tached to the constellations from the heathen mythology, and such vivid descriptions of the natural animals, whose figures are depicted on the celestial sphere, as to give life and animation to his verse, without overburthening it or losing sight of his main object.
In weighing the merits and defects of Aratus, the critic should take into consideration the difficulty of his undertaking. His poem has no hero, no events, no dialogue, no action, and yet he succeeded in rendering it one of the most popular works for a series of years, that ever was published. It is an undeniable fact, that for five or six centuries it held a rank in the estimation of the learned not inferior to that of the Iliad of Homer. Maximus Tyrius only speaks the opinion of his contemporaries, when he terms Aratus, Ποιητήν ουδέν αδοξότερον του Ομήρου; or Ovid, when he ranks him with Homer and Sophocles:
Dum rapidas Simois in mare volvet aquas.
Nulla Sophocleo veniet jactura cothurno:
Cum sole et luna semper Aratus erit.
The admiration which his poems obtained is proved by the numerous scholiasts and commentators upon them. Among the Romans they were so popular, that no fewer than three translations of them were made into Latin hexameters, and by no ordinary writers. Cicero translated the Phenomena and Diosemeia. A great part of the former has come down
