190 THE GREEK ASTRONOMY. 



"that while he laboured, in the most assiduous 

 manner, to represent the motions of the sun and 

 moon by means of equable circular motions ; with 

 respect to the planets, so far as his works show, he 

 did not even make the attempt, but merely put the 

 extant observations in order, added to them himself 

 more than the whole of what he received from pre- 

 ceding ages, and showed the insufficiency of the 

 hypothesis current among astronomers to explain 

 the phenomena." It appears, that preceding mathe- 

 maticians had already pretended to construct "a 

 Perpetual Canon," that is, Tables which should give 

 the places of the planets at any future time ; but 

 these, being constructed without regard to the 

 eccentricity of the orbits, must have been very 

 erroneous. 



Ptolemy declares, with great reason, that Hip- 

 parchus showed his usual love of truth, and his 

 right sense of the responsibility of his task, in leav- 

 ing this part of it to future ages. The Theories of 

 the Sun and Moon, which we have already described, 

 constitute him a great astronomical discoverer, and 

 justify the reputation he has always possessed. 

 There is, indeed, no philosopher who is so uni- 

 formly spoken of in terms of admiration. Ptolemy, 

 to whom we owe our principal knowledge of him, 

 perpetually couples with his name epithets of praise : 

 he is not only an excellent and careful observer, but 

 "a 6 most truth-loving and labour-loving person,' 

 6 Synt. ix. 2. 



