NEW THEORY OF ACHILLES' SHIELD. 315 



thy head ; ' and Serpentarius, or the serpent-bearer, is 

 the promised seed. 



Of course, if we accept these views, we have no 

 difficulty in understanding that a poet so ancient as 

 Homer should refer to the constellations which still 

 appear upon celestial spheres. And, in any case, the 

 mere question of antiquity presents, as we have already 

 shown, little difficulty. 



But there is a difficulty in one respect, a notice of 

 which must close this paper, already carried far beyond 

 the limits I had proposed to myself: It may be 

 thought remarkable that heroes of Greek mythology, 

 as Perseus and Orion, should be placed by Homer, or 

 even by Aratus, in spheres which are undoubtedly of 

 eastern origin. 



Now it may be remarked, first, of Homer, that many 

 acute critics consider the whole story of the f Iliad ' to 

 be, in reality, merely an adaptation of an eastern narra- 

 tive to Greek scenes and names. It is pointed out, 

 that, whereas the Catalogue in Book II. reckons up- 

 wards of 100,000 men, only 10,000 fought at Mara- 

 thon ; and, whereas there are counted no less than 

 1200 ships in the Catalogue, there were but 271 at 

 Artemisium, and at Salamis but 378. However this 

 may be, we have the distinct evidence of Herodotus 

 that the Greek mythology was derived originally from 

 foreign sources. He says, ( All the names of the gods 

 in Greece were brought from Egypt,' an opinion in 

 which Diodorus and other eminent authorities concur. 



