60 AsTER HIsToRY 
and adopting it as an address to Keats, prefixed the Greek lines to 
the original Pisa edition, 1821, of his Adonais. 
From its use as metaphor, for one of beauty or fame, Aster 
passed among the Greeks into use as an occasional personal name. 
Such an Aster in Sparta was father, says Herodotus,* of that 
‘“Anchinolus, son of Aster—a man of note among the citizens ” 
whom the Spartans sent at the head of an army against Athens 
with orders to drive out the Pisistride. Another Aster was put 
to death by Philip of Macedon, and of him Plutarch tells us, 
“He was a skillful archer, one of the garrison of Methone, who 
when Philip was besieging the city, aimed an arrow at him 
with this inscription on it ‘ doryo Odinnw Oavdaorpor mépitee BEhoc,’ 
or ‘A star sends a deadly dart upon Philip,—and deprived him 
of aneye. Philip sent back the arrow into the town with the 
inscription on it “darépa Dihenzoc, jy idpy zpspyiostac. When 
the place was taken Philip crucified Aster.” 
Most of the Greek personal star names were however given 
some terminational addition: as Asteria, mother of Hecate, 
Asterope, wife of Aeacus, Asteropea, daughter of Pelias, Asterodia, 
wife of Endymion, Astraea, goddess of justice, Astraeus the Titan, 
Asterius the giant of Miletus, whose body lies ten cubits long 
under its sepulchre in the isle of Asterius ; Asterion the river god 
of Argolis, and his daughter Astraea; and a whole series of less 
mythic men, from Asterion king of Crete who espouséd Europa, 
and that other Asterion son of Minos whom Theseus slew, and 
Asterion (son of Cometes) the Argonaut who was immortalized, 
about 600 B. C., as a charioteer on the chest of Cypselus,f—to 
Asterion the sculptor, son of Aeschylus, 
Aster appears also as a plant name, Apuleius Platonicus, as 
ee nonym of Plantago major; from confusion with Aster Atticus 
it may be, on account of similarity of medical use; or indepen- 
dently, from the radiately spreading leaves. 
Aster also appears as an animal name, Oppian using it for 4 
bird bearing a starlike circle or spot on its head; and more often 
it occurs as a starfish, dato Paidaoros ; in Aristotle, Plutarch, Op- 
pian ; in Pliny ; and in Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 680 (fide Dindorf’s 
Thesaurus Stephani, Paris, 1831). 
* Rawlinson’s Herodotus, 3 : 268. 
} Pausanias, edn. Siebel, 6: 31. 
