PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES. 63

views of the claims of science: thus the well knownexclamation of Virgil, —

“ Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas! H

(Happy, he who knows the causes of things !}—

would seem to indicate a more just estimation of thevalue»of physical truth.

Nor, again, must we omit to mention the philo-sophical poets, Lucretius, Manilius, and Ovid . Oftheir well known productions it would be superfluoushere to say more, than that the mere circumstance oftheir selecting the subject of natural philosophy affordsa presumption that a certain degree of interest in itmust have been generally felt among their readers.And though they support, with all the eloquence ofpoetry, those theories of the schools, which in truth aremuch better adapted to such illustration than to soberdiscussion, yet it must be allowed that they have placedsome parts of the system of nature in a striking pointof view, and sought to render them attractive by in-vesting them with all the charms of poetical imagery.

During the whole existence of the republic, we hearbut of one Roman who attained any reputation foreminence in astronomy. C. Sulpitius Gallus is men-tioned by Cicero as an indefatigahle calculator ofeclipses; and it appears from Livy, that he predictedan eclipse of the moon on the night preceding a battlebetween the Romans and Macedonians, which wouldhave dismayed the superstitious Romans, and perhapshave occasioned their defeat, had it not been foretold tothem, and adroitly converted into an omen of success.We know that a similar cause produced a defeat of theAthenian army at the siege of Syracuse .

Besides Sulpitius Gallus we have the names of oneor two Romans who are said to have written on physicalsubjects ; but their works are lost, and we have no meansof judging of their scientific acquirements. One ofthese is Varro. Cicero himself translated the poem ofAratus , which, in fact, contains little worth translating;