In Book 1.456–68 of the Astronomica Manilius concludes his catalogue of the constellations with a natural-philosophical explanation of why the figures are not depicted in full detail by individual stars.Footnote 1
464 distinguere Vat. Urb. Lat. 667 (ca. 1470) disiungere codd.Footnote 3
The reason, as the poet explains, for only a partial representation of the figures is that the heat generated by completely delineated constellations, that is, figures whose every physical feature was represented by stars, would have been so intense that it would have caused a cosmic conflagration (461–2). This explanation meets the possible objection that divine ratio could not have made a providential arrangement of stars, which humans then devised as constellations, because that providential arrangement actually resulted in imperfect constructions made out of the imaginative associations of spatially proximate stars into figures that took on the identity of the names given to them. Manilius responds to this view by pointing out that if natura, another name for the divine ratio, had produced figures fully represented in all their parts by stars, then the mass of stars would have created such intense heat that the heavens would have suffered combustive ruin. Nature's solution in response to this potential astral catastrophe is a rational one: it marked out the various shapes by representing them only partially with specific stars, an elegant economy of form that prevented disaster. Thus, what might at first be viewed as nature's failure to produce a rational arrangement of the stars for the purpose of constructing fully delineated figures is in fact a proof of nature's ratio and providentia in avoiding a cosmic conflagration.Footnote 5
In support of this explanation of nature's rational and purposeful plan in the arrangement of the stars, Manilius provides details of its method in 463–5: nature was economical in its placement of stars in the heavens and was content to mark off shapes (formas) and to indicate constellations (sidera) by means of specific stars (stellis certis), a phrase which I understand with distinguere as well as ostendere.Footnote 6 Nature clearly understood the basic principle of dot-to-dot construction and, in this case, its tremendous advantage for the cosmos. My repunctuation of line 463, with a comma after subduxit rather than after flammis in the print tradition, is a response to two problems of interpretation. First, Bentley asked the troublesome question about nature's method, ‘Cui, amabo, perpercit?’ and answered by placing a comma after subduxit and conjecturing sibimet for flammis, a proposal which has gained no acceptance.Footnote 7 The unfavourable reception of his conjecture, however, does not provide an answer to his question. And second, the indefinite relative clause, quidquid subduxit flammis ‘whatever it removed from the fires’, may suggest, on a literal level at any rate, that natura initially made a mistake in the construction of the firmament by creating too many stars and then corrected the error by removing some. But providential nature does not make mistakes. Both of these problems can be solved by repunctuating the line, as Bentley did, but without resorting to conjecture. The simplest answer to Bentley's question is that flammis is the object of pepercit; nature's guiding principle was to be thrifty with the stars. With the indefinite relative clause quidquid subduxit ‘whatever it withdrew from view’,Footnote 8 that is, the parts of the constellation figures not delineated by stars, the poet concedes that considerable portions of the figures are not represented in the heavens, but at the same time he affirms the correctness of nature's method with the words flammis pepercit ‘it was thrifty with the fires’, because it avoided a cosmic conflagration; better to mark out figures by means of specific stars than to incinerate the cosmos with overheated constellations fully formed. Nature, in Manilius’ view, was not concerned with what was missing in the figures (quidquid subduxit), but rather with maintaining the necessary economy of stars, the very point which flammis pepercit emphasizes.Footnote 9
Manilius’ description of Orion (1.387–393), uncharacteristically detailed in comparison to his treatment of the other constellations in the catalogue, provides a good illustration of the foregoing discussion about nature's thrift in populating the heavens with stars and its method of disposition:
Orion is a large and bright constellation in the night sky, but the figure, in all its impressive anatomical detail, is the product of human imagination, which has superimposed on a handful of stars an order and an arrangement that delineates the mighty hunter. As evidence of natura's economical disposition of the stars, Manilius illustrates the very process by which, as he later explains in 1.463–5, it marked out recognizable forms and indicated constellations by specific stars (stellis certis). In this instance a single star marks (signant) each of the shoulders; the head is marked (signatur) by three stars; and the sword is traced (ducitur) by three stars. According to this description the individual stars function as signa, distinct marks, in a pattern providentially arranged by nature, which the human observer constructs as the figure of Orion. In the night sky there are no arms, no legs, no shoulders, no sword, and no head, just stars that function as signa, as emphasized by the poet's repetition of the verb signare, which are seen and interpreted by the observer who connects the dots, so to speak, and creates the figure with its various parts.
It must be understood, moreover, that after describing nature's method and purpose in arraying the firmament with stars, Manilius then adds, in lines 466–8, the human phase in the formation of the constellation figures. Although he does not specifically mention a human agent in the delineation of the figures, he clearly treats the activity of drawing figures in the night sky to make constellations as a human one. Natura has no need of connecting stellar dots or of observing constellations. Here the poet presents a collaborative effort between natura and humans that is paradigmatic for the whole poem: natura put signa in the heavens; it is up to humans to use their wits to recognize them and understand their meaning.
In this otherwise clear account of how nature disposed the stars in the sky, the sentence in 446–7 ignibus ignes | respondent is not consistent with its parsimonious method of distribution. To say that stars correspond to stars suggests some form of symmetrical arrangement in which there is a correspondence of stars representing limbs for human or animal forms, for example, stars representing Andromeda's two legs and two arms or the forelegs of Pegasus; and in the case of inanimate objects, their various components, for example, the balance beam of Libra or the sides of the triangle Deltoton; all of these parts must be supplied by the imagination. One look in the night sky or at a constellation atlas refutes that notion; there is no symmetrical arrangement of the stars in the figures; symmetry, such as it is, is an effect of the selection and deliberate arrangement of them in a constellation by the observer. If, as an alternative, the phrase ignibus ignes | respondent is interpreted to mean something like ‘the fires are linked to fires’, that statement is redundant and imprecise after linea designat species, which means that the fires are connected in an outline, and adds nothing to the understanding of how nature marked out and indicated the forms of the constellations with specific stars.
A.E. Housman confessed that he did not understand ignibus ignes | respondent and commented that the statement does not correspond to what is observed.Footnote 11 In response scholars have made various proposals. In his review of Housman's first edition Garrod conjectured artubus for ignibus, but this is too restrictive for the great variety of missing parts in the constellation figures, human, animal, and inanimate, and too imprecise since stars correspond only to selected parts, as Manilius’ description of Orion makes clear.Footnote 12 D.R. Shackleton Bailey, reinterpreting the first syllable of respondent as the reflexive pronoun se, proposed ignibus ignes | se spondent, which he translates ‘fires pledge themselves by fires’ and understands to mean that the visible stars act as guarantors for imagining the non-existent stars in the figure, a kind of stellar extrapolation, metaphorically expressed as a guarantee, from the seen to the unseen in order to complete all the components of the constellation.Footnote 13 Manilius, however, is explaining how the figure is fashioned out of visible stars (stellis certis); the outline of the figure is traced through the stars that nature put in place in the heavens; non-existent stars are not part of the process of delineation. Taking a more aggressive approach, A.Y. Campbell (n. 4) rewrote the text: et singula signis. He translates, with explanatory comment: ‘and particular parts, i.e., groups of stars, do correspond (cf. V. Aen. 1.585) to the pictures (figures, objects represented)’. Campbell based his conjecture on two assumptions: first, that ignibus ignes was a scribal error precipitated by words having to do with fire in in 459–63 (though it should be noted that ignis itself does not occur in those lines); and second, that in view of the five neuter plurals in 467–68 (media extremis, ultima summis, omnia), which he understands to refer to parts of the constellations, a neuter plural, singula, was needed in 466 to indicate groups of stars. But the neuter plurals media extremis and ultima summis do not provide a parallel for singula in the sense of ‘groups of stars’ because, as creduntur shows, they refer to the surface areas, not the parts, of the constellations that are bounded by the outline and have to be filled in by the imagination. Moreover, it is highly doubtful that singula in 466 can mean ‘groups of stars’ since there is nothing in its immediate context to support that meaning; the focus of attention is the disposition of individual stars and their delineation as figures. Clearly there has been a feeling on the part of critics that something is not right in the sentence ignibus ignes | respondent, though they fail to identify the problem, namely its inconsistency with the poet's explanation of nature's method in its disposition of the stars, as was discussed above; and, consequently, the proposed solutions are not persuasive.Footnote 14
In addition to the problem of inconsistency, two useful observations can be made. First, the conjunction atque interrupts what is otherwise an asyndetic series: linea designat … media … creduntur … satis est. Second, there is a suggestive paronomasia in linea designat species atque ignibus ignes, i.e. a fire (star) is a mark or sign in the heavens for the delineation of a constellation figure and the word ‘fire’ is graphically a sign of its sign-function as a signum because its stem ign- is embedded in s ignum; an ignis is by nature a signum; by its light it makes itself conspicuous and, in the case of a constellation, it marks a physical feature of the figure and makes it conspicuous, e.g., the star in each of Orion's shoulders; fire and sign are inseparable and thus further evidence of nature's provident reason on both the linguistic and cosmic levels. Any proposal to change the transmitted text should not, in my view, eliminate this paronomasia. Working on the hypothesis of an asyndetic series and a paronomasia of ignis and signum that is meaningful in its context by emphasizing the function of stars as signs that mark out (distinguere) and indicate (ostendere) the figures, I want to propose the following text:
Here the neuter plural insignia means the features of a constellation which are indicated by individual stars and thus made recognizable to the observer.Footnote 15 As a luminous celestial body in the night sky, a star is a conspicuous object and, as such, in the formation of a constellation figure, it corresponds to, and becomes identified with, a distinguishing feature (insigne) of the figure, for example, head, shoulder, foot, belt, tail, horn, claws. This identification of individual stars with distinguishing features became so complete that in the description of the constellations, following the tradition established by the preeminence of Aratus’ Phaenomena, it was more often the distinguishing features, rather than the stars that correspond to them, that are the essential elements in sketching the figure. To speak of the horns of Taurus or the head of Equus, both of which are highly imaginative shapes largely devoid of stars, is to create a recognizable outline out of a few stars which are thought to suggest those features.
The rationale of nature's thrift in the disposition of the stars is now perfectly clear; the certae stellae by which nature marked out and indicated the figures correspond to the distinctive features (insignia) of the figures, a method which made possible the delineation of the figures without overpopulating the heavens with stars and causing a cosmic conflagration. It is standard procedure in the description of the constellations to identify their distinctive features (insignia) by the stars that represent them. Again, Manilius’ description of Orion shows the intimate relationship between the stars (ignes) and the distinctive features (insignia) of the constellation. The stars by which Orion is recognized are said to mark (signant 390, signatur 393), and thus make distinct and recognizable, the features of the constellation, one star for each shoulder and three for his head; in the case of the three stars that indicate the sword, a different verb is used, ducitur in the sense of ‘trace’, which, nonetheless, indicates that the stars function as signs for the shape of the sword. To cite another example, seven stars mark off (signant) the constellation Helice (Ursa Major, 1.297).
What triggered the substitution of ignibus for insignibus is obvious. In the context of a possible celestial conflagration, an abundance of words for fire (incendia 461, ardebunt 462, flammis 463, ignes 466) and the common attracting influence of the last word in the line on the one immediately preceding, especially when the preceding word contains a syllable or syllables shared with the word that follows, are factors that easily would have ignited the chain reaction that resulted in the substitution of ignibus for insignibus. An additional factor that may have contributed to the change of insignibus to ignibus is the occurrence of ignibus ignes as a hexameter line-ending in Manilius and other poets.Footnote 16 After the substitution took place atque was added to repair the meter, a simple enough addition. The reading insignibus also preserves the asyndeton in 466–8.
With the reading insignibus there results an even more remarkable paronomasia, one which provides additional proof of nature's foresight and reveals the human capacity for understanding celestial signification: linea designat species, insignibus ignes; the fire of celestial light and the sign-function of that fire are made one because the syllable ign- is embedded in designat and insignibus, and, most importantly, in the word for constellation/sign, signum.Footnote 17 As a res manifesta of nature's foresight and the rational order of the world, which is there to be decoded by human intelligence, a celestial ignis indicates an insigne which forms part of a signum, a sequence of meanings, which can be read on the semantic, astronomical and astrological levels, as well as a graphic signum on the writing surface: de signat – ignes – insignia – signum form their own constellation of meanings.