VI.
ASTRONOMY UNDER IMPERIAL
AND CHRISTIAN ROME.
b.c. 46 to a.d. 1000.
Vos O clarissima mundi Lumina labentem cœlo quæ ducitis annum. Georgic I.
No new school of astronomy arose under the Roman Empire, nor do we even know of one Roman who devoted his life to the science. The genius of this people lay in other directions, and Dante truly says:—
‘“Nature ordained in the world a place and a people for universal command ... to wit, Rome and her citizens or people. The which our poet too has touched upon right subtly in the sixth [Virgil, in the sixth book of the Æneid], introducing Anchises admonishing Æneas, the father of the Romans, thus:—
“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]
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.
Ovid b.c. 43-a.d. 17.