94 COSMOS. 



sages in the Commentary of Simplicius (p. 122), totfie eighth 

 book of the De Codo of Aristotle, in Hyginus, Diodorus, and 

 Theon of Smyrna, it certainly was only its position, and the 

 length of its orbit, which raised it above the other planets. 

 The descriptive names, however old and Chaldean they may 

 be, were not very frequently employed by the Greek and Ro- 

 man writers until the time of the Ceesars. Their diffusion 

 is connected with the influence of astrology. The planetary 

 signs are, with the exception of the disk of the Sun and the 

 Moon's crescent upon Egyptian monuments, of very recent 

 origin ; according to Letronne's researches,^ they would riot 



120.) Wuotan, Odirm, is, according to Jacob Grimm, the all-powerful, 

 all-penetrating being : ' qui omnia permeat,' as Lucan says of Jupiter." 

 Compare, with reference to the Indian names of the days of the week, 

 Budha and Buddha, and the week-days in general, the observations of 

 my brother, in his work Ueber die Vcrbindungcn zwischen Java itnd In- 

 dien (Kawi Sprache, bd. i., p. 187-190). 



* Compare Letronne, Svr V Amulette de Jules Cesar et les Signes Plan- 

 taires,\ii the Revue Archeologique, Annee III., 1846, p. 261. Salmasius 

 considered the oldest planetary sign for Jupiter to be the initial letter 

 of Zevf, that of Mars a contraction of the cognomen dovpioc. The sun- 

 disk was rendered almost unrecognizable by an oblique and triangular 

 bundle of rays issuing from it. As the Earth was not included among 

 the planets in any of the ancient systems, except, perhaps, the Philo- 

 Pythagorean, Letronne considers the planetary sign of the Earth " to 

 have come into use after the time of Copernicus." The remarkable 

 passage in Olympiodorus, on the consecration of the metals to individ- 

 ual planets, is taken from Proclus, and was traced by Boekh (it is in 

 p. 14 of the Basil edition, and at p. 30 of Schneider's edition). Com- 

 pare, for Olympiodorus, Aristot., Meteorol., ed. Ideler, torn, ii., p. 163. 

 The scholium to Pindar (Isthm.*), in which the metals are compared 

 with the planets, also belongs to the new Platonic school. Lobeck 

 (Aglaophamus in Orph., torn, ii., p. 936). In accordance with the same 

 connection of ideas, planetary signs by-and-by became signs of the met- 

 als ; indeed, some (as Mercurius, for quicksilver, the argentum vivum 

 and hydrargyrus of Pliny) became names of metals. In the valuable 

 collection of Greek manuscripts of the Paris Library are two manu- 

 scripts on the cabalistic, or so-called sacred art, of which one (No. 2250) 

 mentions the metals consecrated to the planets without planetary signs; 

 the other, however (No. 2329), which, according to the writing, is of 

 the fifteenth century (a kind of chemical dictionary), combines the 

 names of the metals with a small number of planetary signs. (Hofer, 

 Histoire de la Chimie, torn, i., p. 250.) In the Paris manuscript No. 

 2250, quicksilver is attributed to Mercury, and silver to the Moon, 

 while, on the contrary, in No. 2329, quicksilver belongs to the Moon, 

 and tin to Jupiter. Olympiodorus has ascribed the latter metal to Mer- 

 cury. Thus indefinite were the mystic relations of the cosmical bodies 

 to the metallic powers. 



This is also the appropriate place to mention the planetary hours and 

 the planetary days in the small seven-day period (the week), concern- 

 ing the antiquity and diffusion of which among remote nations more 



