Commentary on the Phaenomena of Eudoxus and Aratus
Ton Aratou kai Eudoxou Phainomenon Exegesis
The widely used astronomical poem of Aratus, itself based on the earlier prose of Eudoxus, contains significant errors in its description of the constellations and their risings and settings, which careful comparison against direct observation can correct.
- technical correction of Aratus's astronomical poem
- the only complete surviving Hipparchus text
- increasing mathematization of Greek astronomy
- Hipparchus's lost works known only via Ptolemy
- critique of an authoritative poetic tradition
The Commentary on the Phaenomena of Eudoxus and Aratus is the only work by Hipparchus of Nicaea, the greatest observational astronomer of antiquity, who made the observations underlying it on Rhodes, to survive complete; all his other writings, including the star catalogue and precession discovery for which he is chiefly remembered, are known only through later authors, above all Ptolemy's Almagest. In it, Hipparchus subjects the popular astronomical poem of Aratus, itself versifying the earlier prose of Eudoxus of Cnidus, to detailed technical criticism, correcting its descriptions of which constellations rise and set together and by how much.
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