Aratus

'" From which it is plain that, using also poetic examples from the Phaenomena of Aratus, he approves what has been well said among the Greeks, and through the "unknown God" he hinted that the Creator God was honoured by the Greeks by a periphrasis, but that he must be received and learned with full knowledge through the Son.

And the sphinx is not the binding-together of all things and the revolution of the world according to the poet Aratus, but perhaps it might be the pervading spiritual tension that holds the world together;

and in the work entitled Phaenomena, Aratus, having said, "Let us begin from Zeus," whom, O men, we never leave unspoken, adds:

and that, many years later, Aratus, taking the whole adornment and design from Eudoxus, had set it forth in verse, not by any knowledge of astronomy, but by a certain poetic faculty.

"Let us imitate, then, Aratus, who, setting out to speak of great matters, thinks one must begin from Jove.

For if Aratus of Sicyon thought it a hard case, that private possessions of fifty years’ standing should be disturbed, how much weightier is that maxim of Augustus, that it is the character of a good man and a good subject to wish for no change in the present government, and, in the words, which Thucydides has assigned to Alcibiades, to support the constitution, under which he has been born?

But where the right of war is doubtful, it will be safest to follow the conduct of Aratus of Sicyon, in advising the new possessors in some measure to prefer taking a sum of money in lieu of the possession, and recommending the same maxim to the original owners, to prefer a sum of money, if they could obtain it, equivalent to the recovery of their right.

I indeed am even a great holder of opinions (for I am not a wise man), and I so direct my thoughts, not by that tiny Cynosura, by which "the Phoenicians trust their guide in deep night," as Aratus says, and steer the more directly because they keep to that which "is turned in a brief circle in the inner course" — but by Helice and the most brilliant Septentriones, that is, by these reasonings of b …

"I will use the verses of Aratus, which, translated by you when quite a young man, delight me so, because they are Latin, that I hold many of them in memory.

Aratus, then, understands the power of God to pervade all things:

To prove that I am speaking the truth and that they did borrow additional sums contrary to the agreement, the clerk shall read you the deposition of the man himself who made the additional loan.

Aratus of Halicarnassus deposes that he lent to Apollodorus eleven minae in silver on the merchandise which he was conveying in the ship of Hyblesius to Pontus, and on the goods purchased there as a return cargo;

For he said that information had been laid against Epitimus, that Aratus had taken him to prison and that you were supporting the prosecution and were the most uncompromising of all toward him.

But if I should demand that those heavenly men be shown to me, Aratus will more easily delineate among the stars his Perseus and Cepheus and Erigone and Ariadne.