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Manilivs, Avgvstvs, Tiberivs, Capricornvs, And Libra.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. E. Housman
A. E. Housman
Affiliation:
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
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Extract

‘The date of the poem has been canvassed with merciless prolixity for the last four-and-twenty years, but the pertinent facts are few.’ So I wrote in 1903 on p. lxix of my edition of the first book of Manilius; and in two octavo pages and a half I collected all those facts, said all that I could find to say on both sides of the questions in dispute, and drew the conclusion that books I and II were written under Augustus and book IV under Tiberius. Ten years have passed, and the prolixity has continued, but the prolix have added no pertinent fact to those which I collected: some of them have even subtracted one, by suppressing the numismatic evidence, which I duly recorded, that Tiberius had Libra for his star.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1913 , pp. 109 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1913

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References

page 104 note 1 Readers of Horace may like to know that Mr Bouche-Leclercq has discovered yet another piece of evidence in carm. I 12 50: astr. Gr.p. 374 ‘Cf. le mot d′Horace: OrU Saturno w etant la maison de h’

page 110 note 1 The anecdote in Suet. Aug. 94 5, ‘quo natus est die, cum de Catilinae coniuratione ageretur in curia et Octauius ob uxoris puerperium serius affuisset, nota ac uulgata res est P. Nigidium comperta morae causa, ut horam quoque partus geniacceperit, affirmasse dominum terrarum orbi natum,’ which answers well in other respects to the words of Manilius, has something wrong with it; for the reference to Catiline′s conspiracy, vague though it is, will not square with the month of September. Virgil′s suggestion in georg. I 32–5 that Augustus may choose Libra for his seat in heaven, though it possibly implies a link between the man and the sign, can easily be explained without assuming any.

page 110 note 2 Mr Smyly on p. 151 says that I made one of these attempts: ‘Mr Housman and the Germans try to escape from this difficulty by asserting that Libra was the Sign of his birth, and Capricorn that of his conception.’ I neither asserted this nor tried in any way to escape from the difficulty: I said, like Mr Smyly himself, that this hypothesis was possible, and I objected, like him, that it was ineffectual.

page 110 note 3 Mr Smyly on pp. 152–6 goes further, and suggests that for Nigidius, who cast Augustus nativity on the day of his birth, and even for Manilius, the horoscope was not, as it is for later astrologers, the determining factor in the geniture. Suetonius however, in telling the story about Nigidius, implies the contrary; for he says that Nigidius broke out into his prophecy upon hearing the hour of the infant′s birth. His prophecy therefore was founded on some brief and passing condition of the heavens, like the rising of the horoscope, not on a condition of more than two days duration, like the Moon′s sojourn in a sign. As to Manilius himself, it is true, as Mr Smyly says, that he nowhere distinctly affirms the predominance of the horoscope in nativities, But he does distinctly imply it, and especially in the passage which Mr Smyly cites on p. 154 to prove the contrary. In IV 122–291 Manilius has described the influence of the twelve signs on the characters of men, without saying when or where they exert it; then in 292–408 he explains how each sign is divided into three decans; and then in 409–501 he runs through the thirty paries or degrees of each sign, distinguishing the bad from the good. Now, in 502 sqq., he begins to speak of something else: nee te perceptis signorum cura relinquat partibus; in tempus quaedam mutantur et ortu accipiunt proprias uires ultraque remittunt. Mr Smyly, like Fayus and all other editors whose opinion is discoverable, like Mr Bouche whose opinion is discoverable, like Mr Bouche Leclercq astr. Gr. p. 385, and like the author of the titles in the archetype, who headed this parathe titles in the archetype, who headed this paragraph with ‘orientia signa quid efficiant.’ understands quaedam to mean quaedam signa; and thence he derives an argument which would be just and cogent if this opinion were true, but which falls to the ground if it is false. And false it is. quaedam signa will not make sense, for Manilius in 505–584 proceeds to speak not of quaedam but of omnia signa. Moreover the whole paragraph senwill then be out of place, and ought to have followed upon 122–291. It is certain and should be evident that quaedam means quaedam paries After describing in 409–501 the permanent quality of the degrees in each sign, Manilius now describes changes which some of those degrees undergo as they surmount the eastern horizon. The degrees in question are those at the begin ning of Aries Taurus Leo Virgo Libra Aquarius and Pisces, the end of Scorpius and Capricorn and the middle of Gemini Cancer and Sagittarius Now the powers which they wield when rising are in some instances tremendous; they beget an Augus or a Hannibal. This could not be. unless the horoscope, the region of the eastern horizon, possessed predominance. The whole of book V points the same way. There are several errors of less moment in this part of Mr Smyly′s paper. His interpretation of iv 144 has nothing in its favour: Manilius tens us that Taurus creates farmers, and he remarks, very aptly indeed, that in spring-time when the sun with Taurus rides, a farmer has plenty to do. Mr Smyly says of verses 162–164 that unless they mean what he thinks they ‘are purely ornamental and misleading’: they a purely ornamental, but Mr Smyly seems to be the first whom they have misled; and his sentence about fulgens confuses that word with ardens or feruens and confuses Cancer with the What he says of mores on p. 156 is contradicted by Manilius at II 831, V 127, 236, 349.

page 110 note 1 Mr Smyly interprets ix kal. Oct. as Sept 22nd: it is more commonly identified with Sept. 23rd.

page 112 note 1 imperium is nominative and the construction is ‘condita Roma et conditum orbis imperium’: see Flor. II 34 ‘ an quia condidisset imperium Romulus uocaretur’ and Sen. de bin. III 37 ‘conditores Romani imperii.’

page 114 note 1 His report of the reading of L in this verse contains two errors, though Mr Bechert had already given it correctly.