Didactic Features in two Latin Translations of Aratus' Phainomena
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Didactic epos "Phainomena" by Aratus of Soloi was very popular among Romans. Thus it was translated into Latin by a number of Roman authors, among others, by Marcus Tullius Cicero and Germanicus Iulius Caesar. The aim of the paper is to find out whether these two authors only translated the information contained in Aratus' text or whether they also managed to imitate the didactic tone of the poem. In the paper, I examine whether their works performed the task of teaching their readers about the heavens. Did both translators manage to play their roles as teachers? Did they try to make the lectures more interesting and perhaps to interact with the reader? Or did they minimize the didactic aspects of the epos and concerned on other features of the text? The main goal of my paper is to analyse the ways in which Cicero and Germanicus applied the features of the didactic poetry genre in their translations. This includes a comparison of these with Aratus' text and also with each other. The focus is put on both the ancient and the contemporary requirements and definitions. |
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