I. CRITICAL SYMBOLS IN AN EDITION WITH COMMENTARY (2.5–20 MARTIN)

Excerpts from an editor's cover letter were included in Anonymus II, and in this instance an overlapping excerpt of the Greek is preserved in one manuscript.Footnote ⁴ After the editor's explanation of his motivation, the text provides tantalizingly obscure information about the format of the work:

Where we have the Greek, we can explain some of the errors in the Latin: τέτταρσι was confused with τε τέρασι, χ taken as the symbol for 600, ἀστέρι ἐν τῶι confused with ἀστεροέντων (cf. ἀστερόεντα > stellantia at 67.16 Martin), παρακείμενον divided with παρά understood as ‘minus’, and so on.

The principal discussion of the passage after the Greek excerpt ends is Martin HT (n. 1), 135–6. He saw that pauimentum (ἔδαφος) and frons (μέτωπον) mean not ‘floor’ and ‘forehead’ but ‘main text-area’ and ‘margin’, metaphors known elsewhere.Footnote ⁶ The critical symbols may appear beside (στίχωι παρακείμενον) and below (sub paginem) the main text. To judge by parallels in Anonymus II or glossaries of that period, the Greek probably continued καὶ ὑπὸ τῆι σελίδι τὸ ἐν μετώπωι, ‘and beneath the column the [sign] in the margin’.Footnote ⁷ Martin's interpretation was therefore that these symbols routinely came in pairs, one beside and one below the text. But why did they need to be duplicated, except perhaps for a few longer annotations? By emending the manuscript's ἂν ἴδης (‘If you see’) to the homophonous ἂν ἴδοις (‘You may see’), we can sidestep this problem while restoring to ἄν its normal meaning in this unemphatic sentence-position; the reader is warned about some cases of paired symbols, but these are no longer the main phenomenon explained in the following words, so they need not have been standard.

The next clause began at scire oportet quia. Since quia represents ὅτι (x5/5), we are dealing with ἰστέον or εἰδέναι χρὴ ὅτι, ‘Be aware that …’. secundum signum admits three explanations: the ‘second sign’ from the preceding list (diplê), or from each pair of symbols that Martin envisaged in the preceding clause (that is, those in the lower margin); or, finally, secundum represents κατά in the sense ‘according to’, as below secundum pauimento represents κατὰ (this time ‘within’) τὸ ἔδαφος.Footnote ⁸ This last interpretation makes it easier to identify a main verb and understand quasque in the following phrase. scriptura represents γραφή, which a monastic copyist would know as ‘Scripture’ (cf. CGL 2.265, 2.555), though the required sense here is ‘reading’. scriptae scripturae are then αἱ γεγραμμέναι γραφαί, ‘the readings written’, after which creditas could represent a verb such as ἀναφέρονται, ‘are ascribed’. quisque, ‘each’, is hardly used elsewhere in the gloss on Anonymus II but, taken with ‘according to the sign’, we appear to be told that the different signs attributed readings to different authorities (perhaps editions, if the feminine gender of alias quasque can be relied on), one each.Footnote ⁹ This use of critical symbols has been conjectured for ancient books such as P.Oxy. 3224, where several signs occur in proximity.Footnote ¹⁰

Next, expositio probably represents something like ἐπεξήγησις: cf. exposuit < ἡγήσατο at 44.14 Martin. An important detail which Martin did not discuss is that this ‘explanation’ lies in memoria: this must represent ἐν ὑπομνήματι, ‘in the commentary’ or similar. The gloss memoria < ὑπόμνημα occurs less misleadingly at 217.1 Maass.Footnote ¹¹ The edition, in other words, was keyed to a commentary with explanations that weighed up the different readings. Contrast Martin's interpretation of expositio as ἔκθεσις, indentation into the margin.Footnote ¹²

Martin supposed that tamquam non in peccato derived from a parenthetic phrase such as ὥστε μὴ ἁμαρτ-, ‘so that you will not get confused’. The three other instances of tamquam gloss ὡς or its homophone ὅς, but a negative final clause suits Martin's idea anyway. ὡς μὴ ἐν ἁμαρτίαι γένηι might explain the following in quo (~ ἐν ἧι). In any case, the possible source of error is whether the reading in the main text or the margins is preferable: secundum pauimento and secus pauimento represent κατὰ τὸ ἔδαφος and παρὰ τῶι ἐδάφει.Footnote ¹³ But hiemalium (‘of wintry’) does not fit. Martin suggested that κείμενον (‘text’) was misread as χειμερί(ν)ων. Rather, a confusion with χείρων (‘worse’) gives the required antithesis. The Greek may have said something like ἡ μὲν κατὰ τὸ ἔδαφος ἐνορωμένη ἐστὶ καὶ χείρων ῥητέα, ἡ δ’ ἀμείνων παρὰ τῶι ἐδάφει φέρεται, ‘the one visible within the main text should in fact be deemed worse, while the superior one is found beside the text.’Footnote ¹⁴ Contrast the procedure of Attalus of Rhodes, who corrected Aratus’ text to make it ‘accord with phenomena’, at least according to his critic Hipparchus (Comm. 1.3.3).

To sum up this interpretation, Anonymus II included the cover letter of an edition that had critical symbols in the margins, including occasionally (not regularly) a pair of symbols with one at the foot of the column. Better readings were added in the margin, rather than being incorporated into the text; in this regard, 2.19 hiemalium < χείρων not κείμενον. Parallels for interpreting 2.15 secundum as a reflex of κατά suggest that one use of the critical symbols was as sigla to refer to different authorities. Correct diagnosis of in memoria shows that the arguments surrounding these textual variations were originally presented in a separate commentary.

II. THE NARRATEES OF THE ILIAD AND THE PHAENOMENA (3.2–13 MARTIN)

The editor next embarked on a discussion of the authentic form of the start of the Phaenomena, about which we have some information from other ancient scholarship. Some deemed the familiar proemic hymn to Zeus (Phaen. 1–18) to be spurious and preferred alternatives (non aestimant hoc Arati esse prouerbium … sed haec auferentes alia praecipiunt, 2.23–5 Martin). These included a proem addressed to Anclides, here called unum de sociis qui uerbum fecerat (2.22 Martin): if this glosses something like ἕνα τῶν ἑταίρων, ὃς ἐλογοποίει, it is the only tradition about Anclides’ literary activity.Footnote ¹⁵ This proem will be discussed in section III. A third option was to start at line 19: quidam tamen sic et alii aliter (3.2 Martin) represents οἱ μὲν ὅμως … καὶ ἄλλυδις ἄλλοι from that line, and the following word, profanant (‘they desecrate’, inappropriately), is probably a corruption of p(rae)fantur, ‘they preface it with’.

The editor's subsequent discussion of these options includes an idea that has not been understood properly:

The first sentence expresses the idea that the proem to Anclides (dismissively called uersiculos) was created to provide an answer to the question of whom Aratus was talking to in lines such as 733 (οὐχ ὁράαις … ;). The idea recurs in a scholium (ΜΔKA) on that line:

As the editor and scholiast pointed out, inclusion of a second-person narratee was an established epic trope, which does not require a reader to know anything specific about the narratee's identity. This point is made several times in Homeric scholia, which allow us to identify the parallels adduced in the Latin passage, and to add these to the list of correspondences between Aratean and Homeric scholarship. Compare:

Il. 3.220 is the key to our Latin: nuncupare et zacynthum extentum has nothing to do with Zacynthus, but is an attempt at φαίης κε ζάκοτόν τέ τιν’ ἔμμεναι (~ τετανυμέναι or τε τεινόμεναι).Footnote ¹⁹ The Latin comments that the line is ‘appropriate’ (decorum), and this suggests a viable critical idea that the Homeric scholia do not preserve. If Antenor had directed ‘You would say …’ at his addressee Helen specifically, his claim about her initial impression of Odysseus would be unsuitable, since she knows Odysseus better than Antenor does.

The inference that nuncupare glosses φαίης enables us to identify nuncupare hos apices alterutris with Il. 15.697 φαίης κ’ ἀκμῆτας (~ ἀκμὴ τάς?) … ἀλλήλοισιν, ‘You would say that unwearied … each other’.Footnote ²⁰ One of the few verbs to appear in this unspecific second-person optative in the Iliad is γνοίης, which must be represented by scire (cf. Phaen. 769 scimus < γινώσκομεν). This verb is indeed used in aliis in quibus non est manifestum, that is, with a negative when the situation is unclear (Il. 5.85; cf. 14.58). The passage seems to end with humour: the trope under discussion (φαίης, nuncupare) is incorporated into a challenge from editor to reader to claim instead that Homer was really addressing a distinctive person.

I end exempli gratia with a reconstruction of the Greek underlying the passage quoted above, and a translation of the sense:

III. THE PROEM TO ANCLIDES (152–3 MAASS, SH 84)

Part 6 of Anonymus II (excluded from Martin's edition) is a complete gloss on an alternative ancient proem of the Phaenomena. We also have various testimonia to this proem to Anclides, including quotations of around two and a half lines in a Greek introduction said to be ‘Achilles On Exegesis’ in Vaticanus gr. 191.Footnote ²² The Greek and the two Latin glosses of the first line and a half immediately demonstrate the uncertainties that any attempt at reconstruction faces. While the possibility that the Latin continued to garble the Greek beyond recognition is unfalsifiable, I will try to demonstrate the plausibility of an alternative hypothesis, namely that the Latin was far less distorting for the majority of the proem.

Confusion of -δη ξειν- and δεῖξιν has led both versions of the Latin to the word ostensio, ‘demonstration’, under the influence of δεῖξιν occurring at the start of Anonymus II.1 (102 Maass).Footnote ²³ θάλος was not understood, and both versions add a noun for what the ‘demonstration’ of a proem might address. In the second line, ψαύσειας seems to have caused trouble: Anonymus II.3 simply omits it, and uitam peragens might translate τρίβων ‘spending time’ rather than τρίβον ‘path’; properaret in Anonymus II.6 possibly derived from σπεύσειας, ‘may you hurry’.Footnote ²⁴ Conversely, the gloss on σύν μοι, cum mihi, shows how at other times a remarkably literal process imprinted the Latin with features of the Greek original, in this case that σύν governs a dative whereas cum governs an ablative.

Where the quotation in On Exegesis and Anonymus II.3 finishes, Anonymus II.6 continues with a series of nominative agent nouns:

saeculum appears in two other places as a gloss on αἰών (163.81, 171.2 Maass); the noun mundus < κόσμος (x7/7); custod- < φυλακ- (x8/9). The person referred to here as the ‘creator of the ages’ and ‘guardian of the universe’ is not Anclides: we need a change of subject. Greek proems standardly effect a transition away from the opening address using a relative pronoun, and the addition of <cuius> restores sense with minimal fuss: the subject is then the builder of the ‘heavenly path’ to which Anclides was invited.Footnote ²⁵ Of the two words glossed elsewhere with conditor, one is too long (δημιουργός), while the other (ποιητής, 1.14 Martin) can scan, and would set up a suggestive analogy between the work of the deity and the poet, which in my view returns at the end of this proem.Footnote ²⁶ One possible reconstruction is:

There follows the first of two lists that balance each other and create a clear symmetry in the proem.

1. (i) quantaue cumoccidentali partibus constituta,

2. (ii) aut quanta a finibus reuoluta per singulos dies,

3. (iii) quantaue inlustrantur,

4. (iv) et quorum nobilium totidemque creator Iouis Saturnus Marius puer a primordio ut fuerat cultor,

5. (v) quantaue diuitia [diuina B] tempestas ac serenitas sacra paret.

Both lists appear in Latin with anaphora of quanta, ‘as many (things) as …’. Compare the brief example in the Homeric Hymn to Mother Earth (30.2–4):Footnote ²⁷

Lists with anaphora of this pronoun are not especially common in Greek proems, making the double appearance here more striking. But anaphoric lists with other pronouns are among the most common structural features of Greek proemic (and other) hymns.Footnote ²⁸ In our case, the list appears to expand on various parts of the universe, mentioned in the preceding phrase.

Element (i) refers to the question of which constellations dip below the horizon as the sun enters each zodiac sign. This is a major concern in the Phaenomena (559–732) and in the first ancient introduction to Anonymus II, where the calques cumoccidentalis and cumorientalis occur four times for ‘simultaneous settings/risings’.Footnote ²⁹ The focus on celestial phenomena of chronological significance follows smoothly from the preceding phrase, where the ‘guardian of the universe’ was also the ‘founder of the ages’. The glossator's usage of many of the Latin words here points to likely Greek equivalents.Footnote ³⁰ I suggest:

For μέρη used alongside συγκαταδύομαι to refer to ‘parts’ of constellations, see 169.5–6 Martin. μοῖραι is used prominently for ‘zodiac signs’ in the relevant section of the Phaenomena (560, 581);Footnote ³¹ the pair of similar words could explain why the gloss ended up only with partibus.

Where the settings of element (i) mark moments on an annual scale, element (ii) refers to the daily cycles of the sun and fixed stars relative to the horizon. singuli < ἕκαστος or ἑκάτερος x17/18, the latter being inappropriate here, while dies < ἦμαρ/ἡμέρ- x9/11; a finibus glosses ἐκ περάτης at Phaen. 821 in a similar context. I therefore suggest:

I postpone discussion of elements (iii)–(iv) until after the contrast of foul weather and fair weather (tempestas … serenitas) in element (v). Again, several words provide pointers to the Greek: tempestas < χειμ- (x17/20), ac/atque < καί (x8/8), seren- < εὐδι- (x5/6) and pareo ‘appear’ < φα(ε)ίνω (x6/6). sacer glosses ἱερός (x5), except at 165.106 Maass, where εὐδιεινὴν ἠέρος κατάστασιν (‘the bright state of the sky’) became serenitatem sacrae disciplinae. Here too, phonetic confusion of ἠέρ- and ἱερ- reveals the noun for εὔδιος. The ‘storm/winter’ and the ‘fair weather’ were originally the objects of a transitive verb, whose implicit subjects were thus the constellations that herald seasonal weather. Finally, the majority reading diuitia (‘rich things’) seems wrong, while MS B's correction diuina is plausible given parallels such as Oppian, Hal. 3.47 χεῖμα Διός (‘Zeus's winter’). Hence I reconstruct:

Element (iii) seems to refer to sunlit regions such as the surface of the earth, the sun having just been implied in element (ii). Element (iv) is more obscure. Maass supposed that there was a list of planets, in which Jupiter and Saturn are still visible, while Mercury might lie behind Marius (read Mercurius or Maeadis?) puer. However, it is difficult to fit in Mars and Venus. A more likely conjunction of Saturn and some ‘notables’ (nobilium), and one connected to the security of the cosmos (cf. custos mundi above), is the idea of Kronos overseeing Tartarus and its divine and human occupants. This conception has its roots in epic tradition (Il. 14.274; Hes. Theog. 851), which sometimes emphasized the sunless nature of Tartarus (Il. 8.479–81), so that there is an effective contrast with element (iii). The reference would engage with the ancient critical tradition of discussing how Aratus’ cosmos relates to those of his epic predecessors. Hesiod's positioning of Tartarus is compared in another preface preserved in a branch of the Aratean scholia (23, 540 Martin). Indeed, the scholia record that some scholars understood the ‘earlier generation’ invoked in Phaen. 16 as the Titans. On this reading, Marius needs to be emended into a reference to one of Kronos’ parents, Ouranos and Gaia: Matris, Mother Earth, is the obvious solution. Otherwise, we have few clues about the Greek phrasing here, other than that a primordio occurs in glosses on Phaen. 388 ἀπὸ προτέρων and 735 πρώτη. One might hesitantly propose something like:

If this is approximately right, the proem chose to allude to the deadest part of the Hesiodic cosmos, overlaying it with new mythography if Kronos lived there literally ‘from the first’ rather than as a result of Hesiod's Succession Myth.

We return to firmer ground with the following line, which is cited in On Exegesis:

The ‘cycling years’ make a connection to the preceding phrase about the constellations that bring seasonal weather, but the focus on a seventy-year period is a new thought: the asyndeton marks a transition rather than an explanation. Moreover, two testimonia (On Exegesis, Anonymus II.3) refer to the line to discredit the proem to Anclides, and both relate it to the subsequent words. On Exegesis says that the seventy-year period refers to the time in which the sun returns to its starting-point in the sky, and complains that this is incompatible with Aratus’ mention of the Metonic cycle (Phaen. 753). This aligned 19 solar cycles with 235 lunar ones, and hence specified the need to intercalate seven months into the civil calendar across each such period. Meanwhile, Anonymus II.3 seems to complain that the proem contains the nonsensical claim that the poet received instructions about his topic seventy years previously:

The two objections, while separate, are compatible. The claim in On Exegesis relates to the next words of the Latin gloss:

locupleto, ‘I enrich’, seems out of place, but locus and ple- produce the sense that the testimonium found: ‘all of the sun's locations’ + ‘filled’. Then follows:

In light of the testimony of Anonymus II.3, the sequence quando … memoriam karissimi filii refers to the daughters of Memory, the Muses, telling the poet-narrator long since to perform a song of honour. filii (‘sons’) suggests that the Greek had a gender-neutral word for ‘child’. There follows an obvious variant of the epic formula μακάρεσσι θεοῖσ’ οἳ Ὄλυμπον ἔχουσιν, ‘the blessed gods who occupy Olympus’.Footnote ³⁵ Beforehand, the fact that pro and pro eo quod occur thirteen times in glosses on διά or διό (‘on account of’) suggests that the Muses asked the poet to honour Δία, Zeus, above the other gods.Footnote ³⁶ Several other regular correspondences between Latin and Greek point to a reconstruction such as the following:Footnote ³⁷

I reserve discussion of the sense here until my concluding paragraphs.

The next words are as follows:

The first four words here appear to assert that ‘the inhabitants/worshippers of the sky have not yet died’, but such a thought went without saying. Rather, like many a student, the glossator expected a simpler word order and allowed himself to overlook the endings. The person qui signa tribuit, ‘who attributed signs …’, was the subject of ‘has not yet died’, while the inhabitants of the sky, who have just been contrasted with Zeus, were the ones to whom signs were wrongly attributed. nondum < οὐ, οὔπω or μήπω (x6/6), pereo represents ἀπόλλυμαι (once correctly, and Phaen. 712 -α πέλοιτο becomes pereunt by confusion), caelum < οὐραν- (x24/26), sign- normally < σημ- (x54/93 + 6 instances of confusion) or ζωιδι- (x21), pater < πατήρ (x10/10), omnis < (ἁ)πᾶς (x109/113).Footnote ³⁸ Hence for example:

The implication that it was misguided to hold some quite standard opinions, such as that Apollo had a role in augury, constitutes a sharpening of the position in the body of the Phaenomena, which gives primacy to Zeus (for example 743, 769–71), but does admit isolated references to ‘the gods’ giving signs (732), to an anthropomorphic Night doing so (408–10), and to the ‘stars of Poseidon’ (756).Footnote ³⁹

Here we reach the second list of ‘all that’ belongs to a certain category, in this case Zeus's ‘signs and portents’:

1. (i) et quanta in mare seu in terra uel quanta circa ignem significantur

2. (ii) aut quanta quadrupedibus et quanta uolucribus natant hinc atque inde bruta animalia monstruosa hieme uel aestate

3. (iii) sacrae conuentionis aut quaecumque tonitrua et fulgura adferentes spiritum repleta

The categories discernible here—signs at sea, on land and around flames; signs from animals and birds; signs from thunder and lightning—are a reasonably complete précis of the second half of the Phaenomena (from line 733). This acquired its own title, the Diosem(e)iai, a word which encapsulates our proem's insistence on the primacy of Zeus in sending omens in the form of phenomena in the natural world.Footnote ⁴⁰ In element (i), the correlations of terra to γῆ/γαῖα (x50/58, plus at least three confusions), circa to περί (x8/9), ignis to πῦρ (x4/4), and significo to σημαίνω (x7) suggest an original such as:

Element (ii) also has several words suggestive of the Greek source: quadrupes < τετράπους (x3/4, the other being τετρασκελής); hinc atque inde glosses Phaen. 855 ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα; brutus transliterates βροτός (x3/3); animal < ζῶιον or ζώιδιον (x4/4), hiem- < χειμ- (x30/36, plus 1 confusion), aest- ‘summer heat’ < θέρος (x13/16, plus 1 confusion). However, these lines are harder to reconstruct because of some likely misprision. quanta uolucribus natant (‘all the things that swim by means of birds’) must contain an omission, for example ‘all the things [sc. signalled] by birds <if they/when they/which> swim …’. And in fact, though significant birds in Aratus are often washing themselves, the position of animalia monstruosa suggests a summary of what precedes including quadrupeds, which do not go swimming in the Diosemeiai. I infer a confusion of νέομαι ‘go’ and νέω ‘swim’. This reasoning prompts the following reconstruction:

The suggestive words in element (iii) are sacer < ἱερός and repleo < πλη- (see above), tonitrua < βρονταί in Phaen. 924, spir- < πνευ-/πνο- (x8/8). The astronomical term behind conuentio is σύνοδος, ‘alignment of sun and moon’, the juncture between two synodic months; the sense occurs frequently in the scholia and in chapter 5 of the Theophrastean On Signs, which is the closest comparandum for the Diosemeiai.Footnote ⁴² This period was indeed ‘sacred’: for example, new-month festivals and worship of Hermes, Hecate and Aphrodite were clustered there. Hence I propose:

The end of the proem's second list brings us to its concluding lines:

We move from the sublunary signs of what precedes to the heights of the upper sky and to Zeus.Footnote ⁴⁴ The glossator uses fieri twenty-three times with a good degree of accuracy, normally to represent an infinitive: I infer that a verb governing indirect discourse has dropped out at the start. After the preceding polemic against the traditional view that various gods send portents, that verb must have a form like ‘But I declare/think’. For example:

As at the start and centre of the proem, the narrator has made an overt appearance. Anclides resurfaces too:

Hymnic proems also often end with the contrast of performer and addressee. Here disponam (‘I will arrange’) suggests διατίθημι and a further return to a feature I suggested for conditor in line—namely, a parallelism between the poet's work and that of the deity being discussed, whom we now know to be Zeus bestowing a fine organization on the cosmos, to be matched by Aratus’ fine organization of his discussion.Footnote ⁴⁵ fabula glosses μῦθος in its other occurrence (4.5 Martin). The promise to lay out the topic is the result of a belief in Zeus's power, so quod should represent ‘therefore’ rather than ‘because’ or ‘which’, perhaps pointing to an ambiguous Greek word. Then per, in the context of praising Zeus, may well reflect the same confusion of διά with Δία which I posited above in pro eo. The resulting duplication of δια in the line, once as Δία and once in διαθήσω, far from being inelegant, corresponds to similar etymological play found repeatedly in the scholia to Phaen. 1–18, emphasizing both how Zeus pervades the cosmos and how Aratus’ task relates to Zeus.Footnote ⁴⁶ In the final line, the stem sapient- appears one other time, in a gloss on Phaen. 473 φρένας. Since cum glosses μετά six times, cum sapientia represents the formula μετὰ φρεσί(ν). intellego occurs twice, both times for νοέω. All this suggests something like the following:

As noted at the outset, the primary aim of this discussion has not been to reconstruct the wording of this Greek proem from the Latin gloss. Many parts of the twenty-four lines in my reconstruction are uncertain. Instead, the process of reconstruction was the essential means to test and, I hope, render plausible the hypothesis that the Latin here was a reasonably complete and sequential gloss on the original, subject to errors which are themselves identifiable by means of parallels within Anonymus II; and, if that hypothesis is plausible, the means to extract enough of the sequence of thought to interpret the proem's effect.

An exercise of this type is insufficient to evaluate the stylistic judgement in On Exegesis that this proem exhibited κακοζηλία, ‘affectation, bad taste’, which was incompatible with the rest of the Phaenomena.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, some artistry is visible on the level of structure. The proem starts and ends with the narrator and Anclides, while its centre features the narrator with the Muses and an opponent; the middle of each half is largely composed of balancing lists with anaphoric ὅσ(σ)α.

The didactic voice of the Phaenomena is reshaped. The poem becomes a pious xenia gift (ξείνων ἱερὸν θάλος), more pleasing to Zeus Xenios than a commission by Antigonus Gonatas, as in the standard biographical account.Footnote ⁴⁹ As in Nicander, the proem begins with a named addressee, rather than with Zeus, who in Works and Days had taken pride of place before the introduction of Perses.Footnote ⁵⁰ Anclides is probably youthful (a common connotation of θάλος, ‘scion’), and is invited to a companionable (σύν μοι) journey, despite the apparent age gap to a narrator who has been mulling the topic over for seventy years after receiving instruction from the Muses. Ancient readers presumably imagined a boyhood poetic initiation to account for this. Besides the obvious contrast with Hesiod (Theog. 22–34), whom the Muses advised to sing about all the gods, it is tempting to compare Callim. Aet. fr. 1.6 Harder τῶν δ’ ἐτέων ἡ δεκὰς οὐκ ὀλίγη, ‘the decade of my years is no small one’, for a proemic reference (possibly, indeed, in a revised proem) to the poet's age, followed by recollection of his initiation into poetry as a schoolboy (fr. 1.21–8). But in our proem different resonances are available from those in the Aetia. It relates the tradition of a seventy-year life-cycle (Sol. fr. 27 IEG ², etc.) to Callippus’ attempt to refine the cycle of Meton and Euctemon by quadrupling its length into a correspondence of 76 solar years with 940 lunar months. The ageing poet thereby gains an affinity for his topic embedded in the chronology of his life, but also embraces the more technical and cutting-edge alternative to the Metonic system.Footnote ⁵¹ The poet's lifetime and the Callippic cycle are just two of many levels of time thematized in this proem, from Zeus's founding of time itself, through coincidences measured by the zodiac, the daily cycle, the mythological generations behind Zeus, seasonal change and the synodic months.

The representation of an older and wiser narrator may be an early response to the ancient topos of questioning how much astronomy Aratus knew.Footnote ⁵² The naming of a primary narratee contributes to this, as we become in some sense overhearers of Aratus’ special knowledge.Footnote ⁵³ The narrator will lay things out with a skill worthy of Zeus, and Anclides will as a result ‘touch’ the sky briefly (ψαύσειας in line 2) and gain understanding (intelleges at the end). This is far from the Hipparchan Aratus, after whom one has to clean up if the reader is to learn.Footnote ⁵⁴ The image of narratorial wisdom also redirects the broadly Stoic primacy of Zeus in Phaen. 1–18.Footnote ⁵⁵ Instead of such formulations as ‘All the streets are full of Zeus’ (2), with their emphasis on humanity sharing access to Zeus as a ubiquitous and beneficent presence, the alternative proem offers a blunter, more polemical tone where the narrator's knowledge is contrasted with the errors of others. Specifically, the Muses have declared privately that other gods, including themselves, are less worthy; people who think that all sorts of deities are involved in sublunary signs are wrong (they are ‘signs of the father’, 14), and anyway fail to focus on the crucial importance of heavenly signs, which come from Zeus. The proem in fact contains an implicit interpretation of the relative importance of the different parts of the Phaenomena: though it has more to say about the Diosemeiai than much of the Aratean tradition, that part is relegated to a secondary status already by the reference to the ‘path of heaven’ in line 2, while the importance of the section on simultaneous settings is acknowledged in line 4.

What emerges from this analysis, I submit, is a coherent train of thought, into which the testimonia about the proem fit naturally. It betrays not only poetic artistry from the composer but also a confidence to create a new poetic programme whose differences from the hymn to Zeus touch on many of the central points of both ancient and current interpretation of Aratus’ didacticism—what sort of knowledge he has, what sort of cosmos he describes, how he compares to Hesiod, and our level of insight as learners and addressees.