The ''Catasterismi'' or ''Catasterisms'' (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Καταστερισμοί ''Katasterismoi'', "Constellations" or "Placings Among the Stars"), is a lost work attributed to

Eratosthenes Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; grc-gre, Ἐρατοσθένης ; – ) was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandr ...

of Cyrene. It was a comprehensive compendium of astral mythology including

origin myths An origin myth is a myth that describes the origin of some feature of the natural or social world. One type of origin myth is the creation or cosmogonic myth, a story that describes the creation of the world. However, many cultures have sto ...

of the stars and

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...

s. Only a summary of the original work survives, called the ''Epitome Catasterismorum'', by an unknown author sometimes referred to as pseudo-Eratosthenes.

Summary

The ''Epitome'' records the mature and definitive development of a long process: the Hellenes' assimilation of a Mesopotamian

zodiac The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The pa ...

, transmitted through Persian interpreters and translated and harmonized with the known terms of

Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities o ...

. A fundamental effort in this translation was the application of Greek mythic nomenclature to designate individual stars, both asterisms like the

Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance ...

and Hyades, and the constellations. In

Classical Greece Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years (the 5th and 4th centuries BC) in Ancient Greece,The "Classical Age" is "the modern designation of the period from about 500 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C." ( Thomas R. Marti ...

, the "wandering stars" and the gods who directed them were separate entities, as for

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

; in Hellenistic culture, the association became an inseparable identification, so that

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...

, no longer the regent of the Sun, actually ''was''

Helios In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Helios (; grc, , , Sun; Homeric Greek: ) is the god and personification of the Sun (Solar deity). His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyperion ("the one above") an ...

(Seznec 1981, pp 37–40). Chapters 1–42 of the ''Epitome'' treat forty-three of the forty-eight constellations (including the

) known to

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

(2nd century CE); chapters 43–44 treat the five planets and the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

. † Not one of the modern constellations. Of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, the ones not included are

Corona Australis Corona Australis is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its Latin name means "southern crown", and it is the southern counterpart of Corona Borealis, the northern crown. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-cent ...

, Equuleus, Libra,

Lupus Lupus, technically known as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in many parts of the body. Symptoms vary among people and may be mild to severe. Commo ...

, and

Serpens Serpens ( grc, , , the Serpent) is a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it remains one of the 88 modern constellations designated by the International ...

. In modern times, Argo Navis (the ship ''Argo'') has been divided into three constellations:

Carina Carina may refer to: Places Australia * Carina, Queensland, a suburb in Brisbane * Carina Heights, Queensland, a suburb in Brisbane * Carina, Victoria, a locality in Mildura Serbia * Carina, Osečina, a village in the Kolubara District ...

(the keel),

Puppis Puppis is a constellation in the southern sky. Puppis, the Latin translation of "poop deck", was originally part of an over-large constellation Argo Navis (the ship of Jason and the Argonauts), which centuries after its initial description, wa ...

(the stern), and Vela (the sails); and the Pleiades are recognized as a star cluster within the constellation Taurus. The work cites in some places the lost ''Astronomia'' attributed to

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...

. A similar later account is the ''

Poeticon Astronomicon ''De Astronomica'', or the ''Astronomy'', also known as ''Poeticon Astronomicon'', is a book of stories whose text is attributed to "Hyginus", though the true authorship is disputed. During the Renaissance, the work was attributed to the Roman ...

'', or ''

De Astronomica ''De Astronomica'', or the ''Astronomy'', also known as ''Poeticon Astronomicon'', is a book of stories whose text is attributed to "Hyginus", though the true authorship is disputed. During the Renaissance, the work was attributed to the Roman ...

'' (tellingly also titled ''De Astrologia'' in some manuscripts that follow Hyginus' usage in his text) attributed to

Gaius Julius Hyginus Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Gramma ...

. During the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

, printing of the ''Epitome'' under the title ''Catasterismi'', began early, but the work was always overshadowed by

Hyginus Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammati ...

, the only other ancient repertory of catasterisms. The ''Catasterismi'' was illustrated by woodcuts in the first illustrated edition by

Erhard Ratdolt Erhard Ratdolt (1442–1528) was an early German printer from Augsburg. He was active as a printer in Venice from 1476 to 1486, and afterwards in Augsburg. From 1475 to 1478 he was in partnership with two other German printers. The first book ...

, (Venice 1482). Johann Schaubach's edition of the ''Catasterismi'' (Meiningen 1791) was also illustrated with celestial maps drawn from another work, Johann Buhle's Aratus (Leipzig, 2 volumes, 1793–1801). After the old Teubner edition of A. Olivieri, ''Pseudo-Eratosthenis Catasterismi'' (Leipzig 1897), the text has a new complete edition including the recensio Fragmenta VaticanaEratòstenes de Cirene, Catasterismes, Introducció, edició crítica, traducció i notes de J. PÀMIAS I MASSANA, Barcelona 2004 and ERATOSTHENES, Catasterismi, Text, Übers., Komm. von J. PÀMIAS u. K. GEUS, Oberhaid 2007.

Notes

References

*Condos, Theony, ''Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans: A Sourcebook, Containing The Constellations of Pseudo-Eratosthenes and the Poetic Astronomy of Hyginus'' (Grand Rapids I Phanes Press, 1997) (hb); (pb). Reviewed by Roger Ceragioli in: ''Journal for the History of Astronomy,'' 30.1 (1999), pp. 313–315; by John McMahon in: ''Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy in Culture'', XVI (2001), pp. 98–99 and by John T. Ramsey, a
"Bryn Mawr Classical Review 98.6.28"
* Decker, Elly, ''Illustrating the Phaenomena: Celestial Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages'',

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

, 2013. . * Hard, Robin, (trans.) ''Eratosthenes and Hyginus: Constellation Myths, With Aratus's Phaenomena'',

, 2015. . * Kanas, Nick, ''Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography'', Springer, 2009. {{ISBN, 978-0-387-71668-8. * Seznec, Jean, ''The Survival of the Pagan Gods'' (Princeton J Princeton University Press, 1981).

External links

*The Katasterismoi
Part 1
an
Part 2
in

ADSABS The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned a ...

* ''Mythographoi. Scriptores poetiace historiae graeci'', Antonius Westermann (ed.), Brunsvigae sumptum fecit Georgius Westermann, 1843
pagg. 239-67
*''Mythographi Graeci'', Alexander Olivieri (ed.)
vol. III, fasc. I
Lipsiae in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1897. *
Eratosthenis catasterismorum fragmenta vaticana
', Albert Rehm (ed.), Ansbach, Druck von C. Bruegel & Sohn, 1899.
Italica: Rinascimento: Ilaria Miarelli Mariani, "Astrologia"
(in Italian)

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20040214205934/http://aagc.dis.ulpgc.es/gt_historia_constelaciones.html Daniel Marin, "The History of Constellations"(in Spanish) *Ian Ridpath
Star Tales – The mythographers
Ancient astronomy Astrological texts Ancient Greek pseudepigrapha References on Greek mythology