DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14696#0088
The Elysian Way
39
There is a road aloft in the clear heaven,
Milk-white and therefore named the Milky Way.
Here go the gods to the great Thunderer's house
And royal home. To right and left the halls
Of high-born deities fling wide their doors.
The populace in diverse spots may dwell ;
But on this front the denizens of heaven
Puissant and proud have pitched their own abode1.
Ovid's celestial city is doubtless made to the pattern of Rome:
viam, quae me post vincula corporis aegri | in sublime ferat, puri qua lactea caeli | semita
ventosae superat vaga nubila lunae | qua proceres abiere pii quaque integer olim | raptus
quadriiugo penetrat super aera curru | Elias et solido cum corpore praevius Enoch. And
Dracontius of Carthage (end of s. v a.d.) would raise the brave man to the sky along the
same starry track : Drac. Romul. 5. 323 ff. his quartus (so F. Biicheler for quintus)
adesto | virtutis ratione fide pietate vigore | possessure polos, scandens qua lacteus axis |
vertitur, aetherii qua se dat (so F. von Duhn for sedat C. Rossberg cj. candet) circulus orbis |
lunarisque globus qua volvitur axe tepenti j aut certe qua Phoebus agit super astra iugales : |
sidera sic capies, poteris sic astra mereri. Cp. Hieron. epist. 23. 3 (xxii. 426 Migne) ille (sc.
the husband of Lea)...nunc desolatus et nudus non in lacteo caeli palatio, ut uxor mentitur
infelix, sed in sordentibus tenebris. These are but Christianised versions of a belief that
must have been wide-spread in later classical times—witness e.g. an elegiac epitaph from
Salonae : Corp. inscr. Lat. iii Suppl. no. 9631, 2 f. = F. Biicheler Carmina Latino,
epigraphica Lipsiae 1897 ii. 685 f. no. 1438, 17 f. sede beatorum recipit te lacteus orbis |
e gremio matris : hoc tua digna fides. The artistic evidence, though considerably later, is
not devoid of interest. A twelfth-century manuscript of Germanicus at Madrid (cod.
Matrit. A 16), with coloured pictures in the scholia, represents the circulus lacteus as
a hoop held by a half-draped female, who bears aloft a draped female, the divinised soul
(G. Thiele Antike Himmelsbilder Berlin 1898 p. 147 ff". fig. 64 = my fig. 15). The same
design with slight variations is found two centuries afterwards in the Vienna manuscript
of a Latin prose work on astronomy (cod. Vindob. 2352) : the starry circle is here more
recognisable, the draped soul on its semi-draped supporter is less so, the apotheosis-type
being ill understood (G. Thiele op. cit. p. [49 fig. 6j = my fig. 16).
1 Ov. met. t. 168 ff. est via sublimis, caelo manifesta sereno ; | lactea nomen habet,
candore notabilis ipso. | hac iter est superis ad magni tecta Tonantis | regalemque domum.
dextra laevaque deorum | atria nobilium valvis celebrantur apertis. | plebs habitat diversa
locis : hac fronte (sic codd. A.N.P.T., a (in rasura) fronte codd. M.e.X., hac parte cod. Be.)
potentes | caelicolae clarique suos posuere penates.
39
There is a road aloft in the clear heaven,
Milk-white and therefore named the Milky Way.
Here go the gods to the great Thunderer's house
And royal home. To right and left the halls
Of high-born deities fling wide their doors.
The populace in diverse spots may dwell ;
But on this front the denizens of heaven
Puissant and proud have pitched their own abode1.
Ovid's celestial city is doubtless made to the pattern of Rome:
viam, quae me post vincula corporis aegri | in sublime ferat, puri qua lactea caeli | semita
ventosae superat vaga nubila lunae | qua proceres abiere pii quaque integer olim | raptus
quadriiugo penetrat super aera curru | Elias et solido cum corpore praevius Enoch. And
Dracontius of Carthage (end of s. v a.d.) would raise the brave man to the sky along the
same starry track : Drac. Romul. 5. 323 ff. his quartus (so F. Biicheler for quintus)
adesto | virtutis ratione fide pietate vigore | possessure polos, scandens qua lacteus axis |
vertitur, aetherii qua se dat (so F. von Duhn for sedat C. Rossberg cj. candet) circulus orbis |
lunarisque globus qua volvitur axe tepenti j aut certe qua Phoebus agit super astra iugales : |
sidera sic capies, poteris sic astra mereri. Cp. Hieron. epist. 23. 3 (xxii. 426 Migne) ille (sc.
the husband of Lea)...nunc desolatus et nudus non in lacteo caeli palatio, ut uxor mentitur
infelix, sed in sordentibus tenebris. These are but Christianised versions of a belief that
must have been wide-spread in later classical times—witness e.g. an elegiac epitaph from
Salonae : Corp. inscr. Lat. iii Suppl. no. 9631, 2 f. = F. Biicheler Carmina Latino,
epigraphica Lipsiae 1897 ii. 685 f. no. 1438, 17 f. sede beatorum recipit te lacteus orbis |
e gremio matris : hoc tua digna fides. The artistic evidence, though considerably later, is
not devoid of interest. A twelfth-century manuscript of Germanicus at Madrid (cod.
Matrit. A 16), with coloured pictures in the scholia, represents the circulus lacteus as
a hoop held by a half-draped female, who bears aloft a draped female, the divinised soul
(G. Thiele Antike Himmelsbilder Berlin 1898 p. 147 ff". fig. 64 = my fig. 15). The same
design with slight variations is found two centuries afterwards in the Vienna manuscript
of a Latin prose work on astronomy (cod. Vindob. 2352) : the starry circle is here more
recognisable, the draped soul on its semi-draped supporter is less so, the apotheosis-type
being ill understood (G. Thiele op. cit. p. [49 fig. 6j = my fig. 16).
1 Ov. met. t. 168 ff. est via sublimis, caelo manifesta sereno ; | lactea nomen habet,
candore notabilis ipso. | hac iter est superis ad magni tecta Tonantis | regalemque domum.
dextra laevaque deorum | atria nobilium valvis celebrantur apertis. | plebs habitat diversa
locis : hac fronte (sic codd. A.N.P.T., a (in rasura) fronte codd. M.e.X., hac parte cod. Be.)
potentes | caelicolae clarique suos posuere penates.