M. MANILIUS

ASTRONOMICON

BOOK ONE

I set out to sing of the divine arts and the stars, which are conscious of fate and reveal the varied fortunes of men: a work of celestial reason. I am the first to stir Helicon with new songs, and to bring sacred, hospitable gifts from the green, nodding summits of the forests, which have been mentioned by no one before. You, Caesar, prince and father of the country, who rule the world with noble laws and deserve to be a god yourself for the world granted to your father, give me the spirit and strength to sing of such great things. The world itself now favors those who explore it more closely and desires to reveal its ethereal riches through my songs. In this peace, only leisure remains. It is a joy to travel through the air itself and live while wandering in the immense sky, and to know the signs and the contrary courses of the stars. But it is not enough to know this alone. It is a joy to know more deeply the very heart of the great world, and to discern by which signs it rules and generates animals, and to recount them in numbers as Phoebus Apollo provides the rhythm. Two altars shine before me with placed flames; I pray at two temples, surrounded by the double heat of song and of the subject matter: the world sounds around the poet singing with a certain law in its immense orbit, and scarcely lets the words be released from its own shapes. Which, first, the lands were allowed to know within...

[Critical Apparatus]
1 arts glcu — 3 nodding lu2 imitating u1 — 10 you make o — 15 the world favors more closely u — 12 senses o — 13 here u is free g is called ω at length it is a joy u2 u1 (is free corrected in margin u1) — 18 whichever o — 19 innumerable u — 21 heat lu — 21 around u2 around u1 (in margin of things) of things ω — 23 immense l — 24 sends in l — 25 it was allowed g.