Manilius
1.
Gaius, a tribune of the plebs (B.C. 66), who
proposed the law (Manilia Lex) granting to Pompey the command of the war against Mithridates,
and which Cicero supported in an extant oration.
2.
The reputed author of a Latin didactic poem upon astronomy and astrology
(
Astronomica), in five books, the first of which was written under Augustus,
after the battle in the Saltus Teutoburgiensis (A.D. 9), and the fifth under Tiberius. The
first two books treat of astronomy as the foundation of astrology; the rest of the influence
of constellations on human destiny. The author certainly intended to write a sixth book, but
it has either been lost or was never written. The poet, who shows extensive knowledge,
frequently boasts of having been the first among Roman poets to treat the subject, and
handles his difficult theme with a dexterity and a moral earnestness that recall Lucretius,
whose language he has frequently imitated. In metrical skill he is on a par with the best
poets of the Augustan Age. The
editio princeps of Manilius appeared at
Nüremberg about 1472; the best texts are those of Bentley
(London,
1739), and Jacob
(Berlin, 1846). See Woltjer,
De Manilio
Poeta (Groningen, 1881); Lanson,
De Manilio Poeta eiusque
Ingenio (Paris, 1887); and Kraemer,
De Manilii
Astronomicis (Marburg, 1890).
