the sun and moon and of those five stars which
are called wanderers, or, as we might say, rovers
[_i. e._, the five planets], contained more than could be
shown on the solid globe, and the invention of Archimedes
deserved special admiration because he had thought out a
way to represent accurately by a single device for turning
the globe, those various and divergent movements with
their different rates of speed. And when Gallus moved
[_i.e._, set in motion] the globe, it was actually true
that the moon was always as many revolutions behind the
sun on the _bronze_ contrivance as would agree with the
number of days it was behind in the sky. Thus the same
eclipse of the sun happened on the globe as would actually
happen, and the moon came to the point where the shadow of
the earth was at the very time when the sun (appeared?)
out of the region ... [several pages are missing in the
manuscript; there is only one].
_De republica_, I, xiv (21-22), Keyes' translation.
When Archimedes put together in a globe the movements of
the moon, sun and five wandering [planets], he brought
about the same effect as that which the god of Plato did
in the Timaeus when he made the world, so that one
revolution produced dissimilar movements of delay and
acceleration.
_Tusculanae disputationes_, I, 63.
Later descriptions from Ovid, Lactantius, Claudian, Sextus Empiricus,
and Pappus, respectively, are (italics supplied):
There stands a globe suspended by a Syracusan's skill in
an enclosed bronze [frame, or sphere--or perhaps, in
enclosed air], a small image of the immense vault [of
heaven]; and the earth is equally distant from the top and
bottom; that is brought about by its [_i. e._, the outer
bronze globe's] round form. The form of the temple [of
Vesta] is similar....
Ovid, _Fasti_ (1st century, A.D.), VI, 277-280,
Frazer's translation.
The Sicilian Archimedes, was able to make a reproduction
and model of the world in concave _brass_ (concavo aere
similitudinem mundi ac figuram); in it he so arranged the
_sun_ and _moon_ and resembling the celestial revolutions
(caelestibus similes conversionibus); and while it
revolved it exhibited not only the accession and recession
of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon
(incrementa deminutionesque lunae), but also the unequal
_courses of the stars_, whether fixed or wandering.
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