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.

The things that move by themselves are more wonderful than
those which do not. At any rate, when we behold an
Archimedean sphere in which the sun and the rest of the
stars move, we are immensely impressed by it, not by Zeus
because we are amazed at the _wood_, or at the movements
of these [bodies], but by the devices and causes of the
movements.

Sextus Empiricus, _Adversus mathematicos_ (3rd century,
A.D.), IX, 115, Epps' translation.

Mechanics understand the making of spheres and know how to
produce a model of the heavens (with the courses of the
stars moving in circles?) by mean of equal and circular
motions of _water_, and Archimedes the Syracusan,
according to some, knows the cause and reasons for all of
these.

Pappus (3rd century, A.D.), _Works_ (Hultsch edition),
VIII, 2, Epps' translation.

A similar arrangement seems to be indicated in another mechanized globe,
also mentioned by Cicero and said to have been made by Posidonius:

But if anyone brought to Scythia or Britain the globe
(sphaeram) which our friend Posidonius [of Apameia, the
Stoic philosopher] recently made, in which each revolution
produced the same (movements) of the _sun_ and _moon_ and
_five_ wandering stars as is produced in the sky each day
and night, who would doubt that it was by exertion of
reason?... Yet doubters ... think that Archimedes showed
more knowledge in producing movements by revolutions of a
globe than nature (does) in effecting them though the copy
is so infinitely i