KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Feb., 1904. 



But it is not necessary to examine her arguments in 

 detail. The objections to her fundamental principle are 

 too serious. In the first place we may be very confident 

 that the starting point of the original year was not fixed 

 at a solstice. The difficulty to the first beginners in 

 astronomical observation of determining the solstice 

 must have been very great. For more than an entire 

 month the sun does not alter its declination by a single 

 degree ; its places of rising and setting, its height at noon, 

 show scarcely any change. But when we turn to the 

 equinoxes we find a very different state of things. At 

 that time three days make a greater difference in the 

 sun's declination than thirty at the solstice. The height 

 of the sun at noon changes from one day to the next by 

 three-fourths of the sun's diameter. The most careless 

 observers could not fail to recognise that either equinox 

 was a point of time which could be determined with very 

 great ease and precision. At these times of the year, too, 

 and at these alone, the place of sunrise is precisely oppo- 

 site the place of sunset. By half-a-dozen methods, all of 

 the greatest simplicity, the time of the equinox could be 

 fixed to a day. 



Then it is not the case, as Miss Plunket avers, that 

 Aries was the traditional constellation to lead the year. 

 It is curious that some of the traditions which speak of a 

 time when Taurus opened the year are expressly 

 quoted by Miss Plunket. The familiar lines of Virgil 

 in the first Georgic are an instance. Prof. Sayce, in the 

 very same paper as that which Miss Plunket takes as her 

 authority, quotes Ernest de Bunsen, "That Scorpio was 

 taken as the starting point of the primitive Calendar," 

 and Scorpio, of course, holds the same position with 

 regard to the autumnal equinox that Taurus, not Aries, 

 does to the vernal. 



Miss Plunket, at the beginning of her fourth chapter, 

 recognises that the great importance of Tauric symbolism 

 in Median art seems to point to the fact that when the 

 equinoctial year was first established, the spring equinoc- 

 tial point was in the constellation Taurus, and she 

 quotes Cumont to show that the great festivities in 

 honour of Mithra were, asa rule, celebrated at the season 

 of the spring equinox. Most opportunely a translation 

 by Mr. Thomas J. McCormack has just appeared of 

 Cumont's " Mysteries of Mithra," in which he gives a 

 clear and most interesting account of the cult of Mithraism 

 and of its distribution in Europe." The illustrations of 

 the book render one fact of Mithraism very conspicuous ; 

 its intimate connection with the constellational figures, 

 and especially with the signs of the Zodiac. In par- 

 ticular, the Bull, the Scorpion, the Lion, and the Man, 

 the four constellations of the colures when Taurus held 

 the vernal equinox, are the great Mithraic symbols. Yet 

 most of these symbols extant were actually carved in the 

 second century a.d., when their appropriateness to the 

 four seasons had been completely lost. 



But the vital objection to Miss Plunket's theory is that 

 it assigns to the constellations an antiquity greater by 

 some thousands of years than they can possibly possess. 

 This is a point I have already taken up elsewhere, and I 

 need only summarise the arguments here : — 



(i) The centre of the space not included in the 

 ancient constellations must have been the south pole 

 of the period when they were designed. This gives 

 roughly the date 2H00 n.c. 



(2) This date accortls with the tradition of the 



• " The Mysteries olMithra " tSy t'ranz Cumont. Translated 

 by T. J. McCormack. (Chicago : Tlie Open Court Publishing Co. 

 London ; Kegan Paul.) 



four Royal stars — Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares, 

 Fomalhaut — marking the original colures. 



(3) It gives the only symmetrical position for the 

 actual constellations of the Zodiac. 



(4) The ascending signs at this date faced east, 

 the descending west. 



(5) As shown above, there are traditions of Taurus 

 leading the' Zodiac; but there are none of Gemini, 

 Cancer, or of any earlier sign. 



Thus as to season and constellation and date, we must 

 find Miss Plunket in error. But beside this error in prin- 

 ciple there are several errors in detail, either as to astro- 

 nomical fact or in computation. 



Thus, for example, we find in the preface, p. viii., the 

 times when the equinox entered Aries and Taurus, quoted 

 from Prof. Sayce, as 2540 and 4698 b.c. respectively, 

 but on p. 66 and elsewhere these dates are given as 2000 

 and 4000. These are not the only instances of a consider- 

 able looseness in dealing with the subject of precession. 

 Thus, on page 37, Miss Plunket speaks of the stars of 

 Aries attaining the southern meridian at midnight, two 

 months after the summer solstice, between the years 1 100 

 and 1400 B.C. Actually the constellation Pisces held that 

 position. On pp. 166 and 167 the star Spica is said to 

 have been in opposition to the sun on the 14th night of 

 the first month at the time of the Exodus. This fixes 

 the date of the Exodus as about 1300 years after Christ, 

 i.e., in the time of the Plantagenets ! 



There should be no very great difficulty in understand- 

 ing the effect of precession. If we take the entire pre- 

 cessional period as 25,800 years, we find that the longitude 

 of any star must increase one degree in 7i§ years. It is 

 then a matter of the very simplest arithmetic to find out 

 what star at any time was on the equinoctial colure, that 

 is to say in zero longitude, and what were the longitudes 

 of other stars. 



So far from Aries having been the equinoctial sign as 

 early as 2540 b.c, the first zodiacal star of the constella- 

 tion about which we can be at all sure did not hold that 

 position till 1650 b.c. The equinoctial point was still in 

 the Pleiades — undoubtedly a portion of Taurus — as late 

 as 2200 B.C., and iVldebaran, " the eye of the Bull," and 

 the very central star of the constellation, was on the 

 colure 3000 B.C. The earliest undoubted bright star of 

 Taurus, Zeta Tauri, the tip of the southern horn, was in 

 zero longitude 4080 b.c 



We can see at once why we have no tradition of the 

 constellation of the Twins opening the year. The con- 

 stellations were certainly mapped out much later than 

 40S0 B.C. But the real difficulty, and it is a very impor- 

 tant one, is to explain how it was that Aries came to be 

 looked upon as the first sign at a comparatively early 

 date. If we take the date 1650 b.c, for instance, the 

 sun was then in conjunction with Delta Arietis (a star 

 but little brighter than the 5th magnitude) at the spring 

 equinox. But it was also in conjunction at the same 

 date with Xi Tauri and Omicron Tauri, considerably 

 brighter stars, and for practically one full month after 

 the spring ecjuinox the sun would be travelling through 

 Taurus. It is not possible to conceive that at this 

 period, when men had always from the very first begin- 

 ning of astronomy been accustomed to regard Taurus as 

 the first sign, they decided to give the primacy to Aries. 

 It would be so easy for them still to consider Taurus as 

 reaching to this point, which indeed it overlaps, and on 

 any view, even if they considered the sun as in Aries on 

 the actual first day of spring, four days later it would be 

 unmistakably in Taurus. Practically the sun at the 

 spring equinox was still at the first point of Taurus, and 

 there was no need to make any change of the first sign. 



