Aratus

He then spent some time at the court of Antiochus I Soter of Syria, but subsequently returned to Pella in Macedon, where he died sometime before 240/239.

Several poetical works on various subjects, as well as a number of prose epistles, are attributed to Aratus, but none of them have come down to us, except his two astronomical poems in hexameter.

The Phenomena appears to be based on two prose works—Phenomena and Enoptron (Ἔνοπτρον, "Mirror", presumably a descriptive image of the heavens)—by Eudoxus of Cnidus, written about a century earlier.

The purpose of the Phenomena is to give an introduction to the constellations, with the rules for their risings and settings; and of the circles of the sphere, amongst which the Milky Way is reckoned.

The immobility of the Earth, and the revolution of the sky about a fixed axis are maintained; the path of the Sun in the zodiac is described; but the planets are introduced merely as bodies having a motion of their own, without any attempt to define their periods; nor is anything said about the Moon's orbit.

From the lack of precision in the descriptions, it would seem that Aratus was neither a mathematician nor observer[4] or, at any rate, that in this work he did not aim at scientific accuracy.

He not only represents the configurations of particular groups incorrectly, but describes some phenomena which are inconsistent with any one supposed latitude of the spectator, and others which could not coexist at any one epoch.

The two poems were very popular both in the Greek and Roman world,[5] as is proved by the number of commentaries and Latin translations.

He enjoyed immense prestige among Hellenistic poets, including Theocritus, Callimachus and Leonidas of Tarentum.

Paul, speaking of God, quotes the fifth line of Aratus's Phenomena (Epimenides seems to be the source of the first part of Acts 17:28,[2] although this is less clear):