Let us turn once more to the Southern Cross to find the ancient
constellations. It is both ancient and modern itself, for its
stars were known to the Greeks of Alexandria, but were included in
the Centaur. The latter, like all those shown in the accompanying
illustration, is of great antiquity, and probably of Babylonian origin.
The two stars which we call the Pointers to the Cross are Alpha and
Beta of the Centaur, and mark his forefeet. Another conspicuous pair,
Delta and Gamma, are on his horse’s body, while his man’s shoulders
are marked by many bright stars, and the head is formed by a little
group. His arm stretches out through bright Eta to Kappa, which is
very close to Beta Lupi. For the Centaur and Lupus form one large
and very brilliant group, and were perhaps connected with the little
constellation of Ara, the Altar, upon which the Centaur seems to have
been imagined as offering the creature which we now know as the Wolf,
though its older name was simply the Beast. Aratus, a Greek poet of
about 300 B.C., to whom we owe the earliest description extant of the
ancient constellations, says of the Centaur:
“His right hand he ever seems to stretch
Before the Altar’s circle. The hand grasps
Another creature, very firmly clutched,
The Wild Beast,—so the men of old it named.”
[Illustration: _The Old Constellation Figures of the Southern
Hemisphere._]
On the other side of the Cross is another splendid constellation, the
Ship Argo, which covers a large space of the sky with many bright
stars, among them Canopus, the brightest in the whole heavens except
Sirius. For convenience this large constellation has been divided into
four—the Keel, the Poop, the Mast, and the Sails.
Sirius is north of Canopus, in the constellation of the Great
Dog—Orion’s Dog, as it is often called, for Orion is a hunter with
two dogs; but the Little Dog is in the northern hemisphere, and Orion
himself has his head in the north and his feet in the south, his famous
belt and sword lying just south of the equator. Thus he is visible all
over the world, and only at the poles would his feet or his head never
rise above the horizon. Beneath his feet is the little Hare, as Aratus
says:
“And ceaselessly beneath Orion’s feet
The Hare is ever chased.”
Four stars of the Hare (α, β, γ, δ), which form a small square, were
called by the Arabs the “Throne of the Giant” (_i.e._ of Orion); or
sometimes “those which quench the thirst of the camel,” in allusion to
the river of the Milky Way which flows close by. Orion is mentioned in
the books of Job and Isaiah, and also by Hesiod and Homer.
Above the Centaur and the Ship Argo stretches the long straggling
constellation of Hydra, the Water-Snake. Its head reaches beyond the
equator into the northern hemisphere, but the beautiful red star
Alphard is in our hemisphere. This Snake is oddly connected with a Crow
and a Cup, which are somehow perched on its back. (I have seen a snake
pursued by an Indian crow, which kept pecking at its tail until the
snake found refuge in a stream.) Crater, the Cup, has no bright stars;
Corvus, the Crow, is an irregular little square which sailors call
Spica’s Spanker, a spanker being a sail of this shape, and two stars of
the four point to Spica, the bright star of the Virgin.
Virgo, the Virgin, is one of the constellations of the Zodiac, that
zone of stars which marks the apparent pathway of sun, moon, and
planets in the sky. All the twelve zodiacal constellations can be
seen in both hemispheres, but those south of the equator, which are
least well seen in northern countries, are of course the best seen
in the south. These are the Scales, Scorpion, Archer, Sea-Goat, and
Water-carrier, with a very small part of the Fishes, and the part of
Virgo which contains her brightest star, Spica, the Ear of Corn held
in her hand. The Romans called her the Goddess of Justice, but these
constellations were invented long before Rome was a great power, and
the ear of corn shows that she was rather a goddess of the fields. They
added that the Scales were her balance wherein she weighed the deeds of
men, but this constellation was of much later origin than the Virgin:
its place was earlier held by the Claws of the Scorpion.[3] In some
old books we find a compromise between the two ideas, for a pair of
tiny scales is hung on the great claws of Scorpio.
[3] Compare Aratus:
“The Virgin and the Claws, the Scorpion,
The Archer and the Goat.”
Scorpio is a magnificent constellation as seen in the south. In England
it merely creeps along the southern horizon in the pale summer skies,
but in southern countries its whole splendid length rises high and
shines, from the bright stars in its head and the ruby Antares on its
back to the sting in its tail, represented by two stars close together.
Close behind Scorpio is Sagittarius, the Archer, also a brilliant
constellation, with his bow strung ready to shoot the Scorpion; he is
a centaur, like the figure near the Southern Cross. He is followed by
Capricornus, a very strange animal, for it has the head and horns of a
goat and the tail of a fish. As a modern writer quaintly says:
“A startling monster’s hybrid form
Your eyes will there assail;
That sign so often dubbed the Goat,
Yet with a fish’s tail.”
Capricorn has very few bright stars. There are two in his goat’s
head, of which the brightest, Alpha, is a beautiful naked-eye
double, and there are two in his fish’s tail. These three figures—a
Scorpion, Centaur-archer, and Capricorn—are carved on old Babylonian
boundary-stones belonging to the second millennium B.C.
Following these is Aquarius, the Water-carrier, his shoulder marked by
the star β, and his pot by four stars (α, γ, ζ, η), from which fall
splashes and streams of faint stars, aptly representing the water which
he is pouring out. He is a familiar figure to those who have lived in
some countries of the East where water is all carried by hand.
[Illustration: THE ARCHER