Didactic Features in Two Latin Translations of Aratus' Φαινόμενα.

The didactic epos Φαινόμενα καὶ Διοσεμεῖα by Aratus of Soloi was very popular among the Romans. Thus, it was translated into Latin by several Roman authors including Marcus Tullius Cicero and Germanicus Iulius Caesar. The aim of this paper is to find out whether these two authors only translated the information contained in Aratus' text or whether they also managed to imitate the didactic tone of the poem. Did both translators manage to play their roles as teachers? Did they try to make the lectures more interesting and perhaps to interact with the reader? Or did they minimize the didactic aspects of the epos and concentrated on other features of the text? The main goal of my paper is to analyse the ways in which Cicero and Germanicus applied the features of the didactic poetry genre in their translations. This includes a comparison of these with Aratus' text and with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]