There stands a globe suspended by a Syracusan's skill in an enclosed bronze [frame, or sphere--or perhaps, in enclosed air], a small image of the immense vault [of heaven]; and the earth is equally distant from the top and bottom; that is brought about by its [_i. e._, the outer bronze globe's] round form. The form of the temple [of Vesta] is similar.... Ovid, _Fasti_ (1st century, A.D.), VI, 277-280, Frazer's translation. The Sicilian Archimedes, was able to make a reproduction and model of the world in concave _brass_ (concavo aere similitudinem mundi ac figuram); in it he so arranged the _sun_ and _moon_ and resembling the celestial revolutions (caelestibus similes conversionibus); and while it revolved it exhibited not only the accession and recession of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon (incrementa deminutionesque lunae), but also the unequal _courses of the stars_, whether fixed or wandering. Lactantius, _Institutiones divinae_ (4th century, A.D.), II, 5, 18. Archimedes' sphere. When Jove looked down and saw the heavens figured in a sphere of _glass_, he laughed and said to the other gods: "Has the power of mortal effort gone so far? Is my handiwork now mimicked in a fragile globe?" An old man of Syracuse had imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods. Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses of the _stars_ and actuates the lifelike mass with definite motions. A false _zodiac_ runs through a year of its own and a toy _moon_ waxes and wanes month by month. Now bold invention rejoices to make its own heaven revolve and sets the _stars_ [planets?] in motion by human wit.... Claudian, _Carmina minora_ (_ca._ A.D. 400), LI (LXVIII), Platnaure's translation. The things that move by themselves are more wonderful than those which do not. At any rate, when we behold an Archimedean sphere in which the sun and the rest of the stars move, we are immensely impressed by it, not by Zeus because we are amazed at the _wood_, or at the movements of these [bodies], but by the devices and causes of the movements. Sextus Empiricus, _Adversus mathematicos_ (3rd century, A.D.), IX, 115, Epps' translation. Mechanics understand the making of spheres and know how to produce a model of the heavens (with the courses of the stars moving in circles?) by mean of equal and circular motions of _water_, and Archimedes the Syracusan, according to some, knows the cause and reasons for all of these. Pappus (3rd century, A.D.), _Works_ (Hultsch edition), VIII, 2, Epps' translation. A similar arrangement seems to be indicated in another mechanized globe, also mentioned by Cicero and said to have been made by Posidonius: