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:
But if anyone brought to Scythia or Britain the globe (sphaeram) which our friend Posidonius [of Apameia, the Stoic philosopher] recently made, in which each revolution produced the same (movements) of the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is produced in the sky each day and night, who would doubt that it was by exertion of reason?... Yet doubters ... think that Archimedes showed more knowledge in producing movements by revolutions of a globe than nature (does) in effecting them though the copy is so infinitely inferior to the original....
De natura deorum, II, xxxiv-xxxv (88), Yonge's translation.
In spite of the lack of sufficient technical details in any case, these mechanized globe models, with or without geared planetary indicators (which would make them highly complex machines), bear a striking resemblance to the earliest Chinese device described by Chang Hêng. One must not reject the possibility that transmission from Greece or Rome could have reached the East by the beginning of the 2nd century, A.D., when he was working. It is an interesting question, but even if such contact actually occurred, very soon afterwards, as we shall see, the western and eastern lines of evolution parted company and evolved so far as can be seen, quite independently until at least the 12th century.
The next Hellenistic source of which we must take note is a fragmentary and almost unintelligible chapter in the works of Hero of Alexandria. Alone and unconnected with his other chapters this describes a model which seems to be static, in direct contrast to all other devices which move by pneumatic and hydrostatic pressures; it may well be conjectured that in its original form this chapter described a mechanized rather than a static globe: