Modern readings of Cicero's reception of Greek culture tend to reflect the way we frame the larger question of Roman reception of Greek culture. In the nineteenth century, and indeed well into the twentieth, when Hellenism was in the ascendant and Latin awarded a decidedly second place, Cicero was often read as a slavish copyist in thrall to the Greek classics.Footnote 1 Recent work, however, has emphasized Cicero's sense of control over and entitlement to the cultural capital of this conquered province, and his manipulation of it in ways that position Rome (and himself) as a cultural and intellectual rival to Greece.Footnote 2
This shift in thinking recommends itself by bearing a much closer resemblance to the attitude towards Greece that Cicero himself projects in many of his works, most famously the philosophical and rhetorical treatises of the 40s. In this paper I will show that the same attitude can already be found in one of his earliest works: the Aratea, his translation of Aratus' Phaenomena. Footnote 3 In this work, the loaded interaction between Greek and Roman culture plays out at a lexical level in Cicero's use of etymological wordplay and, more specifically, in how and when he chooses to translate (instead of simply transliterating) the Greek names for the constellations.
While etymological wordplay is only one of many literary themes that Cicero adapts from Aratus, it is of singular importance for the work.Footnote 4 Faced with the challenge of creating a Roman version of the Phaenomena more or less faithful to the Greek original, and beset by Latin's lack of a fully formed technical language, Cicero recognized that a large part of his task was to devise a vocabulary as capable, accurate and nuanced as Aratus'.Footnote 5 As I will show, Cicero was well versed in both Greek and Latin scholarly resources on etymology, and used these resources to translate etymologically significant constellation names in Aratus with suitable Latin equivalents. The choices he makes in adapting them into Latin provide much insight into his motivations as a translator.
As in Cicero's later philosophical and rhetorical works, two primary motivations can be detected in the translation of Aratus. In the first place, it is clear that Cicero sees translation from Greek into Latin as a contribution to Rome's slow but steady outpacing of Greece in cultural supremacy (cf. Tusc. 1.1-5). At the same time, Cicero recognizes that by increasing Rome's cultural standing, he is also increasing his own (Brut. 255). Both aspects of this attitude—the notion of Rome as Greece's intellectual successor and Cicero as Rome's intellectual guide—are very much on display in Cicero's treatment of three key Aratean constellations: the Bear(s) or Wagon, the Pleiades and the Hyades. In the case of the first two constellations (the Bears and the Pleiades), Cicero plays up Latin's abilities by replacing Aratus' etymological wordplays with suitable Latin equivalents. In Aratus, constellation etymologies reveal the universe's intelligent design, and, by translating them with Latin names of similar significance, Cicero portrays Latin as a language equally capable of accurate description of the cosmos. But the third case suggests that Cicero may not have always come down in Latin's favour in this regard. His fragmentary translation of Aratus' treatment of the Hyades in the poem, read in conjunction with the constellation's appearances in De Natura Deorum and the commonplace book of his secretary and freedman, Marcus Tullius Tiro, will show that Cicero sometimes deemed a Greek constellation name to be superior to the Latin version. In the De Natura Deorum, at least, he chooses to import this constellation's Greek name and meaning into the Latin lexicon, turning it into a new piece of cultural capital for Romans to consume and emphasizing his own role as culture hero.
With these artful translations of etymologically significant names, Cicero positions himself at the forefront of a new intellectual milieu in Rome. At the time that the Aratea and De Natura Deorum were composed, there was considerable interest in establishing a scientific mode of inquiry for Roman etymology.Footnote 6 When the Aratea was first written in the early 80s, Cicero's teacher Aelius Stilo had begun to investigate the origins of Roman words;Footnote 7 when De Natura Deorum was composed in the 40s, Varro, another of Aelius' students, was at work on De Lingua Latina. Like them, Cicero recognized the possibilities of a more rigorous understanding of the Latin language. Latin could now be placed on a level with Greek—consequently, Cicero's poem could be placed on a level with Aratus'. Thus, as in Cicero's appropriation of Greek culture elsewhere, it is not just the benefit that such material brings to Roman culture that is important. It is also the influence that Cicero expects to gain over Roman culture for transferring this material into an appropriate Latin idiom.
The self-serving aspect of Cicero's literary method in the Aratea is particularly well illustrated by his treatment of the Zodiac (317–19):
The Greeks call this the Zodiac, and our Latin speakers will call it by an appropriate name, the constellation-bearing circle: for in its revolution it bears twelve blazing constellations.
Cicero's first two lines here replace one in Aratus: ζωϊδίων δέ ἑ κύκλον ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν (Phaenomena 544: ‘they call this the “circle of the Zodiac” by name’).Footnote 9 Like Cicero, Aratus draws attention to the name of the circle; as O'Hara has shown, from the time of Homer onwards, the word ἐπίκλησις functions as an etymological marker, indicating ‘significant names and poetic etymologizing’.Footnote 10 By using this marked term, Aratus invites his reader to consider the meaning of ‘Zodiac’ (ζῴδιον), a diminutive of ζῷον: the term was originally used to describe painted or carved figures before being metaphorically extended to the ‘figures’ of the heavens. Cicero is a reader who has followed Aratus' injunction, and his translation signifer demonstrates his comprehension of the Greek word's trajectory: signa in Latin could also indicate both a sculpted figure and a celestial one.Footnote 11 Yet he also goes beyond his model here. What Aratus had generalized with a non-specific third-person plural, Cicero turns into a dialogue between Greeks and Romans, comparing and contrasting the options available in each language and showing their basic equivalence to one another. Furthermore, by translating ἐπίκλησις with nomine uero, he suggests that the Latin name is also an etymos logos, and provides this etymology in the following line with the gloss gerit … signa.Footnote 12
But what is most noteworthy about this passage is Cicero's striking use of the future tense: Latin speakers will call (perhibebunt) the Zodiac by the name signifer orbis. In other words, Cicero's use of the name is envisioned as an authorizing moment that will make the terminology standard for Latin astronomy.Footnote 13 Clearly, as he went on to do in his philosophical works, Cicero is here devising a Latin technical vocabulary that he expects others to use. In the case of signifer, his expectation was not disappointed; the term went on to have a long life in Latin literature, and can be found in authors as diverse as Lucretius (5.691, 6.481), Germanicus (526), Vitruvius (6.1.1), Columella (3.6.4), Lucan (3.254, 7.363, 8.172), Seneca (QNat. 7.24.1, Thyestes 847), Pliny (HN 2.9, 2.30) and Avienus (1034). As we will see, the names and etymologies Cicero supplies for other constellations were also influential with later authors, and serve as a clear indicator of the mark his poetry left on Roman literature.Footnote 14
NAMING THE STARS IN ARATUS
While there is no doubt that Cicero had a great deal of personal interest in etymology, this was certainly compounded by its importance in the work he was adapting; etymologies also play a large role in Aratus' Phaenomena. In order to highlight Cicero's virtuosity in translating both Aratus' content and his style, it will therefore be useful to consider Aratus' treatment of the Bear(s), Pleiades and Hyades. It will also be helpful to look at how etymology is portrayed in the Aratean scholia, since these would, more often than not, have been read in conjunction with the poem by an ancient reader.Footnote 15
Like Cicero, Aratus' etymologies look back to an earlier tradition, particularly Homer, whose most famous reference to etymological star lore, a description of the stars depicted on the Shield of Achilles, has particular importance for these three constellations (Il. 18.483-7):
On [the shield] he fashioned the earth, the sky, the sea, the tireless sun and the full moon, and on it all the constellations with which heaven is crowned, the Pleiades and the Hyades and strong Orion and the Bear, which they also call by the name Wagon …Footnote 16
In noting that the constellation known as the Bear also had a second name in Greek, the Wagon, Homer alludes to a tradition of explaining the redundancy through etymology, and his use of the marked term ἐπίκλησις suggests he has etymology in mind.Footnote 17
By implying etymological significance and then declining to follow through with an explanation, Homer provides an opportunity for his audience to fill in his gaps. Aratus, in a characteristically Hellenistic move, accepts this invitation (26–7):
On either side of [the pole] are the two Bears, wheeling along together. Therefore, they are called the Wagons.
In Aratus' version, one Bear has become two, and they travel the sky together. It is, in fact, this ‘togetherness’ (ἅμα) that Aratus suggests is responsible for their alternate name, Ἅμαξαι.Footnote 18 He proceeds to give each bear's individual name (Cynosura and Helice), which he introduces, in a direct echo of Il. 18.487, with an emphatic ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι (36). Next, in what is perhaps a nod to the virtues of leptotēs, he notes that, while both are useful in providing navigation for sailors, Cynosura, though the smaller of the two, is the more reliable (37–44). This description, which comes at the beginning of Aratus' star catalogue, has programmatic significance, and the same elements found in the treatment of the Bears—focus on the name's etymology, mention of its usefulness as a seasonal or navigational marker and paradoxical praise of its smallness—will recur in Aratus' discussion of two other constellations on the Shield, the Pleiades and the Hyades.Footnote 19
The link Aratus creates in this passage between a constellation's name and its usefulness for sailors is connected to one of the work's larger themes: namely, that the stars were put into the sky by Zeus to signify seasonal and meteorological changes for humans.Footnote 20 Aratus returns to this theme in his discussions of the Pleiades and Hyades, in these cases with even more significance: ancient etymologies for these constellation names were derived from their role as seasonal markers.Footnote 21 In alluding to these etymologies, then, Aratus reinforces his emphasis on Zeus's provident design: it is quite literally written into the constellations' names.
Like the Bears, the Pleiades and the Hyades were among the most frequently mentioned constellations in ancient literature, and were often closely linked with one another by ancient authors.Footnote 22 Aratus connects the constellations as well, using verbal echoes that link them back in turn to his discussion of the Bears.Footnote 23 But a further element also appears. In emphasizing the brightness of these two comparatively small star clusters, Aratus ironically suggests that it is more the result of literary fame than astronomical significance. Consider, for example, his treatment of the Pleiades (254–67):
Near [Perseus'] left knee the Pleiades move all in a cluster. The space that holds them all is not very large, and they are themselves faint to observe. Seven-pathed, in fact, they are named among men, though only six are in full view of the eye. No star has ever been lost unknown from ZeusFootnote 24 since our oral tradition began, but this is just what is said. These seven are called by name Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, Electra, and Sterope and Taygete and holy Maia. Altogether they are small and dim, but they are famous [lit. named] from their morning and evening movements, and Zeus is the cause, who ordained them to be a sign of the beginning of summer and winter and of the coming of the ploughing-time.
As in his discussion of the Bears, names and naming take centre stage in this passage: Aratus twice mentions the name of the star group (in addition to giving the names of all seven individual stars), claiming in his first reference that the constellation is called ‘seven-pathed’ (ἑπτάποροι) ‘among men’ (μετ’ ἀνθρώπους).Footnote 25 In so doing, he plays with the contrast between physical reality and literary importance. Though the stars themselves are relatively small and faint, by repeating their name earlier authors have made them famous; perhaps too, as with Aratus' praise of Cynosura, there is a nod to the value of ‘small’ poetry. Aratus then notes the usefulness of the constellation, alluding to its appearance in Hesiod's Works and Days, especially at 383–7, where its rising marks the beginning of the harvest and its setting the beginning of ploughing-time.
Yet, while Aratus insists that the constellation is quite literally named (ὀνομασταί) from these risings and settings, the reader is left to seek out the origin of this name elsewhere. Not surprisingly, Aratus' scholia fill in this gap, providing several options; the most popular of these derives the name from πλεῖν, since the rising of the Pleiades marked the beginning of the sailing season and their setting its end.Footnote 26
Though much briefer, Aratus' treatment of the Hyades is similar (169–73):
The head of the bull needs no other sign to mark it out, so well do the stars form both sides of this shape as they circle around. Their name is frequently spoken: the Hyades are in no way unknown [lit. unheard].
While this description is more compressed than the discussions of the Bears and the Pleiades, it touches on many of the same themes. An explicit reference is made to the name of the constellation, while the adverb λίην alludes to the frequency of its (presumably poetic) use. The Hyades are providentially placed because they establish the head of Taurus, a key zodiacal constellation.Footnote 27 Finally, as with the Pleiades, though Aratus provides all of the pieces—reference to the name, emphasis on their literary nature, and indication of their usefulness—that would lead to a suspicion that this name is etymologically significant, the reader is left to determine its origin on his own. But once again, the scholia offer several etymologies, including the most popular one: since the morning setting of the constellation in late November indicated the beginning of the rainy season, their name was thought to be related to the verb ὕειν.Footnote 28
While it is his scholiasts that draw the explicit link between the stars' name and their usefulness as a weather marker, Aratus' reference to the constellation's name is still suggestive, especially when taken in conjunction with his discussions of the Pleiades and the Bears. Though he (like Homer) makes an explicit reference to etymology only in the case of the Bears, the emphasis he puts on the names of the Pleiades and the Hyades, and the subtle ways he plays with their supposed meanings, have the effect of further emphasizing the role of the constellations in a divinely ordered universe. A reader who turned to the scholia for help and discovered the derivation of each constellation's name from its use as a navigational or seasonal marker would have found Aratus' emphasis on intelligent design further reinforced.
NAMING THE STARS IN CICERO
Cicero was one such reader, and the care with which he undertook his rendering of these three constellation names shows that he recognized the emphasis laid on them by both Aratus and the scholia.Footnote 29 In fact, his access to scholarly resources on both Greek and Latin etymology and his role as a translator allow him to magnify Aratus' etymological focus, highlighting and sometimes creating terminology that reflects well on Latin's range of linguistic abilities.
This is first apparent in Cicero's treatment of the Bears, or Wagon. Like his source, Cicero is interested in the multiplicity of possible names for this constellation. While this section of the Aratea is lost, the lines are preserved by their quotation in his later dialogue De Natura Deorum. Here is his interlocutor Balbus' account, with the poem set off by quotation marks (Nat. D. 2.105):
hunc circum Arctoe duae feruntur numquam occidentes.
‘ex his altera apud Graios Cynosura uocatur,
altera dicitur esse Helice.’ (= fr. VI)
cuius quidem clarissimas stellas totis noctibus cernimus,
‘quas nostri Septem soliti uocitare Triones.’ (= fr. V)
The two Bears, which never set, are carried around this [pole]:
‘of these the one is called Cynosura among the Greeks
and the other is said to be Helice,’
whose very bright stars we see all night long,
‘which our countrymen are accustomed to call the Seven Oxen.’
Like Aratus, Cicero mentions the constellation's many names. But where Aratus gives these names only in Greek, Cicero uses his poem's status as a translation to multiply his options, providing not just the traditional Greek names (Arctoe, comprising Cynosura and Helice) but also a traditional Roman one (Septentriones). Like Aratus, his etymological focus is not on the bears but on an alternate name for the constellation.
Aratus' etymological gloss, which relies on the similarity between the words ἅμα and Ἅμαξαι, cannot be easily translated, so Cicero must search for an alternative. His use of Septentriones rather than another Roman option such as Temo or Plaustra is a clever solution, since the etymology of this name had attracted antiquarian debate.Footnote 30 Septentriones, as a single word, does not scan, which means that it must be divided into two apparent components: Septem and Triones. This division was a source of contention: according to Gellius, Roman scholars disagreed over how much of the word ought to be etymologized. Many believed that the number septem was all that counted; -triones was just empty padding.Footnote 31 But Aelius Stilo—and, later, his student Varro—maintained that both parts of the word had meaning: they took –triones as an archaic word for oxen (as if a syncopated form of terriones), and argued that the seven stars represented yoked oxen.Footnote 32 As Gellius explains, part of the benefit of this explanation for the constellation's name is that the native Roman meaning is thematically linked to the alternate Greek name Ἅμαξαι: oxen are often yoked to wagons.
In the Aratea Cicero, another student of Aelius Stilo, casts his vote for this etymology. His decision to use Septentriones—which must be split up owing to the metre—indicates that he believes each component has a distinct meaning: in order for the line to make sense, it must be ‘seven oxen’, not merely ‘seven triones’.Footnote 33 The attractiveness of this etymology for Cicero is apparent: it points back obliquely to Ἅμαξαι, and thus to Aratus' own etymological wordplay. Furthermore, the tmesis also ‘yokes’ Cicero's gloss soliti uocitare, adding a visual and aural element to the wordplay. By substituting a Roman etymological debate for a Greek one, Cicero is able to preserve Aratus' literary sense, if not his literal one. He also successfully creates a literary tradition of his own: as with his coining of signifer, this tmesis, with its etymological undertones, had a distinguished afterlife in Latin literature, appearing in both Virgil (G. 3.381) and Ovid (Met. 1.64, 2.528).Footnote 34
Cicero's description of the Pleiades takes a similar approach. Like Aratus, he makes repeated references to the constellation's name, contrasting its ‘brilliance’ with the relative dimness of the constellation itself (27–41):
Next you will see all the little Vergiliae (Pleiades) with their slender light, located in the space near the left knee [of Perseus]. By an ancient tradition, these stars are commonly said to be seven in number, but only six small ones are seen in the constellation as a whole. Yet, it must not be thought that one was lost—rather, without any reason and to no purpose are there thoughtlessly said to be seven by common people, just as the ancient poets established, who clearly deemed all of them worthy of an eternal name, Alcyone and Merope, Celaeno and Taygete, Electra and Asterope, also holiest Maia. These slender stars put out little light as they wheel around; but the name of their constellation is great and brilliant, because it illuminates the beginning of summer, and afterward, when it reveals the start of wintertime, it reminds men to sow seeds in the earth.
For all the similarities of this passage to the corresponding version in Aratus, there is at least one immediately noticeable difference: the name given to the constellation. Aratus' title is conspicuous by its absence, especially given Cicero's highly marked substitution on the source of this name: where Aratus had used the vague μετ’ ἀνθρώπους, Cicero directly attributes it to ueteres poetae.Footnote 35 However, these ancient poets were mistaken when it came to counting the number of stars in the constellation, and Cicero both ridicules them with his emphatic sed frustra, temere a uulgo, ratione sine ulla and also places them firmly in the past (an effect amplified by his use of the archaic dicier). This draws attention to the temporal divide, and presumably the improved scientific knowledge, that separates him from them.
This, of course, is not the only thing that separates Cicero from these ancient poets: clearly anyone who called the stars of this constellation Alcyone, Merope and Celaeno was Greek, yet the title Cicero applies to the constellation is the Roman one, Vergiliae. Footnote 36 Apparently the number of stars was not the only Greek mistake when it came to this constellation, a fact that becomes clear when we consider the etymology for the Roman name, which was derived by antiquarians from ueris finis.Footnote 37 Cicero alludes to this derivation with his gloss propterea quod et aestatis primordia clarat; the emphatic propterea quod, following right after a reference to the group's great and famous name (magnum nomen … clarumque) is suggestive, and a learned reader would note that the beginning of summer comes, of course, at the end of spring.Footnote 38 In foregrounding the name's Latin etymology, which was related to its function as a weather sign, Cicero not only answers Aratus' theme of intelligent design, but does him one better: Vergiliae (from ueris finis) speaks much more directly to the constellation's function as a weather sign than Pleiades (connected with πλεῖν) does. In this case, it is the Latin name, far more than the Greek, that serves as the best etymos logos for this constellation's function.
It would be appropriate to consider also Cicero's account of the Hyades here, but, unfortunately, all that remains of his poetic treatment is the single line in which he names it: has Graeci stellas Hyadas uocitare suerunt (frag. XXVIII: ‘these stars the Greeks are accustomed to call the Hyades’). Though the context is meager, it is clear that, once again, Cicero has made an explicit reference to the constellation's name, using a gloss to mark the name in question as a Greek one. Yet, when it came to the constellation's Latin name, it is likely that Cicero took a different approach from his treatment of the Bears and the Pleiades, much as he does in the later De Natura Deorum. But to demonstrate this requires a move away from the Aratea itself and into subsequent Roman literature.
BALBUS AND TIRO ON THE HYADES
The etymology of the Hyades is particularly well treated in later material: it forms part of the discussion of the Aratea in the second book of De Natura Deorum, where Cicero has his interlocutor Balbus quote extensively from the poem, and it also features in the commonplace book Pandectae written by Cicero's secretary and freedman Tiro. Both passages provide insight into the linguistic and cultural issues surrounding Cicero's treatment of etymology more generally, and can be fruitfully placed beside what has already been gleaned about his use of constellation etymologies in the Aratea.
I will begin with Balbus, the learned Stoic interlocutor of Cicero's De Natura Deorum.Footnote 39 Balbus' arguments in favour of Stoic theology, given in the second book of the work, include a long quotation from the Aratea, which he uses in the service of a larger argument for intelligent design (2.97-153). Particularly of note here is the quotation's etymological focus, which is linked to Balbus' use of etymology at an earlier point. Given Balbus' Stoic leanings, this is appropriate; Stoics were quite interested in etymology, and used it often, particularly to etymologize the names of the traditional pantheon of gods in a way that reflected each god's unique sphere of influence in the natural world (as, for example, Hera from aer).Footnote 40
Balbus' first use of etymology comes in a passage in which he seeks to do just this: he will, he says, provide the true sources from which the gods' names derive (2.60-9). He begins his argument by noting that, in addition to the divine features of the natural world itself (2.60),
multae autem aliae naturae deorum ex magnis beneficiis eorum non sine causa et a Graeciae sapientissimis et a maioribus nostris constitutae nominataeque sunt. quicquid enim magnam utilitatem generi adferret humano, id non sine diuina bonitate erga homines fieri arbitrabantur.
many other kinds of gods have been agreed upon and named by the wisest men of Greece and by our own ancestors from the great benefits they confer, and with good reason.Footnote 41 For they thought that whatever provides a great advantage to the human race does not happen without divine benevolence towards mankind.
In Balbus' universe, then, the names of the gods have been specifically chosen to reflect the benevolent actions they confer upon humanity. Corn and wine are called Ceres and Liber, after the gods from whom they originated, while Fides, Mens and other abstract but useful forces become divinities in their own right, whose names are a direct reflection of the benefits they provide (2.61-2). Similarly, particularly renowned and benevolent human beings are now worshipped as gods; their names simply point to the human beings who once carried them (2.63). Last of all, Balbus considers the traditional Olympian gods, the ones who ‘supplied the poets with fairytales and crammed human life full of every superstition’;Footnote 42 what Balbus will show is that, in fact, the etymologies of their names reveal that these deities have a more sober and providential role.
At this point Balbus begins to supply the sort of etymological puns familiar from the Stoic tradition. But it is significant to note that, like Cicero in the Aratea, Balbus' primary interest is in Roman, not Greek, names. Indeed, the few Greek names that are mentioned are those that can be shown to have parallel meanings with their Roman counterparts: thus, both the Greek Kronos (derived from χρόνος) and the Roman Saturn (derived from saturari annis) have to do with time, and Dis and Pluto are both related to each language's words for wealth.Footnote 43 But for the most part Balbus is devoted to demonstrating that the names of Roman deities reflect the provident component of the natural world they represent: Jupiter is the iuuans pater, Ceres bears the earth's crops (gerere), and so on (2.63-9).Footnote 44
The fact that Balbus can focus so extensively on Latin etymologies is a sign of recent Roman research into the topic. These etymologies are most likely drawn from the work of Aelius Stilo, whose theories on Latin etymology would have been current at the dramatic date of the work in the early seventies.Footnote 45 Stoicus esse uoluit, Cicero says of Aelius (Brut. 206), and the evidence suggests that, like the Stoics, he believed words were naturally related to the things they signify.Footnote 46 It is fitting, therefore, that Balbus draws upon Aelius, since his etymologies must have been designed to show that Roman names for the gods derived from their benevolent services for mankind. If one assumes, as Balbus does, that Greek and Latin devised these names independently from one another, then his argument both for the existence of divinity and for its provident and benevolent nature is strengthened: the two languages independently confirm it. At the same time, this sort of argument—like Cicero's use of etymological wordplay in the Aratea—has the added benefit of demonstrating that Latin is fully equal to Greek in its linguistic representation of the world.
After this discussion, Balbus launches into another major component of his argument: proving that the design of the universe reveals the hand of an intelligent creator. Balbus decides that a description of the universe's beauty—in beautiful and eventually poetic language—will prove most persuasive to his audience, and after a description of the earth's beauty he begins to quote the Aratea on the beauty of the heavens.Footnote 47
While Balbus' main purpose in quoting the poem is to support his argument for intelligent design, it also allows him to return to his earlier tactic of etymologizing, and he highlights several moments of etymological significance within the Aratea. At 2.108-9, he quotes two passages that gloss Greek constellation names: the constellation Engonasin acquires its name genibus quia nixa feratur (‘because he is carried around resting on his knees’), while Ophiuchus is described with hic continet Anguem (‘this one holds the Snake’).Footnote 48 Balbus follows this at 2.109-10 by quoting a far more subtle wordplay from the poem that explains the name of the figure Arctophylax/Bootes with quod quasi temone adiunctam prae se quatit Arctum (‘because it is as if he drives the Bear in front of himself joined to the wagon-pole’): the use of Temo, an alternate Latin name for the Wagon, makes it possible to allude to the etymology of both names for the figure (literally, Bear-Guarder and Oxen-Driver).Footnote 49
Having thus established the poem's use of etymological wordplay and the basic equivalence between the Latin and Greek names for the stars, Balbus continues at 2.111 in a similar vein with the Hyades. But this time, instead of quoting an etymology embedded within the Aratea itself, he provides one of his own (Nat. D. 2.111 = Aratea, fr. XXVIII):
eius caput stellis conspersum est frequentibus;
‘has Graeci stellas Hyadas uocitare suerunt’
a pluendo (ὕειν enim est pluere), nostri imperite Suculas, quasi a subus essent non ab imbribus nominatae.
The head [of Taurus] is sprinkled with numerous stars: ‘these stars the Greeks are accustomed to call the Hyades.’ [Their name comes] from rain—for ὕειν means ‘to rain’—though our countrymen ignorantly call them the Piglets, as if they were named from pigs and not from rain.
It should be clear why Balbus provides a lengthier discussion for this particular constellation. By emphasizing, as the Aratean scholia do, that the name of the Hyades is derived from the Greek verb for rain (ὕειν), he can demonstrate that constellations as well as gods get their names from the benefits they provide for mankind: the Hyades mark the beginning of the rainy season, which nourishes the crops that have been planted and allows them to grow.Footnote 50 In this way they reveal the providence of the universe and point back to its divine creator.
Yet it is worth noting the difference between this etymology and the others found in both the Aratea and De Natura Deorum. Cicero's etymological wordplay elsewhere in the poem is largely designed to showcase Latin's equivalence (and occasionally even superiority) to Greek, and Balbus' use of the technique for explaining the names of the gods does the same. Here, on the other hand, Latin is presented at a disadvantage: the Roman name for the constellation, Suculae (Piglets), has, in Balbus' opinion, utterly missed the mark. Romans who call the Hyades ‘piglets’ do so imperite (ignorantly); after all, this name has nothing to do with the providence of nature. Balbus' correction to the Roman tradition makes it clear that the determining factor for his etymologies is not a preference for Latin over Greek at all costs; rather, it is a preference for whichever language best represents divine providence as it is immanent in the world. If Latin occasionally errs in this respect, it is the job of Balbus and other learned men to correct it, using the resources they have acquired from Greek culture. His correction—which is really Cicero's—once again had a long afterlife: all later Roman authors accept this etymology, and Suculae is never found in Roman poetry, despite its use in later prose.Footnote 51
Balbus is not the only one to take this attitude towards the Roman name Suculae. It was also a topic of interest for Cicero's secretary Tiro, who wrote about the relative value of the two names for the constellations in his work Pandectae. Footnote 52 While this work itself is lost, the comments in question happen to be preserved in Gellius (NA 13.9.4):Footnote 53
ibi de his stellis, quae appellantur Suculae, hoc scriptum est: ‘adeo’ inquit ‘ueteres Romani litteras Graecas nesciuerunt et rudes Graecae linguae fuerunt, ut stellas, quae in capite tauri sunt, propterea, Suculas appellarint, quod eas Graeci ὑάδες uocant, tamquam id uerbum Latinum Graeci uerbi interpretamentum sit, quia Graece ὕες, sues Latine dicantur. Sed ὑάδες’ inquit ‘οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑῶν, ita ut nostri opici putauerunt, sed ab eo, quod est ὕειν, appellantur; nam et cum oriuntur et cum occidunt, tempestates pluuias largosque imbres cient. pluere autem Graeca lingua ὕειν dicitur.’
In the Pandectae Tiro writes the following about those stars called the Piglets (Suculae). ‘It was because the ancient Romans did not know Greek letters,’ he says, ‘and because they were unacquainted with the Greek language that they called the stars that are in the head of Taurus the Piglets: namely because the Greeks call these stars the Hyades, and it was as if the Latin word was a translation of the Greek one, since they use the word ὕες for pigs, while Romans use sues. But the word Hyades,’ Tiro continues, ‘comes not from pigs (οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑῶν), as our boorish ancestors thought, but from another word, namely ὕειν. When that constellation rises and sets, it gives rise to rainy weather and heavy showers, and the word for rain in Greek is ὕειν.’
This is obviously quite close to Balbus' remarks, and Pease, taking the correspondence between the two accounts as a sign of Tiro's loyalty to Cicero, assumed that his discussion here derives from Cicero's comments in the dialogue.Footnote 54 But this assumption is almost certainly backwards. Tiro was in close contact with Cicero at the time the dialogue was composed, and was presumably still acting as his secretary and assistant.Footnote 55 It is therefore much more prudent to assume that Tiro, as Cicero's research assistant, is quoting the original source for both comments, probably a scholium on Aratus.Footnote 56 The differences between the two passages seem to bear this out: Tiro's comments are in Greek, Balbus' in Latin. Given Cicero's well-known penchant for translating Greek into Latin in the philosophical treatises, it is likely that a scholium's ἀπὸ τῶν ὑῶν has been translated by Cicero with a subus.
Tiro also provides more rationale for the condemnation of Suculae than Balbus does. Because his explanation is almost completely in Latin (and therefore does not give the Greek word for pig, ὕες), Balbus does not fully explain why the Romans call the constellation Suculae, but Tiro does. The name, he says, represented an attempt by early Romans to translate the Greek title into a suitable Latin equivalent; they believed, erroneously, that Hyades was derived from ὕες and translated it accordingly. In so doing, they unwittingly effaced the etymological significance that lay beneath the constellation's name: an etymology from ὕειν effectively demonstrates the star group's usefulness for mankind, while Suculae does not. It is a mistake, a relic from Rome's more rustic past, and as such has no relevance for an argument such as Balbus' that depends on etymology to demonstrate divine providence.
The Phaenomena makes use of a similar line of reasoning, and one to which Cicero is more or less faithful in his translation. Given the state of the evidence, it is, of course, impossible to know whether the poem also juxtaposed the names Hyades and Suculae. But an examination of the single extant line may reveal an etymological pun: Cicero's gloss Graeci uocitare suerunt appears to point subtly to the Latin word for pig (sus).Footnote 57 This time the Greeks were the ones with the etymos logos for the star group, while the Roman name was an artefact of a less knowledgeable stage in Rome's history. Is it not possible that the pun relies on this idea, perhaps also suggesting that the name derived from sus is based on conventional (suerunt), rather than natural, usage?
CONCLUSION
Cicero's practice in translating Aratus' names for the constellations is clearly indicative of his broader attitude towards the products of Greek culture. Much like his patriotic insistence on Latin's superiority over Greek in his later treatises, in the Aratea Cicero uses both Latin and Greek scholarly resources to portray the abilities of the Latin language as fully equal, if not superior, to Greek: Roman names for these constellations are shown to be no less revelatory of divine providence than those in Greek. While Balbus' treatment of the Hyades in De Natura Deorum may seem, at first glance, like a reversal of this emphasis, the evidence from the Pandectae demonstrates that this is not entirely the case. After all, Suculae may be a Roman mistake, but it is not the mistake of these Romans. Cicero and Tiro live in an era in which Latin (and Greek) etymology is much better understood, and their descriptions of the parallel names for the Hyades celebrate this increased understanding in a way that emphasizes the advances in Roman understanding of Greek culture, while also underscoring the value of the labour they themselves have expended on the transfer of this material into Rome—and, in Cicero's case, in coining appropriate terminology for it. Earlier Romans may have been ignorant, but, thanks to Cicero and Tiro, future Romans will not be. By placing himself at the very centre of this cultural transfer, Cicero attempts to secure a key place in subsequent Roman works on the subject. The widespread adoption by later Roman authors of Cicero's names for the Roman stars is a sign that this attempt was a success.
