Abstract

This paper engages with MS Harley 647 in the British Library, London, a manuscript produced probably at the imperial court in Aachen during the reign of Louis the Pious (814–40 CE), which contains the surviving portion (about four hundred and eighty lines) of Cicero’s Latin translation of the Greek poem Phaenomena, written by Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BCE. The poem is a description of the night sky based on the earliest celestial globe, manufactured by the astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus in the first half of the fourth century BCE. The text itself, however, is not the most important element of the manuscript: in fact, its dominant feature are the full-page images of constellations, to which Cicero’s text, at the bottom of each page, functions as a caption. This article examines the interaction between words and images in the astronomical illustrations of the manuscript, showing how their scientific content is conveyed to the user (at the same time viewer and reader) through the unity of the verbal and the visual. The long-debated question of the originality of their peculiar layout is also addressed, with conclusive evidence supporting the theory of a late Roman model. Finally, the insertion of the text within the illustrations will be interpreted as an allusion to the idea, presented in the proem of the Phaenomena, that the constellations are God’s message ‘written’ in the sky to help humans in their basic activities, above all agriculture: a key concept in Stoic theology that could also appeal to a Christian audience.

摘要

本文涉及伦敦大英图书馆的 MS Harley 647，该手稿可能在虔诚者路易斯统治时期（公元 814-40 年）在亚琛的宫廷制作，其中包含幸存的部分（约四百八十行） ) 西塞罗对希腊诗歌Phaenomena的拉丁文译本，由 Aratus of Soli 于公元前 275 年至 250 年间撰写。这首诗是根据最早的天球仪描述夜空的，该天球仪是公元前 4 世纪上半叶由 Cnidus 的天文学家 Eudoxus 制造的。然而，文本本身并不是手稿最重要的元素：事实上，它的主要特征是整页的星座图像，每页底部的西塞罗文本作为标题。本文考察了手稿天文插图中文字和图像之间的相互作用，展示了它们的科学内容是如何通过语言和视觉的统一传达给用户（同时也是观众和读者）的。关于其奇特布局的独创性的长期争论的问题也得到了解决，有确凿的证据支持晚期罗马模型的理论。最后，在插图中插入文字将被解释为对这个想法的暗示，在序言中提出现象，星座是上帝在天空中“写下”的信息，以帮助人类进行基本活动，尤其是农业：斯多葛神学中的一个关键概念，也可能吸引基督徒听众。