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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.

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

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.Footnote 1 Three carefully placed occurrences of the adjective have so far been uncovered in the passage,Footnote 2 but for a full appreciation of its elegance we must note that Aratus has set his readers up to notice a fourth.

The adjective λεπτός (‘slender’, ‘delicate’, ‘faint’) is one of the more important programmatic adjectives in the Hellenistic arsenal, traditionally seen as signifying an elegance of style, an exclusivity of subject matter, and a scholarly sophistication that enables the poet to encapsulate a variety of literary layers in seemingly straightforward poetry. Aratus himself may have coined this use of the term,Footnote 3 and he uses it throughout the Phaenomena to mark his preference for (star) constellations that are less conspicuous but more significant.Footnote 4 It is not surprising that its use in an acrostic occurs in immediate proximity to a metapoetic passage encouraging the reader to search for hidden signs and meanings.Footnote 5 As he makes the transition from his discussion of the firmament to weather signs, Aratus notes that many of Zeus's symbols remain hidden (768–71). These, he says, can be uncovered, inter alia, in the horns of the moon (778–82):

σκέπτεο δὲ πρῶτον κεράων ἑκάτερθε σελήνην.
ἄλλοτε γάρ τ' ἄλλῃ μιν ἐπιγράϕει ἕσπερος αἴγλῃ,
ἄλλοτε δ' ἀλλοῖαι μορϕαὶ κερόωσι σελήνην
εὐθὺς ἀεξομένην, αἱ μὲν τρίτῃ, αἱ δὲ τετάρτῃ·
τάων καὶ περὶ μηνὸς ἐϕεσταότος κε πύθοιο.
Look first at the moon, at the horns on each side.
For sometimes, evening inscribes her with a different light,
and at other times, different shapes define the horns of the moon,
right when she is waxing, both on the third, and on the fourth day,
and from these you can learn about the present month.Footnote 6

Even though Aratus may primarily be encouraging the reader to examine the moon's real-world horns for indications of future meteorological developments, there could well be an announcement of the acrostic, coming up in the very next verse, contained in these lines as well. After all, its gamma (Γ) shape may suggest the crescent moon Aratus has asked us to look at – or look for – in his discussion of its predictive qualities at 783–7:Footnote 7

λεπτὴ μὲν καθαρή τε περὶ τρίτον ἦμαρ ἐοῦσα
εὔδιός κ' εἴη, λεπτὴ δὲ καὶ εὖ μάλ' ἐρευθὴς
πνευματίη· παχίων δὲ καὶ ἀμβλείῃσι κεραίαις
τέτρατον ἐκ τριτάτοιο ϕόως ἀμενηνὸν ἔχουσα
ἢ νότῳ ἄμβλυνται ἢ ὕδατος ἐγγὺς ἐόντος.
Faint and clear [moon] around the third day will be
an announcement of good weather. When she is faint and very red,
it's indication of wind. When she is rather thickish and with dull horns,
not having neat fourth-day light after the third,
then either it's the south wind that blunts her, or rain is near.

Marked in tis quotation are the three instances of λεπτή that have so far been observed. The arms of the acrostic constitute the first two. Once the reader has noticed the adjective's significance to both the content and the structure of the passage, its third occurrence (line 784) catches the eye and confirms that there is method in the madness.Footnote 8 It is important to envisage these successive recognitions as a process, the kind of revisiting of previous lines only imaginable in circles that privilege the written over the spoken word.Footnote 9 Aratus' intentional inclusion of ‘visual’ wordplay in fact draws attention to this ‘material’ aspect of his poetry, that is, to the lines of ink on his papyrus. These, unlike a verbal utterance, we can ‘read’ more than once and in more than one direction.Footnote 10 In this respect, Aratus' Hellenistic appropriation of the acrostic differs from what is usually seen as its Homeric model at Iliad 24.1–5. Here, the first letters of the relevant lines spell out ΛΕϒΚΗ, but the constraints of oral composition and performance suggest that Homer's acrostic, unlike Aratus', is accidental.Footnote 11

If we now move back a few more lines in Aratus' text (as his Hellenistic readers were accustomed to do), it turns out that the star poet provided us with far more precise instructions on how to decipher the acrostic passage than might at first have been apparent. The ‘introductory’ verses not only point out the ‘horns of the moon’ acrostic written (!) into the text (ἐπιγράϕει, 779), but also imply that the discovery of its true complexity has to be gradual. First (πρῶτον, 778), the reader has to note the two halves (ἑκάτερθε, 778) of the Γ. Then, he or she can distinguish additional shapes (ἀλλοῖαι μορϕαί, 780). More specifically, the moon is worth a third and a fourth look (αἱ μὲν τρίτῃ, αἱ δὲ τετάρτῃ, 781). This ‘numeral’ element is probably not insignificant, considering how frequently references to ‘threes’ and ‘fours’ recur in the immediate proximity (781, 783, 786, 788, 792, 796, 806, 809, 810, 812). If, however, the λεπτή in 784 was only the third instance that Aratus wanted us to notice, what is the fourth?

I believe that there is another metatextual hint, hidden this time in the acrostic itself, which tells us how to uncover the fourth λεπτή. The clue is contained in τέτρατον ἐκ τριτάτοιο (786), ‘the fourth from the third’. If we glance across the page from the Γ in the direction of the third λεπτή, then this suggests a diagonal drawn from the top left corner to the bottom of the passage. Taking this as a hint at the fourth and feeble (ἀμενηνόν, 786) λεπτή, we do indeed discover it spread out diagonally across the page:

λεπτὴ μὲν καθαρή τε περὶ τρίτον ἦμαρ ἐοῦσα
εὔδιός κ' εἴη, λεπτὴ δὲ καὶ εὖ μάλ' ἐρευθὴς
πνευματίη· παχίων δὲ καὶ ἀμβλείῃσι κεραίαις
τέτρατον ἐκ τριτάτοιο ϕόως ἀμενηνὸν ἔχουσαFootnote 12
ἢ νότῳ ἄμβλυνται ἢ ὕδατος ἐγγὺς ἐόντος.
Faint and clear (moon) around the third day will be
an announcement of good weather. When she is faint and very red,
it's indication of wind. When she is rather thickish and with dull horns,
not having neat fourth-day light after the third,
then either it's the south wind that blunts her, or rain is near.

The suspicion that we have discerned what we were meant to discover becomes more pressing if we note that, in the third to fifth lines of the acrostic, the relevant initial letters occur in the second, third, and fourth words respectively. This suggests a deliberate diagonal arrangement into a mesostich or ‘intext’,Footnote 13 and once again matches the recurring hint to look at the ‘fourth’ after the ‘third’ (781, 786).

As far as correspondences between the passage's content and its visual arrangement are concerned, it could be relevant that Aratus is describing how the moon can forecast wind or precipitation (πνευματίη, 785; ἢ νότῳ ἄμβλυνται ἢ ὕδατος ἐγγὺς ἐόντος, 787). If the Γ represents the crescent, then perhaps the diagonal λεπτή is modelled after the rain or gust of wind that emerges from it. Aratus teaches us that the moon on some such occasions is both λεπτή and ἐρευθής (‘red’, 784), and we may wonder whether the letters constituting the Γ acrostic, along with the third and fourth occurrences of λεπτή, might therefore have been written in red ink. The passage's punctilious arrangement would then have created a tongue-in-cheek visual illustration of a moon that is both the right colour and – literally – defined by the word ‘faint’.Footnote 14 Furthermore, such rubrication would have fitted in well with Aratus' noted interest in the material side of his composition, as well as with his explicit announcement that the moon is ‘inscribe[d] … with a different light’ (ἄλλῃ μιν ἐπιγράϕει ἕσπερος αἴγλῃ, 779). Of course, there is no documented case of a scribe highlighting wordplay in this manner until significantly later, so this particular detail has to remain speculative.Footnote 15 Yet my larger argument does show that we have no right to complain that Aratus divorced form (acrostic and mesostich) from content (the moon and the weather), an accusation sometimes levelled against technopaegnia, whose wordplay is ‘extrinsic to its reference’.Footnote 16 Instead, the passage's patterning reflects both the moon-as-weather-sign under immediate discussion and Aratus' larger venture to teach us how to make out meaningful constellations, be it in the night sky or on the pages of his Phaenomena.Footnote 17

In closing, let us return to the observation (first advanced by J.-M. Jacques) that, by choosing λεπτή as the object of his wordplay, Aratus is providing his readers with an elegant illustration of the literary sophistication that the adjective seems to have signified in the third century b.c.e. Befitting this subtext, a moon that is ‘slender’ and καθαρή (‘clear’, 783) – both catchwords often seen to represent ‘Hellenistic’ poetics – brings fair weather; when it is παχίων (‘rather thickish’, 785) – the metapoetic opposite, at least according to Callimachus – rain is in the offing.Footnote 18 If λεπτότης characterizes Aratus' approach to his ambitious subject matter,Footnote 19 then our discovery of the true number of λεπτή adjectives in Phaen. 783–7 (‘true’, that is, unless anyone discovers a fifth or sixth) can help determine the depth of this refinement. We may remember in this context that Antigonos Gonatas reportedly complimented Aratus on having made his model Eudoxus εὐδοξότερον.Footnote 20 I, in turn, hope our sighting of a fourth λεπτή will make the true subtleness of λεπτολόγος (in more than one sense) ἌρατοςFootnote 21 even less ἄρρητον.

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).