ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS.

The Cliffs of Flamanville.

ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS,

BASED ON

FLAMMARION'S
"HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS."

BY

JOHN F. BLAKE.

London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1877.

LONDON:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL,
QUEEN VICTORIA STREET.

PREFACE.

The Book which is here presented to the public is founded upon a French work by M. Flammarion which has enjoyed considerable popularity. It contained a number of interesting accounts of the various ideas, sometimes mythical, sometimes intended to be serious, that had been entertained concerning the heavenly bodies and our own earth; with a popular history of the earliest commencement of astronomy among several ancient peoples. It was originally written in the form of conversations between the members of an imaginary party at the seaside. It was thought that this style would hardly be so much appreciated by English as by French readers, and therefore in presenting the materials of the French author in an English dress the conversational form has been abandoned. Several facts of extreme interest in relation to the early astronomical myths and the development of the science among the ancients having been brought to light, especially by the researches of Mr. Haliburton, a considerable amount of new matter, including the whole chapter on the Pleiades, has been introduced, which makes the present issue not exactly a translation, but rather a book founded on the French author's work. It is hoped that it may be found of interest to those who care to know about the early days of the oldest of our sciences, which is now attracting general attention again by the magnitude of its recent advances. Astronomy also, in early days, as will be seen by a perusal of this book, was so mixed up with all the affairs of life, and contributed so much even to religion, that a history of its beginnings is found to reveal the origin of several of our ideas and habits, now apparently quite unconnected with the science. There is matter of interest here, therefore, for those who wish to know only the history of the general ideas of mankind.

The Annual Revolution of the Earth round the Sun, with the
Signs of the Zodiac and the Constellations.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Earth's Year, and the Months.

CONTENTS.

An Astronomer at Work.

HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS.

CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF ASTRONOMY.

Astronomy is an ancient science; and though of late it has made a fresh start in new regions, and we are opening on the era of fresh and unlooked-for discoveries which will soon reveal our present ignorance, our advance upon primitive ideas has been so great that it is difficult for us to realize what they were without an attentive and not uninstructive study of them. No other science, not even geology, can compare with astronomy for the complete revolution which it has effected in popular notions, or for the change it has brought about in men's estimate of their place in creation. It is probable that there will always be men who believe that the whole universe was made for their benefit; but, however this may be, we have already learned from astronomy that our habitation is not that central spot men once deemed it, but only an ordinary planet circulating round an ordinary star, just as we are likely also to learn from biology, that we occupy the position, as animals, of an ordinary family in an ordinary class.

That we may more perfectly realize this strange revolution of ideas, we must throw ourselves as far as possible into the feeling and spirit of our ancestors, when, without the knowledge we now possess, they contemplated, as they could not fail to do, the marvellous and awe-inspiring phenomena of the heavens by night. To them, for many an age, the sun and moon and stars, with all the planets, seemed absolutely to rise, to shine, and to set; the constellations to burst out by night in the east, and travel slowly and in silence to the west; the ocean waves to rise and fall and beat against the rock-bound shore as if endowed with life; and even in the infancy of the intellect they must have longed to pierce the secrets of this mysterious heavenly vault, and to know the nature of the starry firmament as it seemed to them, and the condition of the earth which appeared in the centre of these universal movements. The simplest hypothesis was for them the truth, and they believed that the sky was in reality a lofty and extended canopy bestudded with stars, and the earth a vast plain, the solid basis of the universe, on which dwelt man, sole creature that lifted his eyes and thoughts above. Two distinct regions thus appeared to compose the whole system—the upper one, or the air, in which were the moving stars, the lights of heaven, and the firmament over all; and the lower one, or earth and sea, adorned on the surface with the products of life, and below with the minerals, metals, and stones. For a long time the various theories of the universe, grotesque and changing as they might be, were but modifications of this one central idea, the earth below, the heavens above, and on this was based every religious system that was promulgated—the very phrases founded upon it remaining to this day for a testimony to the intimate relation thus manifested between the infant ideas in astronomy and theology. No wonder that early revolutions in the conceptions in one science were thought to militate against the other. It is only when the thoughts on both are enlarged that it is seen that their connection is not necessary, but accidental, or, at least, inevitable only in the infancy of both.

It is scarcely possible to estimate fully the enormous change from these ideas representing the appearances to those which now represent the reality; or to picture to ourselves the total revolution in men's minds before they could transform the picture of a vast terrestrial surface, to which the sun and all the heavenly bodies were but accessories for various purposes, to one in which the earth is but a planet like Mars, moving in appearance among the stars, as it does, and rotating with a rapidity that brings a whole hemisphere of the heavens into view through the course of a single day and night. At first sight, what a loss of dignity! but, on closer thought, what a gain of grandeur! No longer some little neighbouring lights shine down upon us from a solid vault; but we find ourselves launched into the sea of infinity; with power to gaze into its almost immeasurable depths.

To appreciate rightly our position, we have to plant ourselves, in imagination, in some spot removed from the surface of the earth, where we may be uninfluenced by her motion, and picture to ourselves what we should see. Were we placed in some spot far enough removed from the earth, we should find ourselves in eternal day; the sun would ever shine, for no great globe would interpose itself between it and our eyes; there would be no night there. Were we in the neighbourhood of the earth's orbit, and within it, most wonderful phenomena would present themselves. At one time the earth would appear but an ordinary planet, smaller than Venus, but, as time wore on, unmeasured by recurring days or changing seasons, it would gradually be seen to increase in size—now appearing like the moon at the full, and shining like her with a silver light. As it came nearer, and its magnitude increased, the features of the surface would be distinguished; the brighter sea and the darker shining continents, with the brilliant ice-caps at the poles; but, unlike what we see in the moon, these features would appear to move, and, one after another, every part of the earth would be visible. The actual time required for all to pass before us would be what we here call a day and night. And still, as it rotates, the earth passes nearer to us, assumes its largest apparent size, and so gradually decreasing again, becomes once more, after the interval we here call a year, an ordinary-looking star-like planet. To us, in these days, this description is easy of imagination; we find no difficulty in picturing it to ourselves; but, if we will think for a moment what such an idea would have been to the earliest observers of astronomy, we shall better appreciate the vast change that has taken place—how we are removed from them, as we may say, toto cœlo.

But not only as to the importance of the earth in the universe, but on other matters connected with astronomy, we perceive the immensity of the change in our ideas—in that of distance, for instance. This celestial vault of the ancients was near enough for things to pass from it to us; it was in close connection with the earth, supported by it, and therefore of less diameter; but now, when our distance from the sun is expressed by numbers that we may write, indeed, but must totally fail to adequately appreciate, and the distance from the next nearest star is such, that with the velocity of light—a velocity we are accustomed to regard as instantaneous—we should only reach it after a three years' journey, we are reminded of the pathetic lines of Thomas Hood:

"I remember, I remember, the fir trees straight and high,
And how I thought their slender tops were close against the sky;
It was a childish fantasy, but now 'tis little joy,
To know I'm further off from heaven than when I was a boy."

The astronomer's answer to the last line would be that as far as the material heaven goes, we are just as much in it as the stars or as any other member of the universe; we cannot, therefore, be far off or near to it.

It is probable that we are even yet but little awake to true cosmical ideas in other respects;—as to velocity, for instance. We know indeed, of light and electricity and the motions of the earth, but revelations are now being made to us of motions of material substances in the sun with such velocities that in comparison with them any motions on the earth appear infinitesimally small. Our progress to our present notions, and appreciations of the truth of nature in the heavens, will thus occupy much of our thoughts; but we must also recount the history of the acquirement of those facts which have ultimately become the basis for our changes of idea.

Our rustic forefathers, whatever their nation, were not so enamoured of the "wonders of science"—that their astronomy was greatly a collection of theories, though theories, and wild ones, they had; it was a more practical matter, and was believed too by them to be more practical than we now find reason to believe to be the case. They noticed the various seasons, and they marked the changes in the appearances of the heavens that accompanied them; they connected the two together, and conceived the latter to be the cause of the former, and so, with other apparently uncertain events. The celestial phenomena thus acquired a fictitious importance which rendered their study of primary necessity, but gave no occasion for a theory.

That we may better appreciate the earliest observations on astronomy, it may be well to mention briefly what are the varying phenomena which may most easily be noticed. If we except the phases of the moon, which almost without observation would force their recognition on people who had no other than lunar light by night, and which must therefore, from the earliest periods of human history have divided time into lunar months; there are three different sets of phenomena which depend on the arrangement of our planetary system, and which were early observed.

The first of these depends upon the earth's rotation on its axis, the result of which is that the stars appear to revolve with a uniform motion from east to west; the velocity increasing with the distance from the pole star, which remains nearly fixed. This circumstance is almost as easy of observation as the phases of the moon, and was used from the earliest ages to mark the passage of time during the night. The next arises from the motion of the earth in her orbit about the sun, by which it happens that the earth is in a different position with respect to the sun every night, and, therefore, a different set of stars are seen in his neighbourhood; these are setting with him, and therefore also a different set are just rising at sunset every evening. These changes, which would go through the cycle in a year, are, of course, less obvious, but of great importance as marking the approach of the various seasons during ages in which the hour of the sun's rising could not be noted by a clock. The last depends on the proper motions of the moon and planets about the earth and sun respectively, by reason of which those heavenly bodies occupy varying positions among the stars. Only a careful and continuous scrutiny of the heavens would detect these changes, except, perhaps, in the case of the moon, and but little of importance really depends on them; nevertheless, they were very early the subject of observation, as imagination lent them a false value, and in some cases because their connection with eclipses was perceived. The practical cultivation of astronomy amongst the earliest people had always reference to one or other of these three sets of appearances, and the various terms and signs that were invented were intended for the clearer exposition of the results of their observations on these points.

In looking therefore into extreme antiquity we shall find in many instances our only guide to what their knowledge was is the way in which they expressed these results.

We do not find, and perhaps we should scarcely expect to find, any one man or even one nation who laid the foundation of astronomy—for it was an equal necessity for all, and was probably antecedent to the practice of remembering men by their names. We cannot, either, conjecture the antiquity of ideas and observations met with among races who are themselves the only record of their past; and if we are to find any origins of the science, it is only amongst those nations which have been cultivators of arts by which their ancient doings are recorded.

Amongst the earliest cultivators of astronomy we may refer to the Primitive Greeks, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Aryans, and also to certain traditions met with amongst many savage as well as less barbarous races, the very universality of which proclaims as loudly as possible their extreme antiquity.

Each of the four above-mentioned races have names with which are associated the beginnings of astronomy—Uranus and Atlas amongst the Greeks; Folic amongst the Chinese; Thaut or Mercury in Egypt; Zoroaster and Bel in Persia and Babylonia. Names such as these, if those of individuals, are not necessarily those of the earliest astronomers—but only the earliest that have come down to us. Indeed it is very far from certain whether these ancient celebrities have any real historical existence. The acts and labours of the earliest investigators are so wrapped in obscurity, there is such a mixture of fable with tradition, that we can have no reliance that any of them, or that others mentioned in ancient mythology, are not far more emblematical than personal. Some, such as Uranus, are certainly symbolical; but the very existence of the name handed down to us, if it prove nothing else, proves that the science was early cultivated amongst those who have preserved or invented them.

If we attempt to name in years the date of the commencement—not of astronomy itself—for that probably in some form was coeval with the race of man itself, but of recorded observations, we are met with a new difficulty arising from the various ways in which they reckoned time. This was in every case by the occurrence of the phases of one or other of the above-mentioned phenomena; sometimes however they selected the apparent rotation of the sun in twenty-four hours, sometimes that of the moon in a month, sometimes the interval from one solstice to the next, and yet they apparently gave to each and all of these the same title—such as annus—obviously representing a cycle only, but without reference to its length. By these different methods of counting, hopeless confusion has often been introduced into chronology; and the moderns have in many instances unjustly accused the ancients of vanity and falsehood. Bailly attempted to reconcile all these various methods and consequent dates with each other, and to prove that practical astronomy commenced "about 1,500 years before the Deluge, or that it is about 7,000 years old;" but we shall see reason in the sequel for suspecting any such attempt, and shall endeavour to arrive at more reliable dates from independent evidence.

Perhaps the remotest antiquity to which we can possibly mount is that of the Aryans, amongst whom the hymns of the Rig Veda were composed. The short history of Hebrew and Greco-Roman civilization seems to be lost in comparison with this the earliest work of human imagination. When seeking for words to express their thoughts, these primitive men by the banks of the Oxus personified the phenomena of the heavens and earth, the storm, the wind, the rain, the stars and meteors. Here, of course, it is not practical but theoretical astronomy we find. We trace the first figuring of that primitive idea alluded to before—the heaven above, the earth below. Here, as we see, is the earth represented as an indefinite plane surface and passive being forming the foundation of the world; and above it the sky, a luminous and variable vault beneath which shines out the fertile and life-giving light. Thus to the earth they gave the name P'RTHOVI, "the wide expanse;" the blue and star-bespangled heavens they called VARUNA, "the vault;" and beneath it in the region of the clouds they enthroned the light DYAUS, i.e. "the luminous air."

Fig. 1.

From hence, it would appear, or on this model, the early ideas of all peoples have been formed. Among the Greeks the name for heaven expresses the same idea of a hollow vault (κοῖλος, hollow, concave) and the earth is called γή, or mother. Among the Latins the name cœlum has the same signification, while the earth terra comes from the participle tersa (the dry element) in contradistinction to mare the wet.

In this original Aryan notion, however, as represented by the figure, we have more than this, the origin of the names Jupiter and Deus comes out. For it is easy to trace the connection between Dyaus (the luminiferous air) and the Greek word Zeus from whence Dios, θεός, Deus, and the French word Dieu, and then by adding pater or father we get Deuspater, Zeuspater, Jupiter.

These etymologies are not however matters beyond dispute, and there are at least two other modes of deriving the same words. Thus we are told the earliest name for the Deity was Jehovah, the word Jehov meaning father of life; and that the Greeks translated this into Dis or Zeus, a word having, according to this theory, the same sense, being derived from ζαω to live. Of course there can be no question of the later word Deus being the direct translation of Dios.

A third theory is that there exists in one of the dialects which formed the basis of the old languages of Asia, a word Yahouh, a participle of the verb nîh, to exist, to be; which therefore signifies the self-existent, the principle of life, the origin of all motion, and this is supposed to be the allusion of Diodorus, who explaining the theology of the Greeks, says that the Egyptians according to Manetho, priest of Memphis, in giving names to the five elements have called the spirit or ether Youpiter in the proper sense of the word, for the spirit is the source of life, the author of the vital principle in animals, and is hence regarded as the father or generator of all beings. The people of the Homeric ages thought the lightning-bearing Jupiter was the commencement, origin, end, and middle of all things, a single and universal power, governing the heavens, the earth, fire, water, day and night, and all things. Porphyry says that when the philosophers discoursed on the nature and parts of the Deity, they could not imagine any single figure that should represent all his attributes, though they presented him under the appearance of a man, who was seated to represent his immovable essence; uncovered in his upper part, because the upper parts of the universe or region of the stars manifest most of his nature; but clothed below the loins, because he is more hidden in terrestrial things; and holding a sceptre in his left hand, because his heart is the ruler of all things. There are, besides, the etymologies which assert that Jupiter is derived from juvare to help, meaning the assisting father; or again that he is Dies pater—the god of the day—in which case no doubt the sun would be alluded to.

It appears then that the ancient Aryan scheme, though possibly supplying us with the origin of one of the widest spread of our words, is not universally allowed to do so. This origin, however, appears to derive support from the apparent occurrence of the original of another well-known ancient classical word in the same scheme, that is Varuna, obviously the same word as Οὐρανος, and Uranus, signifying the heavens. Less clearly too perhaps we may trace other such words to the same source. Thus the Sun, which according to these primitive conceptions is the husband of the Earth, which it nourishes and makes fruitful, was called Savitr and Surya, from which the passage to the Gothic Sauil is within the limits of known etymological changes, and so comes the Lithuanian Saull, the Cymric Haul, the Greek Heilos, the Latin Sol, and the English Solar. So from their Nakt, the destructive, we get Nux, Nacht, Night. From Glu, the Shining, whence the participle Glucina, and so to Lucina, Luena, Luna, Lune.

Turning from the ancient Aryans, whose astronomy we know only from poems and fables, and so learn but little of their actual advance in the science of observation, we come to the Babylonians, concerning whose astronomical acquirements we have lately been put in possession of valuable evidence by the tablets obtained by Mr. Smith from Kouyunjik, an account the contents of which has been given by Mr. Sayce (Nature, vol. xii. p. 489). As the knowledge thus obtained is more certain, being derived from their actual records, than any that we previously possessed, it will be well to give as full an account of it as we are able.

The originators of Babylonian astronomy were not the Chaldæans, but another race from the mountains of Elam, who are generally called Acadians. Of the astronomy of this race we have no complete records, but can only judge of their progress by the words and names left by them to the science, as afterwards cultivated by the Semitic Babylonians. These last were a subsequent race, who entering the country from the East, conquered the original inhabitants about 2000 B.C., and borrowed their civilization, and with it their language in the arts and sciences. But even this latter race is one of considerable antiquity, and when we see, as we shortly shall, the great advances they had made in observations of the sun and moon, and consider the probable slowness of development in those early ages, we have some idea of the remoteness of the date at which astronomical science was there commenced. Our chief source of information is an extremely ancient work called The Observations of Bell, supposed to have been written before 1700 B.C., which was compiled for a certain King Saigou, of Agave in Babylonia. This work is in seventy books or parts, and is composed of numerous small earthen tablets having impressed upon them the cuneiform character in which they printed, and which we are now able to read. We generally date the art of printing from Caxton, in 1474, because it took the place of manuscript that had been previously in use in the West; but that method of writing, if in some respects an improvement on previous methods of recording ideas as more easily executed, was in others a retrogression as being less durable: while the manuscripts have perished the impressions on stone have remained to this day, and will no doubt last longer than even our printed books. These little tablets represented so many leaves, and in large libraries, such as that from which those known have been derived, they were numbered as our own are now, so that any particular one could be asked for by those who might wish to consult it. The great difficulty of interpreting these records, which are written in two different dialects, and deal often with very technical matters, may well be imagined. These difficulties however have been overcome, and a good approach to the knowledge of their contents has been made. The Chaldæans, as is well known, were much given to astronomy and many of their writings deal with this subject; but they did practical work as well, and did not indulge so much in theory as the Aryans. We shall have future occasion in this book to refer to their observations on various points, as they did not by any means confine themselves to the simplest matters; much, in fact, of that with which modern astronomy deals, the dates and duration of eclipses of the sun and moon, the accurate measurement of time, the existence of cycles in lunar and solar phenomena, was studied and recorded by them. We can make some approach to the probable dates of the invention of some part of their system, by means of the signs of the Zodiac, which were invented by them and which we will discuss more at length hereafter. We need only say at present that what is now the sign of spring, was not reckoned so with them, and that we can calculate how long ago it is that the sign they reckoned the spring sign was so.

Semiramis also raised in the centre of Babylon a temple consecrated to Jupiter, whom the Babylonians called Bel. It was of an extraordinary height and served for an observatory. The whole edifice was constructed with great art in asphalte and brick. On its summit were placed the statues of Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea, covered with gold.

The Egyptians have always been named as the earliest cultivators of astronomy by the Grecian writers, by whom the science has been handed down to us, and the Chaldæans have even been said to have borrowed from them. The testimony of such writers however is not to be received implicitly, but to be weighed with the knowledge we may now obtain, as we have noticed above with respect to the Babylonians, from the actual records they have left us, whether by actual records, or by words and customs remaining to the present day.

Plate I.—Babylonian Astronomers.

Herodotus declares that the Egyptians had made observations for 11,340 years and had seen the course of the sun change four times, and the ecliptic placed perpendicular to the equator. This is the style of statement on which opinions of the antiquity of Egyptian astronomy have been founded, and it is obviously unworthy of credit.

Diodorus says that there is no country in which the positions and motions of the stars have been so accurately observed as in Egypt (i.e. to his knowledge). They have preserved, he says, for a great number of years registers in which their observations are recorded. Expositions are found in these registers of the motions of the planets, their revolutions and their stations, and, moreover, the relation which each bears to the birthdays of animals, and its good or evil influence. They often predicted the future with success. The earthquakes, inundations, the appearance of comets, and many other phenomena which it is impossible for the vulgar to know beforehand, were foreseen by them by means of the observations they had made over a long series of years.

On the occasion of the French expedition to Egypt, a long passage was discovered leading from Karnak to Lucksor. This passage was adorned on each side of the way with a range of 1600 sphinxes with the body of a lion and the head of a ram. Now in Egyptian architecture, the ornaments are never the result of caprice or chance; on the contrary, all is done with intention, and what often appears at first sight strange, appears, after having been carefully examined and studied, to present allegories full of sense and reason, founded on a profound knowledge of natural phenomena, that the ornaments are intended to record. These sphinxes and rams of the passage were probably the emblems of the different signs of the Zodiac along the route of the sun. The date of the avenue is not known; but it would doubtless lead us to a high antiquity for the Egyptian observations.

The like may be said of the great pyramid, which according to Piazzi Smyth was built about 2170 B.C. Certainly there are no carvings about it exhibiting any astronomical designs; but the exact way in which it is executed would seem to indicate that the builders had a very clear conception of the importance of the meridian line. It should, however, be stated that Piazzi Smyth does not consider it to have been built by the Egyptians for themselves; but under the command of some older race.

There seem, however, to be indications in various festivals and observances, which are met with widely over the earth's surface, as will be indicated more in detail in the chapter on the Pleiades, that some astronomical observations, though of the rudest, were made by races anterior even to those whose history we partially possess; and that not merely because of its naturalness, but because of positive evidence, we must trace back astronomy to a source from whence Egyptians, Indians, and perhaps Babylonians themselves derived it.

The Chinese astronomy is totally removed from these and stands on its own basis. With them it was a matter concerning the government, and stringent laws were enforced on the state astronomers. The advance, however, that they made would appear to be small; but if we are to believe their writers, they made observations nearly three thousand years before our era.

Under the reign of Hoangti, Yuchi recorded that there was a large star near the poles of the heavens. By a method which we shall enlarge upon further on, it can be astronomically ascertained that about the epoch this observation was said to be made there was a star (α Draconis) so near the pole as to appear immovable, which is so far a confirmation of his statement. In 2169 the first of a series of eclipses was recorded by them; but the value of their astronomy seems to be doubtful when we learn that calculation proves that not one of them previous to the age of Ptolemy can be identified with the dates given.

Amongst all nations except the Chinese, where it was political, and the Greeks, where it was purely speculative, astronomy has been intimately mixed with religious ideas, and we consequently find it to have taken considerable hold on the mind.

Just as we have seen among the Indians that the basis of their astronomical ideas was the two-fold division into heaven and earth, so among other nations this duality has formed the basis of their religion. Two aspects of things have been noticed by men in the constitution of things—that which remains always, and that which is merely transitory, causes and effects. The heaven and the earth have presented the image of this to their minds—one being the eternal existence, the other the passing form. In heaven nothing seems to be born, increase, decrease, or die above the sphere of the moon. That alone showed the traces of alteration in its phases; while on the other hand there was an image of perpetuity in its proper substance, in its motion, and the invariable succession of the same phases.

From another point of view, the heavens were regarded as the father, and the earth as the mother of all things. For the principle of fertility in the rains, the dew and the warmth, came from above; while the earth brought forth abundantly of the products of nature. Such is the idea of Plutarch, of Hesiod, and of Virgil. From hence have arisen the fictions which have formed the basis of theogony. Uranus is said to have espoused Ghe, or the heavens took the earth to wife, and from their marriage was born the god of time or Saturn.

Another partly religious, and partly astronomical antagonism has been drawn between light and darkness, associated respectively with good and evil. In the days when artificial lights, beyond those of the flickering fire, were unknown, and with the setting of the sun all the world was enveloped in darkness and seemed for a time to be without life, or at least cut off entirely from man, it would seem that the sun and its light was the entire origin of life. Hence it naturally became the earliest divinity whose brilliant light leaping out of the bosom of chaos, had brought with it man and all the universe, as we see it represented in the theologies of Orpheus and of Moses; whence the god Bel of the Chaldeans, the Oromaza of the Persians, whom they invoke as the source of all that is good in nature, while they place the origin of all evil in darkness and its god Ahrinam. We find the glories of the sun celebrated by all the poets, and painted and represented by numerous emblems and different names by the artists and sculptors who have adorned the temples raised to nature or the great first cause.

Among the Jews there are traditions of a very high antiquity for their astronomy. Josephus assures us that it was cultivated before the Mosaic Deluge. According to him it is to the public spirit and the labour of the antediluvians that we owe the science of astrology: "and since they had learnt from Adam that the world should perish by water and by fire, the fear that their science should be lost, made them erect two columns, one of brick the other of stone, on which they engraved the knowledge they had acquired, so that if a deluge should wash away the column of brick, the stone one might remain to preserve for posterity the memory of what they had written. The prescience was rewarded, and the column of stone is still to be seen in Syria." Whatever we may think of this statement it would certainly be interesting if we could find in Syria or anywhere else a monument that recorded the ancient astronomical observations of the Jews. Ricard and others believe that they were very far advanced in the science, and that we owe a great part of our present astronomy to them; but such a conjecture must remain without proof unless we could prove them anterior to the other nations, whom, we have seen, cultivated astronomy in very remote times.

One observation seems peculiar to them, if indeed it be a veritable observation. Josephus says, "God prolonged the life of the patriarchs that preceded the deluge, both on account of their virtues, and to give them the opportunity of perfecting the sciences of geometry and astronomy which they had discovered; which they could not have done if they had not lived for 600 years, because it is only after the lapse of 600 years that the great year is accomplished."

Now what is this great year or cycle of 600 years? M. Cassini, the director of the Observatory of Paris, has discussed it astronomically. He considers it as a testimony of the high antiquity of their astronomy. "This period," he says, "is one of the most remarkable that have been discovered; for, if we take the lunar month to be 29 days 12h. 44m. 3s. we find that 219,146½ days make 7,421 lunar months, and that this number of days gives 600 solar years of 365 days 5h. 51m. 36s. If this year was in use before the deluge, it appears very probable it must be acknowledged that the patriarchs were already acquainted to a considerable degree of accuracy with the motions of the stars, for this lunar month agrees to a second almost with that which has been determined by modern astronomers."

A very similar argument has been used by Prof. Piazzi Smyth to prove that the Great Pyramids were built by the descendants of Abraham near the time of Noah; namely, that measures of two different elements in the measurement of time or space when multiplied or divided produce a number which may be found to represent some proportion of the edifice, and hence to assume that the two numbers were known to the builders.

We need scarcely point out that numbers have always been capable of great manipulation, and the mere fact of one number being so much greater than another, is no proof that both were known, unless we knew that one of them was known independently, or that they are intimately connected.

In the case of Josephus' number the cycle during which the lunar months and solar years are commensurable has been long discussed and if the number had been 19 instead of 600, we should have had little doubt of its reference; yet 600 is a very simple number and might refer to many other cycles than the complicated one pointed out by M. Cassini. A similar case may be quoted with regard to the Indians, which, according to our temperament, may be either considered a proof that these reasonings are correct, or that they are easy to make. They say that there are two stars diametrically opposite which pass through the zodiac in 144 years; nothing can be made of this period, nor yet of another equally problematical one of 180 years; but if we multiply the two together we obtain 25,920, which is very nearly the length of the cycle for the precession of the equinoxes.

In this review of the ancient ideas of different peoples, we have followed the most probable order in considering that the observation of nature came first, and the different parts of it were afterwards individualized and named. It is proper to add that according to some ancient authors—such as Diodorus Siculus—the process was considered to have been the other way. That Uranus was an actual individual, that Atlas and Saturn were his sons or descendants or followers, and that because Atlas was a great astronomer he was said to support the heavens, and that his seven daughters were real, and being very spiritual they were regarded as goddesses after death and placed in heaven under the name of the Pleiades.

However, the universality of the ideas seems to forbid this interpretation, which is also in itself much less natural.

These various opinions lead us to remark, in conclusion, that the fables of ancient mythological astronomy must be interpreted by means of various keys. Allegory is the first—the allegory employed by philosophers and poets who have spoken in figurative language. Their words taken in the letter are quite unnatural, but many of the fables are simply the description or explanation of physical facts. Hieroglyphics are another key. Having become obscure by the lapse of time they sometimes, however, present ideas different from those which they originally expressed. It is pretty certain that hieroglyphics have been the source of the men with dogs' heads, or feet of goats, &c. Fables also arise from the adoption of strange words whose sound is something like another word in the borrowing language connected with other ideas, and the connection between the two has to be made by fable.

CHAPTER II.

ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS.

The numerous stone monuments that are to be found scattered over this country, and over the neighbouring parts of Normandy, have given rise to many controversies as to their origin and use. By some they have been supposed to be mere sepulchral monuments erected in late times since the Roman occupation of Great Britain. Such an idea has little to rest upon, and we prefer to regard them, as they have always been regarded, as relics of the Druidical worship of the Celtic or Gaulish races that preceded us in this part of Europe.

If we were to believe the accounts of ordinary historians, we might believe that the Druids were nothing more than a kind of savage race, hidden, like the fallow-deer in the recesses of their woods. Thought to be sanguinary, brutal, superstitious, we have learned nothing of them beyond their human sacrifices, their worship of the oak, their raised stones; without inquiring whether these characteristics which scandalize our tastes, are not simply the legacy of a primitive era, to which, by the side of the tattered religions of the old Paganism, Druidism remained faithful. Nevertheless the Druids were not without merit in the order of thought.

For the Celts, as for all primitive people, astronomy and religion were intimately associated. They considered that the soul was eternal, and the stars were worlds successively inhabited by the spiritual emigrants. They considered that the stars were as much the abodes of human life as our own earth, and this image of the future life constituted their power and their grandeur. They repelled entirely the idea of the destruction of life, and preferred to see in the phenomena of death, a voyage to a region already peopled by friends.

Under what form did Druidical science represent the universe? Their scientific contemplation of the heavens was at the same time a religious contemplation. It is therefore impossible to separate in our history their astronomical and theological heavens.

In their theological astronomy, or astronomical theology, the Druids considered the totality of all living beings as divided into three circles. The first of these circles, the circle of immensity, Ceugant, corresponding to incommunicable, infinite attributes, belonged to God alone; it was properly the absolute, and none, save the ineffable being, had a right there. The second circle, that of blessedness, Gwyn-fyd, united in it the beings that have arrived at the superior degrees of existence; this was heaven. The third, the circle of voyages, Abred, comprised all the noviciate; it was there, at the bottom of the abysses, in the great oceans, as Taliesin says, that the first breath of man commenced. The object proposed to men's perseverance and courage was to attain to what the bards called the point of liberty, very probably the point at which, being suitably fortified against the assaults of the lower passions, they were not exposed to be troubled, against their wills, in their celestial aspirations; and when they arrived at such a point—so worthy of the ambition of every soul that would be its own master—they quitted the circle of Abred and entered that of Gwyn-fyd; the hour of their recompense had come.

Demetrius, cited by Plutarch, relates that the Druids believed that these souls of the elect were so intimately connected with our circle that they could not emerge from it without disturbing its equilibrium. This writer states, that being in the suite of the Emperor Claudius, in some part of the British isles, he heard suddenly a terrible hurricane, and the priests, who alone inhabited these sacred islands, immediately explained the phenomenon, by telling him that a vacuum had been produced on the earth, by the departure of an important soul. "The great men," he said, "while they live are like torches whose light is always beneficent and never harms any one, but when they are extinguished their death generally occasions, as you have just seen, winds, storm, and derangements of the atmosphere."

The palingenetic system of the Druids is complete in itself, and takes the being at his origin, and conducts him to the ultimate heaven. At the moment of his creation, as Henry Martyn says in his Commentary, the being has no conscience of the gifts that are latent in him. He is created in the lowest stage of life, in Annwfn, the shadowy abyss at the base of Abred. There, surrounded by nature, submitted to necessity, he rises obscurely through the successive degrees of inorganic matter, and then through the organic. His conscience at last awakes. He is man. "Three things are primarily contemporaneous—man, liberty, and light." Before man there was nothing in creation but fatal obedience to physical laws; with man commences the great battle between liberty and necessity, good and evil. The good and the evil present themselves to man in equilibrium, "and he can at his pleasure attach himself to one or the other of them."

It might appear at first sight that it was carrying things too far to attribute to the Druids the knowledge, not indeed of the true system of the world, but the general idea on which it was constructed. But, on closer examination, this opinion seems to have some consistency. If it was from the Druids that Pythagoras derived the basis of his theology, why should it not be from them that he derived also that of his astronomy? Why, if there is no difficulty in seeing that the principle of the subordination of the earth might arise from the meditations of an isolated spirit, should there be any more difficulty in thinking that the principles of astronomy should take birth in the midst of a corporation of theologians embued with the same ideas as the philosophers on the circulation of life, and applied with continued diligence to the study of celestial phenomena. The Druid, not having to receive mythological errors, might be led by that circumstance to imagine in space other worlds similar to our own.

Independently of its intrinsic value, this supposition rests also upon the testimony of historians. A singular statement made by Hecatæus with regard to the religious rites of Great Britain exhibits this in a striking manner. This historian relates that the moon, seen in this island, appears much larger than it does anywhere else, and that it is possible to distinguish mountains on its surface, such as there are on the earth. Now, how had the Druids made an observation of this kind? It is of not much consequence whether they had actually seen the lunar mountains or had only imagined them, the curious thing is that they were persuaded that that body was like the earth, and had mountains and other features similar to our own. Plutarch, in his treatise De facie in orbe Lunæ, tells us that, according to the Druids, and conformably to an idea which had long been held in science, the surface of the moon is furrowed with several Mediterraneans, which the Grecian philosophers compare to the Red and Caspian seas. It was also thought that immense abysses were seen, which were supposed to be in communication with the hemisphere that is turned away from the earth. Lastly, the dimensions of this sky-borne country were estimated; (ideas very different to those that were current in Greece): its size and its breadth, says the traveller depicted by the writer, are not at all such as the geometers say, but much larger.

It is through the same author, who is in accordance in this respect with all the bards, that we know that this celestial earth was considered by the theologians of the West as the residence of happy souls. They rose and approached it in proportion as their preparation had been complete, but, in the agitation of the whirlwind, many reached the moon that it would not receive. "The moon repelled a great number, and rejected them by its fluctuations, at the moment they reached it; but those that had better success fixed themselves there for good; their soul is like the flame, which, raising itself in the ether of the moon, as fire raises itself on that of the earth receives force and solidity in the same way that red-hot iron does when plunged into the water."

They thus traced an analogy between the moon and the earth, which they doubtless carried out to its full development, and made the moon an image of what they knew here, picturing there the lunar fields and brooks and breezes and perfumes. What a charm such a belief must have given to the heavens at night. The moon was the place and visible pledge of immortality. On this account it was placed in high position in their religion; the order of all the festivals was arranged after that which was dedicated to it; its presence was sought in all their ceremonies, and its rays were invoked. The Druids are always therefore represented as having the crescent in their hands.

Astronomy and theology being so intimately connected in the spirit of the Druids, we can easily understand that the two studies were brought to the front together in their colleges. From certain points of view we may say that the Druids were nothing more than astronomers. This quality was not less striking to the ancients in them than in the Chaldæans. The observation of the stars was one of their official functions. Cæsar tells us, without entering more into particulars, that they taught many things about the form and dimensions of the earth, the size and arrangements of the different parts of heaven, and the motions of the stars, which includes the greater part of the essential problems of celestial geometry, which we see they had already proposed to themselves. We can see the same fact in the magnificent passage of Taliesin. "I will ask the bards," he says in his Hymn of the World, "and why will not the bards answer me? I will ask of them what sustains the earth, since having no support it does not fall? or if it falls which way does it go? But what can serve for its support? Is the world a great traveller? Although it moves without ceasing, it remains tranquil in its route; and how admirable is that route, seeing that the world moves not in any direction." This suffices to show that the ideas of the Druids on material phenomena were not at all inferior to their conceptions of the destiny of the soul, and that they had scientific views of quite another origin from the Alexandrian Greeks, the Latins, their disciples, or the middle ages. An anecdote of the eighth century furnishes another proof in favour of Druidical science. Every one knows that Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg, was accused of heresy by Boniface before the Pope Zacharias, because he had asserted that there were antipodes. Now Virgilius was educated in one of the learned monasteries of Ireland, which were fed by the Christian bards, who had preserved the scientific traditions of Druidism.

Plate II.—Druidical Worship.

The fundamental alliance between the doctrine of the plurality of worlds and of the eternity of the soul is perhaps the most memorable character in the thoughts of this ancient race. The death upon earth was for them only a psychological and astronomical fact, not more grave than that which happened to the moon when it was eclipsed, nor the fall of the verdant clothing of the oak under the breath of the autumnal breeze. We see these conceptions and manners, at first sight so extraordinary, clothe themselves with a simple and natural aspect. The Druids were so convinced of the future life in the stars, that they used to lend money to be repaid in the other world. Such a custom must have made a profound impression on the minds of those who daily practised it. Pomponius Mela and Valerius Maximus both tell us of this custom. The latter says, "After having left Marseilles I found that ancient custom of the Gauls still in force, namely, of lending one another money to be paid back in the infernal regions, for they are persuaded that the souls of men are immortal."

In passing to the other world they lost neither their personality, their memory, nor their friends; they there re-encountered the business, the laws, the magistrates of this world. They had capitals and everything the same as here. They gave one another rendezvous as emigrants might who were going to America. This superstition, so laudable as far as it had the effect of pressing on the minds of men the firm sentiment of immortality, led them to burn, along with the dead, all the objects which had been dear to them, or of which they thought they might still wish to make use. "The Gauls," says Pomponius Mela, "burn and bury with the dead that which had belonged to the living."

They had another custom prompted by the same spirit, but far more touching. When any one bade farewell to the earth, each one charged him to take letters to his absent friends, who should receive him on his arrival and doubtless load him with questions as to things below. It is to Diodorus that we owe the preservation of the remembrance of this custom. "At their funerals," he says, "they place letters with the dead which are written to those already dead by their parents, so that they may be read by them." They followed the soul in thought in its passage to the other planets, and the survivors often regretted that they could not accomplish the voyage in their company; sometimes, indeed, they could not resist the temptation. "There are some," says Mela, "who burn themselves with their friends in order that they may continue to live together." They entertained another idea also, which led even to worse practices than this, namely, that death was a sort of recruiting that was commanded by the laws of the universe for the sustenance of the army of existences. In certain cases they would replace one death by another. Posidonius, who visited Gaul at an epoch when it had not been broken up, and who knew it far better than Cæsar, has left us some very curious information on this subject. If a man felt himself seriously warned by his disease that he must hold himself in readiness for departure, but who, nevertheless, had, for the moment, some important business on hand, or the needs of his family chained him to this life, or even that death was disagreeable to him; if no member of his family or his clients were willing to offer himself instead, he looked out for a substitute; such a one would soon arrive accompanied by a troop of friends, and stipulating for his price a certain sum of money, he distributed it himself as remembrances among his companions,—often even he would only ask for a barrel of wine. Then they would erect a stage, improvise a sort of festival, and finally, after the banquet was over, our hero would lie down on the shield, and driving a sword into his bosom, would take his departure for the other world.

Such a custom, indeed, shows anything but what we should rightly call civilization, however admirable may have been their opinions; but it receives its only palliation from the fact that their indifference to death did not arise from their undervaluing life here, but that they had so firm a belief in the existence and the happiness of a life hereafter.

That these beliefs were not separated from their astronomical ideas is seen from the fact that they peopled the firmament with the departed. The Milky Way was called the town of Gwyon (Coër or Ker Gwydion, Ker in Breton, Caer in Gaulish, Kohair in Gaelic); certain bardic legends gave to Gwyon as father a genius called Don, who resides in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and who figures as "the king of the fairies" in the popular myths of Ireland. The empyrean is thus divided between various heavenly spirits. Arthur had for residence the Great Bear, called by the Druids "Arthur's Chariot."

We are not, however, entirely limited to tradition and the reports of former travellers for our information as to the astronomy of the Druids, but we have also at our service numerous coins belonging to the old Gauls, who were of one family with those who cultivated Druidism in our island, which have been discovered buried in the soil of France. The importance which was given to astronomy in that race becomes immediately evident upon the discovery of the fact that these coins are marked with figures having reference to the heavenly bodies, in other words are astronomical coins. If we examine, from a general point of view, a large collection of Gaulish medals such as that preserved in the National Museum of Paris, we observe that among the essential symbols that occupy the fields are types of the Horse, the Bull, the Boar, the Eagle, the Lion, the Horseman, and the Bear. We remark next a great number of signs, most often astronomical, ordinarily accessory, but occasionally the chief, such as the sign ∾, globules surrounded by concentric circles, stars of five, six, or eight points, radiated and flaming bodies, crescents, triangles, wheels with four spokes, the sign ∞, the lunar crescent, the zigzag, &c. Lastly, we remark other accessory types represented by images of real objects or imaginary figures, such as the Lyre, the Diota, the Serpent, the Hatchet, the Human Eye, the Sword, the Bough, the Lamp, the Jewel, the Bird, the Arrow, the Ear of Corn, the Fishes, &c.

On a great number of medals, on the stateres of Vercingetorix, on the reverses of the coins of several epochs, we recognize principally the sign of the Waterer, which appears to symbolize for one part of antiquity the knowledge of the heavenly sphere. On the Gaulish types this sign (an amphora with two handles) bears the name of Diota, and represents amongst the Druids as amongst the Magi the sciences of astronomy and astrology.

Some of these coins are represented in the woodcut below.

Fig. 2.

The first of these represents the course of the Sun-Horse reaching the Tropic of Cancer (summer solstice), and brought back to the Tropic of Capricorn (winter solstice).

On the second is seen the symbol of the year between the south (represented by the sun ☉) and the north (represented by the Northern Bear). In the third the calendar (or course of the year) between the sun ☉ and the moon ☾. Time the Sun, and the Bear are visible on the fourth. The diurnal motion of the heavens is represented on the fifth; and lastly, on the sixth, appears the Watering-pot, the Sun-Horse, and the sign of the course of the heavenly bodies.

On other groups of money the presence of the zodiac may be made out.

These medals would seem to show that some part of the astronomical knowledge of the Druids was not invented by themselves, but borrowed from the Chaldeans or others who in other lands invented them in previous ages, and from whom they may have possibly derived them from the Phenicians.

We may certainly expect, however, from these pieces of money, if found in sufficient number and carefully studied, to discover a good many positive facts now wanting to us, of the religion, sciences, manners, language, commercial relation, &c. which belonged to the Celtic civilization. It was far from being so barbarous as is ordinarily supposed, and we shall do more justice to it when we know it better.

M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Guéret, who has studied these coins with care, after having sought for a long time for a clear and concise method of determining exactly the symbolic and religious character of the Gaulish money, has been able to give the following general statements.

The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.

On the right side they present almost universally the ideal heads of gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the symbols that are representative of them.

On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either by direct types or by emblems artfully combined, the principal celestial bodies, the divers aspects of the constellations, and probably the laws, which, according to their ancient science, presided over their course; in a smaller proportion they denote the religious myths which form the base of the national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for them the present life was but a transitory state of the soul, only a prodrome of the future life, which should develop itself in heaven and the astronomical worlds with which it is filled.

Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending towards the celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly appropriate to a nation at once warlike and commercial. These circumstances explain the existence of these strange types, founded at the same time on those of other nations, and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the merit of this ingenious and original conception, of turning the reverses of the coins into regular charts of the heavens. Nothing indeed could be better calculated to inspire the people with respect and confidence than these mysterious and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the heavens.

Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which they wished to maintain as part of the mysteries of their caste, the Druids availed themselves of this method of placing on the money that celestial symbolism of which they alone possessed the key.

The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations were not peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more than their zodiac. There seems reason to believe that they had come down from a remote antiquity, and been widely spread over many nations, as we shall see in the chapter on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the East, where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before the new creations of anthropomorphism, though they were not forgotten in the days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do not represent for me, around this vase" (a vase he had ordered of the worker in silver), "either the heavenly bodies, or the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing to do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted mythological subjects which were more to his taste.

The characters which are made use of in these astronomical moneys of the Druids would appear to have a more ancient origin than we are able to trace directly, since they are most of them found on the arms and implements of the bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric pointed circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the sun, the month, the year, the fluid element; and they appear to have had among the Druids the same signification. The other signs, such as the ∿, and its multiple combinations, the centred circles, grouped in one or two, the little rings, the alphabetical characters recalling the form of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the radiating discs, &c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From this remote period, which was strongly impressed with the Oriental genius, we must date the origin of the Celtic symbolism. It has been supposed, and not without reason, that this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the Phenician establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age of civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of the Druids became modified at the same time that they acquired just notions in astronomy and in the art of casting metals. At a far later period, the Druidic theocracy having, with religious care, preserved the symbols of its ancient traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they caused to be struck.

This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner in the rougher attempts in Gaulish money, and this same state of things was perpetuated even into the epoch of the high arts, since we find on the imitation statues of Macedonia the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a Grecian origin.

In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the warlike element of the nobles soon predominated over the religious. Nevertheless the most ancient Roman coins, those which are known to us under the name of Consular, have not escaped the common law which seems to have presided, among all nations, over the origin of money. The two commonest types, one in bronze of Janus Bifrons with the palus; the other in silver, the Dioscures with their stars, have an eminently astronomical aspect.

The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins may be followed in a series of analogies which are very remarkable from an astronomical point of view. To cite only a few examples, we may observe on a large number of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga "the Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under another form (with his head radiated and drawn in profile); or Diana with her lunar attributes; or the five planets well characterised; for example, Venus by a double star, as that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations of the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost all those of the zodiac and of the circumpolar region and the seven-kine (septemtriones). In later times, under the Cæsars, in the villa of Borghèse, is found a calendar whose arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin. The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of the zodiac are represented, and the drawing of the constellations establishes a correspondence between their rising and the position of the sun in the zodiac. It may therefore be affirmed that in the coinage and works of art in Italy and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor have the Western nations alone had the curious habit of impressing their astronomical ideas upon their coinage, for in China and Japan coins of a similar description have been met with, containing on their reverse all the signs of the zodiac admitted by them.

In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that constructed the dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was, in its essential elements, the same as that of the old Oriental theocracies. The outward ceremonies were addressed to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible phenomena; but, above nature, there was the great generating and moving principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps, among the attributes of their supreme deities.

The Northern Constellations.

The Lyre—Cassiopeia—The Little Bear—The Dragon—Andromeda—The Great Bear—Capella—Algol, or Medusa's Head.

CHAPTER III.

ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS.

When we look upon the multitude of heavenly bodies with which the celestial vault is strewed, our attention is naturally arrested by certain groupings of brilliant stars, apparently associated together on account of their great proximity; and also by certain remarkable single stars which have excessive brilliancy or are completely isolated from the rest. These natural groups seem to have some obscure connection with or dependence on each other. They have always been noticed, even by the most savage races. The languages of several such races contain different names for the same identical groups, and these names, mostly borrowed from terrestrial beings, give an imaginary life to the solitude and silence of the skies. A celestial globe, as we know, presents us with a singular menagerie, rich in curious monsters placed in inconceivable positions. How these constellations, as they are called, were first invented, and by whom, is an interesting question which by the aid of comparative philology we must endeavour now to answer.

Among these constellations there are twelve which have a more than ordinary importance, and to which more attention has always been paid. They are those through which the sun appears to pass in his annual journey round the ecliptic, entering one region each month. At least, this is what they were when first invented. They were called the zodiacal constellations or signs of the zodiac—the name being derived from their being mostly named after living beasts. In our own days the zodiacal constellations are no longer the signs of the zodiac. When they were arranged the sun entered each one on a certain date. He now is no longer at the same point in the heavens at that date, nevertheless he is still said to enter the same sign of the zodiac—which therefore no longer coincides with the zodiacal constellation it was named from—but merely stands for a certain twelfth part of the ecliptic, which varies from time to time. It will be of course of great interest to discover the origin of these particular constellations, the date of their invention, &c.; and we shall hope to do so after having discussed the origin of those seen in the Northern hemisphere which may be more familiar even than those.

We have represented in the frontispiece the two halves of the Grecian celestial sphere—the Northern and the Southern, with the various constellations they contain. This sphere was not invented by the Greeks, but was received by them from more ancient peoples, and corrected and augmented. It was used by Hipparchus two thousand years ago; and Ptolemy has given us a description of it. It contained 48 constellations, of which 21 belonged to the Northern, 15 to the Southern hemisphere, and the remaining twelve were those of the zodiac, situated along the ecliptic.

The constellations reckoned by Ptolemy contained altogether 1,026 stars, whose relative positions were determined by Hipparchus; with reference to which accomplishment Pliny says, "Hipparchus, with a height of audacity too great even for a god, has ventured to transmit to posterity the number of the stars!"

Ptolemy's catalogue contains:—

Of course this number is not to be supposed to represent the whole of the stars visible even to the naked eye; there are twice as many in the Northern hemisphere alone, while there are about 5,000 in the whole sky. The number visible in a telescope completely dwarfs this, so that more than 300,000 are now catalogued; while the number visible in a large telescope may be reckoned at not less than 77 millions. The principal northern constellations named by Ptolemy are contained in the following list, with the stars of the first magnitude that occur in each:—

The Great Bear, or David's Chariot, near the centre.

The Little Bear, with the Pole Star at the end of the tail.

The Dragon.

Cepheus, situated to the right of the Pole.

The Herdsman, or the Keeper of the Bear, with the star Arcturus.

The Northern Crown to the right.

Hercules, or the Man who Kneels.

The Lyre, or Falling Vulture, with the beautiful star Vega.

The Swan, or Bird, or Cross.

Cassiopeia, or the Chair, or the Throne.

Perseus.

The Carter, or the Charioteer, with Capella Ophiuchus, or Serpentarius, or Esculapius.

The Serpent.

The Bow and Arrow, or the Dart.

The Eagle, or the Flying Vulture, with Altaïr.

The Dolphin.

The Little Horse, or the Bust of the Horse.

Pegasus, or the Winged Horse, or the Great Cross.

Andromeda, or the Woman with the Girdle.

The Northern Triangle, or the Delta.

The fifteen constellations on the south of the ecliptic were:—

The Whale.

Orion, with the beautiful stars Rigel and Betelgeuse.

The River Endanus, or the River Orion, with the brilliant Achernar.

The Hare.

The Great Dog, with the magnificent Sirius.

The Little Dog, or the Dog which runs before, with Procyon.

The ship Argo, with its fine Alpha (Canopus) and Eta.

The Female Hydra, or the Water Snake.

The Cup, or the Urn, or the Vase.

The Raven.

The Altar, or the Perfuming Pot.

The Centaur, whose star Alpha is the nearest to the earth.

The Wolf, or the Centaur's Lance, or the Panther, or the Beast.

The Southern Crown, or the Wand of Mercury, or Uraniscus.

The Southern Fish, with Fomalhaut.

The twelve zodiacal constellations, which are of more importance than the rest, are generally named in the order in which the sun passes through them in its passage along the ecliptic, and both Latins and English have endeavoured to impress their names on the vulgar by embodying them in verses. The poet Ausonius thus catalogues them:—

"Sunt: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo,
Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces."

and the English effusion is as follows:—

"The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,
And next the Crab the Lion shines,
The Virgin and the Scales.
The Scorpion, Archer, and He Goat,
The Man that holds the watering-pot,
And Fish with glittering scales."

These twelve have hieroglyphics assigned to them, by which they are referred to in calendars and astronomical works, some of the marks being easily traced to their origin.

Thus ♈ refers to the horns of the Ram; ♉ to the head of the Bull; ♏ to the joints and tail-sting of the Scorpion; ♐ is very clearly connected with an archer; ♑ is formed by the junction of the first two letters τ and ρ in τράγος, the Sea-goat, or Capricorn; ♎ for the Balance, is suggestive of its shape; ♒ refers to the water in the Watering-pot; and perhaps ♓ to the Two Fishes; ♊ for Twins may denote two sides alike; ♋ for the Crab, has something of its side-walking appearance; while ♌ for the Lion, and ♍ for the Virgin, seem to have no reference that is traceable.

These constellations contain the following stars of the first magnitude—Aldebaran, Antares, and Spica.

To these constellations admitted by the Greeks should be added the Locks of Berenice, although it is not named by Ptolemy. It was invented indeed by the astronomer Conon. The story is that Berenice was the spouse and the sister of Ptolemy Euergetes, and that she made a vow to cut off her locks and devote them to Venus if her husband returned victorious; to console the king the astronomer placed her locks among the stars. If this is a true account Arago must be mistaken in asserting that the constellation was created by Tycho Brahe in 1603. The one he did add to the former ones was that of Antinöus, by collecting into one figure some unappropriated stars near the Eagle. At about the same time J. Bayer, from the information of Vespuccius and the sailors, added twelve to the southern constellations of Ptolemy; among which may be mentioned the Peacock, the Toucan, the Phœnix, the Crane, the Fly, the Chameleon, the Bird of Paradise, the Southern Triangle, and the Indian.

Augustus Royer, in 1679, formed five new groups, among which we may name the Great Cloud, the Fleur-de-Lis, and the Southern Cross.

Hevelius, in 1690, added 16; the most important being the Giraffe, the Unicorn, the Little Lion, the Lynx, the Little Triangle.

Among these newer-named constellations none is more interesting than the Southern Cross, which is by some considered as the most brilliant of all that are known. Some account of it, possibly from the Arabs, seems to have reached Dante, who evidently refers to it, before it had been named by Royer, in a celebrated passage in his "Purgatory." Some have thought that his reference to such stars was only accidental, and that he really referred only to the four cardinal virtues of theology, chiefly on account of the difficulty of knowing how he could have heard of them; but as the Arabs had establishments along the entire coast of Africa, there is no difficulty in understanding how the information might reach Italy.

Americus Vespuccius, who in his third voyage refers to these verses of Dante, does not mention the name of the Southern Cross. He simply says that the four stars form a rhomboidal figure. As voyages round the Cape multiplied, however, the constellation became rapidly more celebrated, and it is mentioned as forming a brilliant cross by the Florentine Andrea Corsali, in 1517, and a little later by Pigafetta, in 1520.

All these constellations have not been considered sufficient, and many subsequent additions have been made. Thus Lacaille, in 1752, created fourteen new ones, mostly characterized by modern names—as the Sculptor's Studio, the Chemical Furnace, the Clock, the Compass, the Telescope, the Microscope, and others.

Lemonnier, in 1766, added the Reindeer, the Solitaire, and the Indian Bird, and Lalande the Harvestman. Poczobut, in 1777, added one more, and P. Hell another. Finally, in the charts drawn by Bode, eight more appear, among which the Aerostat, and the Electrical and Printing Machines.

We thus arrive at a total of 108 constellations. To which we may add that the following groups are generally recognized. The Head of Medusa, near Perseus; the Pleiades, on the back, and the Hyades on the forehead of the Bull; the Club of Hercules; the Shield of Orion, sometimes called the Rake; the Three Kings; the Staff of S. James; the Sword of Orion; the Two Asses in the Crab, having between them the Star Cluster, called the Stall, or the Manger; and the Kids, near Capella, in the constellation of the Coachman.

This brings the list of the constellations to 117, which is the total number now admitted.

A curious episode with respect to these star arrangements may here be mentioned.

About the eighth century Bede and certain other theologians and astronomers wished to depose the Olympian gods. They proposed, therefore, to change the names and arrangements of the constellations; they put S. Peter in the place of the Ram; S. Andrew instead of the Bull; and so on. In more recent calendars David, Solomon, the Magi, and other New and Old Testament characters were placed in the heavens instead of the former constellations; but these changes of name were not generally adopted.

As an example of these celestial spheres we figure a portion of one named Cœli stellati Christiani hemisphericum prius. We here see the Great Bear replaced by the Barque of S. Peter, the Little Bear by S. Michael, the Dragon by the Innocents, the Coachman by S. Jerome, Perseus by S. Paul, Cassiopeia by the Magdalene, Andromache by S. Sepulchre, and the Triangle by S. Peter's mitre; while for the zodiac were substituted the Twelve Apostles.

Fig. 3.

In the seventeenth century a proposal was made by Weigel, a professor in the University of Jena, to form a series of heraldic constellations, and to use for the zodiac the arms of the twelve most illustrious families in Europe; but these attempts at change have been in vain, the old names are still kept.

Having now explained the origin in modern times of 69 out of the 117 constellations, there remain the 48 which were acknowledged by the Greeks, whose origin is involved in more obscurity.

One of the first to be noticed and named, as it is now the most easily recognized and most widely known, is the Great Bear, which attracts all the more attention that it is one of those that never sets, being at a less distance from the pole than the latter is from the horizon.

Every one knows the seven brilliant stars that form this constellation. The four in the rectangle and the three in a curved line at once call to mind the form of a chariot, especially one of antique build. It is this resemblance, no doubt, that has obtained for the constellation the name of "the Chariot" that it bears among many people. Among the ancient Gauls it was "Arthur's Chariot." In France it is "David's Chariot," and in England it goes by the name of "King Charles' Wain," and by that of the "Plough." The latter name was in vogue, too, among the Latins (Plaustrum), and the three stars were three oxen, from whence it would appear that they extended the idea to all the seven stars, and at last called them the seven oxen, septem-triones, from whence the name sometimes used for the north—septentrional. The Greeks also called it the Chariot (Ἅμαξα), and the same word seems to have stood sometimes for a plough. It certainly has some resemblance to this instrument.

If we take the seven stars as representing the characteristic points of a chariot, the four stars of the quadrilateral will represent the four wheels, and the three others will represent the three horses. Above the centre of the three horses any one with clear sight may perceive a small star of the fifth or sixth magnitude, called the Cavalier. Each of these several stars is indicated, as is usual with all the constellations, by a Greek letter, the largest being denoted by the first letter. Thus the 4 stars in the quadrilateral are α, β, γ, δ, and the 3 tail stars ε, ξ, η. The Arabs give to each star its special name, which in this case are as follows:—Dubhé and Mérak are the stars at the back; Phegda and Megrez those of the front; Alioth, Mizat, and Ackïar the other three, while the little one over Mizat is Alcor. Another name for it is Saidak, or the Tester, the being able to see it being a mark of clear vision.

There is some little interest in the Great Bear on account of the possibility of its being used as a kind of celestial time-keeper, and its easy recognition makes it all the more available. The line through α and β passes almost exactly through the pole. Now this line revolves of course with the constellation round the pole in 24 hours; in every such interval being once, vertical above the pole, and once vertical below, taking the intermediate positions to right and left between these times. The instant at which this line is vertical over the pole is not the same on any two consecutive nights, since the stars advance each day 4 minutes on the sun. On the 21st of March the superior passage takes place at 5 minutes to 11 at night; on the following night four minutes earlier, or at 9 minutes to 11. In three months the culmination takes place 6 hours earlier, or at 5 minutes to 5. In six months, i.e. on Sept. 22, it culminates at 10.55 in the morning, being vertically below the pole at the same hour in the evening. The following woodcut exhibits the positions of the Great Bear at the various hours of September 4th. It is plain from this that, knowing the day of the month, the hour of the night may be told by observing what angle the line joining α and β of this constellation makes with the vertical.

We have used the name Great Bear, by which the constellation is best known. It is one of the oldest names also, being derived from the Greeks, who called it Arctos megale (Ἄρκτος μεγάλη), whence the name Arctic; and singularly enough the Iroquois, when America was discovered, called it Okouari, their name for a bear. The explanation of this name is certainly not to be found in

Fig. 4.

the resemblance of the constellation to the animal. The three stars are indeed in the tail, but the four are in the middle of the back; and even if we take in the smaller stars that stand in the feet and head, no ingenuity can make it in this or any other way resemble a bear. It would appear, as Aristotle observes, that the name is derived from the fact, that of all known animals the bear was thought to be the only one that dared to venture into the frozen regions of the north and tempt the solitude and cold.

Fig. 5.

Other origins of the name, and other names, have been suggested, of which we may mention a few. For example, "Ursa" is said to be derived from versus, because the constellation is seen to turn about the pole. It has been called the Screw (Ἔλικη), or Helix, which has plainly reference to its turning. Another name is Callisto, in reference to its beauty; and lastly, among the Arabs the Great and Little Bears were known as the Great and Little Coffins in reference to their slow and solemn motion. These names referred to the four stars of each constellation, the other three being the mourners following the bearers. The Christian Arabs made it into the grave of Lazarus and the three weepers, Mary, Martha, and their maid.

Next as to the Little Bear. This constellation has evidently received its name from the similarity of its form to that of the Great Bear. In fact, it is composed of seven stars arranged in the same way, only in an inverse order. If we follow the line from β to α of the Great Bear to a distance of five times as great as that between these stars we reach the brightest star of the Little Bear, called the Pole Star. All the names of the one constellation have been applied to the other, only at a later date.

The new constellations were added one by one to the celestial sphere by the Greeks before they arranged certain of them as parts of the zodiac. The successive introduction of the constellations is proved completely by a long passage of Strabo, which has been often misunderstood. "It is wrong," he says, "to accuse Homer of ignorance because he speaks only of one of the two Celestial Bears. The second was probably not formed at that time. The Phenicians were the first to form them and to use them for navigation. They came later to the Greeks."

All the commentators on Homer, Hygin and Diogenes Laertes, attribute to Thales the introduction of this constellation. Pseudo-Eratosthenes called the Little Bear Φοινίκη, to indicate that it was a guide to the Phenicians. A century later, about the seventeenth Olympiad, Cleostrates of Tenedos enriched the sphere with the Archer (Τοξότης, Sagittarius) and the Ram (Κριός, Aries), and about the same time the zodiac was introduced into the Grecian sphere.

The Constellations from the Sea-Shore.

The Swan—The Lyre—Hercules—The Crown—The Herdsman—The Eagle—The Serpent—The Balance—The Scorpion—Sagittarius.

With regard to the Little Bear there is another passage of Strabo which it will be interesting to quote. He says—"The position of the people under the parallel of Cinnamomophore, i.e. 3,000 stadia south of Meroe and 8,800 stadia north of the equator, represents about the middle of the interval between the equator and the tropic, which passes by Syene, which is 5,000 stadia north of Meroe. These same people are the first for whom the Little Bear is comprised entirely in the Arctic circle and remains always visible; the most southern star of the constellation, the brilliant one that ends the tail being placed on the circumference of the Arctic circle, so as just to touch the horizon." The remarkable thing in this passage is that it refers to an epoch anterior to Strabo, when the star α of the Little Bear, which now appears almost immovable, owing to its extreme proximity to the pole, was then more to the south than the other stars of the constellation, and moved in the Arctic circle so as to touch the horizon of places of certain latitudes, and to set for latitudes nearer the equator.

In those days it was not the Pole Star—if that word has any relation to πολέω, I turn—for the heavens did not turn about it then as they do now.

The Grecian geographer speaks in this passage of a period when the most brilliant star in the neighbourhood of the pole was α of the Dragon. This was more than three thousand years ago. At that time the Little Bear was nearer to the pole than what we now call the Polar Star, for this latter was "the most southern star in the constellation." If we could alight upon documents dating back fourteen thousand years, we should find the star Vega (α Lyra) referred to as occupying the pole of the world, although it now is at a distance of 51 degrees from it, the whole cycle of changes occupying a period of about twenty-six thousand years.

Before leaving these two constellations we may notice the origin of the names according to Plutarch. He would have it that the names are derived from the use that they were put to in navigation. He says that the Phenicians called that constellation that guided them in their route the Dobebe, or Doube, that is, the speaking constellation, and that this same word happens to mean also in that language a bear; and so the name was confounded. Certainly there is still a word dubbeh in Arabic having this signification.

Next as to the Herdsman. The name of its characteristic star and of itself, Arcturus (Ἄρκτος, bear; Οὖρος, guardian), is explained without difficulty by its position near the Bears. There are six small stars of the third magnitude in the constellation round its chief one—three of its stars forming an equilateral triangle. Arcturus is in the continuation of the curved line through the three tail stars of the Great Bear. The constellation has also been called Atlas, from its nearness to the pole—as if it held up the heavens, as the fable goes.

Beyond this triangle, in the direction of the line continued straight from the Great Bear, is the Northern Crown, whose form immediately suggests its name. Among the stars that compose it one, of the second magnitude, is called the Pearl of the Crown. It was in this point of the heavens that a temporary star appeared in May, 1866, and disappeared again in the course of a few weeks.

Among the circumpolar constellations we must now speak of Cassiopeia, or the Chair—or Throne—which is situated on the opposite side of the Pole from the Great Bear; and which is easily found by joining its star δ to the Pole and continuing it. The Chair is composed principally of five stars, of the third magnitude, arranged in the form of an M. A smaller star of the fourth magnitude completes the square formed by the three β, α, and γ. The figure thus formed has a fair resemblance to a chair or throne, δ and ε forming the back; and hence the justification for its popular name. The other name Cassiopeia has its connection and meaning unknown.

We may suitably remark in this place, with Arago, that no precise drawing of the ancient constellations has come down to us. We only know their forms by written descriptions, and these often very short and meagre. A verbal description can never take the place of a drawing, especially if it is a complex figure, so that there is a certain amount of doubt as to the true form, position, and arrangement of the figures of men, beasts, and inanimate objects which composed the star-groups of the Grecian astronomers—so that unexpected difficulties attend the attempt to reproduce them on our modern spheres. Add to this that alterations have been avowedly introduced by the ancient astronomers themselves, among others by Ptolemy, especially in those given by Hipparchus. Ptolemy says he determined to make these changes because it was necessary to give a better proportion to the figures, and to adapt them better to the real positions of the stars. Thus in the constellation of the Virgin, as drawn by Hipparchus, certain stars corresponded to the shoulders; but Ptolemy placed them in the sides, so as to make the figure a more beautiful one. The result is that modern designers give scope to their imagination rather than consult the descriptions of the Greeks. Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Andromeda, and Perseus holding in his hand the Head of Medusa, appear to have been established at the same epoch, no doubt subsequently to the Great Bear. They form one family, placed together in one part of the heavens, and associated in one drama; the ardent Perseus delivering the unfortunate Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. We can never be sure, however, whether the constellations suggested the fable, or the fable the constellations: the former may only mean that Perseus, rising before Andromeda, seems to deliver it from the Night and from the constellation of the Whale. The Head of Medusa, a celebrated woman, that Perseus cut off and holds in his hand, is said by Volney to be only the head of the constellation Virgo, which passes beneath the horizon precisely as the Perseus rises, and the serpents which surround it are Ophiucus and the polar Dragon, which then occupies the zenith.

Either way, we have no account of the origin of the names, and it is possible that we may have to seek it, if ever we find it, from other sources—for it would appear that similar names were used for the same constellations by the Indians. This seems inevitably proved by what is related by Wilford (Asiatic Researches, III.) of his conversation with his pundit, an astronomer, on the names of the Indian constellations. "Asking him," he says, "to show me in the heavens the constellation of Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given him any information about it beforehand. He afterwards brought me a very rare and curious work in Sanscrit, which contained a chapter devoted to Upanacchatras, or extra-zodiacal constellations, with drawings of Capuja (Cepheus), and of Casyapi (Cassiopeia) seated and holding a lotus flower in her hand, of Antarmada charmed with the fish beside her, and last of Parasiea (Perseus) who, according to the explanation of the book, held the head of a monster which he had slain in combat; blood was dropping from it, and for hair it had snakes." As the stars composing a constellation have often very little connection with the figure they are supposed to form, when we find the same set of stars called by the same name by two different nations, as was the case, for instance, in some of the Indian names of constellations among the Americans, it is a proof that one of the nations copied it from the other, or that both have copied from a common source. So in the case before us, we cannot think these similar names have arisen independently, but must conclude that the Grecian was borrowed from the Indian.

Another well-known constellation in this neighbourhood, forming an isosceles triangle with Arcturus and the Pole Star, is the Lyre. Lucian of Samosatus says that the Greeks gave this name to the constellation to do honour to the Lyre of Orpheus. Another possible explanation is this. The word for lyre in Greek (χέλυς) and in Latin (testudo) means also a tortoise. Now at the time when this name was imposed the chief star in the Lyre may have been very near to the pole of the heavens and therefore have had a very slow motion, and hence it might have been named the tortoise, and this in Greek would easily be interpreted into lyre instead. Indeed this double meaning of the word seems certainly to have given rise to the fable of Mercury having constructed a lyre out of the back of a tortoise. Circling round the pole of the ecliptic, and formed by a sinuous line of stars passing round from the Great Bear to the Lyre, is the Dragon, which owes its name to its form. Its importance is derived from its relation to the ecliptic, the pole of which is determined by reference to the stars of the first coil of the body. The centre of the zodiacal circle is a very important point, that circle being traced on the most ancient spheres, and probably being noticed even before the pole of the heavens.

Closely associated with the Dragon both in mythology and in the celestial sphere is Hercules. He is always drawn kneeling; in fact, the constellation is rather a man in a kneeling posture than any particular man. The poets called it Engonasis with reference to this, which is too melancholy or lowly a position than would agree well with the valiant hero of mythology. There is a story related by Æschylus about the stones in the Champ des Cailloux, between Marseilles and the embouchure of the Rhône, to the effect that Hercules, being amongst the Ligurians, found it necessary to fight with them; but he had no more missiles to throw; when Jupiter, touched by the danger of his son, sent a rain of round stones, with which Hercules repulsed his enemies. The Engonasis is thus considered by some to represent him bending down to pick up the stones. Posidonius remarks that it was a pity Jupiter did not rain the stones on the Ligurians at once, without giving Hercules the trouble to pick them up.

Ophiucus, which comes close by, simply means the man that holds the serpent ὀϕι-οῦχος.

It is obviously impossible to know the origins of all the names, as those we now use are only the surviving ones of several that from time to time have been applied to the various constellations according to their temporary association with the local legends. The prominent ones are favoured with quite a crowd of names. We need only cite a few. Hercules, for instance, has been called Ὀκάλζων Κορυνήτης, Engonasis, Ingeniculus, Nessus, Thamyris, Desanes, Maceris, Almannus, Al-chete, &c. The Swan has the names of Κύκνος, Ἴκτιν, Ὄρνις, Olar, Helenæ genitor, Ales Jovis, Ledæus, Milvus, Gallina, The Cross, while the Coachman has been Ἱππιλατης, Ἐλαστίππος, Αἰρωηλατης, Ἤνιοχος, Auriga, Acator, Hemochus, Erichthonus, Mamsek, Alánat, Athaiot, Alatod, &c. With respect to the Coachman, in some old maps he is drawn with a whip in his left hand turned towards the chariot, and is called the charioteer. No doubt its proximity to the former constellation has acquired for it its name. The last we need mention, as of any celebrity, is that of Orion, which is situated on the equator, which runs exactly through its midst. Regel forms its left foot, and the Hare serves for a footstool to the right foot of the hero. Three magnificent stars in the centre of the quadrilateral, which lie in one straight line are called the Rake, or the Three Kings, or the Staff of Jacob, or the Belt. These names have an obvious origin; but the meaning of Orion itself is more doubtful. In the Grecian sphere it is written Ὠρίων, which also means a kind of bird. The allied word ὦρος has very numerous meanings, the only one of which that could be conjectured to be connected with the constellations is a "guardian." The word ἵριον, on the contrary, the diminutive of ὥρος, means a limit, and has been assigned to Jupiter; and in this case may have reference to the constellation being situated on the confines of the two hemispheres. In mythology Orion was an intrepid hunter of enormous size. He was the same personage as Orus, Arion, the Minotaur, and Nimrod, and afterwards became Saturn. Orion is called Tsan in Chinese, which signifies three, and corresponds to the three kings.

Fig. 6.

The Asiatics used not to trace the images of their constellations, but simply joined the component stars by straight lines, and placed at the side the hieroglyphic characters that represented the object they wished to name. Thus joining by five lines the principal stars in Orion, they placed at the side the hieroglyphics representing a man and a sword, from whence the Greeks derived the figure they afterwards drew of a giant armed with a sword.

We must include in this series that brightest of all stars, Sirius. It forms part of the constellation of the Great Dog, and lies to the south of Orion near the extreme limit of our vision into the Southern hemisphere in our latitudes. This star seems to have been intimately connected with Egypt, and to have derived its name—as well as the name of the otherwise unimportant constellation it forms part of—from that country, and in this way:—

The overflowing of the Nile was always preceded by an Etesian wind, which, blowing from north to south about the time of the passage of the sun beneath the stars of the Crab, drove the mists to the south, and accumulated them over the country whence the Nile takes its source, causing abundant rains, and hence the flood. The greatest importance attached to the foretelling the time of this event, so that people might be ready with their provisions and their places of security. The moon was no use for this purpose, but the stars were, for the inundation commenced when the sun was in the stars of the Lion. At this time the stars of the Crab just appeared in the morning, but with them, at some distance from the ecliptic, the bright star Sirius also rose. The morning rising of this star was a sure precursor of the inundation. It seemed to them to be the warning star, by whose first appearance they were to be ready to move to safer spots, and thus acted for each family the part of a faithful dog. Whence they gave it the name of the Dog, or Monitor, in Egyptian Anubis, in Phenician Hannobeach, and it is still the Dog-Star—Caniculus, and its rising commences our dog-days. The intimate connection between the rising of this star and the rising of the Nile led people to call it also the Nile star, or simply the Nile; in Egyptian and Hebrew, Sihor; in Greek, Σοθίς; in Latin, Sirius.

In the same way the Egyptians and others characterised the different days of the year by the stars which first appeared in the evening—as we shall see more particularly with reference to the Pleiades—and in this way certain stars came to be associated in their calendar with variations of temperature and operations of agriculture. They soon took for the cause what was originally but the sign, and thus they came to talk of moist stars, whose rising brought rain, and arid stars, which brought drought. Some made certain plants to grow, and others had influence over animals.

In the case of Egypt, no other so great event could occur as that which the Dog-Star foretold, and its appearance was consequently made the commencement of the year. Instead, therefore, of painting it as a simple star, in which case it would be indistinguishable from others, they gave it shape according to its function and name. When they wished to signify that it opened the year, it was represented as a porter bearing keys, or else they gave it two heads, one of an old man, to represent the passing year, the other of a younger, to denote the succeeding year. When they would represent it as giving warning of the inundation they painted it as a dog. To illustrate what they were to do when it appeared, Anubis had in his arms a stew-pot, wings to his feet, a large feather under his arm, and two reptiles behind him, a tortoise and a duck.

There is also in the celestial sphere a constellation called the Little Dog and Procyon; the latter name has an obvious meaning, as appearing before the Dog-Star.

We cannot follow any farther the various constellations of the northern sphere, nor of the southern. The zodiacal constellations we must reserve for the present, while we conclude by referring to some of the changes in form and position that some of the above-mentioned have undergone in the course of their various representations.

These changes are sometimes very curious, as, for example, in a coloured chart, printed at Paris in 1650, we have the Charioteer drawn in the costume of Adam, with his knees on the Milky Way, and turning his back to the public; the she-goat appears to be climbing over his neck, and two little she-goats seem to be running towards their mother. Cassiopeia is more like King Solomon than a woman. Compare this with the Phenomena of Aratus, published 1559, where Cassiopeia is represented sitting on an oak chair with a ducal back, holding the holy palm in her left hand, while the Coachman, "Erichthon," is in the costume of a minion of Henry the Third of France. Now compare the Cassiopeia of the Greeks with that drawn in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or the Coachman of the same periods, and we can easily see the fancies of the painters have been one of the most fertile sources of change. They seem, too, to have had the fancy in the middle ages to draw them all hideous and turning their backs. Compare, for instance, the two pictures of Andromeda and Hercules, as given below, where those on one side are as heavy and gross as the others are artistic and pretty. Unfortunately for the truth of Andromeda's beauty, as depicted in these designs, she was supposed to be a negress, being the daughter of the Ethiopians, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Not one of the drawings indicates this; indeed they all take after their local beauties.

Fig. 7.

In Flamsteed's chart, as drawn above, the Coachman is a female; and instead of the she-goat being on the back, she holds it in her arms. No one, indeed, from any of the figures of this constellation would ever dream it was intended to represent a coachman.

Fig. 8.

One more fundamental cause of changes has been the confusion of names derived by one nation from another, these having sometimes followed their signification, but at others being translated phonetically. Thus the Latins, in deriving names from the Greek Ἄρκτος, have partly translated it by Ursa, and partly have copied it in the form Arcticus. So also with reference to the three stars in the head of the Bull, called by the Greeks Hyades. The Romans thought it was derived from ὗες, sows, so they called them suculæ, or little sows; whereas the original name was derived from ὕειν, to rain, and signified stars whose appearance indicated the approach of the rainy season.

More curious still is the transformation of the Pearl of the Northern Crown (Margarita Coronæ) in a saint—S. Marguerite.

The names may have had many origins whose signification is lost, owing to their being misunderstood. Thus figurative language may have been interpreted as real, as when a conjunction is called a marriage; a disappearance, death; and a reappearance, a resurrection; and then stories must be invented to fit these words; or the stars that have in one country given notice of certain events lose the meaning of their names when these are used elsewhere; as when a boat painted near the stars that accompany an inundation, becomes the ship Argo; or when, to represent the wind, the bird's wing is drawn; or those stars that mark a season are associated with the bird of passage, the insect or the animal that appears at that time: such as these would soon lose their original signification.

The celestial sphere, therefore, as we now possess it, is not simply a collection of unmeaning names, associated with a group of stars in no way connected with them, which have been imposed at various epochs by capricious imagination, but in most instances, if not in all, they embody a history, which, if we could trace it, would probably lead us to astronomical facts, indicating the where and the when of their first introduction; and the story of their changes, so far as we can trace it, gives us some clue to the mental characteristics or astronomical progress of the people who introduced the alterations.

We shall find, indeed, in a subsequent chapter, that many of our conclusions as to the birth and growth of astronomy are derived from considerations connected with the various constellations, more especially those of the zodiac.

With regard to the date when and the country where the constellations of the sphere were invented, we will here give what evidence we possess, independent of the origin of the zodiac.

In the first place it seems capable of certain proof that they were not invented by the Greeks, from whom we have received them, but adopted from an older source, and it is possible to give limits to the date of introduction among them.

Newton, who attributes its introduction to Musæus, a contemporary of Chiron, remarks, that it must have been settled after the expedition of the Argonauts, and before the destruction of Troy; because the Greeks gave to the constellation names that were derived from their history and fables, and devoted several to celebrate the memory of the famous adventurers known as the Argonauts, and they would certainly have dedicated some to the heroes of Troy, if the siege of that place had happened at the time. We remark that at this time astronomy was in too infant a state in Greece for them to have fixed with so much accuracy the position of the stars, and that we have in this a proof they must have borrowed their knowledge from older cultivators of the science.

The various statements we meet with about the invention of the sphere may be equally well interpreted of its introduction only into Greece. Such, for instance, as that Eudoxus first constructed it in the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C., or that by Clement of Alexandria, that Chiron was the originator.

The oldest direct account of the names of the constellations and their component stars is that of Hesiod, who cites by name in his Works and Days the Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion, and Sirius. He lived, according to Herodotus, about 884 years before Christ.

The knowledge of all the constellations did not reach the Greeks at the same time, as we have seen from the omission by Homer of any mention of the Little Bear, when if he had known it, he could hardly have failed to speak of it. For in his description of the shield of Achilles, he mentions the Pleiades, the Hyades, Orion and the Bear, "which alone does not bathe in the Ocean." He could never have said this last if he had known of the Dragon and Little Bear.

We may then safely conclude that the Greeks received the idea of the constellations from some older source, probably the Chaldeans. They received it doubtless as a sphere, with figured, but nameless constellations; and the Greeks by slight changes adapted them to represent the various real or imaginary heroes of their history. It would be a gracious task, for their countrymen would glory in having their great men established in the heavens. When they saw a ship represented, what more suitable than to name it the ship Argo? The Swan must be Jupiter transformed, the Lyre is that of Orpheus, the Eagle is that which carried away Ganymede, and so on.

This would be no more than what other nations have done, as, for example, the Chinese, who made greater changes still, unless we consider theirs to have had an entirely independent origin.

Fig. 9.

That the celestial sphere was a conception known to others than the Greeks is easily proved. The Arabians, for instance, certainly did not borrow it from them; yet they have the same things represented. Above is a figure of a portion of an Arabian sphere drawn in the eleventh century, where we get represented plainly enough the Great and Little Bears, the Dragon, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, with the Triple Head of Medusa; the Triangle, one of the Fishes, Auriga, the Ram, the Bull obscurely, and the Twins.

There is also the famous so-called zodiac of Denderah, brought from Egypt to Paris. This in reality contains more constellations than those of the zodiac. Most of the northern ones can be traced, with certain modifications. Its construction is supposed to belong to the eighth century B.C. Most conspicuous on it is the Lion, in a kind of barque, recalling the shape of the Hydra. Below it is the calf Isis, with Sirius, or the Dog-Star, on the forehead; above it is the Crab, to the right the Twins, over these along instrument, the Plough, and above that a small animal, the Little Bear, and so we may go on:—all the zodiacal constellations, especially the Balance, the Scorpion, and the Fishes being very clear. This sphere is indeed of later date than that supposed for the Grecian, but it certainly appears to be independent. The remains we possess of older spheres are more particularly connected with the zodiac, and will be discussed hereafter.

From what people the Greeks received the celestial sphere, is a question on which more than one opinion has been formed. One is that it was originated in the tropical latitudes of Egypt. The other, that it came from the Chaldeans, and a third that it came from more temperate latitudes further to the east. The arguments for the last of these are as follow:

There is an empty space of about 90°, formed by the last constellations of the sphere, towards the south pole, that is by the Centaur, the Altar, the Archer, the Southern Fish, the Whale, and the Ship. Now in a systematic plan, if the author were situated near the equator there would be no vacant space left in this way, for in this case the southern stars, attracting as much attention as the northern, would be inevitably inserted in the system of constellations which would be extended to the horizon on all sides. But a country of sufficiently high latitude to be unable to see at any time the stars about the southern pole must be north both of Egypt and Chaldea.

This empty space remained unfilled until the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, except that the star Canopus was included in the constellation Argo, and the river Eridan had an arbitrary extension given to it, instead of terminating in latitude 40°.

Another less cogent argument is derived from the interpretation of the fable of the Phœnix. This is supposed to represent the course of the sun, which commences its growth at the time of its death. A similar fable is found among the Swedes. Now a tropical nation would find the difference of days too little to lead it to invent such a fable to represent it. It must needs have arisen where the days of winter were very much shorter than those of summer.

The Book of Zoroaster, in which some of the earliest notices of astronomy are recorded, states that the length of a summer day is twice as long as that of winter. This fixes the latitude in which that book must have been composed, and makes it 49°. Whence it follows, that to such a place must we look for the origin of these spheres, and not to Egypt or Chaldea.

Plate III.—Chaldean Astronomers.

Diodorus Siculus speaks of a nation in that part of the world, whom he calls Hyperboreans, who had a tradition that their country is the nearest to the moon, on which they discovered mountains like those on the earth, and that Apollo comes there once every nineteen years. This period being that of the metonic cycle of the moon, shows that if this could have really been discovered by them, they must have had a long acquaintance with astronomy.

The Babylonian tablets lead us to the belief that astronomy, and with it the sphere, and the zodiac were introduced by a nation coming from the East, from the mountains of Elam, called the Accadians, before 3000 B.C., and these may have been the nation to whom the whole is due.

On the other hand, the arguments for the Egyptians, or Chaldeans being the originators depend solely on the tradition handed down by many, that one or other are the oldest people in the world, with the oldest civilization, and they have long cultivated astronomy. More precise information, however, seems to render these traditions, to say the least, doubtful, and certainly incapable of overthrowing the arguments adduced above.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ZODIAC.

The zodiac, as already stated, is the course in the heavens apparently pursued by the sun in his annual journey through the stars. Let us consider for a moment, however, the series of observations and reflections that must have been necessary to trace this zone as representing such a course.

First, the diurnal motion of the whole heavens from east to west must have been noticed during the night, and the fact that certain stars never set, but turn in a circle round a fixed point. What becomes then, the next question would be, of those stars that do descend beneath the horizon, since they rise in the same relative positions as those in which they set. They could not be thought to be destroyed, but must complete the part of the circle that is invisible beneath the earth. The possibility of any stars finding a path beneath the earth must have led inevitably to the conception of the earth as a body suspended in the centre with nothing to support it. But leaving this alone, it would also be concluded that the sun went with the stars, and was in a certain position among them, even when both they and it were invisible. The next observations necessary would be that the zodiacal constellations visible during the nights of winter were not the same as those seen in summer, that such and such a group of stars passed the meridian at midnight at a certain time, and that six months afterwards the group exactly opposite in the heavens passed at the same hour. Now since at midnight the sun will be exactly opposite the meridian, if it continues uniformly on its course, it will be among that group of stars that is opposite the group that culminates at midnight, and so the sign of the zodiac the sun occupies would be determined.

This method would be checked by comparisons made in the morning and evening with the constellations visible nearest to the sun at its rising and setting.

The difficulty and indirectness of these observations would make it probable that originally the zodiac would be determined rather by the path of the moon, which follows nearly the same path as the sun, and which could be observed at the same time as, and actually associated with, the constellations. Now the moon is found each night so far to the east of its position on the previous night that it accomplishes the whole circumference in twenty-seven days eight hours. The two nearest whole number of days have generally been reckoned, some taking twenty-eight, and others twenty-seven. The zodiac, or, as the Chinese called it, the Yellow Way, was thus divided into twenty-eight parts, which were called Nakshatras (mansions, or hotels), because the moon remains in each of them for a period of twenty-four hours. These mansions were named after the brightest stars in each, though sometimes they went a long way off to fix upon a characteristic star, as in the sixteenth Indian constellation, Vichaca, which was named after the Northern Crown, in latitude 40°. This arose from the brightness of the moon extinguishing the light of those that lie nearest to it.

This method of dividing the zodiac was very widely spread, and was common to almost all ancient nations. The Chinese have twenty-eight constellations, but the word siou does not mean a group of stars, but simply a mansion or hotel. In the Coptic and ancient Egyptian the word for constellation has the same meaning. They also had twenty-eight, and the same number is found among the Arabians, Persians, and Indians. Among the Chaldeans, or Accadians, we find no sign of the number twenty-eight. The ecliptic or "Yoke of the Sky," with them, as we see in the newly-discovered tablets, was divided into twelve divisions as now, and the only connection that can be imagined between this and the twenty-eight is the opinion of M. Biot, who thinks that the Chinese had originally only twenty-four mansions, four more being added by Chenkung (B.C. 1100), and that they corresponded with the twenty-four stars, twelve to the north and twelve to the south, that marked the twelve signs of the zodiac among the Chaldeans. But under this supposition the twenty-eight has no reference to the moon, whereas we have every reason to believe that it has.