THE SIDEREAL UNIVERSE. 727 



about 800 years before Christ, this poet speaks of the 

 Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion, and Sirius. 



The Odyssey and Iliad are barren in respect to astro- 

 nomical allusions. Homer, however, relates that Ulysses 

 steered his ship guiding his course by the Pleiades and 

 Bootes; and the prince of poets, when he describes the 

 shield of Achilles, mentions several constellations, and 

 among them the Great Bear, "which alone never sinks in 

 the waves of the ocean. " 



The invention of almost all the constellations is gener- 

 ally attributed to the Greeks. As to those which lie near 

 the equator, and which are called zodiacal, the learned 

 consider that they emblematically recall the Egyptian 

 divinities. The Virgin represents Isis, and the Goat 

 Mendes. The Kam is consecrated to Jupiter Ammon, the 

 Bull is only the emblem of the god Apis, and the Lion 

 that of Osiris.^ 



This division of the celestial sphere, though very ancient, 

 has been successively adopted by the learned of all epochs, 



said to have lived. In the book of Job allusion is made to the constellations of 

 Orion, the Pleiades, and the Hyades. The grouping of stars thus goes back 

 nearly three thousand three hundred years. — Arago, Astronomie Populaire, t. i. 

 p. 346. 



We also find on the monuments of ancient Egypt indications of the grouping 

 of constellations. But we now know that many of these monuments are much 

 more recent than was thought at first. 



^ Among the Greeks the Bull recalled to mind the carrying away of Europa 

 by .Jupiter. The sun, when he arrived at the sign of the Crab, indicated, by his 

 moving backwards to the equator, the way in which this crustacean progresses. 



According to M. J. Coulier, the Egyptians, by the sign of the Lion, intended 

 to indicate the great heats which occur towards the summer solstice, a time when 

 the lions are very abundant and very dangerous in Ethiopia. With the Egyptians 

 the Virgin was only the emblem of the goddess Isis. The Balance anciently in- 

 dicated the place where the sun is found at the autumnal equinox, tlie time when 

 the days and nights are of equal length. The sign of the Arclier doubtless recalls 

 the season for hunting, for people abandon themselves to it with more ardour at 

 the period when the sun reaches this sign. — J. Coulier, Lictionnaire cP Astronomie, 

 Paris, 1824. 



