SOURCE: Hutchinson, G. O. “Other Poets: Aratus.” In Hellenistic Poetry, pp. 214-35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

In the following excerpt, Hutchinson presents a detailed structural, thematic, and linguistic analysis of the Phaenomena.

We consider first Aratus, whose poetic career overlapped with Callimachus'.¹ The only substantial work of his to survive is the Phaenomena. The poem was praised by Callimachus and others for its elegance; it also contains some elevated passages on the gods.² We should not allow either fact to limit too greatly our approach to the poem. It does have for its core a poetic version of two exceedingly dry works in prose. The first part, on constellations, draws on the Phaenomena of the astronomer Eudoxus (5th-4th cc.); the second, on weather-signs, draws on a work perhaps by the philosopher Theophrastus (4th-3rd cc.). Many sentences of Eudoxus' work survive in quotation; the other work is...