EMBLEM OF THE CRAB IN RELATION TO THE SIGN CANCER. 605 



Haud secus ac tacitam Luna regnante per Arcton 

 Sidereae cedunt acies, cum fratre retuso 

 Aemulus adversis flagraverit ignibus orbis. 

 Tunc jubar Arcturi languet, tunc fulva Leonis 

 Ira perit. Plaustro jam raro intermicat Arctos 

 Indignata tegi, jam caligantibus armis 

 Debilis Orion dextram miratur inermem. 



The Crab is associated with the Lunar crescent on various coins, e.g., of Consentia 

 and Terina, both towns of the Bruttii, and with the head of Selene in the zodiacal 

 series of Antoninus Pius. It figures more conspicuously in the symbolism of the 

 Ephesian Diana, on whose images it is frequently seen as the pendant or centre- 

 piece of a necklace, lying on the bosom of the goddess (cf. Cl. Menetreius, Symb. 

 Dian. Ephes., Romse, 1657), where it not only figures (with its horns curved crescent- 

 wise) as a lunar emblem of a lunar goddess and in suggestion of the goddess's 

 astrological house, but may perhaps remind us also that Cancer, in the astrological 

 distribution of the body, was guardian of the breast, pectusque locatum Sub Cancro 

 est (Manil., ii. 459). According to Menetreius (p. 26), apud Bruttios peculiari et in- 

 signi coronamento Dianas caput Cancri testa ornatum, ut in eorum nummis palam 

 est ; and precisely such a headdress is figured on a Bruttian coin by Imhoof-Blumer 

 and Keller (pi. viii. 5), though the goddess is there wrongly identified with Amphi- 

 trite ; — a similar headdress occurs on a female figure (identified as Thalassa) on coins 

 of Corycus, etc. (ibid. p. 51, Head, Hist. Numm., p. 602). The crab also occurs to- 

 gether with the head of Artemis on coins of Massilia (Saussaye, pi. i. 6-10 ; Head, 

 p. 7 ; cf. also Macrob., S. Sc.,i. 17, 21). Menetreius suggests also, I think with reason, 

 that it was not without allusion to lunar influences over generation and birth that 

 Plato, and those whom he followed or who followed him, made Cancer the celestial 

 gateway by which the souls of men enter the world (cf. Macrob., S. Sc.,i. 12 ; Porph., 

 de Antro N., vi. ; Clem. Alex., Strom., v. p. 675). 



It was at Ephesus that the marvellous cavern of serpents was that the crabs slew, n 



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toVw -wavTa (Ael., N.H., xvi. 38). We find similar myths alluded to in Pliny (N.H., 

 xxxii. 19), Thrasyllus auctor est, nihil aeque adversari serpentibus quam cancros, suesque 

 percussas hoc pabulo sibi mederi. Quum sol sit in cancro, torqueri serpentes. It is an 

 old and common legend that crabs are in better condition or worse as the Moon waxes 

 and wanes. 



It is not as a zodiacal sign, but simply as a constellation that the Crab figures in the 

 second labour of Hercules. In the more ancient period to which the legend appertains, 

 Leo was (or was still thought of as) the sign of the summer solstice, and it was with the 

 slaying of the Nemsean Lion that the hero's task began. It was while Hercules fought 

 the Hydra, in the second of his labours, that the Crab, coming to the aid of the monster, 

 bit the hero in the foot (Panyasis of Halicarnassus, ap. Apottodor. iv. 2) : — hie dicitur 



