Manilius: Poetry & Science after Vergil
by Mary Pendergraft, Wake Forest University
Immediately preceding this passage, Vergil had surveyed the topics about which he would like to sing, a list that resembles the song of the bard Iopas in Aeneid I.
a. Georgics 2. 476-82
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,
quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore,
accipiant caelique vias et sidera monstrent,
defectus solis varios lunaeque labores;
unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant,
quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles
hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
For my own part, my chiefest prayer would be—
May the sweet Muses, whose acolyte I am,
Smitten with boundless love, accept my service,
Teach me to know the paths of the stars in heaven,
The eclipses of the sun and the moon's travails,
The cause of earthquakes, what it is that forces
Deep seas to swell and burst their barriers
And then sink back again, why winter suns
hasten so fast to plunge themselves in the ocean
or what it is that slows the lingering nights.--
tr. L. P. Wilkinson
b. Aeneid 1.740-76
Cithara crinitus Iopas
personat aurata, docuit quem maximus Atlas.
Hic canit errantem lunam solisque labores;
unde hominum genus et pecudes; unde imber et ignes;
Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones;
quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles
hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Long-haired Iopas,
whom mighty Atlas once had taught, lifts up
his golden lyre, sounding through the hall.
He sings the wandering moon; the labors of
the sun; the origins of men and beasts,
of water and of fire; and of Arcturus,
the stormy Hyades, and the twin Bears;
and why the winter suns so rush to plunge
in Ocean; what holds back the lingering nights.
tr. A. Mandelbaum
These are the kinds of topics Lucretius has tackled, particularly in Bk 5, where he narrates the growth of the world from individual atoms.
But Manilius too answers these questions, from a perspective quite different from Lucretius', and he unambiguously rejects the Epicurean system. In the second half of his first book, for example, Manilius has drawn his reader's attention the regularity of the patterns of the stars, and then continues with selection the following passage:
Astronomica 1.483-500
Ac mihi tam praesens ratio non ulla videtur,
qua pateat mundum divino numine verti
atque ipsum esse deum, nec forte coisse magistra,
ut voluit credi, qui primus moenia mundi
seminibus struxit minimis inque illa resolvit;
e quibus et maria et terras et sidera caeli
aetheraque immensis fabricantem finibus orbes
solventemque alios constare, et cuncta reverti
in sua principia et rerum mature figuras.
quis credat tantas operum sine numine moles
ex minimis caecoque creatum foedere mundum?
si fors ista dedi nobis, fors ipsa gubernet.
at cur dispositis vicibus consurgere signa
et velut imperio praescriptos reddere cursus
cernimus ac nullis properantibus ulla relinqui?
cur eadem aestivas exornant sidera noctes
semper et hibernas eadem, certamque figuram
quisque dies reddit mundo certamque relinquit?
For my part I find no argument so compelling as this to show that the universe moves in obedience to a divine power and is indeed the manifestation of God, and did not come together at the dictation of chance. Yet this is what he would have us believe who first built the walls of the heavens from minute atoms and into these resolved them again; he held that from these atoms are formed the seas, the lands, and the stars in the sky, and the air by which in its vast space worlds are created and dissolved; and that all matter returns to its first origins and changes the shapes of things. Who could believe that such massive structures have been created from tiny atoms with out the operation of a divine will, and that the universe is the creature of a blind compact? If chance gave such a world to us, chance itself would govern it. Then why do we see the stars arise in regular succession and duly perform as a the word of command their appointed courses, none hurrying ahead, none left behind? Why are the summer nights and the nights of winter ever made beautiful with the selfsame stars? Why does each day of the year bring back to the sky a fixed pattern and a fixed pattern leave at its departure?
tr. G. P. Goold
The argument that appears in 494-500, that an intelligent divinity must be responsible for the regularity of the movements of the heavenly bodies, is a familiar one in Stoic contexts; it's very similar to the one Cicero has his Stoic representative, Balbus, employ in De Natura Deorum (2. 87-88). Manilius also explicitly rejects the doctrines of Epicurus at vv. 485 ff: "The world did not come together at the bidding of chance, as he wanted us to believe, who first constructed the ramparts of the world from tiny seeds and dissolved them into those seeds again." Furthermore, Manilius makes this challenge using the language of the great Epicurean poet, Lucretius. For instance, the phrase moenia mundi appears in the selection from De Rerum Natura we have just read above, and at least ten more times. For the atoms, M. uses Lucretius' terms, semina and principia; the verb solveo also for Lucretius refers to the process by which the things of the visible world return to their component atoms, and their combination is often called a foedus, although caeco “blind,” that is, “random,” here is Manilius' evaluation: in Lucretius that epithet more frequently indicates "unseen."
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