Introduction
The history of Lucan's critical reception presents a colorful and curious
insight into the history of European thought, and, in turn, the events of
the 16th century in Europe proved to be a watershed for the Pharsalia.
It would be therefore difficult for this study to avoid discussions of intellectual
or scholarly history, though this is not the prime motivation for publishing
these letters. In addition it is the goal of this work to revive interest
in Lucan's poetry, which has suffered a sharp decline since the devastating
attacks of Scaliger -- attacks delivered shortly before the composition
of these letters. But the primary goal of this work is to increase the understanding
of the Pharsalia itself. As will be shown, Kepler's thoughts on the
poem are an excellent tool for this understanding, since they are formed
at the very time when the poem went out of fashion, by a young man who lived
precariously between the ancient and modern world -- a time when scholars
were beginning to seriously question the supremacy of the ancient wisdom
and the value of ancient writers.
Lucan's poem has hovered on the periphery of western letters ever since
its fall in the Renaissance, a somewhat oblique work only to be read by
the vulgar masses, or the very learned, or rebellious, or perhaps just the
perverse.1 Nevertheless it has been read by and aroused the interest
of an impressive array of characters from Petronius to Dante, Fronto to
Macaulay, Augustine to Erasmus, and perhaps the most historically significant
for our society today, Kepler. I say most significant because of the enormous
role Kepler played in the development of modern "science" and
its concomitant materialistic world view. Those who have suffered the labor
to read Kepler (very little has been translated into any modern language
and all but none into English2), have tended towards terms such as the "watershed"3
of modern history. Newton seems to have outstripped Kepler in the pantheon
of early science because of his innate tendency towards empirical rationalism,
a tendency comforting to the modern scientist. As will be shown, Kepler
had a somewhat more imaginative and catholic intellect which, shortly before
the letters translated here, expressed itself in the obscure Mysterium
Cosmographicum, would several years later stumble onto the planetary
laws that shoved Europe into the scientific age, and yet still later compose
the mystical Harmonice Mundi and Somnium. Thus it is a poetic
turn of fate that these two neglected men of letters, Lucan and Kepler,
met at 26 years old (Lucan dead for a millennium and a half) and discussed
one of their passions, astronomy/astrology.
This meeting and the insights shared in it ought to be of interest to many.
I am sure that all scholars of Neronian literature will find Kepler's reading
of Lucan fresh and provocative; I assume that those who study Kepler and
his era will be interested in these obscure and all but unpublished letters4;
and I hope that a larger audience will be drawn to the youthful clash of
poetic fancy and rational striving exposed in these two authors.
The biographical background of these letters
When Kepler first sat down to reply to the letter of Herwart von Hohenburg
, sometime in early September of 1597, he had finished his third year as
Mathematicus at the provincial Lutheran college of Styria in Graz. Before
attaining this position, his education had been thorough, and directed towards
theology rather than science, though he studied a broad array of fields
first at Wuertemburg and later at the Tuebingen Stift, or theological seminary.
His intention was to become a minister, but when the Protestant college
in Graz requested a teacher of mathematics, the administrators of Tuebingen
suggested Kepler. He took the job although he felt only superficially educated
in the field, and shied from the lowliness and distance of the position.
There he was unsuccessful in interesting students in Mathematics (he reportedly
had no students at all in his second year), and ended up teaching rhetoric
and poetry, fields he was perhaps better trained to teach.5
He seems to have only retained his position by his success with "calendars"
or horoscopes, which happened to predict accurately such events in Styria
as cold weather and incursions of the Turks. Thus at the time of composition
Kepler had just finished his Mysterium Cosmographicum, and was anxious
to get other astronomers' response to it.6 This may be the most immediate cause for his diligence
in satisfying the demands of Herwart, though the issue is problematic. I
treat this problem and several others in a separate essay below.
The Text
I first heard of these letters in a footnote,7 and later discovered them at the library of the Academy
of Science in Philadelphia in a book called Sammlung naturhistorischer
und physikalischer Aufsaetze published in Nurenburg in 1796 and edited
by Franz Schrank. He inserted them as vier merkwuerdige Briefe with
several comments the chief of which was that his friend Professor Reggl
was the first to discover them among the writings of Herwart von Hohenburg.
I owe, however, a greater debt of gratitude to the edition of Caspar and
von Dyck which gathered several letters and fragments not known to Herr
Reggl, and which emended many errors and included many useful notes. Caspar
gives an excellent history of the collected letters in the preface of his
13th volume which I will quickly summarize.8
Kepler had all of his most important correspondence copied, and it is thanks
to these copies that over 700 of his letters (both to and from him) are
still extant. In a time period in which the channels for scholarly publication
were extremely narrow, correspondence served the function of modern scholarly
journals, and thus the letters dealt with in this work ought to be seen
more as scholarly articles than a friendly exchange of letters. Because
of the importance of these "articles" it was natural for Kepler
to save them, and is appropriate for us to read them as scholarship.
The first edition of the letters was done by Michael Gottlieb Hansch in
1718, and the second by Christian Frisch between 1858 and 1871 in his Joannis
Kepleri Opera Omnia. Hansch's contained 407 letters to Kepler, but only
77 composed by the author. Frisch, however, with access to the great horde
of Kepler's letters which was preserved at the observatory of Pulkowo in
Russia, and by determined searching in the libraries of Stuttgart, Tuebiningen
and Munich increased the count of Kepler's letters to 264 (two thirds the
modern Caspar edition), though he paid little attention to increasing the
number of letters to Kepler. Finally, Walther von Dyck, through decades
of careful search, located and photocopied over 100 newly discovered letters
from libraries as widespread as Vienna, Paris, London and Oxford, which
he unfortunately could not publish in a body before his death. Caspar uses
these copies in his edition of the letters.
I have used brackets in the Latin text to indicate that the planet or sign
was designated by Kepler's hand with an astrological symbol rather than
the Roman alphabet. I have capitalized all names of planets and signs and
substituted "i" s for "j"s throughout the text. Kepler
was apparently not concerned at all with consistency in these matters, and
once the reader is aware of this fact, she will be better served to have
a more readable text.
Kepler's Latin Style and the Problems of Translation
It is a commonplace that Kepler was a great Latinist, and he shows throughout
his work a strong interest in Latin literature and style; like many of his
coevals he also composed Latin poetry.9 Yet except for a few rhetorical flourishes in these letters,
he is not displaying his considerable talent for the Latin language. I think
we can take him for his word at the beginning of his first letter (Sept.
12, 1597) when he apologized for his language, because he wrote, "resolutionem
autem ipsam non alia methodo, quam ea, qua natae mihi sunt, de ipsa quaestione
cogitationes." (his answer in no other way than that which was born
in his very thoughts on the problem). In his autobiographical writing Kepler
revealed that his teaching was ineffective because he would leave his lecture
notes and pour out his thoughts in an excited way as they rushed upon him.10
This effusive lecturing was, of course, in Latin, and reminds us that a
man like Kepler, who spoke Latin not only in class from his early education
, but also among friends, felt a strong division between proper written
Latin and spontaneous oral Latin. These letters were jotted down in Kepler's
lecture style, complex, often obscure, convoluted and sloppy, but with flashes
of brilliance and a steady flow of ideas. The technique of spontaneous composition
allowed several advantages for Kepler the chief of which was speed. He simply
did not have time to compose a beautiful, thorough, and rhetorically polished
essay to Herwart (as he comments in his second letter he "can hardly
breathe" under the burden of his work load). Second, this style is
clearly the one that came most naturally to Kepler, and became standard
in all of his later works: it allowed him to record his thinking in an accurate
way rather than merely embellishing his results; it gave him access to his
brutal self-criticism; and led the reader through what he considered more
important than the results, his constant toil and few small victories.
The problems of translating Kepler's scientific Latin have been treated
well before,11 but can stand a brief recapitulation here. First the Latin
language, with its limited vocabulary, was never well suited to scientific
discourse. Though a few ancient authors doggedly attempted to torture the
ideas of Greek natural philosophers into Latin (Cicero, Seneca, and Boethius
to name a few) almost all who chose to write of the stars wrote in Greek.
The result of this problem is nebulous vocabulary. For instance the Latin
word signum is asked to convey the meaning of the words "star,"
"constellation" (whether zodiacal or other), "planet,"
and "zodiac"(in the plural).
Second, Kepler's stream of consciousness style is almost impossible to capture
in English without distorting and obscuring the meaning. A Keplerian sentence
will often ramble through several tenuously related ideas or hypotheses
ending in a contorted and ungrammatical aside. I have interpreted these
sentences into a more even flow of thought.
Third, Kepler is writing in a special scholarly language that mere English
cannot capture in our ears. His native tongue is obviously German, yet he
was taught to use a language that none of his family or townsmen could understand,
a language that had been a constant symbol of higher education for over
a thousand years. Yet on the other hand he uses Latin so familiarly that
to attempt to translate it into academic English would fail since stilted
English would be far closer to frigid scholastic Latin than Kepler's informal
language. I have tried to capture some of the simultaneous informality and
formality of this language in English so the reader can sense some of the
dual flavor of these letters. Finally with respect to the many Latin metaphors,
references to Roman culture innate in the Latin language, and rhetorical
tropes present in almost any educated Renaissance writer, I have aimed for
readibility, though in some places I have been as literal as possible. This
most pressing problem of all Latin translation can only lead to despair.
Herwart is less clear than Kepler, and once again surely is not lying about
his "festinanti calamo" (hastening quill). He seems in his other
letters to be more comfortable in German and even ends his second letter
to Kepler in his native tongue. I admittedly have nudged the boundary of
editing in my translation of this Latin, and frankly admit that my rendering
is nothing more than an educated guess at Herwart's meaning in his second
letter.
As a professional classicist I beg indulgence for my lack of familiarity
with the technical language of astrology, but especially of Herwart's chronology.
I am only comforted in knowing that even so great a thinker as Kepler balked
at Herwart's tangled mess of temporal calculations. I hope and believe that
I have familiarized myself enough with the jargon to make the meaning of
these letters clear to a specialist, and not overly taxing to the layman.
Herwart, Kepler and the Renaissance interest in time12
As investigation of the stars and their motions became
more and more popular in the 16th century, a desire to create strict astronomical
chronology arose.13 This desire burst forth most fully in the Gregorian correction
of Julius Caesar's calendar (1585) and the ensuing Protestant attack upon
the Papist correction. The calendar problem was proposed by Roger Bacon,
among others in the 13th century, who sent his De reformatione calendaris
to the Pope. Papal attention was not, however, won until Pope Sixtus IV
in 1474 who requested that Regiomontanus correct the calendar. The great
astronomer died prematurely and left another century of temporal decay in
his wake. It was not until the 16th century, when new discoveries, specifically
Copernican, had set the kettle boiling, that reform was achieved. Once Easter
had been set back in its proper place,14 scholars set out to reckon exact dates and times of ancient
events from the birth of Christ to that of Augustus.
Kepler, though a Lutheran, would come out in support of Luigi Giglio's work
for the Pope, but at the time of our correspondence Kepler displays no detailed
familiarity with the chronological scholarship of his time.15
In fact, these letters show to us Kepler's first interest in formal chronology
which was apparently spurred by Herwart. Though Kepler wrote several detailed
essays on the Histories of Tacitus and various other problems, his
most developed chronological work was the Bericht vom Geburtsjahr Christi
which was later translated into Latin.16
Herwart's project appears to have been a chronicle along the lines of the
Church fathers,17 which would nail down very specific astronomical times
for biblical events. This desire to give scientific dating to sacred events,
such as the birth of Christ or the Creation, stemmed from an early Christian
form of apology which attempted to satisfy the pagan Greco-Roman desire
for firm dating and chronology18 -- an element sorely lacking from Hebrew and early Christian
literature.19 Herwart, a Jesuit priest, may well have had this apologetic
purpose.
The problem of Lucan's astronomy
Those few modern readers who have approached Lucan with anything but disdain
aforethought have found him intriguing in his apparent modernity, but irksome
in his pedantry. The two main expressions of this pedantry are geography
and astronomy, neither of which holds much interest anymore for readers
who have been spoonfed trips to the planetarium and satellite photo atlasses
since early childhood. But modern smugness about astronomical and geographical
knowledge is a recent acquisition and a hindrance for any insight into the
European intellectual tradition. From well before the time of Lucan till
well after the time of Kepler perhaps the discourse of greatest interest
to the broadest array of people was astronomy, whether in the form of political
astrology, personal horoscopes, Stoic theology, or poetry.20
Kepler himself was required in his position as mathematicus at Graz
to construct a general calendar/horoscope every year. Thus we 20th century
readers have an immediate difficulty if we are to understand and enjoy Lucan's
digressions: we do not feel the same fascination with geography and astronomy
that most felt in the past.
The specific problem present in out text, however, is not that we as modern
readers tend not to care for Lucan's excurses, but rather, first, that the
study of astronomy was in a period of great development around the lives
of both of our authors (Kepler and Lucan), and second, that in particular
many of the Renaissance critics were more interested in scholarly accuracy
than poetic merit. Because the discovery of epicycles and its concomitant
insights into planetary motion were available to Lucan, critics, most notably
Joseph Scaliger, were far more interested to know whether Lucan's astronomical
reading was up to date than to bother with the intricacies of interpreting
the poetry. Thus Scaliger condemned Lucan as a poet, first in his commentary
on Manilius, and then in a direct letter to an adversary, at about the time
that Kepler was cutting his teeth. Scaliger did not want anyone to read
Lucan because he felt that Lucan's astronomy was behind his own times, and
because he constantly argued that all Roman poets were a thorn in the paw
of astronomical progress.21 No criticism of Lucan, of which there were many throughout
the ages, had such a damning effect on the poetry of Lucan. So great was
Scaliger's influence that even though Lucan was defended successfully against
the particular attacks,22 the general bilious rhetoric (borrowed somewhat from Fronto)
still echoes in the most recent English edition (Duff's Loeb) of the Pharsalia,
and almost any academic discussion of the poet.23 Thus Lucan's condemnation is based, to a great degree,
on a Renaissance desire for scholarship from poets. The irony in this case
is that Lucan clearly attempted, to the limits of his stunningly catholic
education, to present what we would call a realistic background of facts.
Scaliger's and later Housman's attacks can be summed up like this: Lucan
was not as good an astronomer or geographer as I am, therefore he was an
inferior poet (both critics actually were accomplished poets). This common
attack, however, has obfuscated the real problem: why is there such a wealth
of detailed fact in this poem, and what is it about the poem that draws
critics to read it as a textbook on astronomy and geography?
A more sympathetic reading of the Pharsalia will show that it strives
to present a recognizably factual, though highly embellished and exaggerated,
account of history, geography, and astronomy. Without recognizing this facet
of the poem, our reading will be badly skewed, as it has been for centuries.
I hope to use the debate on Pharsalia I.638-672 contained in this
correspondence as an example of Lucan's veracity and the problem it poses
for modern readers. Kepler will play Dante's Vergil for us, as a guide who
straddles the worlds of Lucan and Scaliger, the worlds of Ptolemy and Einstein.
-- Kepler on Lucan (ed. Walt Stevenson) draft 7-18-91 --
-- Kepler on Lucan (ed.
Walt Stevenson) draft 7-18-91 --
1 See the veritable bible of the perverse, J.-K. Huysmans,
Against Nature, Baltimore, 1959 (translation in the Penguin series), p.
42. After excoriating the great pillars of golden Latin literature such
as Vergil, "well-washed, beribboned shepherds taking it in turns to
empty over each other's heads jugs of icy-cold sententious verse...,"
Huysmans writes: "Des Esseintes only began to take an interest in the
Latin language when he came to Lucan, in whose hands it took on new breadth,
and became brighter and more expressive..."
2 The only English translations
of the letters that I have been able to find are the excellent edition of
C. Baumgardt, Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters, New York, 1951,
(which does not contain any of the letters translated in this work) and
the scattered quotations in Koestler's biography, The Watershed,
New York, 1959.
3 Arthur Koestler, the greatest
English language biographer, actually titled his biography of Kepler The
Watershed -- perhaps dramatic but not totally inaccurate.
4 Only published in the
editions of Frisch and Caspar/von Dyck. Though these are excellent editions
of the letters, the correspondence is all composed in an obscure, rushed
and baroque Latin which even the trained Latinist will find difficult. The
letters also demand a broad knowledge of subjects few today are familiar
with (eg. astrology of the high and late Roman empire, Renaissance chronology,
history of astronomy, Roman history, Roman chronology, and Lucan's own poetry),
and have only been discussed briefly in several obscure works so that it
would be extremely unlikely that any but the most diligent scholar would
ever chance upon them.
5 See M. Caspar, Johannes
Kepler, Stuttgart, 1948, p. 60, and A. Koestler, The Sleepwalkers,
New York, 1959, p. 242.
6 Interestingly Galileo
seems to have been the first to respond, and his letter is extant, Gesammelte
Werke, vol. 13, no. 73. The Italian's response was immediate and very
enthusiastic, though Galileo admits that he had not actually read the book.
Kepler received Galileo's letter on the first of September (see no. 76,
his reply), right at the time that he was composing his response to Herwart's
first series of questions.
7 Schotes, H., Stoische
Physik, Psychologie und Theologie bei Lucan, Bonn, 1969, p. (?).
8 For an exhaustive study
of the manuscripts of Kepler see Max Caspar, Bibliographia Kepleriana,
Munich, 1936.
9 Kepler's poetry is published
in the 12th volume of his Gesammelte Werke. To give a small sample
here is a distich from the beginning of his elegy for Tycho Brahe: "assuetosque
oculos coelestem pandere lucem/ fusa super tenebris invida claudit humus."
10 See Gesammelte Werke,
vol. XIX, p. 328: "In describendis suis inventis semper aliud intulit
in mundum, quam fuit in exemplari." (Whenever he described his findings,
he always sent something else into the world, than what he had written down.)
And further on , p. 332 where he expounds: "Porro ex illa praecipitantia
et cupiditate, quam nocivam dixi, hoc sequitur, ut prius aliquid incidat
dicendum quam perpendi possit, quam bonum sit. Hinc hallucinatur perpetuo
in sermone, hinc ne quidem epistolam bene scribit ex tempore." (Furthermore,
from this haste and desire [haste borne of Mercury and desire for wild speculation]
which I have called harmful, it follows that something pops into his head
which must be said before he is able to think it through, before it is good.
Because of this he is always speaking wildly, because of this he cannot
even write a letter well ex tempore.) Kepler concludes by saying:
"ex eo taediosa aut certe perplexa et minus intelligibilis efficitur
eius oratio." (Thus his speech is made tedious, or at least confusing,
and less intelligible.)
11 Buzon, Catherine du,
"Problemes de traduction du Latin scientifique sur l'exemple des `Paralipomenes
a Vitellion' de J. Kepler," in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Turonensis,
Jean Claude Margolin (ed.), Paris, 1980, 767-778.
12 In this discussion I
have relied heavily on G. J. Whitrow, Time in History, Oxford, 1989,
esp. pp. 115-120.
13 See T. S. Kuhn, The
Copernican Revolution, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, p. 125: "Agitation
for calendar reform had an even more direct and dramatic effect on the practice
of Renaissance astronomy, for the study of calendars brought the astronomer
face to face with the inadequacy of existing computational techniques."
14 As decided at the Coucil
of Nicaea (325) Easter would be on the Sunday after the first full moon
after the vernal equinox. Because they figured the spring equinox by the
calendar, that is the 21st of March, as March 21 worked its way towards
March 9th or so in the time of Pope Gregory, and since the full moon was
figured as 14 days after the conjunction or new moon, Easter could be on
the wrong day if there were another shift in the calendar of 2 more days.
15 Kepler himself, in his
autograph catologue of writings, called the Grazer Katolog , mentions
a Kalendar nach der gregorianischen rechnung as published in 1595.
See M. Caspar, Bibliographia Kepleriana, Munich, 1936, p. 25. Kepler
therefore must have been acquainted with the technicalities of the Gregorian
reform. Furthermore, living in the Roman Catholic province of Styria, he
ought to have been using the Gregorian calendar. This leaves us with a mystery
as to Kepler's apparent ignorance of the chronological reforms of his time.
16 The first of which is
found in Gesammelte Werke vol. 12, and the latter two in vol. 5.
17 Schrank, op cit., p.
233, says, "Als Johann Georg Herwart von Hohenburg damit beschaeftiget
war, die Angaben der Schriftsteller zum Beruf seiner Chronologie, die er
unter handen hatte, zu sammeln..." This is the only evidence I have
found that Herwart was indeed working on a chronicle of some sort.
18 Add a footnote here
from Grafton on Momigliano's article on this subject.
19 See Whitrow p. 131,
"By about 1700 chronology had become a subject of major concern to
many thinkers because of its relevance for the authenticity of the Bible.
The Old Testament as it comes down to us has no dates. Bede had calculated
the interval between Creation and Incarnation to be 3, 952 years. Earlier,
Eusebius obtained a figure of 5, 198 years." Though the "scientific"
needs of the ancients were less urgent than ours today, the ancient evangelist
needed dates to win over the educated pagan, as the educated clergyman of
the 16th century needed dates to calm the doubts of his educated flock.
20 Note the immense popularity
of Aratus in both the Greek and Latin speaking parts of the ancient world.
See as several general examples of the influence of astrology on antiquity
P. Wuilleumier, "Cirque et astrologie," Melanges d'archeologie
et d'histoire de l'ecole francaise a Rome, 1927, 184-200, or E. Buchner,
Solarium Augusti und Ara Pacis, Berlin, 1981.(?)
21 "Haec digressiuncula
(a rather sizable attack on Lucan's geographical knowledge) non inutilis
futura est adolescentulis, qui poetas non illo praecipiti calore, qui illi
aetati communis est, et quo non caruit Lucanus, sed cum iudicio legere volunt:
quamquam scio me nullam gratiam a magistellis inivisse, qui illorum Virgilio
Cordubensi os sculponeis batuerim." Commentary on Manilius page 51.
See also Grafton 212-214.
22 See Palmer's defence,
op cit.
23 See p. xii of the Loeb
edition where Duff maligns the value of the poem at great length. Here is
a short sample: "His frequent digressions are often irrelevenat and
much too long. His geographical descriptions are obscure and wearisome...he
is concise where detail is needed and dwells at length on trivial or irrelevant
matters..."
Essay 1: explication of Pharsalia 1.650-665
I. History of readings
The first extant criticism of this passage in the Pharsalia comes
from two 5th century collections of scholia, referred to as the Adnotationes
Super Lucanum and the Commenta Bernensia. These are most notable
for their lack of interest in the passage. Each makes several glosses on
unusual terms (such as Cyllenius) and adds a Stoic interpretation
of the possible conflagration, but neither is skeptical about Lucan's astronomical
accuracy. Two possibilities leap forth: the scholiasts themselves were ignorant
of the fine points of 1st century astronomy; or they assumed that few of
their readers would be concerned with the accuracy of Lucan's description.
I suspect that there is a mixture of both of these, but will try to show
below that the ancients would have had little interest in the problem of
accuracy. Only a more "enlightened" age would seek utter scientific
accuracy from an epic poet.
The first to attack Lucan was Scaliger,1 who did so passim in his commentary on Manilius.
He could not be satisfied with the reading in the most common commentary
of his time, Sulpitius, who had merely explained what the zodiac was and
why Mars in Scorpio meant there would be war. Scaliger had a deep-seated
interest in the history of astronomy, specifically in debunking the Renaissance
view that astronomy was born whole and perfect among the Magi and slowly
deteriorated till its decay in their present. Scaliger's main thesis in
his commentary on Manilius argued that astronomy had grown in a steady stream
of trial and error, that "the ancient Near East had been not a world
of gold, populated by calm sages, but a world of iron, haunted by superstitious
fears and only fitfully illuminated by the work of certain science-minded
priests -- themselves prone to spin out unfounded speculations," that
"it had been the Greeks, not the Babylonians and Egyptians, who performed
most of the observations and, above all, tabulated and systematized the
results."2 When he attacked Lucan he was thus attacking the body
of Renaissaince thinkers, nearly all of whom exalted to a level of near
perfection any mention of astronomy in Roman poetry. Scaliger clearly felt
it his sacred mission to undermine this Renaissance prejudice, but in so
doing he attacked the innocent bystander Lucan with the fury better reserved
for his coevals (not that he did not attack his peers violently and frequently3).
Grafton goes on to say, "in the Manilius he (Scaliger) spied out the
vast unsettled areas that would later be claimed, inhabited, and cultivated
by Bouche´-Leclercq, Boll, Cumont, Housman, Warburg, and Saxl."4
Housman truly took up the gauntlet of Scaliger, not just the desire to purify
the astronomical crudity of Roman poets, but also the need for, or pleasure
in, polemical rhetoric. Thus his celebrated appendix on Lucan's astronomy
rings with phrases like, "Lucan, so far as his phraseology does not
screen him from exposure, is wrong about all of them but Mercury."
This appendix, situated as it is in the most recent and well received text
of Lucan, is cited and followed in almost every modern discussion of Lucan's
astronomy.5 Housman lives on as an excellent example of the dangers
of hypercritical reading. He is predisposed both by his admiration for Scaliger
and his open distaste for Lucan's style to read the Pharsalia as
though it were a large straw man awaiting the marksmanship of a witty archer.
This is not to discount his truly profound learning and sensitivity to the
Latin language, as well as his tireless work on Lucan (Manilius and Juvenal).
But Lucan has suffered all too many superficial attacks; he awaits a sympathetic
reading.
And Housman's attacks are superficial (as most of Scaliger's were before
him6). The foundation of his arguments rests on one shockingly
simple presumption: the coming civil war between Caesar and Pompey must
have become apparent in Rome on November 28, 50 B.C. by the reformed Julian
calendar, and so all we have to do is reckon where the stars were then (he
does not even specify at what time of day this reckoning was made). First
it has been a matter of much debate (in these very letters) how to accurately
calculate a precise date for something as simple as the day Pompey left
Rome. How can Housman possibly calculate the day a rumor arrived? Second,
why did Nigidius have to take his reading of the sky on the day that the
rumor of Caesar's approach arrived? He could have made his horoscope anywhere
from the time when civil war seemed possible, let's say early in the Roman
year 51, to the time when his prophecy was fulfilled that war would bring
a dominus or emperor, let's say 46 B.C. To choose one day almost
randomly from this stretch of years is the act of an umsympathetic reader.
Therefore, he bases the majority of his attacks on the horoscope of November
28. In particular he states that Lucan "is very unlucky, for the u{ywma
(or exaltation) of Saturn is 21o of Libra, and he was almost exactly on
that spot." That is to say: Lucan stated, contrary to fact, that if
Saturn were in his house the world would be flooded, and Saturn was in his
exaltation on November 28, so the world would have been flooded.7
Needless to say Saturn was not in his house a week later or a week earlier,
when Nigidius may just as well have been consulting the stars. Likewise,
Housman asserts that Mars was not in Scorpio, but the critic was not lucky
enough in his choice of days to disclude Mercury from a stationary position.8
Besides this curious methodology, Housman applied several innaccuracies
to his analysis. First his interpretation of Lucan's in alto occasu
(Jupiter): "The only natural or even possible sense of these words
is that Jupiter was some distance below the western horizon." Why then
does Kepler come up with a number of possible interpretations of this phrase
(including an interesting emendation occursu)? The phrase could easily
be translated into the modern astrological term "descendant,"
which conveys any number of astronomical possiblities. Granted that the
phrase is not precise or susceptible of an easy interpretation, the proper
reaction should not be to create a simple and incorrect interpretation.
Second Housman's judgment: "If he was (under the horizon), it did not
necessarily affect his potency; and moreover it was Figulus' own fault:
he had put him there himself. The position of a planet in relation to the
horizon depends entirely on the hour of the day which you select for making
your observations." This is a curious statement since astrology almost
always requires the precise moment of observation. Figulus did not put Jupiter
anywhere. He found the planet where it was when he cast his horoscope. Housman
goes on to assert that alto occasu could not mean the tapeivnwma
or house of debilitation (why not?), but that even if it did, Jupiter was
in Leo, on November 28, 50 B.C.
He states the following on Venus: "If atmospheric conditions rendered
her dim when Figulus was making his observations, that had no astrological
significance." True, but what if she were dimmed by the rays of the
sun or another planet? It simply does not occur to Housman, as it did to
Kepler, to look for any other interpretation than that which could be easily
attacked. As Kepler finds in his own reading, Venus was within 11o of the
sun and thus was "afflicted" by its rays, or was "dimmed."
Finally Housman's interpretation of Orion: "If Orion was bright and
the other constellations dim and missing from their places, that was an
atmospheric phenomenon. Astrology is not concerned with the brilliancy of
the constellations, but, in certain cases, with their diurnal rising and
setting." It is strange that the same person who edited Manilius could
forget this poet's comments on Orion, for instance 5.58-60: "maximus
Orion magnumque amplexus Olympum,/quo fulgente super terras caelumque trahente/
ementita diem nigras nox contrahit alas (Orion, mightiest of constellations
girdles with his course the mighty skies: when Orion shines over the horizon
drawing heaven in his train, night feigns the brightness of day and folds
its dusky wings.) Figulus is not saying that there were no clouds, but rather
reiterating that Orion is so bright in the sky that he obscures the other
stars ("obscura feruntur"). As for the astrological significance,
Housman never bothered to look it up. See, for example, Ptolemy Tetrabiblos
I.9.27 on Orion's effects: tw^n de; peri; to;n jWrivwna oiJ me;n (ajstevroi)
ejpiv tw^n w[mwn tw/^ te tou^ [Arews kai; tw/^ tou^ JErmou^ (oJmoivan e[xei
th;n ejnevrgeian)... (of those in Orion, the stars on his shoulders [have
a similar effect]to that of Mars and Mercury...). The two stars on Orion's
shoulders are Rigel and Betelgeuse,9 and we can assume that the learned Figulus was referring
to the soulder that had a martial influence, which can be inferred from
Ptolemy to Betelgeuse or the right shoulder (thus the word latus
in the text refers to the sword or club side of Orion as most commentators
have understood). Thus any ancient astrologer worth his salt would have
immediately seen the warlike aspect of Lucan's rising Orion.
It is important to point out here that Kepler had no impact on the discussion
of Pharsalia I.651-665. Kepler's work all but died with him (the
exception being his planetary laws--an achievement he himself shows little
interest in), such that not only scholars and the general public but even
mathematicians and astronomers rarely read his works. Because of this lack
of interest, Kepler's letters were not seriously gathered and published
until the mid-19th century, and even then have recieved little attention.
This is unfortunate for the study of Roman literature and history since
Kepler represented a type of thinking alien to Scaliger and his tradition.
Kepler's reading of Lucan was not influenced by philological and academic
wars, but rather the young scholar read with many of the tools necessary
for understanding Lucan: an attraction to the enigmatic and baroque, love
of Latin poetry, an understanding of ancient astrology, a good sense of
Roman history, and a rather mystical view of the universe sympathetic to
Lucan's. Perhaps the most interesting point of these letters, however, is
that Kepler's first letter was clearly written in innocence of Scaliger's
criticisms, while his second is deeply influenced by the critic. In this
way he shows us the two forces at work in criticism of the Pharsalia,
the sympathetic insight into an ancient poet, and the hyper-rational rejection
of objective falsehood. Had Housman read these letters, he would have been
forced to change a good many of his curt conclusions.
II. A New Reading
Now that Kepler's letters have been brought to bear on the problems of Pharsalia
I.651-665, and the critical weight of one of the great Renaissance thinkers
has swung the scales back into balance, it seems appropriate to risk a new
reading of the passage--one more useful to the modern reader. I will build
this reading on several of my views of the Pharsalia which I hope
to argue at length elsewhere, but will quickly summarize here.
This epic offers the reader a good deal of geographical and astronomical
teaching, more than any other well known ancient epic (or any epic for that
matter). This information is not meant to prove indirectly the author's
vast erudition, but rather to display the synthetic Stoic view of the universe.
Specifically Lucan attempts to create a world that reflects the Stoic belief
in divination. Since the Stoics believed that the universe was constructed
according to a well-wrought plan, they concluded that its signs could be
read by one who was learned enough to attune himself to the world plan.
Thus Lucan was involved in a sort of hind-sight divination, recreating the
state of nature to be in accord with successful Stoic prognostication. It
should be pointed out here that the Stoics were not magicians or fortune
tellers. They openly admitted the great difficulty of divination, and Lucan
has accordingly not constructed a world that can be easily read as a straightforward
allegory. He rather has used the actual geography, or at least his understanding
of the actual geography of the world to show that the world plan called
for an inevitable war in 49 B.C. For instance, Lucan describes the first
camp of Pompey in reference to the Apennine mountains:
interea trepido descendens agmine Magnus
moenia Dardanii tenuit Campana coloni.
haec placuit belli sedes, hinc summa moventem
hostis in occursum sparsas extendere partes,
umbrosis mediam qua collibus Appenninus
erigit Italiam, nulloque a vertice tellus
altius intumuit propiusque accessit Olympo.
mons inter geminas medius se porrigit undas
inferni superique maris, collesque coercent
hinc Tyrrhena vado frangentes aequora Pisae,
illinc Dalmaticis obnoxia fluctibus Ancon.
Fontibus hic vastis inmensos concipit amnes
fluminaque in gemini spargit divortia ponti.
(Meanwhile Magnus marched away in haste and occupied the Campanian walls
founded by the Trojan. Capua was chosen as the seat of war; he resolved
to make Capua the base of his chief campaign, and from there to disperse
and extend his forces in order to meet the enemy where Apennine raises up
the center of Italy in wooded hills; nor is there any peak at which earth
rises higher and approaches closer to the sky. Midway between the two seas,
the Lower and the Upper, the mountains stretch; and the range is bounded
on the west by Pisa, where her beach breaks the Tyrhene sea, and on the
east by Ancona, which faces the Dalmatian billows. From vast springs the
mountain engenders mighty rivers and scatters their streams along the water-sheds
that lead to two seas.)
This is one of Lucan's most allegorical geographical descriptions. We clearly
see that Italy was designed by the Stoic all soul to be divided in civil
war, and thus the sharp division of its geography by the Apennine mountains
foretold political division to those sage enough to understand the world
plan.
Another geographical example can be drawn from Lucan's treatment of the
Nile. He has the only positive Egyptian character in the epic, Acoreus,
express an opinion on the source of the Nile to Caesar in an after-dinner
conversation.
ast ego, si tantam ius est mihi solvere litem,
quasdam, Caesar, aquas post mundi sera peracti
saecula concussis terrarum erumpere venis
non id agente deo, quasdam conpage sub ipsa
cum toto coepisse reor, quas ille creator
atque opifex rerum certo sub iure coercet. (10.262-267)
(But I myself, if I have the right to decide so great a dispute, hold this
opinion, Caesar: certain waters, long after the world was created, burst
forth in consequence of earthquakes, with no special purpose on the part
of the deity; but certain others, at the very formation of the world, had
their beginning along with the universe; and the latter the creator and
artificer of all things restrains under a law of their own.)
Lucan hints at the proper interpretation of geography, specifically that
we should not read all rivers as equally significant. Some are accidental,
and some are woven into the fabric of the universe. Thus we need to be very
careful in our reading of any geological features, but one such as the Nile
can readily be assumed to show that the greatest river in the world will
be the hinge upon which the fate of Rome swings. Pompey and Marc Antony
die beside it; Caesar and Octavian vanquish with it.
I believe that Lucan's astronomy in book one follows the same method as
his geography. Because the poet believes that the cosmos would foretell
the civil war and more importantly the outcome of the civil war, he projects
the heavens as he does. Just as he was incorrect in calling the Apennines
the tallest mountains in the world and in his theories on the source of
the Nile, he fails to satisfy the modern scientific requirement of complete
accuracy. Lucan, however, had no intention of producing a schoolboy textbook
on geology or astronomy. He merely wanted to create a world that well understood
the events unfolding in it.
Once it is recognized that Lucan (like any other poet) is using the facts
that make up his poetic world to create a poetic effect, and not to prove
the virtue of his own education and knowledge, the issue of the Pharsalia's
accuracy becomes important to Lucan's purpose, in so far as the poet does
not want all of his lines read as fiction. Particularly in Lucan's astronomy,
if Lucan could not create a sense of verisimilitude in his readers, he would
fail to express his poem's sentient universe. For the problem in defining
accuracy is that Lucan asks the reader to distinguish between his use of
rhetorical hyperbole and his statements on natural philosophy. Indeed, Lucan's
frequent and absurd exaggeration often taxes even the most sympathetic reader.
Kepler, for instance, was not able to evade one of these exaggerations which
appears shortly before Figulus' speech in Lucan's catalogue of portents.
This old survey of bad omens, among talking cows and comets, adds complete
eclipses of the sun and moon. Kepler continually attempts to work these
into his constellation, but is sound in concluding that they happened at
no time near the civil war between Caesar and Pompey.
This particular problem of accuracy is actually a problem of interpretation.
Can we judge the astronomy Lucan presents in Figulus' speech by a stock
listing of portents in the narrator's own voice? I am sure that Lucan expected
all his readers to recognize his list of portents as a stock trope expressing
the idea that something awful was about to happen. The voice of the narrator
in the Pharsalia is not that of an astronomer or astrologer. Rather
it is an apprehensive and excited spectator reporting any rumor it has heard.
To unify this obviously exaggerated list of portents with the scholarly
Figulan speech is unwarranted. Even in Housman's estimation Lucan was not
so ignorant of astronomy that he would ask his readers to believe that new
stars, a simultaneous eclipse of sun and moon, and various comets and meteors
all appeared at the same time. The experienced Lucan reader knows right
off that we are faced with one of the many threats of universal destruction
in this passage, threats which, being composed 100 years after the fact,
obviously were not intended to portend the end of the universe. And so,
as Lucan warned us to be careful in our reading of rivers, we must be careful
in our reading of astronomy. Only passages presented to us in a credible
and "scientific" form are to be interpreted as signs from the
world soul. Thus it is easy to become lost in quibbles as to Lucan's accuracy,
but far more difficult to prove him inaccurate.10
As stated above, what is important is the appearance of accuracy rather
than actual scientific precision. Figulus' speech shows a good deal of astrological
knowledge, which in turn would certainly win the faith of almost all ancient
readers and most modern ones. He clearly knows the fundamental facts about
the zodiac, the twelve houses, the planets and which planets have what influence
in which houses. He also appears to know more about the influence of "fixed"
stars, such as those in Orion, than some modern experts. Kepler, in his
second letter, rejects the accuracy in this passage because of its schematic
nature (all benign planets are shown to be afflicted while the war planet,
Mars, alone holds the sky), and because even so, the constellation does
not appear monumental enough to portend so great a disaster as the civil
war. But these are the considerations of a practising astrologer under the
influence of his age's most respected scholar, Scaliger. The fact of the
matter is that Lucan did not have to worry about his readers looking up
his planetary configurations on their Prutenic tables, and deciding whether
or not it could have occured in 50 B.C. All Lucan needed to do to convince
his audience was to create a plausible constellation that portended war.
This plausible constellation would fit nicely into Lucan's method of Stoic
divination after the fact. Lucan, may well, after all, have found Stoic
divination as implausible as we today do.11
Therefore, if the reader's goal is to understand the Pharsalia, and
not to argue a specific thesis in the history of science, that reader will
not find the discourse of Scaliger, Palmer, and Housman very helpful at
all. On the other hand the reading provided in Kepler's first letter, "naively"
aimed at an understanding of Lucan, provides new posibilities for interpreting
Lucan. Once we have seen an expert in astrology such as Kepler take Lucan's
astronomy seriously, we are forced to abandon the attacks of Scaliger and
Housman, and turn instead to a more sympathetic reading of the Pharsalia.
This man bridging the ancient and modern world helps us to translate Lucan's
scientific passages into a language that we in the 20th century can understand
and enjoy.
Essay II: Biographical Problems Concerning Kepler
The two greatest biographers of Kepler, Caspar12 and Koestler,13 both point out that these letters, though apparently aimed
towards humoring the amateur Herwart, began a friendship very important
to Kepler. Both biographers safely assume that Kepler's work for Herwart
could display a strong political motivation: Kepler was teaching and working
in a Catholic country (Austria); Kepler's direct superiors were Catholics;
and Kepler was Lutheran, worse yet teaching at a Lutheran school at the
beginning of the Counter-reformation; and Herwart was a Jesuit priest and
Chancellor of Bavaria. As it turned out, the Protestant College in Graz
was disbanded in 1599, and only Kepler of all the Lutheran faculty was asked
to stay.14 This special treatment is one of several pieces of evidence
that Koestler brings forth to show that Kepler had ingratiated himself with
the Jesuits, presumably through Herwart. In addition, Caspar points out
that Herwart spread Kepler's name among the great world renowned intellectuals
of the day, and thus did great service to him.15 Thus considering what a large role Kepler's friendship
with Herwart played in the astronomer's life, we ought to pause here and
consider its origins in these letters.
Both of the above-cited biographers presume that Kepler went through a good
deal of trouble to impress Herwart, since he knew that the Chancellor could
do him great favors. Caspar says:
Dieser (Herwart) bemuehte sich bei seinen diesbezueglichen Studien um Klaerung
einer Stelle bei Lucanus, an der dieser roemische Dichter in seinem Werk
ueber den Buergerkrieg zwischen Caesar und Pompeius eine phantastische Konstellation
ausfuehrlich beschreibt. Um den Zeitpunkt zu fixieren, zu dem eine solche
Gestirnstellung stattgefunden haben koennte, wandte er sich an eine Reihe
von Gelehrten, darunter auch an Kepler. Dieser gab sich, um den hohen Herrn
zu befriedigen, sehr viele Muehe mit diesen Berechnungen, um schliesslich
festzustellen, dass es sich an der betreffenden Stelle nur um eine poetische
Spielerei mit astrologischen Regeln handeln koenne.16 (the underlining is mine)
It sounds in this passage as though Kepler dreaded the drudgery of the requested
chronological studies, but carried them out nevertheless to please the high-ranking
magistrate. Koestler is less detailed in his account:
The Catholic Chancellor of Bavaria, Herwart von Hohenburg, amateur philosopher
and patron of the arts, had asked Kepler among other astronomers, for his
opinion on certain chronological problems. It was the beginning of a life-long
correspondence and friendship between the two men.17
Judging from these accounts Kepler satisfied the Jesuit's desires fully
and pleasantly, taking a good deal of trouble for the sake of Herwart who
in turn was highly appreciative. Here is where the problem lies: is the
tone of this short correspondence that of two friends scratching each other's
backs, or two rather frustrated scholars further frustrating each other?
First, neither biographer hints that Kepler even attempted to play the sycophant
in scholarly matters, and it is evident in these four letters that Kepler
had a very independent mind and little inclination to restrain it. But did
Kepler even attempt to address the problem posed to him by Herwart? Let
us look at the details:
1. Herwart clearly wanted Kepler to find a time for Lucan's constellation
in 39 B.C. which Kepler refused even to check.
2. Not only did Kepler not attempt to find Herwart's constellation in 39,
he lectured the priest on why the Lucan must have meant 50 or 49.
3. Herwart requested in his second letter a calculation on the eclipse of
Venus by Mars around 5 B.C. Kepler refused based on a lack of sufficient
observations.
Moreover the language of the two correspondents is at best formal and at
times quite strained. See, for instance, this passage from the second letter
in which Herwart after revealing his long and complicated calculations implores
Kepler to look for the constellation in 39 B.C.:
sed cum causas illas, quae me in hanc sententiam deducunt, recensere longum
foret, etiam atque etiam rogo, ut interim mihi et veritati concredas, aliud
plane tempus intra limites praescriptos esse quaerendum, cui positus caeli
a Lucano designatus respondeat. At vero cum videam, te verba ipsa et sensum
Lucani longe aliter quam a me, et aliis assumuntur, accipere, velim te aequo,
et sereno animo considerare...
(But since it would be lengthy to recount the causes which have led me to
this opinion, again and again I beg that you meanwhile trust me and the
truth, that another time must be sought within my prescribed bounds which
would answer to Lucan's stellar configuration. But since I see that you
interpret the very words and sense of Lucan far differently than they are
taken by me and others, I would wish that you calmly consider...) [underlining
is mine]
Are these the words of a placid and contented patron? It seems clear that
Herwart worked himself up into quite an argumentative mode just reading
Kepler's first letter. Arguments can take place between good friends, but
these two have, as it were, just met.
The issue of liesure for non-essential studies seems to have piqued Kepler
as much as his own reading of Lucan did Herwart. Herwart excuses himself
for dumping this work on Kepler by pointing out that he himself is so heavily
burdened by his high position that he has no time for philosophy, whereas
Kepler is young and free and seems to enjoy the labor, or even tedium, of
calculation. Whether or not this comment was made in good humor, Kepler
seems to receive it in bad. He takes the opportunity in his reply to hold
forth on the crushing load of responsibilities under which he suffers:
Cum accepissem literas tuas, Vir Magnifice, Nonis decembribus circiter,
et animadvertissem, ut tibi satisfacerem, nonnihil mihi laboris esse subeundum:
iam tum omissa cura celeriter respondendi, coepi mihi ocium dispicere. Quibus
enim occupationibus (quamvis et privatus et iuvenis) distringar, non est
operae pretium tibi recensere, nisi ut id summatim dicam, me vix respirare.
Cum igitur dedita opera rem in ferias Natalitias, quas iam Dei benignitate
attingimus, reiecissem: ut tamen tanto esem paratior postmodum, interea
nonnullas horas aliis laboribus, mehercule contemptis et poenitendis, furto
quasi ereptas in lectionem Lucani...
(When I received your letters, outstanding man, around the 5th of December,
and became aware that I must undertake considerably more labor to satisfy
you, already then I had to cast off the duty of answering, and began to
search for some liesure. Surely there is no need for me to describe to you
into what diverse occupations, though I am a youth and private citizen,
I am torn , except merely to say that I can hardly breathe. Since I had
to push off your request till the Christmas holidays [which I reached only
by the grace of God] due to my heavy workload, I decided, in order to be
the more prepared afterward, to steal like a thief several hours from my
other labors [good God, how contemptible and regretted] to read Lucan, Caesar,
and both volumes of Cicero's letters.)
Though all of this ranting has the rhetorical virtue of amplifying the suffering
Kepler underwent to help Herwart, there is evidence here that Kepler was
unhappy that his first letter did not suffice. After the above quoted list
of complaints, he immediately sets out to show why all of Herwart's request
was based on a childish reading of Lucan, and thus no more effort was warranted.
It is true that Kepler also included his marvelous chronology of the beginning
of Caesar and Pompey's civil war, but he presents this as a separate work,
a labor of love, and as publishable material.18 In short Kepler not only did nothing to please Herwart,
he seems to have angered him and in turn been angered himself.
It would be imprudent, however, to jump to conclusions and say that Kepler
and Herwart did not enjoy a long and pleasant friendship. Rather our letters
show most clearly that neither friend was particularly submissive to the
other. It is not unlikely that the two would never have been more than business
acquaintances, had Kepler chosen to satisfy Herwart in a more subservient
way. What we see here is the origin of the father/son type relationship
that the biographers dwell on,19 and as with most of these relationships it is built on
respect for the other's integrity. Of this virtue Kepler gave ample evidence
in these letters.
A second biographical problem involves the extent of Kepler's intellectual
integrity. Specifically, why did the young mathematician change his opinion
on Lucan so quickly and abruptly? One suspicion presents itself immediately:
Kepler wanted to impress Herwart in the first letter, and when he realized
that he had acheived what he wanted, i.e. exposure for his new book, he
decided to back out of further discussion in the second letter. As I have
tried to argue above, Kepler seems not to have made much of an effort at
all to please Herwart in the first letter, and thus it seems unlikely that
he spent a good deal of time composing it purely to gain some publicity.
Second, Kepler did reply at length in the second letter, and although it
was not directed at satisfying Herwart's desires, it nevertheless showed
a good deal of work and interest--i.e. the second letter required almost
as much effort as the first. Finally there is a liveliness and intellectual
curiosity evident throughout Kepler's letters that argues against even the
most cloaked sycophancy.
Rather the key to Kepler's change of mind, I believe, is to be found in
his reading, and not in his reading of Caesar and Cicero. After laying out
his calendar in the second letter, Kepler states openly his new opinion
of Lucan:
Primum ex lectione Lucani deprehendi Lucanum in astronomicis tyronem fuisse.
Id quamvis ex aliis Scaliger in Hypercritico colligat, mihi tamen sufficit
ex solo hoc loco in praesentia probare...
(Based on my reading of Lucan I have perceived that Lucan was a neophyte
in matters of astronomy. Although Scaliger, among many others, gathers this
in his Hypercritic, it is sufficiently proven to me from this passage in
front of us.)
Here Kepler admits that he read a work by Scaliger which collected Lucan's
astronomical errors. This must have been the letter that Joseph Scaliger
sent to Francois de Lisle listing the faults of Lucan. De Lisle had attacked
the criticisms that Scaliger had leveled against Lucan in his commentary
on Manilius, and the famous scholar replied with a far more devastating
attack on the scientific accuracy of the poet, as well as the imcompetence
of de Lisle.20 Kepler was probably favorably inclined towards Joseph
Scaliger for two reasons. First he had doted on the works of Julius Caesar
Scaliger, Joseph's father.21 Second, Scaliger was clearly the greatest, most famous,
and most influential scholar of the age, both a tireless philologist and
a competent scientist. As I have argued above, Scaliger was so powerful
a figure that his two attacks on Lucan, that in the commentary on Manilius
and that in the letter to de Lisle, not only swayed his own generation away
from the Pharsalia, but also most scholars even to the present day.
Thus we are not surprised that the young Kepler was overwhelmed by the rather
specious arguments of Scaliger.
In this way we see certain limits on the intellectual integrity and independence
of the youthful Kepler. In his first letter he shows an admirable synthesis
of critical ability and astrological knowledge in making perhaps the most
plausible reading of the passage up to his own day. In the second letter
he spurns his own reading utterly overturning it in favor of the vitriolic
raving of Scaliger. Kepler seemed to be aware that he had displayed his
literary naivete in the first letter, and yet was not mature or confident
enough to recognize the value of his own views--as with so many young scholars
he sometimes valued scholarly sophistication more than the truth.
One final biographical note of less importance: Kepler's autobiographical
horoscope, referred to several times in these essays, and only dated roughly
to 1597,22 was not finished before these letters, and therefore must
have received the ultima manus some time in late December. I assert
this relying on two pieces of evidence. First, Kepler uses a telltale Lucanism
in his text. On page 331, he calls Mercury "celer motu" (swift
in motion), the exact strange and otiose phrase that Lucan uses for the
planet.23 Second, on page 329, Kepler, while listing his scholarly
achievements mentions that, "Calendarium Romanum investigavit"
(he investigated the Roman calendar.) If we can trust anything he says in
his second letter, then we have to assume that his investigation of the
Roman calendar was confined to the end of December. Thus it would not be
imprudent to assume that he cast the horoscope and composed the document
shortly before his 27th birthday, on the 27th of December, 1597.
1 It is true that Macrobius had published several criticisms
of Lucan's factuality, but Scaliger represents the first truly lethal attack
on the legitimacy of Lucan as a poet.
2 See A. Grafton, Joseph
Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Oxford, 1983,
p. 212. I have relied heavily on this excellent book in all my judgments
on Scaliger.
3 See his letter to de Lisle
on the very subject of Lucan's astronomy. See also J. Bernays, Joseph
Justus Scaliger, Berlin, 1855, p. 282 where he quotes a particularly
stinging jibe: "venio ad nuper clientem nunc vero patronum. Hoc enim
me docent illa: `te ne ego quem semper vel magni numinis instar suspexi,
cultus nunc prisci oblitus.' (de Lisle's attack was in hexameters of as
dubious quality as this sample would show) Coluit Lucanum poetaster, nunc
Lucanus poetastrum, a quo defenditur. Salve patronicliens Lucani."
4 Grafton, p. 210.
5 Here I must point out
the exception of the commentary of Wuilleumier-Bonniec who apparently ignored
Housman's comments.
6 See the counter attack
of Palmer in Oudendorp's text pp. 911-945. Housman concedes that almost
all of Palmer's defences were successful right as he begins to find several
new battlegrounds.
7 Threats of utter destruction
are common enough in Lucan that most readers have been led to search for
their reas on, not simply smirk at their lack of fulfillment. See for instance
M. Lapidge, "Lucan's imagery of cosmic dissolution," Hermes
107 (1979), 344-370.
8 This happens about 4 days
every 3 months.
9 Betelgeuse is reddish
and therefore more likely to be seen as martial.
10 Obviously one could prove
any ancient poet or prose writer inaccurate in almost any passage if we
choose to quibble the way, for instance, Getty does in his introduction
on the geography of Lucan. For a very learned and forceful defence of Lucan's
accuracy see Palmer's address to Scaliger in Oudendorp's edition of the
Pharsalia.
11 See Appendix on Kepler's
accuracy.
12 Caspar, M., Johannes
Kepler, Stuttgart, 1948.
13 Koestler, A., The
Sleepwalkers, New York, 1959, pp. 225-422.
14 See Caspar, p. 127 ff.,
who treats the issue in some detail with the central fact being: "Unter
den umfangreichen Akten zur Gegenreformation finden sich drei Stuecke, alle
vom 3. August 1600 datiert, in denen uebereinstimmend an den Erzherzog berichtet
wird, Kepler habe sich nebst andern an diesem Tag vereit erklaert, katholisch
zu werden. Die Schriftstuecke stammen von dem Sekretaer Ferdinands, dem
Kapuzinerpater Peter Casal, dem Kanzler Wolfgang Joechlinger und dem Kammerprokurator
Angelus Costede, einem Mitglied der Reformationskommission." (p. 128).
As we know from our letters, Casal was one of the go-betweens of Kepler
and Herwart, and thus could be seen to be acting in agency with Herwart
to release Kepler from religious oppression. Caspar cannot accept the possibility
that Kepler himself lied about his religion. Koestler's account, however,
is less detailed but presents a more straigtforward conclusion: "In
the summer of 1598 Kepler's school was closed down, and in September all
Lutheran preachers and schoolmasters were ordered to leave the Province
within eight days or forfeit their lives. Only one among them received permission
to return, and that was Kepler...The reasons why an exception was made with
him are rather interesting. He himself says that the ARchduke was "pleased
with my discoveries" and that this was thereason for his favour at
his court; besides, as a mathematicus he occupied a "neutral position"
which set him apart from the other teachers. But it was not as simple as
that. Kepler had a powerful ally behind the scenes: the Jesuit order."
(p. 279) The problem whether Kepler named himself a Catholic or Herwart
had Kepler protected awaits further study.
15 As seen in our letter
1, Kepler had expressly asked this favor for his Mysterium Cosmographicum.
16 Caspar, p. 101.
17 Koestler, p. 279-280.
18 Kepler claims he sent
it, "quia neminem existimo id hactenus indicasse, et quia cum de antecedentibus
annis (paucis exceptis) necessario desperetur, credibile est, coeteros antiquitatum
studiosos, etiam de his quatuor ultimis desperasse." (because I do
not think anyone up till now has clarified it, and because, since there
is of necessity despair concerning the preceding years [with a few exceptions],
it is believable that others interested in antiquity have reached a state
of despair concerning these last four.) Kepler was the first to admit that
he enjoyed such esoteric problems as the chronology of the early civil war.
See his autobiographical sketch found in volume XIX of the Gesammelte
Werke, p. 328. From the start he says such things as: "homo iste
hoc fato natus est, ut plerumque rebus difficilibus tempus terat, a quibus
aliis abhorrent...Materias complexus est insolentes...Aenigmatis delectatus
fuit..." (the person was born under such a star that he would wear
away most of his time on difficult problems from which others shrink...he
embraced unusual fields...he was delighted by riddles...)
19 Koestler actually refers
to Herwart as "adoptive father no. 2" p. 308.
20 See Grafton, pp. 212-213.
21 Kepler tells us in his
autobiographical horoscope, "in physica Scaligerum suspexit. In libro
quarto Meteororum inhaesit praecipue disputando." (In natural philosohy
he looked up to Scaliger. He spent an unusually large amount of time in
discussion of the fourth book on Meteors.) Gesammelte Werke, vol.
XIX, p. 329.
22 Kepler tells us his
age at the time of composition on page 331: "homo hic usque ad annum
26, quo haec scripsi, fuit rationis non audiens... " (this person,
up to his present age of 26 at the time of composition, did not listen to
reason...).
23 See Pharsalia
1.662. This borrowing, of course, only points to a date of composition after
September.