[Flourished about B.C. 270.]
A fellow-countryman of St. Paul, who quotes one of his works in his
address to the Athenians. Called to the Court of Antigonus Gonatas, King
of Macedonia. He there pursued physics, grammar, and philosophy. He also
versified two astronomical treatises by Eudoxus. There are many errors
with much want of precision in the descriptive portions of these works,
proving the poet to have been neither a mathematician nor an acute
observer. As a poet, Aratus was hardly more eminent. He is wanting in
originality and poetic feeling; yet his verses obtained popularity both
in Greece and Rome.
[The well known head, representing, as it is supposed, the Poet of the
Stars, in the attitude of viewing the heavens. The same head is found
on medals, of which the best is preserved in the Hunterian Museum of
the College of Surgeons, London.]
GREEK COURT.--NORTH SIDE-COURT.
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS, STATESMEN, AND GENERALS.