Manilius is a difficult author, a quality hardly surprising in an astrological poet. Many controversies surround his didactic epic Astronomica, a poem that famously falls short of its repeated promise to furnish an outline of planetary astrology. Is the poem complete? What were the poet's intentions in failing to deliver the promised content? Why, instead of turning to the workings of the seven planets, does he discuss the effects exercised by the fixed stars? These questions are but a small selection of the problems involved in studying Manilius. G. begins with a fascinating proposal: what if Manilius’ famed failure is fully intentional, reflecting a much deeper and subtler purpose? What if his work's conundrums are themselves a unique commentary on astrology's controversial status in Rome? The proposal is certainly worth considering: in such a reading the incompleteness of the poem would, on the one hand, become a testimony to the ambivalence of astrology's position as a recognised and officially exploited instrument of imperial propaganda and, on the other, as an unwelcome, foreign and potentially destructive element of the East. From another standpoint (notably missing from the study) questioning the purpose this reading questions the actual genre of the work, assimilating it to the modern roman-à-clef, while simultaneously exposing scholars to the dangers so clearly highlighted by A. Barchiesi with respect to the study of Ovid.Footnote ¹

The study, its principal argument developed in twelve chapters, takes into account the major part of Augustan literature while relying on Ciceronian testimony for the time of Caesar's comet (its appearance and the ideological manoeuvring it occasioned is presented, in accordance with P. Domenicucci, Astra Caesarum: Astronomia, astrologia e catasterismo da Cesare a Domiziano [1996], as a decisive point in the history of Roman astrology). The main problem with the argument becomes clear when one considers the length of the study: with the total number of pages just short of 200 and an average of seventeen pages per chapter, occasionally including extensive quotations, one quickly realises that the discussion is, to put it mildly, of a synthetic nature. True, G. is quick to point to adequate subject literature, but his method of exposition does little to endear him to the reader: one is left with the impression of sketchiness, a point particularly visible in his treatment of authors he considers secondary to the main subject of his investigation (Vitruvius, Virgil, Ovid, etc.). Admittedly, their works are not the primary focus of the inquiry – yet simplification and generalisation are hard to avoid when attempting to discuss Horace, Virgil, Hyginus and Ovid in eleven pages (pp. 119–29). Unfortunately, this sketchiness is only one, if the most manifest, of the work's problems.

Essential to G.'s argument are subtleties of exposition, the dynamic interplay between author and reader or, to be more precise, between the internal author (henceforth IA, a literary, within-the-work version of the historical Manilius) and his reader (R). In order to discern between the guises assumed by the IA and various readers, G. seeks inspiration in the works of A. Sharrock (‘Ovid and the Politics of Reading’, MD 33 [1994], 97–122 et al.). Still, one has to remember that any distinguishing between various authorial, narratorial and recipient instances calls for extreme care and rigour, and would do well to take into account the work already done in the field since the formalist movement.Footnote ² Thus, it is important to note that Manilius and his readers, including the dedicatee (the emperor), represent one level, while the IA, whether identifiable with the internal personae of poet or teacher, and his readers/disciples represent another. As it is, while he differentiates between three ‘readers’ of the teacher persona, namely the dedicatee (emperor), the student (the ‘you’ implied and occasionally present in the exposition itself, a constant and distinguishing feature of the didactic genre) and the more general reader (identifiable, at least to some extent, with the external reader, but also occasionally identifiable with the student persona), G. sometimes appears to miss the possible change (collapse or overlapping) of levels implied in such a change. On the internal, within the text, level, the distinction occasionally collapses, with two readers (dedicatee and general intended reader) appearing instead of three, or with something like Ecoesque ‘ideal reader’ manifestly influencing the concept of the purely internal student addressee: none the less, they are all implicit in the text. On a very different level, the external intended readers (or the target public), one may think, are quite rightly identified with the educated Roman elite, among whom the recent fashion for astrology would be most notable (they would, at the same time, be most likely to appreciate the irony inherent in the lore being fashionable and recognised, but all the more carefully controlled).Footnote ³ Still, questions appear: to what extent does the Ecoesque ideal reader overlap with this reconstructed external instance? Where does the purely internal student persona stand? Is this persona (student tu) identifiable with the IR of the poem (reader within the poem, general tu)? It is at this point that G.'s argument would in all likelihood have benefited from a more careful differentiation of said instances (which would be greatly facilitated by references to Iser and others).

Let us return to the course of the argument: the Ecoesque ideal reader would naturally appreciate the nuances of the poem, but what about Manilius’ actual reader? The question is of considerable weight given the character of G.'s hypothesis. G. strives to make the case for the probable identity of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘actual’ reading by referring his own public to a vast array of testimonies confirming the spread and popularity of astrology among Augustan-period Romans, and by claiming that the aforementioned tension can be detected in Virgil, Ovid, Propertius and others (Chapters 6–10, pp. 109–88). Unfortunately, the extreme brevity of his arguments influences the outcome, as G.'s reader is left, much like the reader of Manilius’ text (not to mention the student persona), with a feeling of incompleteness.

G.'s interpretation, touching on the fascinating subject of the interior dynamics of the text as well as on the political reality of the era, deserves serious consideration. Taken at its best, it provides an ambitious and inspiring reading of one of the more underestimated Latin poems, highlighting the possible complexities of its composition. That this endeavour is undermined by the sketchiness of the argument is unfortunate, but not necessarily damning; possibly more damaging is G.'s seeming indifference to modern achievements of literary theory, resulting in occasional confusion between levels of literary structure or, in fact, between the reader personae. Still, G. points out a hitherto undiscussed interpretative possibility – and for this, Manilius (and Manilian scholars) would (and should) in all likelihood be grateful.