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/344

 3o8 A R I O S T O. being then fifty-nine years of age. He was interred in the church of the Benedictine monks, who, contrary to their cuiloirij attended his funeral. He had a buft erected to him, and an epitaph, written by himfelf, inscribed upon his tomb. His death was much regretted by all his acquaintance, and particularly by the men of letters, who honoured his memory with levei al Latin and Italian poems. ARISTARCHUS, a Grecian philofopher, born in Samos, is delivered down to us as the principal perfon, if not the firft, who maintained the earth to turn upon its center, and Bayle'sDia. to defcribe a circle yearly round the fun: an opinion, revived and eftablifoed by Copernicus and Galileo, and now univer- fally received. Vitruvius, fpeaking of certain mathemati- cians who had made difcoveries, places Ariftarchus in the vftruv.de firft rank: he mentions a kmd of fun-dial of his inventing. f 7 if' ^ ' :s not certa ' n w h en he l' ve ^ '> but from the mention made 9 'of him by Archimedes, he muft have flourithed before his death. None of his works remain, except a treatife " Upon the greatnefs and diftance of the fun and Moon :" it was tranflated into Latin, and commented upon by Frederic Com- mandine, who firft publifhed it with " Pappus's Explana- " tions" in 1572. Doctor Wallis afterwards publifhed it in Greek, with Commandine's Latin verfion, in 1688, and by him inferted again in the third volume of his " Ma- " thematical works," printed at Oxford, 1699, in folio. Ariftarchus did not fuffer perfecution and impriionment, as Galileo fince did, for removing the ftability of the earth - 9 though, as we learn from a corrected paflage in Plutarch, he DC facie in was thought by fome to be guilty of great impiety, and to orbe Luna?, have deferved it. ARTSTARCHUS, a celebrated grammarian, was born in vle, Dia.Samothracia, but chofe Alexandria to relide at. He was much efleemed by Ptolemy Philometor, who committed to him the education of his fon. He applied himlelf exceed- ingly to (.riticil'm, and made a revifal of Homer's poems with great exa&nefs, but in a manner too magisterial j for fuch verfes as he did nut like he treated as fpurious. He marked them with the figure of a dart, w&Aixf : whence 'otlgti was i .uft. ad u f et ] f or ig condemn in general. Some have fa id, that he never 1X1 10 ' would publiih any thing, for fear of giving others an oppor- tunity of retorting upon him j but others fay, that he pub- liflied a great deal. Cicero and Horace have ufed his name so'cxprefs a very rigid critic i and it is ufed to this day for the fame