Astronomicon

[Why] the lands would burn and the solid orb of the earth would tremble;
Why the rains fall and what causes the winds to move—
[The human mind] saw through these things, and for our souls, solved the miracles of the world Manilius argues that scientific understanding removes the terrifying "miracle" or mystery of natural phenomena, replacing fear with knowledge..
It snatched the lightning bolt and the power of thundering from Jove original: "iovi." Jupiter, the king of the gods. This line suggests that by understanding the physical causes of lightning, humans no longer had to fear it as a weapon of a fickle god.,
And assigned the sound to the winds and the fire to the clouds.
After [the mind] traced these individual things to their own proper causes,
It aimed to know the massive structure of the universe from on high
And intended to encompass the whole of heaven within the mind.
It attributed to the constellations their own shapes and names,
And noted which cycles they performed under a fixed lot;
It saw that everything moves according to the number and appearance of the world,
With the various stars changing our fates in a prescribed order.

This work of mine rises up, hallowed by no previous poems Manilius is claiming to be the first to write a technical didactic poem on astrology in Latin, a common trope among ancient poets seeking to establish their authority..
May Fortune favor this great labor;
May a long life and a gentle old age be granted to me,
So that I may be able to bring forth such massive subjects,
And traverse great things with a care equal to that given to small ones.

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD

And since this song descends from high heaven,
And the fixed order of the fates comes down to the lands,
First, the very form of nature must be sung by me;
The whole world must be set forth under its own image—
Whether you prefer to think of it as seeking its seeds from nothing,
Lacking a birth, always having been,
And destined to exist forever, lacking a beginning and a fate equally Manilius here introduces the philosophical debate between those who believe the universe was created (like the Epicureans) and those who believe it is eternal and uncreated (like the Aristotelians or certain Stoics)..