BIRD AND BEAST IN ANCIENT SYMBOLISM. 181 



could we not show that these two signs were in some way related to one another, 

 and had a definite meaning in their conjunction. Now, in the first place, Leo and 

 Aquarius are just six signs or six months apart ; and, in the second place, they 

 were, in the epoch immediately preceding that of classical astronomy, the tropical or 

 solstitial signs. The sun, which had its summer and winter solstices in Cancer 

 and Capricorn in classical times, stood in Leo and Aquarius at the corresponding 

 seasons in the immediately preceding age ; and just as we still speak of the tropics 

 of Cancer and Capricorn, though the sun in its precessional course has now moved into 

 Gemini and Sagittarius, so the yet older signs of Leo and Aquarius held their place 

 in Hellenic speech and symbol when Cancer and Capricorn had superseded them in 

 scientific astronomy and in actual fact. In a word, the monument was emblematic of 

 the midsummer solstice, when the sun was rising in Leo and Aquarius was setting in the 

 west ; and the heavenly signs are shown circling round the head of the Earth-Mother. 



While this is the simplest explanation, and the one which first occurred to me of 

 the conjunction of the two signs, there is yet another very closely akin, which I offer 

 as a perhaps preferable alternative. When the sun is in Leo, that is to say (at the 

 epoch of which I speak) in the month of the summer solstice, the full moon of 

 that month is situated in the opposite sign of Aquarius ; and it is therefore 

 conceivable, and even probable, that the monument represents the sun and moon in 

 opposition at midsummer, that is to say, the season of the full moon in the month of Leo. 



Whichever of these two closely allied interpretations of the monument we prefer, we 

 should, in either case, expect to find the same subject repeated in other monuments 

 and works of art, were it a type so ancient and so important as I take it to be. 

 On the very next preceding page of Miss Harrison's book we find it again : the Lion 

 sits at Cybele's feet on the left, and on the right we see the Watering-pot and 

 hand of Aquarius, whose retreating figure has been broken away. In another of Miss 

 Harrison's figures we have one-half of the same subject, the Lion lying in Cybele's lap, 

 symbolising equally well the midsummer season. And yet again, we meet with the 

 whole group in a certain very ancient Mithraic monument. 



The frieze sculptured along the base of the St Petersburg monument is eminently 

 corroborative of my hypothesis. It represents the ancient and widespread device of the 

 Bull and Lion in combat, the Bull kneeling with lowered head to the left, the Lion on 

 the right in attitude of attack. In the same epoch when Leo and Aquarius occupied 

 the place of the solstices, the Bull marked the spring equinox, the ancient opening of 

 the year: — " Candidus auratis aperit cum eornubus annum Taurus." 



The Bull and the Lion, then, if we follow the same line of argument as we have 

 taken in regard to the major group, represent spring and summer, spring giving way 

 before the heats of summer ; or, restricting ourselves to the face of the sky as revealed 

 at one particular date or moment, we may interpret the victorious Lion as Leo standing 

 in mid-heaven precisely when Taurus is setting in the west. 



The conjunction of the Bull and Lion is extraordinarily frequent in art, and their combat 



