SOURCE: Fowler, Barbara Hughes. “The Creatures.” In The Hellenistic Aesthetic, pp. 115-67. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

In the following excerpt, Fowler describes Aratus's portrayal of animals, the Stoic worldview, and his indebtedness to Hesiod in the Phaenomena.

Aratus, more obviously than any other Hellenistic poet, shows a scientific interest in animals. He, of course, follows self-consciously in the Hesiodic, didactic tradition. A part of his didacticism is his versification of the works of Eudoxus and Theophrastus. Governing it all perhaps is his Stoicism. The pattern in the skies is perpetuated in the patterns on earth. The same fire that shines through the stars appears in the souls of animals and men. This basic Stoic principle may account for his anthropomorphizing of Zeus' creatures. It is also what, almost accidentally, gives his Weather Signs such ingenuous charm.

Aratus may have versified the work of Theophrastus, but the detail...