“Others shall beat out the breathing bronze more softly, I do well believe it! And shall draw the living features from the marble; shall plead causes better, and trace with the rod the movements of the sky, and tell of the rising stars. Roman! do thou be mindful how to sway the peoples with command. These be thy arts: to lay upon them the custom of peace, to spare the subject and fight down the proud.”’[59] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [59] _De Mon._ II. vii., “Temple Classics” edition. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yet there were some enthusiastic amateur astronomers in Rome, for Cicero tells us of one who had felt old age to be no burden because he was so eager over his astronomical studies, sitting up sometimes all night to finish his calculations, and delighted when an eclipse he had foretold came to pass.[60] This ardent amateur, Sulpicius Gallus by name, had found such knowledge of practical value in his younger days, when he was with the legions in Macedonia, for he had been able to persuade the troops not to be alarmed by an eclipse of the moon which was about to happen, explaining how it was due to natural causes; and while the soldiers in the opposite camp were shrieking and moaning, believing that the eclipse portended the death of their king, the Roman soldiers remained quite calm. This was on the eve of the battle of Pydna, in B.C. 168, a little before the time of Hipparchus. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [60] _De Senectute._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Sidenote: Ovid B.C. 43-A.D. 17.] [Sidenote: Virgil B.C. 70-19.] [Sidenote: Manilius _c._ A.D. 10.] [Sidenote: Cicero B.C. 106-43.] In Cicero’s own life-time, and throughout the early days of the Empire, it was the fashion to have at least a smattering of Greek astronomy. Ovid tells legends of the constellations; Virgil, at his farm where he lingered happily among his vines, his cattle, and his bees, studied the varying aspects of the constellations in connection with the seasons and the weather; Manilius wrote a long poem in five books on astronomy and astrology; Cicero himself was quite learned in the subject, and made a translation of Aratus, which had a great vogue.