The term is used by Geminus in his Elementa, in early modern editions misattributed to Proclus as Commentarius in sphaeram. R. B. Todd, "The Manuscripts of the Pseudo-Proclan Sphaera", Revue d'histoire des textes 23 (1993), 57–71.
The term continues to be used in modern astronomical works throughout the 18th century, e.g., Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler, Physikalisches Wörterbuch (1791), p. 688.