The uniqueness of the word ‘mollipedes’ in Cicero’s Prognostica IV.10-11
The uniqueness of the word ‘mollipedes’ in Cicero’s Prognostica IV.10-11

Summary/Abstract: The article uses the word ‘mollipedes’ as a point of repair in its attempt to re-examine the didactic poetry of Aratus and Cicero. The three title words used by the authors, namely Phaenomena, Diosemeia, and Prognostica, will be found to have the etymological capacity to suggest that the writers’ true agenda relates not to inexplicable portents of the weather but to the scientific causes of natural phenomena. However these etymologies also suggest that the rhetoric by which this new discourse is accessed will be oracular. That is, in complete contradistinction to what appears to be the case, the arguments of these authors will prove to be sibylline, while their material will prove to be scientific. The brunt of the article will consist in detailed analyses of specific passages from Cicero’s Prognostica and Aratus’ Diosemeia. It is hoped these analyses will show that an array of subversive literary techniques are laid by these authors at the service of an agenda that seeks to convey to posterity the truth about the way the ancient world was perceived by its literary elite. In the final analysis Cicero’s word ‘mollipedes’ proved to have a fatal flaw which rendered it unattractive to his successors. However for our purposes it will serve as a totemic indicator of the literary programme Cicero and Aratus bequeathed to the world. Had Cicero not used the word, the discovery of our thread would have been virtually impossible.

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