ZODIACAL SIGNS. 119 



groups ; the former mentions the constellation of the Bear 

 (" otherwise known as the Celestial Wain, and which alone 

 never sinks into the bath of Oceanos"), Bootes, and the Dog 

 of Orion ; the latter speaks of Sirius and Arcturus, and both 

 refer to the Pleiades, the Hyades, and Orion.* Homer's twice 

 repeated assertion that the constellation of the Bear alone 

 never sinks into the ocean, merely allows us to infer that in 

 his age the Greek sphere did not yet comprise the constella- 

 tions of Draco, Cepheus, and Ursa Minor, which likewise do 

 not set. The statement does not prove a want of acquaint- 

 ance with the existence of the separate stars forming these 

 three catasterisms, but simply an ignorance of their arrange 

 ment into constellations. A long and frequently misunder- 

 stood passage of Strabo (lib. i., p. 3, Casaub.) on Homer, II., 

 xviii., 485-489, specially proves a fact important to the 

 question that in the Greek sphere the stars were only grad- 

 ually arranged in constellations. Homer has been unjustly 

 accused of ignorance, says Strabo, as if he had known of only 

 one instead of two Bears. It is probable that the lesser one 

 had not yet been arranged in a separate group, and that the 

 name did not reach the Hellenes until after the Phoenicians 

 had specially designated this constellation, and made use of 

 it for the purposes of navigation. All the scholia on Homer, 

 Hyginus, and Diogenes Lacrtius ascribe its introduction to 

 Thales. In the Pseudo-Eratosthenian work \o which we 

 have already referred, the lesser Bear is called ^olvLkt] (or, 

 as it were, the Phoenician guiding star). A century later 

 (01. 71), Oleostratus of Tenedos enriched the sphere with the 

 constellations of Sagittarius, To^ottj^, and Aries, Kpioq. 



The introduction of the Zodiac into the ancient Greek 

 sphere coincides, according to Letronne, with this period of 

 the domination of the Pisistratidae. Eudemus of Rhodes, one 

 of the most distinguished pupils of Aristotle, and author of a 

 " History of Astronomy," ascribes the introduction of this zo- 

 diacal belt (?) tov %o)diaitov dta^cjaig, also ^wtdYo^ kvkXch;) to 

 ffinopides of Chios, a cotemporary of Anaxagoras.f The 



* Ideler, Unters. uber die Stcrnnamen, s. xi., 47, 139, 144, 243 Le- 

 tronne, Sur VOrigine du Zodiaqve Grec, 1340, p. 25. 



t Letronne, op. cit., p. 25 ; and Carteron, Analyse des Rechercn.es de 

 M. Letronne sur les Repr6sentations Zodiacales, 1843, p. 119. "It is 

 very doubtful whether Eudoxus (01. 103) ever made use of the word 

 Zodiaicor. We first meet with it in Euclid, and in the Commentary of 

 Hipparchus on Aratus (01. 160). The name ecliptic, tK^einriKoc, is 

 also very recent." Compare Martin in the Commentary tO'Theonis 

 Smi/rncri Platonici Liber de Astronomia, 1 849, p. 50, CO. 



