96 COSMOS. 



transcribers have, however, added them to Gnostic and al- 

 chemistic manuscripts ; scarcely, in any case, to the oldest 



to the planetary series (the sequence of their distances from each oth- 

 er), together with the planetary hours and days, belongs to an entirely 

 different period of advanced and speculative culture. 



With reference to the naming of the individual week-days after plan- 

 ets, and the arrangement and succession of the planets 



Saturn, Venus, 



Jupiter, Mercury, and 



Mars, Moon, 



Sun, 



situated, according to the most ancient and widely-diffused belief (Gem- 

 inus, Element. Astr., p. 4; Cicero, Somn. Scip., cap. 4; Firmicus, ii., 4, 

 Edmond's translation, ed. Bohn, p, 294-298), between the sphere of 

 fixed stars and the immovable earth as a central body, there have been 

 three views put forward: one derived from musical intervals; another 

 from the astrological names of the planetary hours ; a third from the 

 distribution of each three decans, or three planets, which are the rulers 

 (domini) of these decans among the twelve signs of the zodiac. The 

 first two hypotheses are met with in the remarkable passage of Dio 

 Cassius, in which he endeavors to explain (lib. xxxvii., cap. 17) why 

 the Jews, according to their laws, celebrated the day of Saturn (our 

 Saturday). " If," says he, " the musical interval which is called did, 

 Teaadpuv, the fourth, is applied to the seven planets according to their 

 times of revolution, and Saturn, the outermost of all, taken as the start- 

 ing-point, the next which occurs is the fourth (the Sun), then the sev- 

 enth (the Moon), and in this way the planets are encountered in tho 

 same order of succession in which their names have been applied to 

 the week-days." A commentary upon this passage is given by Vincent, 

 Sar les Manuscrits Grecs relative a la Musiqite, 1847, p. 138. Compare 

 also Lobeck, Aglaophamus, in Orph., p. 941-946. The second expla- 

 nation of Dio Cassius is borrowed from the periodical series of the plan- 

 etary hours. " If," he adds, " the hours of the day and the night are 

 counted from the first (hour of the day), and this ascribed to Saturn, 

 the following to Jupiter, the third to Mars, the fourth to the Sun, the 

 fifth to Venus, the sixth to Mercury, the seventh to the Moon, always 

 recommencing from the beginning, it will be found, if all the twenty- 

 four hours are gone through, that the first hour of the following day 

 coincides with the Sun, the first of the third with the Moon; in short, 

 the first hour of any one day coincides with the planet after which the 

 day is named." In the same way, Paulus Alexandriuus, an astronomic- 

 al mathematician of the fourth century, calls the ruler of each week- 

 day that planet whose name agrees with the first hour of the particular 

 day. 



These modes of explaining the names of week-days have hitherto 

 been very generally considered as the more correct; but Letronne en- 

 tertains a third explanation the distribution of any three planets over 

 a sign of the zodiac which he considers to be the most adequate, upon 

 the evidence of the long-neglected zodiacal circle of Bianchini, pre- 

 served in the Louvre, to which I myself directed the attention of ar- 

 chaeologists in 1812, on account of the remarkable combination of a 

 Greek and Kirgisch-Tartar zodiac. (Letronne, Observ. Crit. et Archf.ol. 

 sur I'Objet. des Representations Zodiacales, 1824, p. 97-99.) This dis- 

 tribution of planets among the 36 decans of the Dodecatomeria is pre- 



