My dear Bridges, I adjure you not to waste your time on Manilius. He writes on astronomy and astrology without knowing either. My interest in him is purely technical. His best poetry you will find in I 483-531, where he appeals to the regularity of the heavenly motions as evidence of the divinity and eternity of the universe. He has nothing else so good, and little that is nearly so good. Yours sincerely A.E. HOUSMAN

(The Letters of A. E. Housman, edited by H. Maas [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971], 22.)

Who was this Manilius, so lackluster and technical a poet, who nevertheless was edited by three of Europe's greatest classical scholars--Joseph C. Scaliger (1579), Richard Bentley (1739), and Housman (1903-1932)? No facts about Manilius's life have survived antiquity. There is even doubt about his name. Manuscripts give the name Marcus Manilius, but Pliny (Nat. Hist. 35.199) refers to an astrological...