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A. Life and work Manilius, of whom nothing else is known, devised his didactic poem Astronomica (‘Astronomy/Astrology’) during the reign of Emperor Augustus and left it, incomplete, during that of Tiberius (AD 14–37). His active period thus coincided with the latter part of Ovid’s career and with that of Germanicus. It is also with the former that his poetic art most readily finds comparison. His ‘world-poem’, Stoic in spirit, attempts to capture the universe as a whole in a poetical microcosmos. B. Reception B.1. Antiquity and Middle Ages The few echoes of Germanicus’ translation …

A. Antiquity to Renaissance A.1. IntroductionAntiquity and the Renaissance were high water marks in the history of A. The cosmological worldview, associated with Graeco-Roman polytheism, was in both periods regarded as a form of surrogate religion. While Christian rulers in the West for the most part condemned A. as heresy and only occasionally engaged with it [18], it lived on in Sassanid Persia (AD 227–651) and India. After the Arabs conquered the then hub of scholarship, Alexandria, in AD 642, A. migrated to Constantinople and Baghdad. During the…

A. Leben und Werk Sein Lehrgedicht Astronomica (»Astronomie/Astrologie«) hat der sonst nicht näher bekannte Manilius noch unter Kaiser Augustus konzipiert und unter Tiberius (reg. 14–37 n.Chr.) unvollendet hinterlassen. Er wirkte also etwa gleichzeitig mit dem späten Ovid und Germanicus. Mit dem Erstgenannten ist auch seine Verskunst am ehesten zu vergleichen. Sein stoisch geprägtes ›Weltgedicht‹ versucht, die gesamte Welt in einem poetischen Mikrokosmos zu erfassen. B. Rezeption B.1. Antike und Mittelalter Die wenigen Anklänge an die Arat-Übersetzung des Germanic…