The Galaxy or Milky Way, which stretches across the heavens like a broad
band whitish in color caused by closely crowded stars, has appealed to
men's imagination since very early times. Its resemblance to a road or
street has been suggested in the names given to it by many peoples. Ovid
called it _via lactea_ and the Roman peasants, _strada di Roma_; pilgrims
to Spain referred to it as the _road to Santiago_; Dante refers to it as
"the white circle commonly called St. Janus's Way"[134]; and the English
had two names for it, _Walsingham way_ and _Watling-street_.
Chaucer twice mentions the Galaxy; once in the _Parlement of Foules_,
where Africanus shows Scipio the location of heaven by pointing to the
Galaxy:
"And rightful folk shal go, after they dye,
To heven; and shewed him the galaxye."[135]
In the _Hous of Fame_, the golden eagle who bears Chaucer through the
heavens toward Fame's palace, points out to him the Galaxy and then
relates the myth of Phaeton driving the chariot of the sun, a story
traditionally associated with the Milky Way:
'Now,' quod he tho, 'cast up thyn ye;
See yonder, lo, the Galaxye,
Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
For hit is whyt: and somme, parfey,
Callen hit Watlinge Strete:
That ones was y-brent with hete,
Whan the sonnes sone, the rede,
That highte Pheton, wolde lede
Algate his fader cart, and gye.
The cart-hors gonne wel espye
That he ne coude no governaunce,
And gonne for to lepe and launce,
And beren him now up, now doun,
Til that he saw the Scorpioun,
Which that in heven a signe is yit.
And he, for ferde, loste his wit,
Of that, and lest the reynes goon
Of his hors; and they anoon
Gonne up to mounte, and doun descende
Til bothe the eyr and erthe brende;
Til Iupiter, lo, atte laste,
Him slow, and fro the carte caste.'[136]
In narrating this story here, Chaucer may have been imitating Dante who
refers to the myth in the _Divine Comedy_:
"What time abandoned Phaeton the reins,
Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched,"[137]
and states its source and the use made of it by some philosophers in the
_Convivio_:
"For the Pythagoreans affirmed that the sun at one time wandered in its
course, and in passing through other regions not suited to sustain its
heat, set on fire the place through which it passed; and so these traces
of the conflagration remain there. And I believe that they were influenced
by the fable of Phaeton, which Ovid tells at the beginning of the second
book of the _Metamorphoses_."[138]
V