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9780199781683

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Emma Gee's learned, authoritative and lucid book gives us a new understanding of the historical importance of the Hellenistic poet, Aratus. Aratus' learned poem on the night sky was read and translated and argued over from the third century BC up to the era of Copernicus. Until now the poem's popularity has been simply baffling, but Gee's crisp and witty arguments explain not just why Aratus was popular but why he mattered. As a template for how to fuse astronomical data with an imaginative vision of an ordered cosmos, Aratus was never out of fashion, whether providing a model for Stoic providence or being deconstructed by the atomist Lucretius. At last, thanks to Gee, we can start to understand where Aratus belongs in the scientific tradition of the West. --Denis Feeney, Princeton University

Emma Gee's learned, authoritative and lucid book gives us a new understanding of the historical importance of the Hellenistic poet, Aratus. Aratus' learned poem on the night sky was read and translated and argued over from the third century BC up to the era of Copernicus. Until now the poem's popularity has been simply baffling, but Gee's crisp and witty arguments explain not just why Aratus was popular but why he mattered. As a template for how to fuse astronomical data with an imaginative vision of an ordered cosmos, Aratus was never out of fashion, whether providing a model for Stoic providence or being deconstructed by the atomist Lucretius. At last, thanks to Gee, we can start to understand where Aratus belongs in the scientific tradition of the West. Denis Feeney, Princeton University

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Emma Gee is Lecturer in Classics at the University of St. Andrews.

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