PREFACE Xlll 



Many illustrations of this theory of mine will be found 

 in the pages of this Glossary^. Suffice it to say here, in 

 briefest illustration, that the Eagle which attacks the Swan 

 and is in turn defeated by it, is, according to my view, the 

 constellation Aquila, which rises in the East immediately 

 after Cygnus, but, setting in the West, goes down a little 

 while before that more northern constellation ; that Haliaetus 

 and Ciris are the Sun and Moon in opposition, which rise 

 and set alternately, like the opposite constellations of Scorpio 

 and Orion with which the poet compares them. 



Among many other opinions and testimonies to the same 

 effect, let us listen to the words of a Father of the Church : 

 * The ancients believed that the legends about Osiris and 

 Isis, and all other mythological fables [of a kindred sort], 

 have reference either to the Stars, their configuration, their 

 risings and their settings, or to the wax and wane of the 

 Moon, or to the cycle of the Sun, or to the diurnal and 

 nocti-diurnal hemispheres ^.' 



The proof and the acceptance of such a theory as this 

 are linked with considerations far-reaching in their interest. 

 The theory has its bearing on our new knowledge of the 

 orientation of temple-walls; it helps to explain what Quintilian 

 meant when he said that acquaintance with Astronomy was 

 essential to an understanding of the Poets ; the wide-spread 

 astronomic knowledge which it presupposes may account for 

 the singular interest in and admiration of the didactic poem 

 of Aratus, the poem translated by Germanicus and Cicero 

 and quoted by St. Paul ; and the whole hypothesis points to 

 a broad distinction between two great orders of Myth. 



Myths are spontaneous or literary, natural or artificial. 

 Some come to us from the Childhood of Religion and the 

 Childhood of the World ; dream-pictures as it were from 

 the half-opening eyes of awakening intelligence, archaic traces 

 of the thoughts and ways of primitive and simple men ; these 



Gcmmis Astrifcris, 1750 ; and a kindred but exaggerated development, in regard to 

 legend, of the same hypothesis forms the method of Dupuis. 



* Cf. pp. 8, 28, 31, 63, 107, 121, 132, 192, &c. 



' Euseb. Pr. Ev. iii. c. 4. 



