Astronomica

...we might seem insane to those who are so ignorant of all antiquity that they believe the arts were born in their full perfection and were first established by men in such a state: that all the ancients never erred, and could never be deceived. What if they were to read that at the equinoctial line The Earth's equator all the signs of the zodiac rise vertically? Would they not deny this rather than admit that any ancient author had even conceived of it? When Ausonius Decimus Magnus Ausonius (c. 310–395 AD), a Roman poet and rhetorician—otherwise the greatest man of his century—called "three times three" a cube, did not the schoolmasters and the ghosts of literature attribute that error to us, rather than to Ausonius? Yet they were seriously triumphing, when they were instead worthy of the whip because they did not know that three times three is nine, and that the whole theme of that Eclogue A reference to Ausonius's poem 'Griphus Ternarii Numeri' (The Riddle of the Number Three) is the number three or nine. But nothing is more unjust than ignorance, especially that of schoolmasters, and particularly those who teach the elements of mathematics. Since they once forbade us from reading Manilius Marcus Manilius, 1st-century AD author of the 'Astronomica'—because they think it is lawful only for themselves, as initiated High Priests original: "Epoptis" - a term for those initiated into the highest grade of the Eleusinian Mysteries, to penetrate those inner shrines—I wish they would interpret not that ancient astrology (which they have not seen even in their dreams), but merely the diction of Manilius. Let them explain the theme of the work and declare the mind of the author, who holds nothing more dear than to be ignorant of Latin. For this is the way of the Grammarians. But it is well that our Manilius had need of those whom they call Grammarians. For certainly, no hope of salvation shone forth from such Astrologers for a poet so badly treated and beset by countless...