Structuring the Cosmos in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica

Abstract This book explores motifs of cosmology and meteorology in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica, demonstrating how Valerius draws eclectically on philosophical theories to construct an unstable cosmos prone to dissolution and internal conflict. The coherence of Valerius’s philosophical engagement depends on the centrality he affords the elements of air and fire, meteorology’s driving forces, which serve as personified mythological beings and active cosmic forces on a layered system of metaphor and analogy. The book is structured in rough accordance with the levels of Valerius’s meteorological metaphor, beginning with the subterrestrial and ascending toward the celestial. It looks first at literal, mythologized, and intertextual manifestations of volcanic and seismic activity, then demonstrates how Valerius’s relationship with didactic poetry intrudes into and shapes his poem, in both the viewpoints of his characters and his epic’s pervasive engagement with the Lucretian plague. It centers the Lemnos episode as an early illustration of the epic’s themes, showing how volcanism and plague are not just evident in but intrinsic to the episode’s construction and demonstrating the crucial importance of Empedocles’ philosophy for the episode. Returning to representations of plague in the epic, it looks at the influence of the Dogstar Sirius and at metaphorical and intertextual manifestations of the literary plague’s traditional symptoms, highlighting how the epic’s meteorological dimension interacts with its eschatological concerns. Finally, it examines the importance of celestial fires in the epic, emphasizing the influence of Manilius’s Astronomica, and concludes with consideration of Flavian Rome, arguing for the inescapable relevance of Valerius’s own era.