We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2019
That Cicero as a young didactic poet embraced the traditions of Hellenistic hexameter poetry is well recognized. Those traditions encompass various forms of wordplay, one of which is the acrostic. Cicero's engagement with this tradition, in the form of an unusual Greek-Latin acrostic at Aratea 317–20, prompts inquiry regarding both the use of the acrostic technique as textual commentary and Cicero's lifelong concerns regarding translation.
1 The debate has become specific, moving to what kind of Hellenistic poet Cicero is. Several scholars have found that Cicero's Aratea and other early poems ally him with Callimachus and the neoterics. See, for instance, Clausen, W., ‘Cicero and the new poetry’, HSPh 90 (1986), 159–70Google Scholar, at 161; Gee, E., ‘Cicero's astronomy’, CQ 51 (2001), 520–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 522. But Knox, P.E., ‘Cicero as a Hellenistic poet’, CQ 61 (2011), 192–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 193 and 203 argues that Cicero was instead influenced by Ennius and Hellenistic historical epic. This genre distinction need not be resolved here, as acrostics are found across hexameter genres, and particularly in both Ennius and Aratus.
2 The acrostic has received almost no notice. It was reported in Hurka, F., ‘Ein Akrostichon in Ciceros Aratea (vv. 317–20)’, WJA 30 (2006), 87–91Google Scholar.
3 In contrast to Cicero's acrostic, those in Aratus have prompted extensive discussion. Recent commentary includes Danielewicz, J., ‘Further Hellenistic acrostics: Aratus and others’, Mnemosyne 58 (2005), 321–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 324; id., ‘Vergil's certissima signa reinterpreted: the Aratean LEPTE-acrostic in Georgics I’, Eos 100 (2013), 287–95; id., ‘One sign after another: the fifth ΛΕΠΤΗ in Aratus’ Phaen. 783–4?’, CQ 65 (2015), 387–90; Hanses, M., ‘The pun and the moon in the sky: Aratus’ ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic’, CQ 64 (2014), 609–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kidd, D., Aratus Phaenomena (Cambridge, 1997), 446Google Scholar; Luz, C., Technopaignia. Formspiele in der griechischen Dichtung (Mnemosyne Suppl. 324) (Leiden, 2010), 48–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trzaskoma, S., ‘Further possibilities regarding the acrostic at Aratus 783–7’, CQ 66 (2016), 785–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Volk, K., ‘Letters in the sky: reading the signs in Aratus’ Phaenomena’, AJPh 133 (2012), 209–40Google Scholar, at 225–9.
4 Callim. Aet. fr. 1.22–4.
5 The Alexipharmaca text is as amended by Jacques and accepted by Luz (n. 3), 20; the Theriaca text is of Overduin, F., Nicander of Colophon's ‘Theriaca’: A Literary Commentary (Leiden, 2015), 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Acrostics stating an author's name have often been taken to have the function of preventing plagiarism, although nothing guarantees that a name in an acrostic is actually that of the author. See Schubert, C., ‘Ein literarisches Akrostichon aus der ersten Hälfte des vierten Jahrhunderts v. Chr?: zu Chairemon, TrGF I, 71 F 14b’, GFA 16 (2013), 389–97Google Scholar.
6 See Luz (n. 3), 1; Morgan, T., Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 1998), 121, 124Google Scholar; Schubert (n. 5), 392.
7 Heraclitus, fr. 92 Diels.
8 Satterfield, S., ‘Notes on Phlegon's Hermaphrodite oracle and the publication of oracles in Rome’, RhM 154 (2011), 117–24Google Scholar, at 118 n. 5.
9 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.62.6.
10 Cic. Diu. 2.54.111–12, transl. W.A. Falcomer (Cambridge, MA, 1923), with my modifications. Several of the manuscripts suggest that the Sibylline acrostics employ all the letters of the first line. The unreliable Phlegon of Tralles records an oracle alleged to be from the Sibylline books of 125 b.c., which duplicates the entire first line in an acrostic; see Satterfield (n. 8), 118.
11 De or. 1.69.
12 The most accessible text, with extensive commentary in French, is Soubiran, J., Cicéron Aratea, Fragments Poétiques (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar. See also Gee (n. 1), 520.
13 Cf. Knox (n. 1), 197, who suggests that Cicero sought knowledge rather than aesthetics.
14 Henkel, J., ‘Nighttime labor: a metapoetic vignette alluding to Aratus at Georgics 1.291–296’, HSPh 106 (2011), 179–98Google Scholar, at 183 n. 9.
15 Gee (n. 1), 525 summarizes: ‘The monumental juxtaposition of constellations in the Phaenomena becomes contact between characters in a Ciceronean drama.’ Indeed, where Aratus’ constellations stretch out toward each other, Cicero's constellations touch, caress and display emotions. See Clausen (n. 1), 161–70 for a detailed discussion of a greatly modified passage, Aratea 420–35, which elaborates upon Arat. Phaen. 637–46.
16 Atzert, C., De Cicerone Interprete Graecorum (Göttingen, 1908), 4Google Scholar: ‘Cicero non vertit Aratum sed Arati interpretem’, ‘Cicero does not translate Aratus but the interpreter of Aratus’. Hurka (n. 2), 90 sees the acrostic as a form of Cicero writing his own scholia: ‘Cicero glossiert sich selbst in Form eines Akrostichon.’
17 The letters a and e may possibly have been physically joined by a ligature, as was sometimes used in early Roman book hands. See Bischoff, B. (transl. Cróinín, D.Ó. and Ganz, D.), Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1990), 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 56 figs. 1, 62; M. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (Toronto, 1994), 21.
18 Bischoff (n. 17), 54.
19 Compare Catull. 95, where several lines begin with the striking Zmyrma.
20 Enn. Ann. 7.211 Skutsch.
21 Enn. Ann. 3.140 Skutsch; see also Ann. 15.399 Skutsch.
22 Gee, E., Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition (Oxford, 2013), 223CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Semple, W.H., ‘Notes on some astronomical passages of Claudian (continued)’, CQ 33 (1939), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 3; Soubiran (n. 12), 220 n. 4.
23 Citations to uses of this and similar terms are given in Hurka (n. 2), 89 n. 14; Soubiran (n. 12), 220 n. 5.
24 OLD s.v. 1b.
25 Aratea 29–30, 179, fr. 14.
26 OLD s.v. 3.
27 Bilingual wordplay predates Cicero. Plautus, for example, occasionally makes use of code-switching between Latin and Greek, often for a pun; see Fontaine, M., ‘A lost example of code switching: VNVM SOMNVM (Plautus, Amphitruo 697)’, RhM 148 (2005), 404–6Google Scholar, at 405 and n. 2.
28 E.g. Curc. 220; Truc. 954–5.
29 Soubiran (n. 12), 220 n. 4; see Semple (n. 22), 3; van der Waerden, B.L., ‘History of the zodiac’, AOF 16 (1952–3), 216–30Google Scholar, at 216.
30 Soubiran (n. 12), 220 n. 4.
31 The text is that of G.P. Goold (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998).
32 On Manilius’ borrowings from acrostics in Aratus and Germanicus, see Colborn, R., ‘Solving problems with acrostics: Manilius dates Germanicus’, CQ 63 (2013), 450–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and works cited there. Furthermore, Damschen, G., ‘Das lateinische Akrostichon’, Philologus 148 (2004), 88–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 109 n. 65 reports an acrostic by Manilius at Astronomica 2.912–18, in a context reminiscent of Cicero's zona acrostic. Like Cicero's passage discussed here, the horizontal text refers to both a Latin name (in the future tense) and a Greek name (in the present tense).
33 Greenough, J.B. et al. (edd.), Allen & Greenough's New Latin Grammar (Newburyport, MA, 2000)Google Scholar, § 373a and n.
34 Arat. Phaen. 460; Cic. Aratea 224–37.
35 Atzert (n. 16), 5–6 regards the lines just before the acrostic (Aratea 309 and following) as an example where Cicero amplifies the text with the scholia.
36 E.g. Top. 55 (using Greek); Fin. 3.15.15 (transliterating to the Latin alphabet).
37 Tusc. 3.7.
38 Top. 35.
39 Top. 30.
40 Top. 35; see also Fin. 3.15, expressing a similar opinion. These examples are meant only to provide an admittedly unscientific sampling; scholars of Cicero's translation methodology will no doubt have a more comprehensive view.
41 Cf. Hurka (n. 2), who interprets the acrostic as imitative of scholia and consequently enhancing the pedagogical function of the poem.
42 Volk (n. 3), 227 similarly interprets Aratus’ λεπτή acrostic as a sign, although no explicit word for ‘sign’ appears in the lines containing that acrostic.
