Astronomica

Astronomica is Marcus Manilius's own first-century Roman primary text, a didactic poem expounding the zodiac and horoscopic doctrine within a Stoic cosmological framework. As a primary text it is authoritative for what Roman astrological doctrine of Manilius's own period actually held, checkable directly against the poem itself, not for a modern scholarly analysis of that doctrine's history or influence. Use it to establish the content of a specific Roman astrological doctrine as Manilius states it; a claim about how Roman astrology developed after Manilius or drew on earlier Hellenistic sources needs a dedicated scholarly history alongside this primary text.