Aratus: Phaenomena (review)

Translating Aratus’ Phaenomena has a long history: following the example set by Cicero’s Aratea various prominent Romans (Varro Atacinus, Ovid, Germanicus, Gordian I and Avienus) tried their hand at rendering this complex and erudite poem from Greek into Latin. Despite its great popularity among ancient readers, modern scholars, for the longest time, paid only little attention to the Phaenomena. However, with the general reappraisal of Hellenistic poetry over the past few decades, scholarly interest in Aratus has been rekindled and recent studies have contributed immensely to our understanding of the text.¹ Any attempt to make the Phaenomena accessible to a wider audience can only be welcomed—a new translation into English accompanied by an introduction and notes could very well attract the interest of Greek-less readers and be of great use, for instance, in courses on Classical Civilization.

Aaron Poochigian has undertaken to provide just that. He has, however, made the task even more daunting than it might otherwise have been. For, hoping to convey not only the text’s contents, but also its poetry, he has decided to render the Phaenomena into rhyming couplets, which he regards as “the traditional vehicle for didactic poetry in English” (xxvii). Though in itself a literary tour de force, for which one has to admire the author, the result strays regrettably far from the original and might, in my view, more properly be called an adaptation than a translation. It is, in general, debatable whether rhymes are the proper medium for the rendering of a text from Classical Antiquity, where verses seldom, if ever, rhyme. As Melville, who translated Ovid’s Metamorphoses into blank verse, noted about Sandys’ 1626 version of the epic: “the tyranny of the rhyme inhibits a faithful translation.”² In his own version, he sometimes added a special twist by rounding off a paragraph or speech with a rhyming couplet, from which, he says, “is much to be gained.”³ If used occasionally, rhyme can, indeed, have a memorable effect, and Melville’s verses do sound quite elegant (such as, for instance, his ending of the Apollo and Daphne story: “Thus spoke the god; the laurel in assent / Inclined her new-made branches and bent down, / Or seemed to bend, her head, her leafy crown.”). In Poochigian’s translation, on the other hand, the combination of rhyme and enjambement tends to give the lines a somewhat awkward flow (for example: “Day in, day out, innumerable mixed / And scattered stars process above us. Fixed / Forever, never bending, an axle pins / Earth in the center of all; around it spins / Heaven on opposing poles, the axle’s ends,” vv. 19–23). Admittedly, this might simply be a matter of taste, and I do not want to exclude that the translator’s choice of form may be more appealing to other readers.

What is truly problematic, however, is how much of the original gets lost because of this formal constraint, not least of all poetic features that are of great importance to the text. A typical element of didactic poetry, for instance, is the repeated address of the implied student-reader.⁴ By omitting the verb σκέπτοιο in his translation of 96–97, Poochigian fails to convey the passage’s particular tone of instruction: ἀµφοτέροισι δὲ ποσσὶν ὕπο σκέπτοιο Βοώτεω / Παρθένον, ἥ ῥ’ ἐν χειρὶ φέρει Στάχυν αἰγλήεντα⁵—“Beneath his heels / a Maiden holds a golden ear of corn” (note too how the opposition between Bootes’ feet and the Maiden’s hand disappears in his version).

Another characteristic feature of ancient poetry, one also prominent in the Phaenomena, is the use of proper names and epithets designating mythical figures. Everyone approaching ancient poetry for the first time will be surprised to discover in how many different ways writers can refer to one and the same person (Achilles is not simply Achilles, but also son of Peleus), and it takes a lot of background knowledge to understand all of these references. A modern translator should give his readers a sense of this poetic technique by...