Marcus Manilius was a Roman poet, astrologer, and author. He flourished in the 1st century AD and is mainly known for his poem Astronomica.
Background
Marcus Manilius was born in the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD. According to the early 18th-century classicist Richard Bentley, he was an Asiatic Greek; according to the 19th-century classicist Fridericus Jacob, an African. Little of his life is known. Even his name is variously presented in the somewhat restricted manuscript tradition of his one surviving work as Manlius or Mallius, to which is often added Boenius or Boevius; this probably reflects some confusion with the philosopher Anicius Manilius Boethius.
Education
From his poem is evident, that Manilius had studied his subject from the best writers of his time because it generally represents the most advanced views of the ancients on astronomy (or rather astrology).
Career
The composition of the poem in five books called Astronomica by Marcus Manilius began while Augustus was still reigning, and book I was written later than a.d. 9; but it has been much debated whether the work as we have it was completed before Augustus’ death in a.d. 14 or only under his successor, Tiberius. In either case, Manilius intended to write more than the five books preserved in the manuscripts. Not only does he promise to expound the nature of the planets in book II and fail to accomplish this before the end of book V, but the poem as it stands is not adequate for its purpose - the instruction of students in the science of astrology. In fact, its astrological content, while important because of its antiquity (Manilius’ is one of the oldest connected treatise on astrology), is quite rudimentary.
Roughly, the scheme of the Astronomica is as follows. Book I treats the sphere, zodiacal and other constellations, great circles, and comets; book II, the zodiacal signs, their classifications, interrelations, and subdivisions, and the dodecatopus; book III, the twelve astrological places (here called athla), the Lot of Fortune, the rising times of the signs at Alexandria, the lord of the year, and the length of life; book IV, the decans, the monomoria, and an astrological geography; and book V, the fixed stars that rise simultaneously with points on the ecliptic. The possessor of only this poem could not hope to cast or to read a horoscope; he would have several thousand Latin hexameters, some of which are very fine, and a curious congeries of strange doctrines, many of which are found in no other extant text in either Greek or Latin.
Views
The sources of Manilius’ doctrines are not often evident. Housman has cited those that are in his edition, and also a large number of parallel passages. An attempt at a survey of the sources in book I was made by R. Blum. The evidence which points to his use of Hermetic astrological writings is strong, and the relation of book V to Germanicus’ version of Aratus’ Phaenomena has been studied by H. Wempe. But the fragmentary state of our knowledge of the early stages of the development of astrology in Hellenistic Egypt makes it impossible to pursue the search for Manilius’ sources much further. It is even more difficult (though not because of a lack of texts) to discern any influence exercised by Manilius over later astrologers.
Following the style and philosophy of Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid, Manilius stresses the providential government of the world and the operation of divine reason. He exercises his amazing ability for versifying astronomical calculations to the extreme, often forcing unnecessarily complex constructions upon his lines. The poem’s chief interest lies in the attractive prefaces to each book and in the mythological and moralizing digressions.
Although it was inspired by the Epicurean poem De rerum natura by Lucretius the Astronomica embraces Stoicism.
Quotations:
"Speak that I might see you!"
Connections
There is no information on whether Marcus Manilius was ever married or had any children.