plaga lactea

Latin noun

Last edited: 2025-05-11
Primary meaning milky way
Literal translation milky stripe
Variants
plaga lactea
lactea plaga
Edited by
milky way celestial object

Attalo regnante initio cometes modicus apparuit; deinde sustulit se diffuditque et usque in aequinoctialem circulum venit, ita ut illam plagam caeli cui lactea nomen est in immensum extentus aequaret.

‘In the reign of Attalus a comet appeared, of moderate size at first. Then it rose up and spread out and went all the way to the equator, so that its vast extent equalled the region of the sky which is called the Milky Way.’

— Seneca, Natural Questions 7.15.2

Genre: philosophy
Date: 62/63 CE

Seneca. Natural Questions, Volume II: Books 4-7. Translated by Thomas H. Corcoran. Loeb Classical Library 457. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. 258-259

Cite this entry
APA (7th)
Meinhardt, K. (2025). plaga lactea (Lemma #1897). The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/1897/
Chicago (Author-Date)
Meinhardt, K. (2025). plaga lactea (Lemma #1897). The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/1897/
MLA (9th)
Meinhardt, K. (2025). plaga lactea (Lemma #1897). The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/1897/
Harvard
Meinhardt, K. (2025) plaga lactea (Lemma #1897), The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. Available at: https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/1897/ (Accessed: February 2, 2026).
BibTeX 
@misc{zodiac1897,
	note = {[Online; accessed 2026-02-02]},
	author = {Meinhardt, Kierán},
	year = {2025},
	title = {plaga lactea ({Lemma} #1897)},
	url = {https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/1897/},
	howpublished = {https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/1897/},
}