Sosigenes


Not much is known about Sosigenes except that he was employed by Caesar for his calendar reform. The Roman author Pliny the Elder mentions Sosigenes in his work Natural History in two places:

Pliny book 18, 210-212:
"There were three main schools, the Chaldaean, the Egyptian, and the Greek; and to these a fourth was added in our country by Caesar during his dictatorship, who with the assistance of the learned astronomer Sosigenes (Sosigene perito scientiae eius adhibito) brought the separate years back into conformity with the course of the sun."

In Pliny book 2, 8:
"Next upon it, but nothing of the same bigness and powerful efficiency, is the star Mercury, called Apollo by some: it goes in an inferior circle, after the like manner, a swifter course by nine days: shining sometimes before the sun rising, otherwhile after his setting, never farther distant from him than 23 degrees, as both the same Timaeus and Sosigenes do show."

According to the second quote Sosigenes is thus credited with work on the orbit of Mercury.


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