58 Aster HIsTory 
The word Aster on passing into Latin was used chiefly of the 
flower, not for a star, for which the Romans had already their 
own name sée//a. 
Aster in modern colloquial Greek, while still used for a star, 
is not used for any flower, Aftica; being replaced by dorpov in 
the sense of the flower. It has been used in French as Astere, 
“the Aster,’(Martyn, 1797). 
Stars of the sky find a quick response in the poetry of most 
peoples, but especially from that of the ancient Greeks; as in 
Homer, Iliad, xi., 62. 
060g 0 &% vegéwy dvagatvetat odltoz datyp. 
“Such as the star of fate, Sirius, when it shines forth 
from the clouds.” 
So in sug panels line of the Iliad, viii., 555 or 551. 
i oe év ovpave ALOT OO. Qasiyy apet oshyyny 
which oe rendered literally 
‘* As when in heaven the stars about the moon 
Look beautiful,’’ 
and which Eustathius, the great Homeric commentator of the 12th 
century, illustrated by citing Sappho’s immortal lines about the 
stars, which begin 
‘The stars around the lovely moon,’”— 
*Aatépes psy dpge xddav aehdvvay, 
This remained still true of the Greek mind two thousand years 
after, and recounting the objects of nature that affect us most, we 
find the star still mentioned first of all; as in a Greek 16th cen- 
tury poem* by a Cretan beginning 
Ma 7 dat7%0,—where the order of mention is star, 
sky, sunrise, sunset, earth, sun and moon.—The same preéminence 
remains in modern Greek ; the star is the source of the first rhym- 
ing distich, “4z bla 7 dick, z’odoavod, among Rodd’s series, 
which he translates. 
Of all the stars in heaven, but one is like to thee 
The star that comes at midnight and makes all others dim. 
Fe es ae 
* The Lrotocritus Vincones Cornaro, quoted as an early example of rhyming 15- 
syllable meter, Rodd, 2 
