Though one cannot be seen, the other extends
Over the north.
(translated by Aaron Poochigian, ll.19–25)Aratus’s idea of the cosmos is geocentric and begins with the polestar, moving
directly to the two constellations surrounding the pole.
Two Bearssurround this pole
(Which are at times called Wagonssince they roll
Like wagon-wheels). Muzzle to behind,
They rear and dive with shoulder joints aligned
And bellies outward. If the tale is true,
Zeus the almighty stellified these two
Because, near Ida, in his infancy,
They found him lying on Dicte’s dittany
And picked him up and housed him in their den.
One year they nursed him while the older men
Of Crete distracted Cronos from his son.
(translated by Aaron Poochigian, ll. 19–35)This combines the visual picture of the constellations of the Great and Lesser Bear
(as they can still be named and represented on astrological maps) with an aetiological
myth, it seems, partly of Aratus’s own making. Rhea hid the infant Zeus from his father
Cronos (who had been told one of his sons would supplant him and so swallowed her
children) by presenting him with a stone wrapped in swaddling cloths instead. A more
usual version of his upbringing on Crete has the infant being nursed by the goat
Amaltheia. The constellation of the Bear is more usually explained as a compensatory
reward ordained by Zeus for the nymph Callisto, a devotee of the goddess Artemis,
whom he had previously ravished. So, although the basis may have been the scientific
treatise by Eudoxus, the mythological part is the poet’s own addition and sometimes
invention. The poem was much commented upon and translated into Latin in later
centuries several times. It met with the approval of a leading contemporary, his fellow
poet Callimachus (c. 305–c. 240):
Aratus of Soloi models his verse
OnHesiod’s best, refuses to write
The Ultimate Epic. We praise these terse,
Subtle tokens of long effort at night.
(Epigram 62, translated by Lombardo and Rayer, p. 60)LITERATURE 177