DISTRIBUTION OF THE FIXED STARS. 159 



changing aspect of the starry heavens, successive constellations 

 are always coming to view. A slight degree of attention suf- 

 fices to show that these are the same which had before vanished 

 in the west ; and that the stars which are opposite to the sun, 

 setting at its rise, and rising at its setting, had about half-a- 

 year earlier been seen in its vicinity. From the time of 

 Hesiod to Eudoxus, and from the latter to Aratus and Hip- 

 parchus, Hellenic literature abounds in metaphoric allusions to 

 the disappearance of the stars amid the sun's rays, and their ap- 

 pearance in the morning twilight, their heliacal setting and 

 rising. An attentive observation of these phenomena yielded 

 the earliest elements of chronology, which were simply ex- 

 pressed in numbers, while mythology, in accordance with the 

 more cheerful or gloomy tone of national character, continued 

 simultaneously to rule the heavens with arbitrary despotism. 



The primitive Greek sphere, (I here again, as in the history 

 of the physical contemplation of the universe, 25 follow the in- 

 vestigations of my intellectual friend Letronne,) had become 

 gradually filled with constellations, without being in any de- 

 gree considered with relation to the ecliptic. Thus Homer and 

 Hesiod designate by name individual stars and 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. 26 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 constellations of Draco, Cepheus 

 and Ursa Minor, which likewise do not set. The statement 

 does not prove a want of acquaintance with the existence of 



25 Cosmos, p. 533. 



26 Ideler, Unters. uber die Sternnamen, s. xi. 47, 139, 144, 

 243 ; Letronne Sur V Origine du Zodiaque Grec, 1840, p. 25. 



