414 COSMOS. 



(Jupiter and Mars) originated, as Salmasms has shown, 

 with his ordinary acuteness, from letters, were very different 

 from ours; the present form reaches scarcely beyond the 



logical phantasms. It may, therefore, be assumed, with 

 Ideler, that the week has originated from the length of the 

 synodic months, the fourth part of which amounts, on the 

 average, to 7-f- days ; that, on the contrary, references to the 

 planetary series, (the sequence of their distances from each 

 other,) 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 planets, 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 (Geminus, Elem. Astr. p. 4 ; Cicero, Somn. Scip. 

 cap. 4 ; Firmicus, ii. 4 ; Edmond's translation, ed. Bohn, 

 pp. 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 (domlni] 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 

 endeavours to explain (lib. xxxvii. cap. 17,) why the Jews, 

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

 day). " If," says he, " the musical interval which is called Bia 

 reaffdpwv, the lourth, is applied to the seven planets according 

 to their times of revolution, and Saturn, the outermost of all, 

 taken as the starting-point ; the next, which occurs in tht 

 fourth (the Sun), then the seventh (the Moon); and in this 

 way the planets are encountered in the same order of succea- 



