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A GREEN SKY AND A GREEN SUN? (PLINY, HN 17.74 AND MANILIUS 2.941)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2021
Abstract
This article considers two passages in which either the sky (Plin. HN 17.74) or the sun (Manilius 2.941) is described as ‘green’; it argues that in both cases such a colour epithet is out of place and proposes to correct uiridi caelo to nitido caelo in the former case, and uiridis … Phoebus to rutilus … Phoebus in the latter.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
I should like to thank CQ's editor and the anonymous reviewer for their valuable suggestions.
References
1 Giardina, G., ‘Nuovi emendamenti al testo delle Dirae e della Lydia pseudovirgiliane’, QUCC 92 (2009), 167–73, at 171Google Scholar.
2 The corruption may also have been facilitated by the scribe's memory of uiridem in the same position at line 114, as well as by the ending of 141 crudelem, written right over nitidum (?) in our line (I owe this observation to the anonymous reviewer).
3 The manuscripts’ redeunt implies the onset of night, but there are reasons to believe that the passage should rather refer to the morning (reading cedunt with Haupt, M., ‘Coniectanea’, Hermes 8 [1874], 1–17, at 13)Google Scholar, in which case nitidum would be particularly apt: ‘the pale stars disappear throughout the brightening sky’; but the adjective could also work with redeunt, in which case it could be taken proleptically to mean ‘brilliant with stars lighting up in the sky’.
4 See Putsche, K., Valerii Catonis poemata (Jena, 1828), 95Google Scholar and Jacob, F., ‘Zu Catonis Dirae, Propertius, Cicero’, Philologus 3 (1848), 547–53, at 549CrossRefGoogle Scholar respectively.
5 Cf. the translations by Rackham, H., Pliny: Natural History, Books 17–19 (London, 1950), 51Google Scholar (‘regard being paid to the weather so that they may be planted under a bright sky and when there is no wind’) and André, J., Pline l'ancien: Histoire naturelle livre XVII (Paris, 1964), 44Google Scholar (‘en prenant soin, pour le temps, que le ciel soit serein et le vent nul’).
6 Note also Cato, who likewise advises against transplanting trees (including the cypress) cum uentus siet aut imber (Agr. 28.1).
7 HN Book 17 survives only in minuscule manuscripts, whose archetype (or rather already its ancestor) was evidently likewise written in minuscule; note e.g. on the same page: 17.72 natura eius (codd.) for naturae uis (Caesarius) and 73 uuluoalis (D) for uoluiculis (Mayhoff). On Pliny's tradition, see in general Reynolds, L.D., ‘The Elder Pliny’, in id. (ed.), Texts and Transmission (Oxford, 1983), 307–16Google Scholar.
8 More tentatively, I would further suggest that the reverse corruption may have taken place at Ov. Met. 14.720 nitidaque incingere lauro, where very possibly uiridique should be read (cf. Verg. Aen. 5.246 uiridique aduelat tempora lauro, 5.539 cingit uiridanti tempora lauro; Val. Fl. 4.334 uiridi conectit tempora lauro), although in view of Met. 1.552 remanet nitor unus in illa (of Daphne transformed into a laurel tree) the transmitted nitidaque may not be entirely indefensible (cf. e.g. Myers, K.S., Ovid: Metamorphoses Book XIV [Cambridge, 2009], 186Google Scholar: ‘nitida recalls Daphne's metamorphosis into the laurel at 1.552’).
9 Housman, A.E., M. Manilii Astronomicon liber secundus (Cambridge, 1937 2), 111Google Scholar.
10 Goold, G.P., Manilius: Astronomica (Cambridge, MA, 1977), 157Google Scholar. Garrod, H.W., Manili Astronomicon liber II (Oxford, 1911), 59Google Scholar translates similarly: ‘Phoebus rises pale from the cold sea’, but then offers a baffling explanation in the commentary (at 151): ‘uiridis means quite simply “of the colour of the sea”’.
11 Normally uiridis has an expressly chromatic force of ‘green’, but in poetry it sometimes appears to be used in a way similar to, and no doubt in imitation of, Greek χλωρός in its non-chromatic sense (which is usually rendered with pallidus), as, for instance, at Ciris 225 uiridis … pallor, on which cf. Lyne, R.O.A.M., Ciris: A Poem Ascribed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), 193Google Scholar: ‘By uiridis the poet means of course χλωρός; indeed the usual active connotations of uiridis itself are all wrong for the context (“flourishing” and the like). The reader has to ignore these to find a phrase that makes sense; and has to feel through to the connotations of χλωρός (cf. LSJ s.v. II) to find a phrase that comes alive.’ Cf. further André, J., Etude sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris, 1949), 186Google Scholar.
12 See Hübner, W., ‘Manilius als Astrologe und Dichter’, ANRW 2.32.1 (1984), 126–320Google Scholar, at 145. S. Feraboli and R. Scarcia, Manilio: Il poema degli astri (Astronomica), 2 vols. (Milan, 2001), 1.366 follow Hübner's interpretation.
13 See Hübner, W., Die Eigenschaften der Tierkreiszeichen in der Antike: Ihre Darstellung und Verwendung unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung des Manilius (Wiesbaden, 1982), 295–9 and 361Google Scholar.
14 Note that Manilius speaks about Saturn's uires, astrological ‘influences’, at line 938, immediately before our passage (I owe this point to the anonymous reviewer). But rutilus and uiridis can look sufficiently similar in minuscule for one to be corrupted into the other directly (ru → uı, t → r, l → d), especially as scribes (as indeed most practised readers) would normally read words as whole units, rather than deciphering them letter by letter. According to Housman, A.E., M. Manilii Astronomicon liber quintus (Cambridge, 1937 2), xviiiGoogle Scholar, ‘The archetype need not have been older than the 10th century’ (i.e. it will have been written in minuscule).