Manitius' Text of Geminus Γεμνου Εσαγωγ Ες Τ Φαινμενα. Gemini

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Manitius' Text of Geminus Γεμνου Εσαγωγ ες τ Φαινμενα. Gemini Elementa Astronomica ad Codicum dem recensuit Germanica Interpretatione et Commentariis instruxit Carolus Manitius. (Lipsiae in Aedibus B. G. Teubneri.)

E. J. Webb

The Classical Review / Volume 15 / Issue 02 / March 1901, pp 120 - 123 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00029735, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00029735

How to cite this article: E. J. Webb (1901). The Classical Review, 15, pp 120-123 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00029735

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 130.133.8.114 on 07 May 2015 120 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 488 where the Cologne MS. has fusosque per the usual explanation for the variety of aequor ipse manu magna nebulam circumdatus readings at i. 159, ii. 70, iii. 124, 264, etc. acri Restituit pugnae. FLOVagree in reading —variety of reading in the archetype. Thus nebula ; the only other variations are that F at i. I.e. ffertni Jlauescit harenis F is right, has al/ra at the end of the line, whilst LOV OY reading mi as in, join it to the verb and for pugnae have pugnam. F has, very un- write her (O indeed, characteristically, hec) justly, been suspected of interpolation here, inflauescit. But L has hermus inflauescit. though atras and acris have been confused Blass supposed that the archetype had heri, elsewhere by LFOV. But that is by the with mj written above, and that L misread way : the main point is how did the editor the j as the abbreviation for -us. But if L of L's ancestor come back to acri, which came from F this explanation cannot stand made nonsense with his interpolation pug- —and it is difficult to find another. nam. WALTER C. SUMMERS. (7) Lastly, the theory plays havoc with

REVIEWS. MANITIUS' TEXT OF GEMINUS.

Ttfiivov Eicrayioyri eU ra ^aivofneya. Gemini several important restorations of the Greek Elementa Astronomica ad Codicum fidem text, but to obtain what he thinks recensuit Germanica Interpretatione et conclusive evidence that the well-known Commentariis instruxit CAROLUS MAN- Sphaera Prodi, which, as has long been ITIUS. (Lipsiae in Aedibus B. G. Teubneri.) known, is no more than an arrangement of certain chapters from Geminus, cannot So many eminent critics have bestowed possibly have been compiled by Proclus. warm praise on the little Introduction to For lacunae common to all extant MSS. of Astronomy which bears the name of Geminus and to the Sphaera apparently did Geminus, that there is something rather not exist in the MS. which was used, several chilling in its latest editor's want of centuries later than Proclus, by the Arab enthusiasm. But that Geminus has faults translator. must be admitted, the more readily by Turning now to the German notes and those who are not quite so willing as commentary at the end of the book, the Professor Manitius to make a convenient reader will find a full discussion of the scapegoat of his more or less imaginary questions which have been raised—often ' Excerptor.' His merits however are con- without the faintest hope of an answer—as spicuous enough to divert attention from a to the date, nationality, and literary per- much greater number of faults; and make formances of Geminus. On these problems him fully worthy of the care and skill Professor Mstnitius brings to bear a learning which Professor Manitius has devoted to and sagacity which are truly admirable, him. even to those who may doubt the possibility The most interesting points brought out of drawing valuable inferences from.the in the Preface seem to be: first that the titles of books cited casually by ancient MSS. of Geminus are few and closely authors. Who shall decide, when the books related, which is hardly what would be themselves have long perished, whether expected if the book were, as has been Freeman's ' Normans in Sicily' was the supposed, a compilation widely used for same as his 'Norman Conquest,' whether educational purposes; secondly that there ' Eobinson Crusoe' was or was not a mere exists a Latin version of the whole work epitome of ' The Life and Adventures of which, though obviously made from an Robinson Crusoe ' ? The principal achieve- Arabic translation, must descend through the ment of Professor Manitius himself in this Arabic from a Greek manuscript older and discussion is to discredit the reading ivravOa fuller than any which has come down to us. Se in the chapter on the celestial globe (p. By the aid of this Latin version Professor 50 of this edition), by which Geminus is Manitius has been able, not only to make made to say that here the northern tropic THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 121 is divided in the ratio of five to three, and portion given by Aratus himself, who is which has been supposed to afford ground actually being quoted, there can surely be for thinking that he wrote at Rome. It is no reason whatever for detecting in it certainly clear that this was not the reading , a reference to the situation of the person which the Arab translator found, and quoting him. whether Professor Manitius can be con- I can only notice a few of the questions sidered quite successful in his proposed bearing on the history of astronomy which emendation or not, there can be little are suggested by the researches of Professor doubt that he has removed practically all Manitius. reason for connecting Geminus with Rome ; The famous Calendar at the end of the and we are therefore probably safe in con- book, which gives the time taken by the sidering the name as Greek, and pronouncing sun in passing through each sign of the it Geminus. We may also, I think, agree zodiac, was supposed by Ideler to be based that the observations about the shifting —as the remarks in Chapter I certainly are date of the Isis festival (p. 108) justify the —on the solar theory of Hipparchus, the natural, and usual, conclusion that the author days being given in round numbers instead wrote about 75 B.C. The whole theory of of fractions for the sake of convenience. Professor Manitius, which he does not pre- But later research has shown that there was tend to regard with full confidence, is as an earlier theory—that of Callippus—to follows: Geminus was a Stoic, who com- which the calendar more nearly conforms, posed a long commentary on the meteoro- and Professor Manitius is doubtless right in logical text-book of his master, Posidonius. referring the whole document, which men- This commentary he afterwards compressed tions no observations nearly so recent as into an epitome, which was current even as those of Hipparchus, to an earlier age than late as the time of Priscianus Lydus. And that of Geminus. His argument that finally this epitome itself, in the fourth or Geminus, who expresses a poor opinion of fifth century, was made by some nameless weather-predictions, would never have in- and ignorant compiler into the abbreviated serted such a compilation in his book does and interpolated work which has come down not strike me as forcible: it might T>e to us. If Professor Manitius is not right replied that the admirable chapter on star- on all these points, it is at any rate very risings and the weather was written ex- difficult to be sure that he is wrong on any. pressly to prepare his readers to discriminate I confess to regarding with scepticism his between the value of the astronomical and view that Geminus himself wrote at Rhodes, meteorological predictions in the calendar. while the excerptor lived at Constantinople, But whether Geminus inserted it or not, or at any rate somewhere in latitude 41°. the calendar is not, as Ideler supposed, Geminus may have written at Rhodes ; but Hipparchian ; and to me the question seems that he did, there seems to me no evidence to arise whether there is not really much other than such as might be taken to prove less of Hipparchus in the whole book than that any English geographer lived at Ideler thought, or than Professor Manitius Greenwich. The reasons why most globes thinks, or than might, from the date of the were constructed for the latitude of Rhodes author, have been expected. It has long —as he practically tells us they were—are been remarked that Geminus takes no plain enough, and that he should have used notice of the important correction which such a globe needs no explanation. Nor Hipparchus had made in the accepted can I understand either why what seems to estimate of the length of the year. Is it as me a very intelligible passage on p. 90 certain as Professor Manitius holds that he should be ascribed to the excerptor, or why, was better informed as to the length of the if it is, it should be held to convey any month 1 information about him. After it has been shown that the signs of the zodiac do not Geminus in several places tells us that the all take the same time to rise, the writer exact length of the synodic month is 29 days proceeds to say that this explains why, as + ^ + -^s- This estimate, if worked out, Aratus in some lines which he quotes has will be found to differ by about 25 seconds pointed out, the same number of signs, from the true value as obtained by Hip- namely six, rise and set in the longest as parchus. Now in one passage of the in the shortest night, although the longest Eiparallel, but as it is the pro- certainly seems to offer it as absolutely correct, is in fact only offered as an earlier 122 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. and less close approximation to the truth. of what was well established by the time of Professor Manitius proposes a solution of Archimedes, that the apparent breadth of this difficulty. For critical reasons of some the sun and moon is only about half a weight he strikes out altogether the passage degree. Certainly Professor Manitius has- containing the estimate of Hipparchus, but fallen into a strange mistake when he says maintains at the same time that the other that Cleomedes also estimates the diameter- estimate, though different in appearance, is at a whole degree. It is of course true that in fact the same, being merely the Hip- he divides the diameter into 12 digits, and parchian value reduced for shortness to the that the digit may have originally been the nearest convenient fraction of a day. This twelfth part of a degree—more or less, but- is certainly plausible, but it seems to me Prof. Manitius must surely know that this that there is something to be said on the measure, whatever its origin may have been, other side. Geminus tells us (p. 114) that has been used by astronomers down to the the error in the eight-year cycle (which gave nineteenth century. Now in at least two 51 months of 30 days to 48 of 29 days) was places (pp. 150, 170 of Ziegler's edition) corrected by comparing the average month Cleomedes says plainly that the apparent- deduced from this cycle with the true breadth of the sun, which he takes (pp. value 29 days + \+^. Now if he is here 148 and 178) to be equal to that of the telling us how mistakes really were found moon, is not quite half a degree. Indeed out, and not merely how they may be found his exact estimate of the diameter, several out, it seems impossible that the Hip- times repeated, is the seven hundred and parchian estimate can have been thus fiftieth part of the whole circle, that is to say employed at a time which was certainly if of a degree. This estimate, which in long before Hipparchus. Moreover, Geminus reality is rather too small, is not that of says that the 99 months of the eight-year Hipparchus. If it be that of Posidonius, the- period were shown, on the application of chief authority, as we know, of Cleomedes, this test, to be one day and a half short; is it likely that Geminus, who, according to- and this is exactly true if we take the Professor Manitius, was a pupil of Posi- fractional estimate as it stands, but only donius, can have been ignorant of it 1 approximately true if we translate it into In another place (p. 273) Professor- the Hipparchian value. It may be urged Manitius does equal injustice to Cleomedes that what Geminus says is not history, and in attributing to him the antique doctrine that in fact the early reformers detected the refuted by Geminus, that the planets do not- error of the eight-year cycle by its discor- really move from west to east, but from east dance, not with a theoretical estimate, but to west as the fixed stars do, only more with the phases of the moon. Still it slowly. It is true that he uses words which, seems to me far from certain that the month if detached from their context, might have- of Geminus is intended to be the month of this meaning; but the context, as Professor Hipparchus. Manitius himself seems to admit, is incom- There is another passage (p. 134) showing patible with it. Elsewhere, too, Cleomedes a remarkable divergence from Hipparchus, assigns to each planet its own proper- upon which Professor Manitius comments motion—irpoaxperiKyj iroptia—in the most with less than his usual accuracy. Geminus orthodox way. there says that the breadth of the earth's It appears to me here and there that shadow at the distance of the moon is two Professor Manitius, with all his skill in degrees. Now we know that Hipparchus dissecting the remains of Geminus, and estimated the breadth, at the moon's mean pointing out what must have been lost by distance, to be not twice, as his predecessors careless custodians, or supplied by an over- had held, but two and a half times the careful 'excerptor,' does not sufficiently diameter of the moon; but even so the take into consideration the mental charac- shadow, according to him, would only have teristics of the man, which may, I think, be a width of about one degree and a third. inferred from what survives to us of his Professor Manitius explains the statement work. Geminus seems to have been a of Geminus by supposing that he held to rationalist of the most uncompromising kind, the pre-Hipparchian estimate of the shadow impatient alike of those who traced- the as twice the moon's breadth, while imagining changes of the weather to stellar influences, the moon to have an apparent diameter of and of those who found the doctrines of a whole degree. Plausible as this is, I can- scientific geography in Homer. When, there- not believe that any instructed person in fore, at the end of the chapter which so- the time of Geminus can have been ignorant lucidly explains that the risings of stars in THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 125 general and of the dog-star in particular are the last chapter—that concerning the moon- merely reminders, and not causes, of the period called i£e\iyfws—which, as he truly meteorological phenomena that accompany says, impresses us as being a mere fragment. them, he winds up with an ill-judged and By a series of emendations he has made feeble argument that the influence of Sirius, Geminus speak throughout this chapter in if it existed, should be exerted rather in the first person singular, which I do not winter than summer, it seems to be quite think is ever employed elsewhere in the unnecessary to assign this paragraph to the book. Nor is the result here entirely satis- excerptor. Even were the argument so factory, for-the calculations which the author wholly imbecile as Professor Manitius thinks, is thus made to attribute to himself certainly it would only show that Geminus, like many can hardly have been claimed by Geminus as a later controversialist, lacked the self- his own. restraint to leave off arguing at the moment There is another point—a small one—on when his good arguments were exhausted. which one may differ with more confidence On the other hand, even if the excerptor than usual from Professor Manitius, namely knew enough astronomy to invent even a as to the length of the passage (p. 70)- bad argument, there seems no reason to to be placed within inverted commas as a suppose that he would have felt any strong quotation from Pytheas of Massilia. Surely temptation to employ it. Again, when it should comprise no more than the words- Professor Manitius accuses Geminus (pp. iSeiKwov rjfuv 61 (iapfiapoi oirov 6 iJAios Kotjuartu. 255, 262) of ignorance, or rather wilful The following sentence, which gives the ex- perversity, in refusing to understand that planation of the phenomenon, is entirely in the ancients placed the equinoctial and the manner of Geminus; it begins with one solstitial points not, with Hipparchus, at of his favourite expressions, cruvi^awe -yap, and the beginnings of the signs, but, with the words which follow, irtpl TOVTOVS TOUS Eudoxus, in the middles, he fails, I think, TOTTOVS, are a characteristic repetition of a to perceive that, as the context plainly sug- phrase in the sentence preceding the quota- gests, the attack of Geminus is really tion. directed not at the ancients, but the astro- At the end of the work Professor Manitius logers, who must in his -time have been prints some extracts from the Latin version coming into prominence, and whose wisdom which has done him such good service, and must have been even less to his taste than also the long passage cited by Simplicius that of weather-prophets or Homeric inter- from a Geminus, whom it certainly seems preters. In Manilius we have all the con- simpler to suppose to be the same as the fusion of which Geminus complains—even author of the 'Euraya>yr]: what relation, if calculations based upon the primitive any, the two works bore to one another, assumption that all the signs rise in equal seems to me so obviously unanswerable as times—and this mass of contradictions is to be hardly worth asking. The passage is all represented as the wisdom of the ancients, a very remarkable one, as will be remem- Egyptians and Babylonians. bered by all readers of Schiaparelli's work I am a little disappointed that Professor on the ancient precursors of Copernicus. Manitius has not given us more notes on E. J. WEBB.

PESKETT'S BOOK III. OF CAESAR'S CIVIL WAR.

Caesar's Civil War, Book III. Edited with Civil War, starts from Tiberius Gracchus, Introduction, Notes, and Maps, by A. G. sets the events antecedent to the campaign PESKETT, M. A., President and Tutor of in Epirus clearly before the reader, except Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pp. xxiv, with regard to the constitutional question 184. Pitt Press, 1900. Price 2s. 6d. over which Caesar and Pompey fell out. On this point what the writer says at the THIS is a careful and scholarly piece of bottom of p. xviii may have a meaning, but • work—a little dull perhaps, as compared it is hard to discover it. The historical^ with Moberly's, but if a commentator may aspects of the work have been carefully- not be dull, who may? studied, while for the military geography- The introduction, which, like Appian's the editor relies on Colonel Stoffel. He has-