Abstract
This book is a conundrum. On one hand, it is a compendium of useful information about manuscripts containing Latin translations of Aratus’ Phaenomena, a Greek astronomical poem written in the third century
Since the book is written from an art-historical perspective, there is little in it of interest for historians of astronomy. On p. 347, Dolan asks, “In what way … does the information found in Aratea manuscripts become significant in the history of astronomy?” One answer is, not very much. “ … Although the astronomical information in the Aratea could not teach basic astronomy[,] there were many helpful facts that could be learned” (p. 353). The function of Aratea was primarily mnemonic and aesthetic. Its poetic and artistic traditions clung to earlier prototypes, bypassing the “Ptolemaic revolution” of the Middle Ages.
For the astronomer, there are two areas of interest. Both have to do with questions of dating. First, the so-called Leiden Planetary Configuration, treated by Dolan on pp. 285–291 (cf. B. Eastwood, “Origins and Contents of the Leiden Planetary Configuration,” Viator 14, 1983: 1–40). This is a diagram of planetary apogees and perigees found first in a manuscript of the ninth century
Second, on pp. 348–350, Dolan refers, quite uncritically, to an article by S. Zhitomirsky, “Aratus’ Phainomena: dating and analysing its primary sources,” Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions 17.6, 1999: 483–500. Rather than showing, as Eastwood’s article does, what can be done by the sensitive application of astronomical information to ancient materials, this article demonstrates the perils of conjecture. Zhitomirsky argues for a date of the original source of Aratus’ poem of c. 2000
The article descends into flights of fancy. “The pinpointed epoch of the creation of the primary source of Aratus’ poem is marked by a wide diffusion of archaeoastronomical monuments of the Stonehenge type” (p. 495). It argues that the poem contains traces of a flat earth doctrine (p. 496). In reality, these traces are of Homeric poetic diction, used by Aratus as the basis of his poetic language. Even more, Zhitomirsky goes on to attribute these traces to the ancient Vedic myth of the World Egg swimming in the waters (p. 497). To a contemporary Aratus scholar, all this is absurd.
It is extraordinary that Zhitomirsky postdates D. Kidd’s 1997 edition of the Phaenomena, in which astronomical information is applied, by a scholar with considerable scientific expertise, to this ancient text. The fact that Dolan mingles citations of an article of deep eccentricity, at best, and legitimate Classical scholarship, speaks to a promiscuous and uncritical use of sources.
From first to last, Dolan’s book is marred by innumerable and glaringly obvious typographical errors. How it can be that a book which has not been copy-edited can reach the public domain? Responsibility is shared by both author and press. Academic scholarship is not the uncritical collection of information; it is the production of work according to the highest scholarly, literary, and aesthetic standards. This book does not meet these criteria.