1 02 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE TJRANOLOGICAL PORTION 



and more towards the setting sun, until at last they are losf; in 

 his beams, and disappear in the twilight ; on the other hand, 

 the stars which shone in the morning sky before sunrise 

 recede more and more from the Sun. In the constantly 

 changing spectacle of the starry heavens, fresh and fresh 

 constellations show themselves. With some degree of 

 attention it is easily recognised that they were the same 

 which had before become invisible in the West ; and that, 

 in the course of about half a year, those stars, which before 

 were seen near the Sun, are now opposite to it, setting when 

 it rises, and rising when it sets. From Hesiod to Eudoxus, 

 and from Eudoxus to Aratus and Hipparchus, the literature 

 of the Greeks is full of allusions to the disappearance of 

 stars in the Sun's rays (their heliacal setting), and their 

 becoming visible in the morning twilight (their heliacal 

 rising). The accurate observation of these phenomena 

 presented the first elements of chronology elements which 

 were simply expressed in numbers; while at the same time, 

 mythology, varying in its imaginations with the gay or 

 gloomy dispositions of the national mind, exercised without 

 restraint its capricious sway in the fictions connected with 

 the bright bodies of space. 



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

 history of the Physical Contemplation of the Universe, ( 191 ) 

 the researches of my too early departed friend, the illus- 

 trious Letronne) became gradually filled with constellations, 

 without their having been in the commencement referred in 

 any way to the Ecliptic. Thus Homer and Hesiod dis- 

 tinguish different groups of stars, as well as single stars, by 

 particular names : Homer notices the She Bear (" else called 

 the Wain of Heaven, and which alone never descends to 



