The importance of Aratus' Phaenomena, not only for contemporary Greek poetry, but also for the Latin literature of the late Republic and early Empire, has now been confirmed by a large number of articles and monographs published in recent years. In this impressive book, Emma Gee convincingly discusses most of the reasons for Aratus' enormous popularity and his impact on Greek and Latin literature. G. devotes several chapters to a detailed intertextual analysis of works by authors who have contrasting views of the cosmos. The idea is that Aratus' text came to represent what we may call an ‘intelligently designed’ universe, in which all parts are orderly, comprehensible and divinely guided.

Ch. 1, ‘Poetic Justice’, examining the antecedents for the myth of Dike (Phaen. 96–136), considers the differences between Aratus' poem and the Platonic tradition of astronomical cosmology, from the point of view of the Alexandrian poet. Appendix A provides the Aratean references to the Hesiodic myth of Ages, which is the main, but not the only model for Aratus. Indeed G. argues that Aratus placed Hesiod in dialogue with Empedocles (whose universe cycles between Love and Strife) as a means of negotiating concepts of time in the myth.

Ch. 2, ‘Roman Justice’, turns from Aratus to his Roman interpreters, examining how they adapted the myth of Dike alongside Platonic cosmology to emphasize the very Roman cyclicality of civil war (which echoes the cyclicality of the phases of the universe). G. begins with the analysis of Virgilian passages (from Eclogue 4 and Georgics 2), to show how the Latin poet combines Aratus with Plato (Politicus) in order to suggest that Rome will cycle from its age of civil conflict back to the Saturnian Golden Age. The contrast between civil war and Golden Age is also detectable in Aratus' translators (more subtly in Cicero, more explicitly in Germanicus). The chapter ends with the hypothesis that Lucretius was the first author to link Aratus' age of strife with civil conflict, thus becoming the Roman intermediary between Aratus and his translators.

The focus on Cicero and Lucretius is at the centre of the challenging discussions of chs 3 (‘Wandering Stars’) and 4 (‘Lucretius’ Aratea’). G. extensively (and convincingly) argues that Lucretius was in constant dialogue with Cicero's Aratea, as witnessed by a long and useful list of verbal reminiscences between the two authors (appendix B). The key point in ch. 3 is that Aratus' universe, predicated on intelligent design, subject to rational explanation and fashioned to benefit mankind, stands in fundamental opposition to Epicurean atomism, and Lucretius' sustained use of ‘polemical allusion’ to Cicero's translation in the astronomical section of DRN 5. G.'s intertextual analyses clearly show how Aratus' text was used (and sometimes abused) by the two poets in order to support their different visions of the universe.

In ch. 5, ‘Planetary Motion’, G. demonstrates that the Lucretian polemical use of the Aratean tradition survives way beyond Roman Republican literature, showing how early Imperial authors, such as Manilius, Lucan, Seneca and Statius use Aratus to express ideas of cosmic disorder (often in relation to the recurrent topic of civil war), in the wake of Virgil and Germanicus (as discussed in ch. 2). The theme of civil war is indeed a central one for Augustan and Silver Epic, and the distortion of Aratus' paradigmatic celestial order is a powerful metapoetic means to demonstrate the catastrophic effects of civic strife.

Ch. 6, ‘Late Antique Aratus', focuses on Avienus’ Phaenomena, showing how distant this fourth-century text can be, not only from its original model, but also from anything else in the Aratean tradition. A useful comparison between Avienus' and Aratus' proems is provided in appendix C, but it is through an intelligent analysis of the contemporary works of Firmicus Maternus, Julian's Hymn to King Helios and the Latin panegyric tradition, that G. is able to conclude that Aratus was merely the starting point for an astronomical exegesis that was in tune with Avienus' time. In a brief epilogue, G. invites us to reconsider the gap between the ‘Copernican revolution’ and ‘ancient astronomy’, arguing that Copernicus was, in many ways, a successor of the Aratean tradition.

In this extremely erudite book, G. provides clever analyses (particularly the intertextual ones, in chs 3 and 4) that will certainly set a template for future Aratean studies. Of course, some conclusions are more convincing than others, but it was not an easy task to take the reader through more than seven centuries of literature, and persuasively explain most of the reasons for the popularity of this relatively short but very complex Hellenistic text. At the end of her Introduction, G. sarcastically offers a propitiatory sacrifice to reviewers, in the form of an enumeration of ‘chapters I could have written’ (21). My personal regret is that in this book, there is not a single mention of a topic that most certainly contributed to Aratus' popularity (and not only among ancient poets), namely the so-called technopaignia. As pointed out by many scholars (such as Katharina Volk or myself) Aratus' Phaenomena describes the constellations as a sign system devised by Zeus for the benefit of human beings. Aratus figuratively depicts these signs as if they were ‘letters in the sky’, a veritable text inscribed in the physical world. The writing metaphor is indeed pervasive in Aratus' poem and the Phaenomena thus presents an important early instance of the concept of the ‘readability’ of the world, which is also expressed by an extensive use of technopaignia, such as acrostics and other forms of letter play. A chapter devoted to this crucial aspect of the Aratean tradition would, therefore, have been very welcome, especially for the appreciation of Aratus' (ancient and modern) popularity.