Knot of the Heavens

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The Knot of the HeavensAuthor(s): Godefroid de CallataSource: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 59 (1996), pp. 1-13Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/751394 .Accessed: 31/01/2014 01:15

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THE KNOT OF THE HEAVENS*

Godefroid de Callatay

n his Phaenomnenahe poet-astronomer Aratus of Soli (c. 315-240 Bc) describesthe zodiacal sign of Pisces in the following way:Even further in front of [the Triangle], but still in the entrance of the South areThe Fish. One of them, which always precedes the other,Hears Boreas louder when it starts to come down.From both are stretched, as it were, the chainsBy which their tails, on each side, are joined together in one point.A single star holds them, a beautiful and great starWhich is called the 'Knot of the Heavens'.'

From the distant time when Aratus composed his authoritative work until the pres-ent, the iconographic representation of this part of the sky has not changed in anysignificant respect, so that in all modern atlases the constellation of Pisces still hasthe same, rather strange appearance (Fig. 1): he two Fish, Piscis Borealis and PiscisAustralis, are squeezed along the ecliptic between the zodiacal signs of Aries andAquarius; their tails are connected to one another by a sort of chain (the LinumPiscium), or rather two bonds by which both Fish appear to be fixed to one par-ticular place on the heavenly vault by a single star, a Piscium.

Although it was the brightest star of the constellation, a was only of the thirdmagnitude (on a scale of 1 to 6) according to Ptolemy in Book viii of the Almagest.2Aratus's description of this star as beautiful (Kchk6g) and great (gCycyg)may seem,therefore, a slight exaggeration to any reader acquainted with the basic elementsof observational astronomy. This is perhaps why, of the three extant Latin trans-lations of the Phaenomena, only the verbose paraphrase of Avienus seems to havefollowed the Greek model on this point.3 More puzzling-and more interesting-is that Aratus chose to point out that the same star was also named the 'Knot ofthe Heavens', a remarkable privilege for a light much fainter than dozens of otherbeacons in the night sky. What follows is an attempt to fathom the reason why thisapparently unimpressive star received such an impressive designation.

* I should like to thank all those who have made valu-able comments on this paper. I am particularly indebtedto Christopher Ligota and Jill Kraye.I Aratus, Phaenoiena, 11. 239-45:

O16'

c9p T"T TpoTCple,iT 6' iv pOtoXfSiot 6oto1, /'IX0OCg. 'MAY'cici rpog po-(ppcrrEpog "XXov, Kai ItcXXOv opiCao vCOV KacT1OVTOgQKO)CE. /'Ajpotpv & G(CoTWUEy OTInoVEatC i flO)T 6C(c/ocpaciw ?KcTEPOEv ptT1XXCpO

ci Ev 16vuyv../Kai

cTh vEig OT(fiP WtL(CKca6LgEC yat TE, ov p6 TE KatZbCi&o-Iov iTovup6vtov KCl0OUVOGV.

2 Cf. Ptolemy, Syntaxis, ed. J. L. Heiberg, i, Leipzig1903, pp. 126-7. In modern times the brightness of acPiscium has decreased to the fourth magnitude. Forcomprehensive tables listing the variation of stellar mag-nitudes from -127 to + 1880, see C. Flammarion, LesEtoiles et les curiosites du ciel, Paris 1892; for a and theother stars of Pisces see p. 267. According to its Arabic

name, a Piscium is known as al-Rish ('the Cord'); onthis see P. Kunitzsch and T. Smart, Short Guide to ModernStar Names and their Derivations, Wiesbaden 1986, p. 50.3 Cf. Cicero, Aratea

(around90

B(),xxxiii.14-16:

'Atquehorum e caudis duplices velut esse catenas /dices, quaediu diversae per lumina serpunt /atque una tamen instella communiter haerent'; Germanicus, Phaenomena(between 14 and 19 AD), 246-6: 'Non illis liber cursus,sed vincula cauda, /singula utrumque tenent uno coe-untia nodo. /Nodum stella premit'; Avienus, Aratea (4thcentury AD), 552-5: 'Sed tamen hi late stellis ex ordinefusis /nectuntur caudas, et lenta trahuntur utraque/vincula, per coelum coeunt quae singula rursum, /etrutilo confixa quasi super igne tenentur.' For otherGreek and Latin designations of a Piscium see A. LeBoeuffle, Les Noms latins d'astres et de constellations, Paris1977, pp. 182-3.

1

Journal of the W'aibu>g nd Courtauld Institutes, Volume 59, 1996

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4 GODEFROID DECALLATAY

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the precession of the equinoxes, a slow movement of the sphere along the eclipticwhich affects the equatorial coordinates of all stars.'2 A retrospective computation,by means of which the effects of the precessional movement are taken into ac-count, enables us to fix with sufficient accuracy the place on the ecliptic in whichthe vernal point was located around 300 BC. The vernal point shifts to the Westalong the ecliptic at a rate of 50" per year. Since the period of time between thenand now is around 2300 or 2400 years, which makes a shift of around 32', and

zodiacales avait eu plus de succes, car la precession desequinoxes ne modifie pas les latitudes, tandis que lesdeclinaisons varient avec le temps.'

12 This phenomenon, the effects of which are believedto have been first noted by Hipparchus in the secondcentury BC, s described at length in Ptolemy's Almagest(cf.Syntaxis, ii.2).The reality s that the axis of the earthis not absolutely ixed in space, but rotates slowly ike aspinning top around the pole of ecliptic at a rate of 36"a year, according o Ptolemy's alue, which gives 3600 orone complete revolution n 36,000 years (modern values

give 25,765 years, which corresponds o a shift of about50" per year). Similarly, he vernal point, i.e. the point ofintersection between the celestial equator and the eclip-tic, moves at the same speed along the ecliptic with aretrograde motion. This movement, which has immense

implications since it affects the coordinates of all stars,was called equinoctial precession, because it brings anadvancing of the vernal equinox from East to Westthrough the stars of the zodiacal signs every year. For acomprehensive account of equinoctial precession see P.Duhem, Le Systime du monde, i, Paris 1914, pp. 180-266;more recently O. Neugebauer, 'The Alleged BabylonianDiscovery of the Precession of the Equinoxes',Journal ofthe American Oriental Society, ii, 1950, pp. 1-8; idem, AHistory of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, , Berlin, Hei-delberg and New York 1975, pp. 292-8; and R. Mercier,

'Studies in the Medieval Conception of Precession', Ar-chives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxvi, 1976, pp.197-220 (part I), and xxvii, 1977, pp. 33-71 (part II).



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KNOT OF THE HEAVENS 5

~~ ri??:?li . 8ja~l i ~.. ~pZ~ ?.i::":

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Fig. 3-The 'Knot of the Heavens' on the Farnese globe.'Orbis caelestis tabula ex marmore antiquo in Aedibus Farnes: Romae', detail, from

M. Manilius, Astronomicon, d. R. Bentley, London 1739

since the vernal point is now situated a few degrees south of the Tail of the zodiacalSouthern Fish,'3 it follows that in Aratus's day the vernal point must have beensituated not on cc Piscium, which was then (as now) a few degrees south of theecliptic, but on a meridian circle remarkably close to the meridian of the noduscaelestis. The retrospective computation shows that the difference in right ascensioncannot have exceeded one or two degrees (Fig. 2). This distance would meana difference of only a few minutes in the time of culmination of the 'Knot of theHeavens' and the vernal point, a fact which must have been regarded as essentialby Aratus and all astronomers of his time.'4

Significantly enough, in Aratus's time the vernal point must have been very closeto the border between the constellations of Aries and Pisces (Fig. 3). This is undoubt-edly consistent with a piece of information given by Hipparchus, Ptolemy's model,in his commentary on Aratus's Phaenomena: hat the star called Vv6xcitogTov hXLvv,the 'Knot of the Bonds', is the last star of Pisces to rise above the horizon.'5 Nowsince in those times Pisces was itself considered to be the last sign of the zodiac,'6there can be no doubt that the ancients regarded the 'beautiful and great' star ofPisces as the one with which the yearly cycle was brought to an end. To anyone whois willing to consider this from a more symbolic point of view, it becomes clear

13 In fact, the current vernal point is located approxi-mately 70 south of the star 0o Piscium, which correspondsto the Tail of Piscis Australis.

14

Hipparchus, ad Phaenomena, .11.20, notes that in hisown time the 'Knot of the Fish' culminates with Aries31/4, which would mean that it was a few decades beforeAratus that caPiscium and the vernal equinox at Aries 00actually co-culminated.

15 Cf. Hipparchus, ad Phaenomena, iii.3.9: iai oXcog6&... Co'lf2'p LvacCT' Lt... v TCOZvv6G&t~( ToC)Lvov.16 Cf., among countless pieces of evidence, Ovid, Meta-

morphoses, x.78-9: 'Tertius aequoreis inclusum Piscibusannum /Finierat Titan.'



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how right the Greeks were to call caPiscium not only DJIV&G6oog @vXivov, the 'Knotof the Bonds', but also iOviEoWog Oit0ovpCvtog,

he 'Knot of the Heavens'.

Aratus could have stopped at this point, deciding that he had said enough aboutthe famous star; but he did not. Contrary to his usual method, which is to describeall the constellations of the sphere successively, he returns, around 120 lines later,to the 'Knot of the Heavens'. This can be explained, as we shall see, by the fact thatcaPiscium seems to be at the same time part of another constellation, namely Cetus,the Sea Monster. Still, one cannot help being surprised at the abrupt way in whichAratus inserts this second mention of the 'Knot' into his poem:

For in this area the lonely remains of Eridanus,River of many tears, are carried away under the feet of the gods.The river stretches to the left foot of Orion.But the bonds that hold the tails of the Fish by their endsStart from these tails and come together.Behind the mane of Cetus, they mingle their course,Being driven to one point: they end on a single starOf Cetus, the one which lies on the first vertebra of the beast."7

Why does the poet move so suddenly from the description of the river Eridanusto what on the face of it is a mere repetition of his previous account of Pisces, andwhat do we learn from this extract that we did not know already? The Fish, thetails, the bonds that link these tails and the star that marks the junction of thesebonds (the expression cig Ev is used here as it was in line 243)-none of this is orig-inal. There is, however, one new element. The 'Knot of the Heavens' is no longernamed; instead, Aratus notes its position, on the first vertebra (jTp6" QKwvQ") ofthe Sea Monster-an indication faithfully followed in all subsequent descriptions of

the starry sphere. But what might well appear as no more than a banal detail inmost iconographical representations of the celestial vault acquires, I believe, a veryprecise relevance in the architectural design of Aratus's poetry.

The reference to the single star at which the bonds converge occurs at lines 364-6.Now, it appears from many examples that in antiquity some kind of magical sig-nificance was attributed to the number 365. Particularly obvious is the prominenceof this number in all sorts of speculations current in Graeco-Roman Egypt. FromHeliodorus of Emesa (third century AD)we learn, for example, that some people inEgypt identified the Nile with the solar year and based this on the equivalence-technically called isopsephism-between the Greek name NEtlog (numerically: 50+ 5 + 10 + 30 + 70 + 200) and the number 365.18 The life of the phoenix was alsoassociated in several ways with the number 365, once again a clear reference to thenumber of days in the Egyptian year.19 More interesting for our purposes is the so-called EO)6dov rm'Xvy, short astronomical treatise dating from the second centuryBC. The first paragraph of this work consists of twelve lines (the twelve months);each line contains thirty letters, except for the final one which contains thirty-five(the 360 days plus the five 'epagomenal' days of the solar year); and the lines form

17 Aratus, Phaenomena, 11. 359-66: OIov ycp KCdKEVO

O6)v tO6 TOOo (POPE7LCT1tltfravov 'HptbCvoLo, oTku--KXhaCtrov norca o. /Kcai TbTv ''pl(Ovog on60uatdv T66&cTCLVE.&?coLo ' OpacLotL, oL 'IX0US &Kfpot xoVrwt,

/aiqw)o1u'popCOVTrcl

n'o1Jtpalov Kcart6eVTg. KrlTcrlg 6'

6tOtev Xkoq(prlg tid (popOVrCal Ed[gv Xcav6[vot ?-v i 6'dcCi-pt ntpcavovrat /Ki'r~og, %gKelVOIJvoT'll LKELTcrcxKdv~n.

18 Cf. Heliodorus, Aethiopica, x.22.19 See J. Hubaux and M. Leroy, Le Mythe du Phenix dans

les littiratures grecque t latine, Liege 1939, pp. 3-9; R. Vanden Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix according to Classicaland Early Christian Traditions, Leiden 1972, pp. 261-73.

See also W. O. Moeller, 'Marks, Names and Numbers',Hommages d Maarten J. Vermaseren, i, Leiden 1978, pp.801-20.



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the acrostic E866$ov TFCXVrlthe 'Art of Eudoxus'). The symbolic meaning of thispattern is expressed in the text itself.20

Considering Aratus's obvious sympathy for Alexandrian scholarship, it seemsworthwhile to look for something similar in the Phaenomena, a work devoted to thecelestial signs by which the seasons of the year are indicated to mankind.2'

The Phaenomena onsist of 731lines,22

hat is, almostexactly

2 x 365. Edwin Brownhas suggested that this total might have been chosen because it corresponds withthe number of days of a double solar year in the Egyptian calendar.23 But why adouble solar year? It is, I think, inspired by a desire to conceptualise the celestialvault not so much as a sphere, as two opposed hemispheres (or circles, in two-dimensional representations) that are connected to one another at only one point.In fact, this depiction, technically known as polar stereographic projection, is ex-actly what we find on most modern astronomical maps: two contiguous circles withthe two celestial poles as their respective centres.

Could classical astronomers such as Aratus or Hyginus have already conceivedof the heavenly vault as formed from the joining of two hemispheres? Regarding

the construction of celestial globes it may be argued, for instance, that the castingand soldering of two hemispheres is only a late, perhaps Islamicate invention.24Although our information on earlier constructions is scanty, we can certainly tracethe problem of polar stereographic projection back to Hipparchus, if not earlier-as Otto Neugebauer has argued:It is evident from the writings of Vitruvius... that not only the theory of stereographic pro-jection existed before Ptolemy but practical applications as well. We can only conjecture theaccurate time of invention. From a purely mathematical viewpoint all necessary methodsare attested for Apollonius and nothing would exclude the same for Euclid (who also wroteon conic sections) or even for the geometers of the fifth century.25

According to Macrobius's Commentary n Cicero's Somnium,Theophrastus said that the Milky Way was the seam by which the two hemispheres of theheavenly sphere were joined together and that, accordingly, a greater brilliance was to beseen at the place where the two rims met.26

Above all, Aratus himself in his review of the constellations carefully distinguishes'those which lie between the North and the Sun's wandering path'-including thetwelve zodiacal signs themselves-from 'the many others which rise beneath be-tween the South and the Sun's circuit'.27

20 For an edition of this work see J. Letronne and W.Brunet de Presle, Les Papyrus grecs du Musde du Louvre,Paris 1866, pp. 25-76. For some useful remarks and

a French translation of the treatise see P Tannery, Re-cherches ur i'histoire de l'astronomie, Paris 1893, pp. 23-5,283-94.

21 Cf. Aratus, Phaenomena, 11. 10-13: 'For he [Zeus] wasthe one who fixed the signs in the heavens by markingout the constellations, the one who devised for the year(cig vtccv'r6v) which stars should preferably indicate tomen the order of the seasons, so that all things may growfirmly.'

22 Some editions contain 732 lines of verse, but it seemspreferable to regard 1. 138 as spurious; cf. Aratus, Phae-nomena, ed. J. Martin, p. 30. The 731 verse lines of thepoem are followed by another 422, which are usuallygrouped in manuscripts under the separate title of

AtioOyrll (Weather Signs).These

lines,which are

mainlyconcerned with meteorological predictions to be used byfarmers, should not be included in the Phaenomena assuch, and most editions of Aratus's works rightly give

them an independent numbering. At any rate, oneshould bear in mind that the lines commented on byHipparchus or translated by Cicero or Germanicus allpertain to the properly so-called Phaenomena.

23 See E. L. Brown, Numeri Vergiliani. Studies n 'Eclogues'and 'Georgics', Brussels 1963, p. 98.

24 See E. Savage-Smith, Islamicate Celestial Globes: TheirHistory, Construction, nd Use, Washington, D.C. 1985, pp.81-3, 90-5.

25 0. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical As-tronomy, i, Berlin, Heidelberg and New York 1975, p.868. See also idem, 'The Early History of the Astrolabe',Isis, xl, 1949, pp. 240-56.

26 Macrobius, in Somnium Scipionis, .15.4: 'Theophrastuslacteum dixit esse compagem qua de duobus hemisphae-riis caeli sphaera solidata est, et ideo ubi orae utrimqueconvenerant notabilem claritatem videri.'27

Aratus, Phaenomena,11.319-21:

KcLT&'v

ov [30op0wKci d?Jlotog jEXckoto jC(Joofly0g CXJTCzra6t vet6OtTLX-TLat Cc ccroXz pCrlUX v6TotLoKWaVelxoto KCOXeiOOJ.



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According to the polar stereographic projection (Fig. 4), the three fundamentalcircles I referred to in connection with Hyginus's explanation appear in the follow-ing way: the celestial equator forms the borders of both circles; the ecliptic becomesa sine curve that gently spirals between these borders and the two tropical circles(the summer and winter tropics); and the equinoctial colure becomes a straight linethat passes through the two poles (northern and southern). The three lines meetat only two points, which mark the autumnal and the vernal equinoxes. Since itindicates the transition between two yearly cycles, the vernal point is traditionallychosen as the only point of the figure in which the junction of all these lines is madevisible.

A closer look at the stereographic projection reveals, moreover, that the generalmotif of two different Fish (Piscis Borealis and Piscis Australis)28 n this area of theheavens was remarkably appropriate for this purpose. With one Fish on each sideof the celestial equator, the constellation could be regarded as the point of intersec-tion between the northern and the southern hemispheres. It is with this in mind, Ithink, that we must interpret the numerous illustrations of Pisces where the twoFish are

drawn, symbolically,in

perfect symmetryin relation to the Bond that links

them, and not at all as they appear on the celestial vault (Fig. 5).It does not make much sense to assign a beginning or an end to a circle unless

one considers it in a relative way. As may be gathered from the previous discussion,the uniqueness of the vernal point only appears when one contemplates the tran-sition between two successive cycles. It may have been this consideration whichprompted Aratus to construct his poem in terms of a double yearly cycle. EdwinBrown was certainly right to stress that the poet ran through the whole vault notonce, but twice: having systematically described all the constellations of both hemi-spheres in lines 1-558, Aratus chose to deal with the 'simultaneous risings' (ouvava-TOXCi) in lines 559-732,29 which led him to go through all the constellations for a

second time.30But the clearest indication of the literary design which I believe underlies thestructure of the poem is the 'Knot of the Heavens' itself, which Aratus managed toplace exactly at the centre of his poem. Let us look once more at lines 364-6:

Behind the mane of Cetus, they [the Bonds of the Tails] mingle their course,Being driven to one point: they end on a single starOf Cetus, the one which lies on the first vertebra of the beast.31

The 'Knot', we now learn, is located 'on the first vertebra [&K6v6n]' of the monster.The word &KCv6a, phonetically acantha, originally means anything sharp, stingingor thorny.32The acanthus, of course, is a thorny plant from the same family as the

thistle,33but the

etymology explains whyin Greek the word

&KCv6Onded

up des-ignating the spine or the backbone of certain animals as well.

28 On the risk of this latter designation being confusedwith that of the extra-zodiacal Piscis Australis, see LeBoeuffle (as in n. 3), p. 182.29 This is a sort of calendar showing which stars or

constellations rise together with a given zodiacal sign. OnvvccavaccroXcaee Aratus, Phaenomena, ed. Mair (as in n.

6), pp. 202-4.3o G. le Grelle, in his article 'Nombres Virgiliens. An-

tecedents litteraires et presupposes mathematiques. Apropos d'un ouvrage recent', Les Etudes classiques, xxiii,

1965, p. 54, makes the following remark on this confir-mation of Brown's interpretation: 'Or la premiere partiedes Phinomines, celle qui est consacree

' I'astronomie,compte 731 vers. E. Brown observe que ce nombre estle double de 3651/,. Donc deux fois le cycle annuel: on

notera la convenance particulibre de ce chiffre, puisque,dans ces vers, le po te parcourt a deux reprises a vouiteetoilee.'

31 See above, n. 17.32 From the Indo-European root *ak- (idea of sharp-

ness) we may derive, among other words, Greek cKpog,c&Kafi nd 66SI, Latin acer, acetumn nd acies, English acidand edge, and French aiguille.

13 For classical references on the acanthus and its dif-ferent varieties see E. Guillaume in Dictionnaire des anti-

quites, ed.C.

Darembergand E.

Saglio, i.1,Paris

1877,pp. 12-14, s.v. 'Acanthus'; P. Wagler in Paulys Real-En-cyclopdidie as in n. 6), i.1, cols 1148-50, s.v. "'AKcavog,&KcvOe tptdKcvOct, acanthus'. For the iconography seeL'Acanthe dans la sculpture monumentale de l'Antiquitei la



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Ik;

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t AF,-.. i

1:-._4k Al-:to

.wl6l3 ~~:1/',:1 5 A `

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Fig. 4-The polar stereographic projection of the heavens.Adapted from illustrations in Eratosthenes, Catasterism, d. C. Schaubach, Gottingen 1795



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10 GODEFROID DE CALLATAY

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Fig. 5-The symbolic representation of Pisces.London, British

LibraryMS

Harley647, folio

3v.Texts inside the Fish:

Hyginus,De astronomia, i.30 and iii.29. Text below: Cicero, Aratea, xxxiii. 12-19



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It was not, in my view, a casual decision on Aratus's part to evoke the spinalcolumn of the Sea Monster in these lines at the very centre of the Phaenomena, butnot in his earlier discussion of a Piscium at lines 244-5. The second passage, pre-cisely because of its position in the poem, has a particular numerological signifi-cance that is lacking from the first. The poet's intention, I suggest, was to stress the

pivotalrole of the

'Knot',in the heavens as in his own work.

This hypothesis concerning the structural design underlying Aratus's poem findsan echo in Vergil's third Eclogue. Aratus's influence on Vergil's astronomy is wellknown. Many comparisons of detail have been made between their writings, andthere are borrowings from, or allusions to, passages from the Phaenomena in everypart of Vergil's trilogy.34 These allusions are thicker on the ground in Eclogue III,and it is now generally accepted that Aratus is the answer to the famous question'Quis fuit alter?' ('Who was the other one?'), asked in the poem by the herdsmanMenalcas. Most of the arguments for this identification have been gathered togetherby Carl Springer, who notes:Readers of the eclogue have consistently overlooked the best piece of evidence for electingAratus. It is the pun on his name in line 42: ...quae curvus arator haberet.Virgil plays on thename of Aratus while creating a special irony by placing the word arator n the mouth ofMenalcas. If he only realised it, Menalcas has answered his own question.35

In favour of this identification one should also point out, along with the com-mentator Servius, that the 'Ab love principium, Musae, lovis omnia plena', whichcomes a bit further on in the eclogue (line 60), refers to the opening lines of Aratus'sPhaenomena:

Let us begin with Zeus, whom we the mortals never leaveUnnamed. For all the streets and all the market-placesOf men are full of Zeus, as are the seaAnd the harbours. In every place we all have need of Zeus.36

Renaissance. Actesdu colloque enu du ler au 5 octobre 990 a'La Sorbonne, Paris 1993, esp. pp. 75-95 (G. Sauron, 'Lapromotion apollinienne de l'acanthe et la d6finitiond'une esthetique classique il'apoque d'Auguste'). It isinteresting to recall here, in passing, the widespread useof the tender acanthus as a motif adorning innumerablearchitectural columns (Fig. 6).

ilit

].I VRE 1 Vo

...

-

i;?-*4

Fig. 6-Acanthus leaves on Corinthian capitals.Vitruvius, De architectura, v. 1.9-12 (edn Paris 1684)

34 For general information on this see G. Aujac in En-ciclopedia Vergiliana, , Rome 1984, pp. 266-8, s.v. 'Arato'.More specifically, see for BucolicsJ. S. Campbell, 'Damoe-tas's Riddle: a Literary Solution', ClassicalJournal, lxxviii,

1982, pp. 123-6; and C. Springer, 'Aratus and the Cupsof Menalcas: A Note on Eclogue 3.42', ibid., lxxix, 1983,pp. 131-4; for Georgics ee Brown (as in n. 23), pp. 96-104; B. Otis, Virgil: A Study on Civilized Poetry, Oxford1964, pp. 386-7; and L. P. Wilkinson, The Georgics ofVirgil, Cambridge 1969, pp. 60-3; for Aeneid see G. deCallataj, 'Quis fuit alter? Aratos, le Palinure de l'Endide',Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome, xii, 1992, pp.175-92, where it is argued that Palinurus, the chief pilot

of the poem, actually represents Aratus.35 Springer (as in n. 34), p. 132. The identification with

Aratus had already been proposed, among other possi-bilities (including Ptolemy ), by both Servius and JuniusPhilargyrius; see Servii Grammatici n Vergilii armina com-mentarii, ed. G. Thilo and H. Hagen, Leipzig 1887, iii.1,p. 36, and iii.2, p. 56. For other proposed solutions tothe 'Quis fuit alter?', see L. Herrmann, 'Notules sur lesBucoliques virgiliennes', Les Etudes classiques, vi, 1948, p.371; P Boyance, 'Le sens cosmique de Virgile', Revue des&tudes atines, xxxii, 1954, pp. 220-49; M. Mayer, 'En tor-no a Vergil ecl. 3.40', Durius (Boletin castellano de estudioscldsicos), i, 1974, pp. 397-411.

36 Aratus, Phaenomena, 11.1-4: 'EK At6lgapXC6p(i6a0T

oG)JOT'r' a'v6~pg qy

wv/a"pplTxov'V

ocrut &6AL6gaoCt

pv Ayutcal, iaoat 6'v'pdav)p6w ayopac, WcOrn &_dXao-oa /KaL hl~wpvEg? v'r

t At6l KEXPlE0Ca avrtEg.37 Vergil, Eclogues, ii.36-43: '[Menalcas]: ..pocula ponam

/fagina, caelatum divini opus Alcimedontis; /lenta quibus



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12 GODEFROID DE CALLATAY

The riddle put by Vergil to his readers is part of a singing contest between thetwo herdsmen Menalcas and Damoetas. Each wagers two drinking cups, designedby the same artist, a certain Alcimedon. Here are the lines in which Menalcas de-scribes the cups:

... I shall wager beech cups,The chiseled work of the divine Alcimedon.His supple drill has crowned their borders with a soft vine,And here and there it has adorned the grapes with clusters of pale ivy.In the centre are two figures: Conon, and... who was the other one,Whose stick has traced for mankind the whole worldAnd marked the seasons for the reaper and for the stooping ploughman?I have not yet put my lips to these [cups], but keep them stored away.37

And Damoetas's rejoinder:The same Alcimedon has also made two cups for me.He has twined a flexible acanthus around the handles,And in the centre he has set Orpheus and the woods that follow him.I have not

yet put my lipsto these

[cups],but

keepthem stored

away.38The scene is apparently an imitation of Theocritus's Thyrsis, where a wooden vasewhich the poet describes in detail serves as the prize for a similar contest, betweenthe herdsman Thyrsis and an anonymous goatherd.39 The vine, the ivy and eventhe tender acanthus (icyp6g &iKcav0og, ine 55) are already present in Vergil's model;but Theocritus's Greek idyll does not contain the astronomical allusions that wefind in the Latin eclogue. Conon of Samos was a well-known mathematician andastronomer, roughly contemporary with Aratus. His most celebrated achievement,according to the Romans, was naming the small constellation of Coma Berenices.40The 'divine' Alcimedon could be a phonetic pun on the name of Archimedes, whois said to have been on friendly terms with Conon. Archimedes was primarily knownto the Romans for his skill in designing armillary spheres and planetary mechan-isms, and we know from a passage in Cicero's Republic-where Aratus's name alsoappears-that Archimedes's genius in these matters was considered to be almostsuperhuman.4 The reference to astronomy in lines 41-2 speaks for itself, and I donot see any better candidate for the solution of the riddle than Aratus, a pun onwhose name appears in the text: just as line 41 ('descripsit radio...') clearly refers tohis Phaenomena, so we may also assume that line 42 ('tempora quae...') alludes morespecifically to his Weather Signs.42

All this might prompt us to think of the drinking cups referred to in the ecloguein a metaphorical way, bringing us back to the spherical appearance of the heavens.In this

respectit is

highly significantthat Damoetas in his

rejoinderdoes not

speakof one vase or bowl-as the goatherd in Theocritus's version had done-but of twocups ('duo pocula'), which the artist had presumably designed so as to form a pair.As for the flexible acanthus which surrounds the handles of these cups, it nowseems possible that it echoes not only the lines of Theocritus, but also those of hiscontemporary Aratus. Vergil's skill in literary jokes is worth noting here. Not only

torno facili superaddita vitis /diffusos hedera vestitpallente corymbos. /In medio duo signa, Conon, et...quis fuit alter, /descripsit radio totum qui gentibusorbem, /tempora quae messor, quae curvus arator habe-ret? /Necdum illis labra admovi, sed condita servo.'38 Ibid., iii.44-7: '[Damoetas]: ... Et nobis idem Alci-

medon duo pocula fecit, /et molli circum est ansasamplexus acantho; /Orpheaque in medio posuit, silvas-que sequentis. /Necdum illis labra admovi, sed conditaservo.

39 See Theocritus, Thyrsis, sp. 26-60.40 See Le Bceuffle (as in n. 3) p. 119, with references.Among Latin authors, Catullus, lxvi.1-9, and Hyginus,De astronomia, i.24.1, might be mentioned.

41 Cicero, Republica, i.14.22. On this passage see A.Novara, 'Ciceron et le planetaire d'Archime'de', LesAstres.

Actes du colloque nternational de Montpellier Mar. 1995), i,Montpellier 1996, pp. 227-44.

42 See above, n. 22.



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does he appear to have succeeded in making his characters answer their own riddle,but he also seems to be evoking in a few words the structural design of the work heis alluding to: the pair of cups suggest the two celestial hemispheres, and the flex-ible acanthus hints at the knot which links them. If this interpretation is correct, itcould be that Vergil was alluding to the transmission of this secret design when hetwice affirmed: 'I have not yet put my lips to these [cups], but keep them storedaway.

THE WARBURG NSTITUTE

Knot of the Heavens

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