_De republica_, I, xiv (21-22), Keyes' translation.
When Archimedes put together in a globe the movements of the moon, sun and five wandering [planets], he brought about the same effect as that which the god of Plato did in the Timaeus when he made the world, so that one revolution produced dissimilar movements of delay and acceleration.
Later descriptions from Ovid, Lactantius, Claudian, Sextus Empiricus, and Pappus, respectively, are (italics supplied):
There stands a globe suspended by a Syracusan's skill in an enclosed bronze [frame, or sphere--or perhaps, in enclosed air], a small image of the immense vault [of heaven]; and the earth is equally distant from the top and bottom; that is brought about by its [_i. e._, the outer bronze globe's] round form. The form of the temple [of Vesta] is similar....
Ovid, _Fasti_ (1st century, A.D.), VI, 277-280, Frazer's translation.
The Sicilian Archimedes, was able to make a reproduction and model of the world in concave _brass_ (concavo aere similitudinem mundi ac figuram); in it he so arranged the _sun_ and _moon_ and resembling the celestial revolutions (caelestibus similes conversionibus); and while it revolved it exhibited not only the accession and recession of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon (incrementa deminutionesque lunae), but also the unequal _courses of the stars_, whether fixed or wandering.
Lactantius, _Institutiones divinae_ (4th century, A.D.), II, 5, 18.
Archimedes' sphere. When Jove looked down and saw the heavens figured in a sphere of _glass_, he laughed and said to the other gods: "Has the power of mortal effort gone so far? Is my handiwork now mimicked in a fragile globe?" An old man of Syracuse had imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods. Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses of the _stars_ and actuates the lifelike mass with definite motions. A false _zodiac_ runs through a year of its own and a toy _moon_ waxes and wanes month by month. Now bold invention rejoices to make its own heaven revolve and sets the _stars_ [planets?] in motion by human wit....
Claudian, _Carmina minora_ (_ca._ A.D. 400), LI (LXVIII), Platnaure's translation.