the son of Clinias, was born at Sicyon about 271 B.C. On the murder of his father by Abantidas, he was rescued from a similar fate by the care of a relative who conveyed him to Argos. At the age of twenty, with the assistance of some Argians, he deposed the tyrant Nicocles, and thus, without bloodshed, restored freedom to his native Sicyon. In 245 he was elected chief of the Achaean League, which office he frequently held in subsequent years; and he was mainly instrumental in confirming that great confederation which restored the liberties of Greece. (See ACHAEANS.) In Aratus were combined many private virtues with splendid abilities; but he was more eminent as a statesman than as a general; for in his wars with the Ætolians and Spartans he was frequently unsuccessful. He died at the age of 58, as commonly reported by poison administered to him by the order of Philip of Macedon; but the symptoms of his disorder afford no certain grounds for such an assumption. His countrymen paid divine honour to his memory; and two yearly festivals (Arateia), were celebrated at Sicyon, one to commemorate his birth, the other his deliverance of the city from tyranny.—Plutarch, Aratus and Agis; Polybius ii. iv. vii. viii.

Greek poet, born at Soli, or Solza, 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 Caesar, and another into elegant verse by Festus Avienus. An edition of the Φαινόμενα 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 Ἐρυθρόποδος on Theoporus; an Ἡθοσκοπία 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, Τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γάρ τις ἀνήρ, For we are also his offspring. These words are the beginning of the fifth line of the Φαινόμενα.