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A GREEN SKY AND A GREEN SUN? (PLINY, HN 17.74 AND MANILIUS 2.941)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2021

Boris Kayachev
Boris Kayachev*
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford
*
boriskayachev@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article considers two passages in which either the sky (Plin. HN 17.74) or the sun (Manilius 2.941) is described as ‘green’; it argues that in both cases such a colour epithet is out of place and proposes to correct uiridi caelo to nitido caelo in the former case, and uiridis … Phoebus to rutilus … Phoebus in the latter.

Keywords

Latin literaturetextual criticismweathermeteorologyastrologyDirae
Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , December 2021 , pp. 900 - 902
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

Three passages of Latin literature employ an unusual colour epithet, uiridis, in reference to the sky or the sun: Dirae (Lydia) 142 sidera per uiridem redeunt cum pallida mundum; Plin. HN 17.74 differuntur [sc. cypress seedlings] post annum dodrantali filo, custodita temperie, ut uiridi caelo serantur ac sine aura; and Manilius 2.941–2 uiridis gelidis et Phoebus ab undis | enatat. Only the first has apparently come under suspicion so far, with Giardina suggesting that uiridem is an error for nitidum, for which he lists numerous parallels: Manilius 1.126 mundum … nitentem, 1.848 nitidum [v.l. liquidum] … mundum, 4.866–7 nitentem … mundum; Sen. Med. 402 nitidus … mundus; Val. Fl. 3.467 nitidus … aether; Mart. 10.28.1 nitidi … mundi (add Val. Fl. 5.565 nitidum … aethera; Stat. Silv. 1.2.262 nitidum … aethera, 3.3.36 nitido … caelo).Footnote 1 It may be worth pointing out that nitid- and uirid- can be virtually indistinguishable in minuscule script.Footnote 2 Since the Dirae (Lydia) passage is corrupt to such an extent that it is uncertain, among other things, to what time of day it refers, one cannot be quite sure of Giardina's emendation, but it definitely deserves to be remembered;Footnote 3 even if nitidum is not the original reading, uiridem is none the less probably corrupt. The Pliny and the Manilius passages have been cited in its support (of which Giardina seems to have been unaware);Footnote 4 as I propose to argue, however, in both of them uiridis is likewise an error of transmission.

Pliny is speaking about the cultivation of the cypress tree and advises that one-year-old seedlings should be transplanted in favourable weather conditions, namely uiridi caelo … ac sine aura ‘under a green sky and with no wind’. While in principle ‘green sky’ may not be inconceivable as a specific weather sign (even if it appears to be unparalleled elsewhere), what Pliny refers to is ‘good weather’ in general, not some rare atmospheric phenomenon.Footnote 5 The point of this phrase is explicated by the next sentence: mirumque dictu, periculum eo tantum die est, si rorauit quantulumcumque imbris, aut si adflauit,Footnote 6 in which si adflauit is the opposite of sine aura, and si rorauit … imbris – of nitido caelo ‘clear sky’; cf. OLD s.v. nitidus 1: ‘Bright […] b (of sunny days, the sky)’.Footnote 7 My argument is not that uiridis can under no circumstances refer to ‘clear sky’ but that it actually never does, whereas here we expect a fairly simple and neutral expression.Footnote 8

Manilius is describing the first ‘temple’ (= ‘house’ in modern astrology) of the ecliptic, located in the eastern horizon (2.939–42):

nunc age surgentem primo de cardine mundum
respice, qua solitos nascentia signa recursus
incipiunt, uiridis gelidis et Phoebus ab undis
enatat et fuluo paulatim accenditur igni.

The point is quite straightforward: Manilius refers to the section of the celestial sphere where the stars and the sun begin to rise. Why is the sun uiridis? Housman explains: ‘solem autem uiridem uiderunt Cleomedes II 1 72 (ὁ ἥλιος) ἄλλοτε ἀλλοῖος ἡμῖν φαντάζεται … ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ ποικίλος ἢ χλωρός et Lydus ostent. 9 6 μέλας δὲ ἢ ὑπόχλωρος ἀνατέλλων … χειμῶνας δηλοῖ.’Footnote 9 These parallels are irrelevant: they only show that the sun may seem ‘green’ in some specific cases, but not as a rule, whereas Manilius speaks of a typical situation that occurs every morning (note solitos). Goold takes uiridis in a non-chromatic sense and translates: ‘a pale Sun swims upward from the icy waves and begins by slow degrees to blaze with golden flame’.Footnote 10 Yet, even if uiridis could have such a meaning as a calque of χλωρός,Footnote 11 it is inappropriate in the present context: under normal circumstances, the rising sun is anything but pale. Hübner claims that Manilius alludes to an astrological system, subsequently attested in the ninth-century Persian astrologer Abu Maʿshar, which associated different ‘temples’ with different colours.Footnote 12 Yet, even if one ignores the gap of eight centuries that divides the two authors, in Manilius both ‘green’ (uiridis) and ‘yellow’ (fuluo) belong in the first ‘temple’, whereas Abu Maʿshar links the first ‘temple’ with blue colour and only the adjacent ‘temples’ with green (the second and the twelfth) and yellow (the third and the eleventh).Footnote 13 Besides, Manilius simply does not supply enough evidence to detect in his use of colour terms any sort of astrological system. If uiridis is corrupt, what has it replaced? I have considered nitidus, but in view of line 942 it is unlikely; we need a term for ‘red’, I suggest: when the sun only emerges from under the horizon (enatat), it is red, but then it gradually becomes yellower as it rises higher (942 fuluo paulatim accenditur igni). Out of a number of synonyms, rutilus is the likeliest: it could easily have produced uiridis (possibly by way of uirilis),Footnote 14 and it can be paralleled (note, for instance, Sil. Pun. 1.577–8 rutilus primis sonipes hinnitibus altos | afflarat montes, of the Dawn's horse, and especially 12.648 attollens rutilantem lampada Titan).

Footnotes

I should like to thank CQ's editor and the anonymous reviewer for their valuable suggestions.

References

1 Giardina, G., ‘Nuovi emendamenti al testo delle Dirae e della Lydia pseudovirgiliane’, QUCC 92 (2009), 167–73, at 171Google Scholar.

2 The corruption may also have been facilitated by the scribe's memory of uiridem in the same position at line 114, as well as by the ending of 141 crudelem, written right over nitidum (?) in our line (I owe this observation to the anonymous reviewer).

3 The manuscripts’ redeunt implies the onset of night, but there are reasons to believe that the passage should rather refer to the morning (reading cedunt with Haupt, M., ‘Coniectanea’, Hermes 8 [1874], 1–17, at 13)Google Scholar, in which case nitidum would be particularly apt: ‘the pale stars disappear throughout the brightening sky’; but the adjective could also work with redeunt, in which case it could be taken proleptically to mean ‘brilliant with stars lighting up in the sky’.

4 See Putsche, K., Valerii Catonis poemata (Jena, 1828), 95Google Scholar and Jacob, F., ‘Zu Catonis Dirae, Propertius, Cicero’, Philologus 3 (1848), 547–53, at 549CrossRefGoogle Scholar respectively.

5 Cf. the translations by Rackham, H., Pliny: Natural History, Books 17–19 (London, 1950), 51Google Scholar (‘regard being paid to the weather so that they may be planted under a bright sky and when there is no wind’) and André, J., Pline l'ancien: Histoire naturelle livre XVII (Paris, 1964), 44Google Scholar (‘en prenant soin, pour le temps, que le ciel soit serein et le vent nul’).

6 Note also Cato, who likewise advises against transplanting trees (including the cypress) cum uentus siet aut imber (Agr. 28.1).

7 HN Book 17 survives only in minuscule manuscripts, whose archetype (or rather already its ancestor) was evidently likewise written in minuscule; note e.g. on the same page: 17.72 natura eius (codd.) for naturae uis (Caesarius) and 73 uuluoalis (D) for uoluiculis (Mayhoff). On Pliny's tradition, see in general Reynolds, L.D., ‘The Elder Pliny’, in id. (ed.), Texts and Transmission (Oxford, 1983), 307–16Google Scholar.

8 More tentatively, I would further suggest that the reverse corruption may have taken place at Ov. Met. 14.720 nitidaque incingere lauro, where very possibly uiridique should be read (cf. Verg. Aen. 5.246 uiridique aduelat tempora lauro, 5.539 cingit uiridanti tempora lauro; Val. Fl. 4.334 uiridi conectit tempora lauro), although in view of Met. 1.552 remanet nitor unus in illa (of Daphne transformed into a laurel tree) the transmitted nitidaque may not be entirely indefensible (cf. e.g. Myers, K.S., Ovid: Metamorphoses Book XIV [Cambridge, 2009], 186Google Scholar: ‘nitida recalls Daphne's metamorphosis into the laurel at 1.552’).

9 Housman, A.E., M. Manilii Astronomicon liber secundus (Cambridge, 1937 2), 111Google Scholar.

10 Goold, G.P., Manilius: Astronomica (Cambridge, MA, 1977), 157Google Scholar. Garrod, H.W., Manili Astronomicon liber II (Oxford, 1911), 59Google Scholar translates similarly: ‘Phoebus rises pale from the cold sea’, but then offers a baffling explanation in the commentary (at 151): ‘uiridis means quite simply “of the colour of the sea”’.

11 Normally uiridis has an expressly chromatic force of ‘green’, but in poetry it sometimes appears to be used in a way similar to, and no doubt in imitation of, Greek χλωρός in its non-chromatic sense (which is usually rendered with pallidus), as, for instance, at Ciris 225 uiridis … pallor, on which cf. Lyne, R.O.A.M., Ciris: A Poem Ascribed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), 193Google Scholar: ‘By uiridis the poet means of course χλωρός; indeed the usual active connotations of uiridis itself are all wrong for the context (“flourishing” and the like). The reader has to ignore these to find a phrase that makes sense; and has to feel through to the connotations of χλωρός (cf. LSJ s.v. II) to find a phrase that comes alive.’ Cf. further André, J., Etude sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris, 1949), 186Google Scholar.

12 See Hübner, W., ‘Manilius als Astrologe und Dichter’, ANRW 2.32.1 (1984), 126–320Google Scholar, at 145. S. Feraboli and R. Scarcia, Manilio: Il poema degli astri (Astronomica), 2 vols. (Milan, 2001), 1.366 follow Hübner's interpretation.

13 See Hübner, W., Die Eigenschaften der Tierkreiszeichen in der Antike: Ihre Darstellung und Verwendung unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung des Manilius (Wiesbaden, 1982), 295–9 and 361Google Scholar.

14 Note that Manilius speaks about Saturn's uires, astrological ‘influences’, at line 938, immediately before our passage (I owe this point to the anonymous reviewer). But rutilus and uiridis can look sufficiently similar in minuscule for one to be corrupted into the other directly (ru → uı, t → r, l → d), especially as scribes (as indeed most practised readers) would normally read words as whole units, rather than deciphering them letter by letter. According to Housman, A.E., M. Manilii Astronomicon liber quintus (Cambridge, 1937 2), xviiiGoogle Scholar, ‘The archetype need not have been older than the 10th century’ (i.e. it will have been written in minuscule).