And personally, based on what I presented: I would like to keep on thinking of 1) things that come in sets of ##; 2) of poems as lists; and 3) of the relationship between those poetic vehicles of order in relation to diagrams that also order, relate and create.

Indeed. There is a lot to be sad about the divorce of the scientific and the literary/the poetic and what this says about contemporary imagining of science, scientific practice, and those who perform it. It is astonishing how pervasive the idea that "this has always been so" is and how incorrect.

I think someone is You!

As for the lack of a hybrid option, I know it is frustrating but I wanted to preserve the workshop feeling as much as I could.

You know me well because, of course, this was my "secret" agenda all along! If you have any suggestions for people to approach, please share and of course, if you would like to contribute an instrument poem or a poem on an instrument, it would be fab!

Previously, Stamatina led the working group Heavens in Your Hand at the @mpiwg.bsky.social , Berlin. Her research focuses on ancient astronomy and its material culture.

Stamatina Mastorakou (@smasto.bsky.social) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Pittsburgh (www.classics.pitt.edu/people/stama...). She holds a PhD in the history of ancient astronomy from Imperial College, London.

She is pointing to the starry 💫🌌sphere above them. The book 📖lying on the ground before the globe perhaps represents Aratus' "Phaenomena". It seems that the celestial globe 🌐on the tripod is a mimesis of the real night sky 🌌above it.

Aratus, whose name is written in Greek just above his head (ΑΡΑΤΟC), is pointing on a celestial globe🌐. The globe rests on a three-legged stand and has a few stars ✨on it. The muse of astronomy Urania is depicted on the other side of the globe 🌐with her name inscribed (ΟΥΡΑΝΙΑΙ).

Beyond literary sources, material culture also depicts Aratus with celestial globes🌐 and manuscripts✍️, often alongside Urania, the Muse of Astronomy—cementing his role as the public face of astronomy, e.g. on this 6th-C silver plate (Private Collection, UK): isaw.nyu.edu/exhibitions/...

Even Hipparchus, the famous astronomer, felt compelled to compare it with Eudoxus’ work, noting its widespread use, despite some errors he points out.

As I argue in my upcoming book, Aratus transformed the way people observed, visualized and consequently represented the sky🌌, and introduced a new astral vocabulary📖. The poem’s verses likely aided memorization and helped its popularity spread among both scholars and the general public.

In recent decades, however, scholars have increasingly recognized the poem not just for its poetic beauty and relationship to Homer and Hesiod, but also for its significance in the history of astronomy.

Despite Aratus’ prominence in ancient sources, both written and material, he remained surprisingly overlooked in modern scholarship.

It captivated audiences both in its written and oral form, from Hellenistic Macedonia through to the Byzantine Empire and beyond. It inspired many commentaries, translations, illustrations and it even appears in the New Testament.

This poem holds a special place in my research. When I first encountered it, I wondered why such a widely admired work in antiquity has become relatively unknown today. What is indeed fascinating is how extensively the "Phaenomena" was read and preserved over the centuries.

It belongs to a long tradition of observing the risings and settings of stars✨—a practice that was essential for timekeeping, navigation, meteorology, and healing.