Pretty much off-topic, but not quite:
Aratus mentions a different way to tell when the (presumably?? winter) storms are over.
Here is the English by Mair & Mair (1921) in the LCL.
Scan well the Manger, whereby wheels the Crab, when first it is freed of every covering cloud. For its clearing marks the waning tempest.
The Manger is Praesaepe (M44)
Sublime. “I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.”
Zefiro torna. Lovely (and thanks, Hylander), but a little melancholy as we approach fall 
.
Another off topic, but not quite:
In 2016-2017, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) had a fine exhibit of sundials, water clocks, calendaric imagery and the like, called Time and Cosmos in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. The exhibition catalog is well worth having.
ISAW is affiliated with New York University. They have a wonderful small headquarters, library, and museum just a few block away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you’re ever in NYC and especially if you’re visiting the Metropolitan Museum anyway, check it out. It’s one of NYC’s treasures.
Back on topic, though I much enjoyed the digression.
Nossis put it more simply: ἅδιον ουδεν ερωτος (another exception to the long iota, btw). Too simply for Asclepiades, a very different kind of epigrammatist, but the message is the same.
εκηβολος’ Aratus passage is from the Weather-signs (Diosemeia), the latter part of the Phaenomena, nothing to do with seasonal markers or the beginning of spring. Aratus’ lines on Corona/Stephanos, Ariadne’s crown, are towards the beginning of the Phaenomena proper, 71-75, and they fix its position relative to neighboring constellations in the celestial sphere. You can check it all out on a star map.
Stars are the conventional almanac markers. Hesiod’s Works and Days is full of them. He had used the dusk rising of Arcturus (in Bootes) to fix the time when the first of the farmer’s post-winter tasks (vine-pruning) should begin, 60 days (he says) after the winter solstice. That would be a few weeks earlier than the rising of Corona used by Asclepiades—and no doubt others—to mark the start of the sailing season. (Of course the times would vary according to the observer’s location.)
εκηβολος’ Aratus passage is from the Weather-signs (Diosemeia), the latter part of the Phaenomena, nothing to do with seasonal markers or the beginning of spring.
In fact, the Manger (aka the Beehive) is a fall/winter asterism in the evening and night. But I think there is a certain amount of astronomical misinformation in Aratus, who wasn’t really an astronomer himself but took his information from someone else and sometimes garbled it.
By the way, there’s a very weird chromatic chord progression near the end of the Monteverdi, just before the reprise of the chaconne. I hope those who listened noticed it.
Yes there’s a certain amount of misinformation in Aratus, polemically exposed by his first commentator Hipparchus, treating the poem as if it were an astronomical treatise. But I think Aratus’ placing of Corona is accurate enough, and the separate weather-signs section has no bearing on the beginning of spring. As a poem the Phaenomena was highly regarded and remained enormously popular, and its occasional inaccuracies didn’t bother Cicero or Vergil. You should see how Vergil plays fast and loose with Aratus’ weather signs in bk.1 of the Georgics. He makes complete nonsense of them—but not bad poetry.
Thanks for the Monteverdi. I always relish his discords, as in the final duet of l’Incoronazione (which gets us back on topic). That’s more pedestrian, but sets me tingling every time.
Here is Chaucer:
What shal I telle more her compleining?
Hit is so long, hit were an hevy thing.
In her epistle Naso telleth al;
But shortly to the ende I telle shal.
The goddes have her holpen, for pitee;
And, in the signe of Taurus, men may see
The stones of her coroun shyne clere.–
However, I can’t quite make out his source (beyond the mentioned Heroides). If it’s Fasti, why Taurus and not Aries? Is he misreading the Vergil reference, which does mention Taurus?
A question about the third part of this epigram.
In committing this to memory, I realise that while I understand the meaning of αἰνέεται κύπρις ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων, I have no idea what it means.
While it is a bit in the “society and culture area”, it may as well be here in the Asclepiades V.169 thread.
While literally αἰνέεται κύπρις ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων may mean if both are devotee of Aphrodite, but from context it seems to be a specific reference to what happens under the χλαῖνα (“cover”). Within the patron-client relationship of φιλία, what would this mean? Would it be that both achieve (mutual) gratification of sexual desire, or that the client would gratify the patron? As explained to me, the male homosexual culture here, where I live differentiates between 1’s and 0’s, but that differentiation seems to be determined by personality, rather than social roles.
Did relationships in Ancient Greece follow that model? I guess that if there was this same distinction between binary numbers in ancient Greece, then this αἰνέεται κύπρις ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων might mean that those roles defined, who in a particular relationship was the 1 and who was the 0.
Is this actually so well constructed to mean one man looks forward to drinking a white semi liquid and another hopes to watch something? Or is that taking the interpretation too far?
and its occasional inaccuracies didn’t bother Cicero or Vergil
Nor, as far as I know, did they bother Caesar Germanicus, who besides Cicero also translated Aratus (Aratea, extant).
In committing this to memory, I realise that while I understand the meaning of αἰνέεται κύπρις ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων, I have no idea what it means.
Euphemism. Use your imagination.
If anyone is interested in more Youtube Monteverdi with classical associations, including another (and more intense) Zefiro torna on a different text, the ending of the Coronation of Poppea mentioned by mwh in a splendid setting that is both exquisitely beautiful and very creepy (fitting the triumph of evil that concludes this opera) and the lament of the owner of the εἰαρινὸν Στέφανον, send me a private message (so that I can avoid hijacking this thread).
φιλεόντας
or φιλέοντας ? Is there an allowable variability in accent for this form of the verb?
It’s just a typo.
After having read the comment down to the end, I wish he wouldn’t.
It’s only an exploration of the possible relationship between the imagery of the first two parts of the tripartite structure and what is not being described directly in the third part. I think descriptions of this as “love” poetry very tame - or “Victorian”. If we are to use the word “love”, it seems to be (homo)erotic love being described here, rather than romantic love. The central theme of both of the first two images seems to be longing, perhaps even desperation followed by a sudden event that changes things for the better. I suppose that at least to that exent the first two images describe some element of the euphemism of the third. The further the parallel is taken, the more it is conjecture. As literature, the reader of course is part of the literary process, and an understanding of the norms of the day could guide any reading - hence the first part of the discussion. I think that modern (or Judeo-Christian) “morality” or even the notion that exclusive (binary and polarised) heterosexuality was in any way normative may have seemed ridiculous.
Is there any reason for not reading this as descriptive erotic poetry?
The fact that it’s in Greek doesn’t necessarily mean A. is talking about same-sex love, as other epigrams of his show.
http://www.archive.org/stream/greekanthology01newyuoft#page/168/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/stream/greekanthology01newyuoft#page/198/mode/2up
On the other hand,
http://www.archive.org/stream/greekanthology01newyuoft#page/196/mode/2up
Those three look more like (emotional) love poems.
τους φιλεοντας doesn’t imply that both are male, and the reader would assume different sexes. Most (though not all) of Asclepiades’ epigrams are heterosexual; there’s one (Anth.Gr.5.209) in which Lesbian sex is presented as a perversion, an offense to Kypris. αυτον in 5.169 (linked by Hylander) comes as a great surprise, a deliberate παρα προσδοκιαν (provided it’s right, as I suppose it must be). Are there any other paraclausithura at a male’s door? It’s highly unorthodox, if not unique.
As to αινηται (subjunctive, not αινεεται), cf. my first post. Lovemaking is a tribute to the goddess of love (erotic love, of course—Eros). That’s what she wants.
For the future of Poppea, better even than catasterism, see http://discourse.textkit.com/t/ovid-metam-book-ii-begin-line-518/12717/4
The poet may not have cared to specify, being happy to leave it up to the reader’s predilections. After all, they are hidden by a cloak.
But ἥδιον to whom?
Those other references to the Crown did, as you say, mention its position, but didn’t mention anything about it as a marker for the weather. My mention of the beehive was merely because that is what is spoken of by Aratus in that regard. As I hoped in my somewhat clumsily bringing it up, somebody was able to locate it in the zodiacal year.