56 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



Homer in his Eastern travels visited imposing 

 temples devoted to astronomical observation and 

 star-worship, and that nearly every line in both 

 descriptions is borrowed from a poem in whrch 

 he described a temple of this sort, its domed 

 zodiac, and those illustrations of the labors of 

 different seasons and of military or judicial pro- 

 cedures which the astrological proclivities of 

 star-worshipers led them to associate with the 

 different constellations. For the arguments on 

 which this theory is based I have not hei - e 

 space. They are dealt with in the essay from 

 which I have quoted. One point only I need 

 touch upon here, besides those I have mentioned 

 already. It may be objected that the description 

 of a zodiac temple has nothing to connect it with 

 the subject of the " Iliad." This is certainly true > 

 but no one who is familiar with Homer's man- 

 ner can doubt that he would work in, if he saw 

 the opportunit} - , a poem on some subject outside 

 that of the " Iliad," so modifying the language that 

 the description would correspond with the sub- 

 ject in hand. There are many passages, though 

 none of such length, in both the " Iliad " and the 

 " Odyssey," which seem thus to have been brought 

 into the poem ; and other passages not exactly 

 of this kind yet show that Homer was not insen- 

 sible to the advantage of occasionally using mem- 

 ory instead of invention. 



Any one who considers attentively the aspect 

 of the constellation Draco in the heavens, will per- 

 ceive that the drawing of the head in the maps is 

 not correct ; the head is no longer pictured as it 

 must have been conceived by those who first formed 

 the constellation. The two bright stars, Beta 

 and Gamma,- are now placed on a head in profile. 

 Formerly they marked the two eyes. I would 

 not lay stress on the description of the Dragon 

 in the shield of Hercules, " with eyes oblique 

 retorted, that askant shot gleaming fire;" for 

 the reader may not be prepared to accept my 

 opinion that the description related to the con- 

 stellation Draco. But the description of the 

 constellation itself by Aratus suffices to show 

 that the two bright stars I have named marked 

 the eyes of the imagined monster — in fact, Aratus's 

 account singularly resembles that given in the 

 shield of Hercules. " Swol'n is his neck," says 

 Aratus of the Dragon — 



" . . . . Eyes charged with sparkling fire 

 His crested head illume. As if in ire 

 To Helice he turns his foaming jaw, 

 And darts his tongue, barbed with a blazing star." 



And the Dragon's head with sparkling eyes can 

 be recognized to this day, so soon as this change 



is made in its configuration, whereas no one can 

 recognize the remotest resemblance to a dragon's 

 head in profile. The star barbing the Dragon's 

 tongue would be Xi of the Dragon according to 

 Aratus's account, for so only would the eyes be 

 turned toward Helice the Bear. But, when Ara- 

 tus wrote, the practice of separating the constella- 

 tions from each other had been adopted ; in fact, 

 he derived his knowledge of them chiefly from 

 Eudoxus the astronomer and mathematician, who 

 certainly would not have allowed the constellations 

 to be intermixed. In the beginning there are rea- 

 sons for believing it was different ; and if a group 

 of stars resembled any known object it would be 

 called after that object, even though some of the 

 stars necessary to make up the figure belonged 

 already to some other figure. This being remem- 

 bered, we can have no difficulty in retorting the 

 Dragon's head more naturally — not to the star 

 Xi of the Dragon, but to the star Iota of Her- 

 cules. The four stars are situated thus, * * the 



larger ones representing the eyes, and so far as 

 the head is concerned it is a matter of indiffer- 

 ence whether the lower or the upper small star 

 be taken to represent the tongue. But, as any 

 one will see who looks at these stars when the 

 Dragon is best placed for (ordinary non-telescop- 

 ic) observation, the attitude of the animal is far 

 more natural when the star Iota of Hercules 

 marks the tongue, for then the creature is situ- 

 ated like a winged serpent hovering above the 

 horizon and looking downward; whereas, when 

 the star Xi marks the tongue, the hovering 

 Dragon is looking upward and is in an unnatu- 

 rally constrained position. (I would not, indeed, 

 claim to understand perfectly all the ways of 

 dragons ; still it may be assumed that a dragon 

 hovering above the horizon would rather look 

 downward in a natural position than upward in 

 an awkward one.) 



The star Iota of Hercules marks the heel of 

 this giant, called the Kneeler (Engonasin) from 

 time immemorial. He must have been an im- 

 portant figure on the old zodiac temples, and not 

 improbably his presence there as one of the 

 largest and highest of the human figures may 

 have caused a zodiac dome to be named after Her- 

 cules. The Dome of Hercules would come near 

 enough to the title, " The Shield of Hercules," 

 borne by the fragmentary poem dealt with above. 

 The foot of the kneeling man was represented on 

 the head of the dragon, the dragon having hold 

 of the heel. And here, again, some imagine that 



