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.
