Page:A new and general biographical dictionary; containing an historical and critical account of the lives and writings of the most eminent persons in every nation v1.djvu/325

 A Q^U I N A S. 289 taries upon the Gofpels of Sr. Matthew niel ; upon the Books of t!ic M<ccabeet, and St. John : the former is fjid to have !'.iri', 1596, odtavo. Upcn all the been wtitten by Peter Scaliger, a Domi- canonical Epifllcs, Paris, i 545, ocl.iM'. nican tiiar and bilhop ot Verona. The We have likewife a Commentary fifteenth volume contains the Galena upon Bocthiui's Confolatinn of I'lu. - upon the tour Gofpels, extracted from f"plu, publiilicd under .Aquinus's narnc, the fathers, and dedicated to pope Ur- at Louvain, in 1487, in fulio. ban IV. The fixtcemh confifls of the Several difficulties have been raiftd Commentary upon St. Haul's F.piftles, in regard to his lt Summa Theologian," and the Sermons of Aqninn? prrached on which have occafioned fomc authors to Sundays and the Fcllilvals of Siints. doubt whether he was really the ,iuthor The feventeenth contains divers Traces of it. There is a very accurate cximi- jn Divinit. nati<n of thefe Difficulties in Cufimir There have been alfo published fe- Cumin's " Commenurius de fcriptori- parately, under his name, fevers! other " bus ecclcfix antiquis eorumque fcrip. Commentaries upon the Scriptures, par- " tis ;'' wherein he determines, tkat ticularly upon Genelis, Lyons, 1573, Thomas Aquinas is the real author of
 * n Octavo. Upon the prophecy of Da- the " Summa Theokijjie."

ARATUS, a Grrekpoet, born at Soli, or Solas, a town in Cilicia, which afterwards changed its name, and was called Pompeiopolis, in honour of Pompey the Great. He flou- riflied about the i24th Olympiad, underPtolemy Philadelphia king of Egypt, who reigned near 300 years before Chrift. He difcovered in his youth a remarkable poignancy of wit, and capacity for improvement ; and having received his edu- cation under Dionyfius Heracleoies, a Stoic philofopher, he efpoufed the principles of that fe<5t. Aratus was phyfician to Antigonus Gonatus, the fon of Demetrius Poliorcete?, king of Macedon ; who, being a great enco'jrager of learned men, fent for him to court, admitted him to his intimacy, and encouraged him in his ftudies. The u PhsenoTiena" of Aratus, which work is fliil extant, gives him a title to the character of an aftronomer, as well as a poet; for in this piece he defcribes the nature and motion of the {lars, and (hews their various difpofuions and relations. He wrote this poem in Grctk verfe : it was tranflanni into Latin by Cicero, who tells us, in his firft book " De Ora-ore," that the vei'fes of Aratus are very noble, but th::t thr author did no: thoroughly underftand aftronomy ; and it ib C;iJ that he bor- rowed his materials from Eudoxus. Q*iintilian obferves, thgtlnftit.Orat. his fubjec c t has nothingof the pa;).o . novariny, no ficrrio-jb 1 " 3 - x ' perfons introduced ipeakiii.^, xviih t.ic other ornaments, c ap> ,. which have fo great an effect in osher kinds of poc;ry ; how- ever, that he was very capable c.i c:;cci;;ir.;-, th? uef^n !: undertook. Aratus's piece was tsanflatcd b/ O;!.LTS as wJl as Cicero; particularly by Germnnicu^ C;cf.r, and alfo t>v Feftus Avicr.us. Our poet was iiv acqiiaiiuej with Theocritus, who is fa id ^o have. >ah Idvllium VOL. 1. U to