Eratosthenes and Hyginus Constellation Myths with Aratus's Phaenomena A new translation by Robin Hard

Nothing is more beauty during a summer evening than to go out with some friends, in a countryside, choosing a field, putting there a blanket and watching the stars in the sky.
Stars: the reflection of our past, they speak to us of us, of our Destiny, of our existence while they reflect their brightness to our hearts donating us dreams, expectations, illusions, hopes. They speak of past, present and future and our stories and what it will be of our life.

We mustn't forget captains and sailors.
They have always looked at the sky for finding the route during their trips in the Oceans.

If you want to read the sky and its stars, with  a lot of curiosity for a particular Constellation, looking at your zodiac Constellation or the ones of your friends, relatives, there is nothing more beauty than buying this book: Eratosthenes and Hyginus Constellation Myths with Aratus's Phaenomena A new translation by Robin Hard published by Oxford World's Classics for reading under a complete different aspect, thanks to the erudite thoughts of these wise men of the past, what Constellations and stars are telling to us, with their myths, legends.
Discovering that there is a special map in the Sky, connected for creating a beautiful masterpiece of incredible stories just written by the stars for us and forever!
Greek's myths mixed and intersected with other legends will take corporeality in a fusion of old and new, passions and feelings, death and life, and the stars will become a real tapestry of stories, passions giving us the exact portrait and mirror of what life was, is and will be for us common mortals: life.

These myths stories and legends are our stories, reflected and seen brightly in the sky in an eternal perpetuity for every human being.

The Constellations, have been completely accepted in their complexity of myths and legends in our modern age as well, following the Ptolemaic table of Constellations.

They are our visible Heaven on this Earth and at the same time what we must expect from life.

Heratosthenes from Cyrene: he portrayed himself like a philologos, inventing this new word and giving to it the meaning of someone interested to many topics. Heratosthenes loved to study philosophy, geography, astronomy. He passed at the story for the estimation of the circumference of the Earth.
When he compiled the myth map of the Universe with his Catasterisms he amplified and gave corporeality to the classic myths told and known previously.

Aratus wrote a long poem about the Universe called Phaenomena a word that in Greek means things that appear, while it will be Hyginus with his four books called: Astronomy who later will complete the work. His mentor the book written by Herathosthenes.

Enjoy this reading! Each myth, of each Constellation is interesting.
Past speaks to us with intensity, feeling and strong energy and you will feel that also the Sky is human like the Earth and the reflection of what we do on Earth.

Highly recommended!


I thank Oxford University Press for the physical copy of this book.



Anna Maria Polidori