Appendix I: Objects that are not comets

430 B.C. SYLLECTA CLASSICA 17 (2006) 191 APPENDIX I: OBJECTS THAT ARE NOT COMETS Object 1a 430 B.C. (B3) Linked to plague at Athens. not a comet or a meteor Manilius (fl. c. A.D. 15) tells us that comets are sent as warning signs in advance of many natural disasters such as droughts and plagues, and by way of an example of a deadly plague, he gives the one at Athens, which broke out in the summer of 430, as we know from the contemporary observer Thucydides (2.47.1–3). Manilius stops short, however, of making an explicit claim that a comet actually foreshadowed the Athenian plague. Likewise, no such claim is made by the slightly earlier Roman poet Lucretius (fl. mid 1st cent. B.C.) in his lengthy account of the Athenian plague, which Manilius abridges.266 Scholars, therefore, wisely tend not to include Manilius’ text in comet catalogues (e.g. Pingré [1783] and Yeomans [1991]), or if they do take it into account, they place it under 430 with a query (Barrett [1978], 86 and Kronk [1999], 511).267 There is no corroborating evidence in the Chinese sources for a comet in 430. The closest comet sighting to this date is Ho no. 14 (433 B.C.), after which none is attested in the Asian sources until 361 B.C. Granted that Manilius modeled his description of the Athenian plague upon Lucretius, there is nothing to exclude the possibility that Manilius learned from an entirely separate source about a connection between a comet and the plague in Athens.268 There was a comet in the 266 I thank my colleague Alexander MacGregor for pointing out to me Manilius’ clear indebtedness to Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 6.1138–1286. 267 Gundel (1921), 1183 mistakenly assigns it to 410 B.C. with a query. 268 A comparable example may be provided by Manilius’ allusion to the Battle of Actium (1.914–18) after mentioning comets that supposedly attended the Battle of Philippi (see Appendix, Object 17a, text a). Although Manilius makes no explicit assertion that the Battle of Actium was foreshadowed by its own comet, we have it on good authority that a comet appeared in the year before that battle (Object 27 under 32 B.C., above). 192 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 17 (2006) 430 B.C. winter of 426 (Object 3), firmly attested in its own right, and we happen to know from Thucydides (3.87) that a second, severe outbreak of the plague at Athens occurred precisely at that time. It was presumably as a result of the comet of 426 and the one in 87 B.C. (Halley’s), which accompanied a deadly plague in which some 17,000 persons died at Rome (see ad loc.), that comets came to acquire by Manilius’ day their reputation as harbingers of plagues. Manilius, Astronomica 1.880–86 “Heavenly blazes” (caeli incendia, 875)—a poetic gloss for cometae (870)—portend disasters of various sorts, including plagues. aut gravibus morbis et lenta corpora tabe 880 corripit exustis letalis flamma medullis labentisque rapit populos, totasque per urbes publica succensis peraguntur iusta sepulcris. qualis Erechtheos pestis populata colonos extulit antiquas per funera pacis Athenas, 885 alter in alterius labens cum fata ruebant. Or a deadly fever seizes bodies with severe diseases and slow corruption . It consumes them to their marrow and carries off tottering nations. Throughout entire cities public funeral rites are carried out upon kindled pyres. Such was the plague that ravaged the people of Erechtheus’ land and bore off ancient Athens through deaths not caused by war, when death piled up upon death, as one victim of the disease fell upon another. Object 2a 394 B.C. trabs Linked to Battle of Cnidus (in August). According to one source only (Pliny), a “beam” (trabs) was observed at the time when Sparta lost her bid for hegemony by sea, at the naval battle off Cnidus (SW tip of Asia Minor), where the Spartan fleet was defeated by the Persian fleet under the command of the former Athenian admiral Conon. Pliny, Natural History 2.96 Emicant et trabes simili modo, quas dokouv~ vocant, qualis cum Lacedaemonii classe victi imperium Graeci amisere. 174...