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THE PUN AND THE MOON IN THE SKY: ARATUS' ΛΕΠΤΗ ACROSTIC*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Mathias Hanses
Mathias Hanses*
Affiliation:
Columbia University in the City of New York
*
mhanses@gmail.com
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Extract

Aratus has been notorious for his wordplay since the first decades of his reception. Hellenistic readers such as Callimachus, Leonidas, or ‘King Ptolemy’ seem to have picked up on the pun on the author's own name at Phaenomena 2, as well as on the famous λεπτή acrostic at Phaen. 783–6 that will be revisited here. Three carefully placed occurrences of the adjective have so far been uncovered in the passage, but for a full appreciation of its elegance we must note that Aratus has set his readers up to notice a fourth.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 609 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Katharina Volk, Joshua Katz, and Jerzy Danielewicz commented on earlier drafts of this paper, and I am grateful for their enthusiasm and ample advice. I would also like to thank my fellow Columbia ‘stargazers’ for many interesting discussions, Caleb Dance for asking the right question at the right time, and CQ's reader for several helpful observations.

References

1 The pun on Aratus' name (ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα, τὸν οὐδέποτ' ἄνδρες ἐῶμεν | ἄρρητον, ‘let us begin from Zeus, whom we men never leave unmentioned’) at the poem's opening could benefit from further discussion as well. It seems to recur in several metapoetic passages that address ‘Aratean’ activities and instruments, such as the first astronomer's dividing up of the unordered mass of stars into constellations (ἐναρηρότες, 383), or the ekphrasis of the Athenian craftsman's armillary sphere (συναρηρότα, 532).

2 The λεπτή acrostic was first noted by Jacques, J.-M., ‘Sur un acrostiche d'Aratos (Phén., 738–787)’, REA 62 (1960), 48–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Levitan, W., ‘Plexed artistry: Aratean acrostics’, Glyph 5 (1979), 55–68Google Scholar, added similar plays on πᾶσα/πάντα (803–6) and σημεῖα/σημαίνει (808–12) to the discussion. Bing, P., ‘A pun on Aratus’ name in verse 2 of the Phaenomena?’, HSPh 93 (1990), 281–5Google Scholar, and Bing, P., ‘Aratus and his audiences’, MD 31 (1993), 99–109Google Scholar, discuss allusions to the play on the author's name, as well as to the λεπτή acrostic in Callimachus (Anth. Pal. 9.507 = Epigr. 27 Pf. = 56 Gow-Page), Leonidas (Anth. Pal. 9.25 = 101 Gow-Page), Ptolemy (Suppl. Hell. 712), and Virgil (G. 1.429–33). See also Brown, E.L., Numeri Vergiliani: Studies in ‘Eclogues’ and ‘Georgics’ (Brussels, 1963), 102–5Google Scholar; Levitan (this note), 68 n. 18; Kidd, D., ‘Notes on Aratus, Phaenomena’, CQ 31 (1981), 355–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kidd, D., Aratus: Phaenomena (Cambridge, 1997)Google Scholar, ad loc.; Damschen, G., ‘Das lateinische Akrostichon: neue Funde bei Ovid sowie Vergil, Grattius, Manilius und Silius Italicus’, Philologus 148 (2004), 88–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katz, J.T., ‘Vergil translates Aratus: Phaenomena 1–2 and Georgics 1.1–2’, MD 60 (2008), 105–23Google Scholar; Somerville, T., ‘Note on a reversed acrostic in Vergil Georgics 1.429–33’, CPh 105 (2010), 202–9Google Scholar; and Castelletti, C., ‘Following Aratus’ plow: Vergil's signature in the Aeneid’, MH 69 (2012), 83–95Google Scholar. For further possible examples in Aratus, see Haslam, M., ‘Hidden signs: Aratus Diosemeiai 46ff., Vergil Georgics 1.424ff’, HSPh 94 (1992), 199–204Google Scholar (ΜΕΣΗ, 807–8; with the suggestion that λεπτή, πᾶσα, and μέση suggest the crescent, full, and half-moon phases); Cusset, C., ‘Exercises rhétoriques d'Aratos autour du terme ἠχή’, RPh 69 (1995), 245–8Google Scholar; and Cusset, C., ‘Poétique et onomastique dans les Phénomènes d'Aratos’, Pallas 50 (2002), 187–96Google Scholar. For wider (Hellenistic) literature, see Vogt, E., ‘Das Akrostichon in der griechischen Literatur’, A&A 13 (1967), 80–95Google Scholar; Courtney, E., ‘Greek and Latin acrostichs’, Philologus 134 (1990), 3–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Danielewicz, J., ‘Further Hellenistic acrostics: Aratus and others’, Mnemosyne 58 (2005), 321–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar (with bibliography, for which see also Katz, J.T., ‘The Muse at play: an introduction’, in Kwapisz, J., Petrain, D., and Szymański, M. [edd.], The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry [Berlin, 2013], 1–30)Google Scholar. Cicero discusses acrostics (ἀκροστιχίς), otherwise also known from the brief verse summaries preceding Roman comic plays, at Div. 2.111–12. He distinguishes between authors' signatures worked as a sphragis into the first letters of lines (e.g. Q. Ennius fecit, or compare Lobel, E., ‘Nicander's signature’, CQ 22 [1928], 114)Google Scholar and the Γ-shaped acrostics of Sibylline oracles; see also Varro apud Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.62.6; Gore, J. and Kershaw, A., ‘An unnoticed acrostic in Apuleius Metamorphoses and Cicero De divinatione 2.111–12’, CQ 58 (2008), 393–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Unlike Germanicus Caesar, Cicero did translate the weather-signs section (including our acrostic) when he rendered Aratus' Phaenomena into Latin, but lines 783–6 have sadly been lost. For his use of acrostics in the remainder of the poem, see Hurka, F., ‘Ein Akrostikhon in Ciceros Aratea (vv. 317–320)’, WJA 30 (2006), 87–91Google Scholar.

3 Cameron, A., Callimachus and His Critics (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 321–8Google Scholar, argues against Callimachus as its originator and in favour of Aratus. For the adjective's pre-Aratean history, see Pfeiffer, R., History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford, 1968), 137–8Google Scholar; Hopkinson, N., A Hellenistic Anthology (Cambridge, 1988), 89–91Google Scholar; Asper, M., Onomata allotria: Zur Genese, Struktur und Funktion poetologischer Metaphern bei Kallimachos (Stuttgart, 1997)Google Scholar, esp. 242–3 n. 7.

4 Volk, K., ‘Aratus’, in Clauss, J. and Cuypers, M. (edd.), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature (Malden, MA, 2010), 197–210Google Scholar, at 205–8, highlights this use of the term in the poem, but asserts that it is distinct from the ‘Callimachean’ sense usually ascribed to it. For even wider-ranging cases against λεπτός and related words as representing Hellenistic poetics, see Tsantsanoglou, K., ‘The λεπτότης of Aratus’, Trends in Classics 1 (2009), 55–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar (who, at 70–5, combines several previously discovered acrostics into one), and Porter, J.I., ‘Against λεπτότης: rethinking Hellenistic aesthetics’, in Erskine, A. and Llewellyn-Jones, L. (edd.), Creating a Hellenistic World (Swansea, 2011), 271–312Google Scholar. Personally, I remain convinced of the terminology's significance. A focus on details does not have to clash with large-scale themes or ‘object-oriented’ materialism. Rather, it is – as Porter has put it – the ‘grandeur arising from and amidst refinement that stamps Aratus’ poem and marks it as specifically Hellenistic' (291).

5 Bing (n. 2 [1993]), 104 n. 10.

6 Aratus' Greek is taken from Kidd (n. 2 [1997]). All translations from ancient languages are my own.

7 Luz, C., Technopaignia: Formspiele in der griechischen Dichtung (Leiden, 2010), 48–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The term ‘gamma-acrostic’ was introduced by Morgan, G., ‘Nullam, Vare … chance or choice in Odes 1.18?’, Philologus 137 (1993), 142–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See Morgan (n. 7), 143, who notes a ‘verbal referent’ (not unlike this third λεπτή) that leaves little doubt that the acrostic MARS at Verg. Aen. 7.601–4 (on which see, e.g., Fowler, D., ‘An acrostic in Vergil [Aeneid 7. 601–4]?’, CQ 33 [1983], 298)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is deliberate.

9 See Bing, P., The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets (Göttingen, 1988), 10–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Danielewicz (n. 2), 332–3.

10 Porter (n. 4) discusses the ‘materialism’ of Hellenistic poetry; see also Habinek, T., ‘Situating literacy at Rome’, in Johnson, W.A. and Parker, H.N. (edd.), Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 2009), 114–40Google Scholar, esp. 127–35, on acrostics and related wordplay. On metaphors of reading and writing underlying Aratus' conception of stars, constellations, and their representation in the poem (including our deliberately ‘literate’ acrostic), see now Volk, K., ‘Letters in the sky: reading the signs in Aratus’ Phaenomena’, AJPh 133 (2012), 209–40Google Scholar, esp. 225–9.

11 Damschen (n. 2), 105, however, does believe the Homeric acrostic to be ‘intendiert’. In the melancholy context of Il. 24, it could constitute a reference to the island of Leuke, where Achilles was reportedly transposed after his death. Korenjak, M., ‘ΛΕϒΚΗ: was bedeutet das erste “Akrostichon”?’, RhM 152 (2009), 392–6Google Scholar, argues convincingly that, even though the acrostic is probably accidental, some ancient readers did consider it an intentional act of foreshadowing of the kind that Damschen suggests.

12 I have added spaces to the beginning of this line to make the ‘diagonal’ more apparent. This enhances the visual effect, but does not create it. Perhaps such adjustments would have been less conspicuous (or all-out unnecessary) in a third-century b.c.e. manuscript: even with all word division and punctuation removed, our λεπτή remains visible. For an impression of the passage's appearance in a first-century c.e. bookroll, see P Berol. inv. 7503 + 7804 = BKT 5.1.47–54; cf. Martin, J., Histoire du texte des Phénomènes d'Aratos (Paris, 1956), 210–12Google Scholar. Sadly, almost nothing remains of the relevant lines, but the context provides an impression of the letters' even distribution across the page.

13 For diagonal intexts (and far more complex patterns), see Levitan, W., ‘Dancing at the end of the rope: Optatian Porfyry and the field of Roman verse’, TAPhA 115 (1985), 245–69Google Scholar, esp. 257–63. See also Higgins, D., Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature (Albany, NY, 1987)Google Scholar, esp. 4–7, 19–53, 170–2.

14 The famous technopaegnion poems, resembling in their form wings, an axe, an egg, a syrinx, or altars, attest that such mirroring of a poem's content in its visual arrangement would not have been alien to Hellenistic tastes. See Levitan (n. 2), 55; Higgins (n. 13); Luz (n. 7).

15 For this practice in late antique wordplay, including the brilliantly self-referential hidden hendecasyllable hic versus vario colore dispar (‘this verse is set off in a different colour’), see Levitan (n. 13), 254–5 and 265; see also Courtney (n. 2), 4, and Ernst, U., Carmen figuratum: Geschichte des Figurengedichts von den antiken Ursprüngen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Cologne, 1991), 97–8Google Scholar. Some scholars believe that they have discovered hints at rubrication in much earlier texts: Habinek (n. 10), 131, suspects that references to ‘redness’ in Virgil's Aratus-based acrostic (see n. 2) point to this practice; Damschen (n. 2), 97 n. 28, suggests (unconvincingly) an allusion to visually offset acrostics in Ov. Ars am. 2.595–6: nec vos | excipite arcana verba notata manu (‘do not intercept words spelled out in a secret hand’). For a particularly elaborate example of later scribes adjusting a text's visual representation to have it match their own interpretation, see Heil, A., ‘Christliche Deutungen der Eklogen Vergils: die Tityre-Initiale im Codex Klosterneuburg CCl 742’, A&A 53 (2007, 100–19Google Scholar.

16 Levitan (n. 13), 249, who does not however consider this a fair objection to the poetry he is studying (269). See also Habinek (n. 10), 129; Katz, J.T., ‘Wordplay’, in Jamison, S.W., Melchert, H.C., and Vine, B. (edd.), Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, October 31–November 1, 2008 (Bremen, 2009), 79–114Google Scholar, at 100–1; Luz (n. 7), xiii–xxi; Katz (n. 2 [2013]), 3.

17 Compare e.g. Volk (n. 10), 227.

18 Jacques (n. 2), 52–5; Vogt (n. 2), 83–7; Cameron (n. 3), 325–6. For καθαρή, see Callim. Hymn to Apollo, 111; Anth. Pal. 9.565.1. For παχίων, see Callim. Aet. fr. 1.23 Pf., fr. 398 Pf.

19 Compare (and contrast) especially Porter (n. 4).

20 Martin, J., Scholia in Aratum vetera (Stuttgart, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 8. Eudoxus was Aratus' forerunner mainly in terms of astronomical subject matter, but he also composed an acrostic (Εὐδόξου τέχνη), on which see e.g. Courtney (n. 2), 9.

21 ‘King Ptolemy’ at Suppl. Hell. 712.4 (see nn. 1 and 2 above).