Marcus Mānīlius (c.48 BCE–20 CE) was the last of the Roman didactic poets. He is the author of the Astronomica—an unfinished astrological poem that spans the final years of Emperor Augustus and the initial reign of Emperor Tiberius.
Little of Mānīlius’s life is known. His Astronomica is a compendium of ancient astrological and astronomical conceptions, together with a treatise of the nature of the Milky Way. The Astronomica was the first Roman work on the subject of astrology and was a subject of translation for astrological commentators in the seventeenth century.
Astronomica is known particularly for Mānīlius’s engaging forewords to each book and in his mythological and moralizing forays. Continuing the style and philosophy of Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid, Mânîlius emphasizes the providential rule of the world and the operation of divine reason.
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We are always beginning to live, but are never living.
—Marcus Manilius
Topics: The Present
Labor is a pleasure in itself.
—Marcus Manilius
We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.
—Marcus Manilius
Topics: Dying, Death
A docile disposition will, with application, surmount every difficulty.
—Marcus Manilius
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