ARATUS, a Greek poet, born at Soli, or Solæ, a town in Cilicia, which afterwards changed its name, and was called Pompeiopolis in honour of Pompey the Great. He flourished about the 124th, or, according to some, the 126th Olympiad, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt. He discovered in his youth a remarkable poignancy of wit, and capacity for improvement; and having received his education under Dionysius Heracleotes, a Stoic philosopher, he espoused the principles of that sect. Aratus was physician to Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, king of Macedon. His poem, entitled Φαινόμενα, describes the nature and motion of the fixed stars, and shows the particular influences of the heavenly bodies, with their various dispositions and relations. He wrote this poem in Greek verse. It was translated into Latin by Cicero, who tells us, in his first book De Oratore, that the verses of Aratus are very noble. This piece was translated by others as
well as Cicero, there being a translation by Germanicus Cæsar, and another into elegant verse by Festus Avienus. An edition of the Phænomena was published by Grotius at Leyden, in quarto, in 1600, in Greek and Latin, with the fragments of Cicero's version, and the translations of Germanicus and Avienus; all which the editor has illustrated with curious notes. A valuable edition was published at Oxford, by Fell, in 1672, in 8vo; but the most complete is that of Buhle, published at Leipzig in 1801, in 2 vols. 8vo. There were several other works ascribed to Aratus, none of which have come down to us: Hymns to Pan; Astrology and Astrothesy; a composition of Antidotes; an Επιθεσις on Theopropus; an Ἰθωροά on Antigonus; an Epigram on Phila, the daughter of Antipater and wife of Antigonus; an Epicedium of Cleombrotus; a Correction of the Odyssey; and some Epistles in prose. Virgil, in his Georgics, has imitated or translated many passages from this author; and St Paul has quoted a passage of Aratus. It is in his speech to the Athenians (Acts xvii. 28), wherein he tells them that some of their own poets have said, Τὸν γὰρ καὶ γένος ἰσχύν. For we are also his offspring. These words are the beginning of the fifth line of the Phænomena.