Aratus: Phaenomena
Aratus: Phaenomena
$134.00
USDAratus of Soli was a highly original poet of the early third century BC, famous throughout antiquity for his poem on constellations and weather signs, and imitated by later Greek and Latin poets. This volume presents for the first time in English an edition of the poem with a full introduction, a facing translation and a line-by-line commentary. The text is based on a new reading of the manuscripts, including one not used before. The work provides a valuable basis for further research on Aratus and on Hellenistic poetry in general.
- The commentary is a major advance on previous interpretations of the text
- The text is based on readings from 14 manuscripts, including one not previously available
- This volume is a genuinely important and innovative book and is the only full-scale commentary available in English
Reviews & endorsements
"...Kidd has produced a fine work of scholarship...." Robert Renehan, Religious Studies Review
"Kidd's text will now be the standard. It is the product of a critical judgment that consistently makes the right choices in that most difficult of textual traditions....the commentary is so rich and detailed and illuminates so much....one can only be filled with admiration and graditude for the painstaking scholarship and devotion that went into the making of this book....Kidd's book is the true editio princeps of Aratus's Paenomena, five hundred years overdue, which at long las t give us our author pristino nitori restitutus." Mark Possanza, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"Kidd's edition, however, is obviously the result of a long labor, and it promises to have a long life as the definitive work on this important, but neglected, poem." --Phoenix, A.-M. Lewis, Dept. of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics York University
Product details
June 2004Paperback
9780521607124
616 pages
215 × 143 × 38 mm
0.79kg
2 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction:
- 1. Life of Aratus
- 2. The Phaenomena
- 3. The astronomy and weather signs
- 4. Language, style and the hexameter
- 5. Contemporary and later poets
- 6. Scholia and commentators
- 7. Text and manuscripts
- Text and Translation
- Commentary
- Indexes.
