who came before and after Aratus' Phaenomena; the language, style, and nature of the hexameter in the poem; the relations of Aratus with his contemporaries; the influence of the Phaenomena on the first book of Vergil's Georgics; the scholia and commentators to the poem; and the manuscripts. His analysis of the language and style of the poem is particularly important for showing how the Phaenomena is an innovative work. His evaluation of the eighth-century Aratus Latinus demonstrates well how this Latin translation (or rather, mistranslation) can best be used as supporting evidence for the Greek manuscript readings.

The Greek text is based on a new reading of the manuscripts (including one not used previously). It is the first new reading of the manuscripts since Martin's edition, which has been the authoritative edition since 1956.² Some of the new readings are minor, but others are more substantial. The lengthy commentary is scholarly and covers a number of topics, such as parallel and comparative usages; manuscript variants; echoes and imitations of Homeric and Hesiodic passages; comments from the scholia; astronomical references to stars within the constellations; and references to Eudoxus and Hipparchus, to the Latin translations of the Phaenomena, to other Latin works, and to the previous modern editions of the Phaenomena. Kidd's translation replaces the previous and somewhat archaic English translation of Mair (the only one in English until now). Kidd translates Aratus' elegant hexameters into simple, direct English prose. His translation will no doubt help to make the Phaenomena, one of the greatest poems from antiquity, more accessible to a larger audience of scholars and students of classical civilization.

This volume is a valuable addition to Aratean studies. Unfortunately, however, Kidd does not make much of a case for why scholars (or students), other than those specializing in Aratus or Hellenistic poetry, should read this poem. The Phaenomena of Aratus is one of the essential Hellenistic Greek texts because it is, in refinement, learnedness, and brevity, a quintessentially Hellenistic work. But it also has great significance for scholars and students of Roman literature and culture. Kidd does not discuss in any great detail the ancient poetic translations by Cicero, Germanicus Caesar, and Avienus, which play an important role in the Aratean tradition and are proof of its popularity in the Roman world. Kidd also does not place Aratus and his poem in a wider context by giving a sense of the immense popularity and importance of this poem (as attested by testimonia) throughout Greek and Roman antiquity and the Middle Ages.³

Furthermore, for a work that will undoubtedly become the definitive scholarly and critical edition of the Phaenomena, the bibliography of secondary sources is incomplete. Some important secondary sources can be found in the bibliography, but many more secondary sources dealing with the Phaenomena and the Latin translations of the poem are missing. Perhaps a full bibliography had to be omitted because of the already large size of this volume. Perhaps Kidd had not wanted to duplicate previous bibliographical lists.⁴ This bibliographical incompleteness is evident also in a number of places in both the introduction and commentary, where Kidd has elected not to refer to scholarly work on the topic he is discussing.⁵ It is apparent that he chose to concentrate in his introduction and commentary on textual and literary matters, and these portions of the volume do much to affirm the reputation of the Phaenomena as “a work of much originality and poetic craftsmanship” (175). Yet references to relevant secondary sources would assist the reader in identifying the important work that has been done by scholars on the Phaenomena.

The volume would also benefit from the addition of astronomically accurate star maps. Only two star maps appear in the volume. Figure 1 (160), which is poorly reproduced from Bentley's 1739 edition of Manilius, is not useful for understanding the subject matter in the Phaenomena. Figure 2 (254), which is reproduced from Diels's Parmenides Lehrgedicht (1897) is limited because it depicts only the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia. Throughout the commentary, Kidd regularly identifies stars by their technical designations within constellations. The reader is unable to examine these stellar placements or verify these comments without a star map.⁶

To conclude, this new edition of the Phaenomena of Aratus, in terms of depth of introduction and commentary, clarity of English translation, thoroughness in textual matters, and overall presentation is commendable and welcome. If a second edition is ever undertaken, the volume might be made more useful still by expanding its appeal to a wider audience and by updating its bibliography and star maps. Kidd's edition, however, is obviously the result of a long labor, and it promises to have a long life as the definitive work on this important, but neglected, poem.

Notes

1. D. A. Kidd, “The Fame of Aratus,” AUMLA [Australasian Universities Modern Language Association Journal] 15 (1961) 5-18; “The Pattern of Phaenomena 367-385,” Antichthon 1 (1967) 12-15; and “Notes on Aratus, Phaenomena,” CQ[Classical Quarterly] n.s. 31 (1981) 355-362. Otherwise, he has written almost exclusively on Latin poetry, in particular, on Horace, Catullus, Vergil, Propertius, and Juvenal. He also compiled a Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary (1973).

2. Erren's 1971 edition merely uses the text of Martin with some variations.

3. See, for example, earlier articles on the popularity of Aratus and his poem by Kidd, “The Fame of Aratus” (above, n. 1); W. Sale, “The Popularity of Aratus,” CJ [Classical Journal] 61 (1966) 160-164; and A.-M. Lewis, “The Popularity of the Phaenomena of Aratus: A Reevaluation,” in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 6 (Collection Latomus 217; Brussels 1992) 94-118.

4. See, for example, the bibliography in M. Erren (ed.), Aratos Phainomena: Sternbilder und Wetterzeichen (Munich 1971) 96-108; and M. Erren. “Arat und Aratea 1966-1992,” Lustrum 36 (1994) 189-284, 299-301.

5. For example, at the point in the introduction (41-43) when he is discussing Vergil's use of Aratean material in G. 1.351-460, G. Beede, “Vergil and Aratus: A Study in the Art of Translation” (Diss., University of Chicago, Chicago 1936) would have been a relevant reference. The fullest scholarly references in the commentary appear for the debate surrounding the acrostic in Phaen. 783-787 (446).

6. Star maps can now be produced easily by computer. For example, Figure 3 (88) in J. T. Ramsey and A. L. Licht, The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar's Funeral Games (Atlanta 1997) was produced by means of the program SkyMap 3.0. This figure clearly indicates the constellation patterns, the names of the constellations and individual stars, and the magnitude of the stars.