Cicero Among the Stars: Natural Philosophy and Astral Culture at Rome Ashley Ariel Simone Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Ashley A. Simone All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Cicero Among the Stars: Natural Philosophy and Astral Culture at Rome Ashley Ariel Simone This dissertation examines Cicero’s contribution to the rise of astronomy and astrology in the literary and cultural milieu of the late Republic and early Empire. Chapter One, “Rome’s Star Poet,” examines how Cicero conceives of world building through words to connect Rome to the stars with the Latin language. Through a close study of the Aratea, I consider how Cicero’s pioneering of Latin astronomical language influenced other writers, especially his contemporaries Lucretius and Catullus. In Chapter Two, “The Stars and the Statesman,” I examine Cicero’s attitudes towards politics. By analyzing Scipio’s Dream and astronomy in De re publica, I show how Cicero uses cosmic models to yoke Rome to the stars. To understand the astral dimensions of Cicero’s philosophy, in Chapter Three, “Signs and Stars, Words and Worlds,” I provide a close reading of Cicero’s poetic quotations in context in the De natura deorum and De divinatione to show how Cicero puts the Aratean cosmos to the test in Academic fashion. Ultimately, I argue that Cicero profoundly shaped the Roman view of the stars and cemented the link between cosmos and empire. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables and Figures…………………………….…………………………………….….…ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..………iii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………..….iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..………1 Chapter 1: Rome’s Star Poet……………………………………………………………………..13 1.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………..………13 1.2 Aratus at Rome…………………………………………………………………………….17 1.3 Translation as Creation ……………………………………………………………..……..29 1.4 Lucretius and the Aratea….……………………………………………………………….49 Chapter 2: The Stars and the Statesman…………………………………………………………66 2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..66 2.2 The Horizontal and the Vertical ……………………………………………………….…..71 2.3 Archimedes’ Celestial Spheres ……….……………………………………………….…..90 2.4 Planetary Motion and Political Cycles ……………………………………………..……100 2.5 The Static Sphere and the Beauty of the Cosmos……………………………………..….104 2.6 The Invocation of Aratus…………………………………………………………….……112 2.7 The Dream of Scipio…………………… ………………………………………………..120 Chapter 3: Signs and Stars, Words and Worlds………………………………………..…….….134 3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….134 3.2 De natura Deorum and the Beauty of Art……………………..…………………………139 i 3.3 Balbus’ Aratea……………………………………………………………………………147 3.4 Latin Stars………………………………………………………………….…………..…152 3.5 Seeing the Stars……………………………………………………………………..……160 3.6 The Cosmos as a Celestial Model…………………………………………………….…..171 3.7 Skepticism and the Art of the Dialogue………………………………………..…………179 3.8 Reading the Signs of De divinatione………………………………………………..……185 3.9 Cosmic Semiotics…………………………………………………………………………190 3.10 De consulatu suo and Physics’ Preamble to Politics……………………………………197 3.11 Caesar and the Skeptical Statesman’s Path to Heaven…………………………………..206 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………………..217 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………220 ii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1……………………………………………………………………………………………2 Table 1………………………………………………………………………………………..….85 Figure 2…………………………………………………………………………………………107 Figure 3…………………………………………………………………………………..…….108 Table 2………………………………………………………………………………………167–71 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks first and foremost goes to my supervisor Katharina Volk, who first taught me to love the stars in a graduate seminar on Star Poetry my very first semester at Columbia. Her passion for the stars in ancient literature sparked my own imagination, and has profoundly shaped my current project. Katharina has been an extremely patient, persistent, prompt, and thorough reader, combing through multiple rounds of drafts and shaping the project with her expert insight. I am also deeply indebted to the other members of my committee: James Zetzel, Gareth Williams, Raphael Woolf, and Wolfgang Mann. Jim taught me how to read Latin literature deeply and thoroughly my very first semester at Columbia and introduced me to Roman law. Gareth has generously made himself available over the years, always willing to make time to read a text with me, and Wolfgang has been an exceptional interlocutor and mentor, whose intellectual kindness and acuity have made me a stronger scholar. I will always look back on our seminar on the Timaeus with fond memories. Special thanks goes to Raphael, who permitted me to adopt him as a mentor after we connected over Cicero and Plato at a Timaeus conference in Edinburgh. In addition to my dissertation committee, I have several professors and colleagues I would like to thank. Elizabeth Scharffenberger taught me discipline while I was a student in her Greek Prose Composition class, and she never let up on me. My Greek is the better for it. Marcus Folch has on many occasions offered a friendly ear and insightful advice, and Nancy Worman has been an incredible encourager and insurmountable Director of Graduate Studies for the past couple years. Julie Crawford and Joanna Stalnaker have taught me much about teaching Literature Humanities. I am especially thankful for Helene Foley, whose kindness, generosity, iv and huge heart have shown me what kind of teacher and scholar I aspire to become. My deep gratitude goes to my mentors and friends from the Advanced Seminar in the Humanities at Venice International University, which was the highlight of my academic career to date. Special gratitude goes to Alessandro Schiesaro, Alessandro Barchiesi, David Sider, Del Maticic, Martina Russo, Stephanie Crooks, Il-Kweon Sir, and Enrico Prodi. At Columbia, I am incredibly grateful for the colleagues and friends I’ve had over the years, including Isaia Crosson, Anna Conser, Simone Oppen, Elizabeth Heintges, Cait Morgan, Kate Brassel, Joe Sheppard, Shulamit Shinnar, Usha Nathan, Jonathan Fine, Samuel McVane, Michael West, Mathias Hanses, Caleb Dance, Jane and Nathaniel Peters, Luke Foster, Lingzi Zhuang, and Eyvana Bengochea. I must also thank the administrative staff at Columbia: in Classics, Geraldine Visco, Selina Rivera, and Juliana Driever; in the Core Curriculum, Christine Butcher, Lidibeth Inoa, and Toni Gunthrope- Hardee. Outside of Columbia, my thanks are due to Chris Waldo, Angeline Chiu, David West, Leah Kronenberg, Cynthia Liu, David Konstan, Laura Viidebaum, Caroline Bishop, Hannah Čulík-Baird, David Levene, and James Uden. I would also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge my friends and mentors from Baylor, especially Julia Hejduk, Alden Smith, and K. Sarah-Jane Murray, all of whom have continued to mentor and shape me into the young scholar that I am today in various ways. Beyond academic circles, I must give my deepest thanks to my family and my church community at Emmanuel Anglican Church. My spouse and colleague Caleb Simone has been a huge encouragement over our years at Columbia, and I would not be where I am without his love and support. Our two children, Aidan and Alistair, have endured far too many viewings of various Disney movies while their parents worked on their graduate education, and I am so v thankful for their unconditional love and sweet embraces that always awaited me at the end of a long day. My mother and father Gary and Jeanie, as well as my parents-in-law Ken and Brenda, have my deepest gratitude for their love and support. Emmanuel Anglican Church has been one of the most important parts of our life in New York City while at Columbia, nurturing us and equipping us to do the work in the city we are called to do. Huge thanks goes to Jim and Amber Salladin, Iain and Maggie Atkinson, Edmond Rochat, Allegra Fisher, Sarah Bailey, Lydia Dugdale, Laura Childers, Clint and Laura Werezak, and Julia Hembree Smith. vi INTRODUCTION pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terram, os homini sublime dedit caelumque videre iussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus Although other animals gaze downwards at the earth, he gave to humankind a sublime visage and ordered them to lift their faces aloft to the stars.1 Ov. Met. 1.84–6 People have always looked to the sky for inspiration, imagining a world that is above our own. Looking at the stars reminds us that the world is more marvelous, more ordered yet more mysterious than we often recognize in the bustle of day-to-day life, even as its operation of days and nights rely on the stars above as the cosmic markers of our own daily rhythms. Yet the omnipresence of hand-held devices and digital clocks has made us forgetful of this reality, and thanks to the effects of the light of electric cities (as well as environmental pollution), most of us have very little sense of what the night sky must have looked like to people before such inventions of the industrial and digital revolution. Yet for the ancients, the sky’s sweeping expanse held a more definitive and immediate role. The structure of the cosmos represented stability and order. By the time of Aristotle (4th c. BCE), a two-sphere model of the universe was dominant,2 in which the earth lies at the center of the cosmos (the first sphere) and a second hollow celestial shell, inscribed with the constellations (the second sphere) encloses the entire 1 All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.