HESPERUS AND PHOSPHOR.
The radiant planet that hangs on the skirts of dusk and dawn
"like a jewel in an Ethiop's ear,"
has been known and sung by poets in all ages. Its supremacy over the remainder of the starry host is recognized in the name given it by the Arabs, those nomad watchers of the skies, for while they term the moon "El Azhar," "the Brighter One," and the sun and moon together "El Azharan," "the Brighter Pair," they call Venus "Ez Zahra," the bright or shining one par excellence, in which sense the same word is used to describe a flower. This "Flower of Night" is supposed to be no other than the white rose into which Adonis was changed by Venus in the fable which is the basis of all early Asiatic mythology. The morning and evening star is thus the celestial symbol of that union between earth and heaven in the vivifying processes of nature, typified in the love of the goddess for a mortal.
The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, not unnaturally took the star, which they saw alternately emerging from the effulgence of the rising and setting sun, in the east and in the west, for two distinct bodies, and named it differently according to the time of its appearance. The evening star they called Hesperus, and from its place on the western horizon, fabled an earthly hero of that name, the son of Atlas, who from the slopes of that mountain on the verge of the known world used to observe the stars until eventually carried off by a mighty wind, and so translated to the skies. These divine honors were earned by his piety, wisdom, and justice as a ruler of men, and his name long shed a shimmering glory over those Hesperidean regions of the earth, where the real and unreal touched hands in the mystical twilight of the unknown.
But the morning star shone with a different significance as the herald of the day, the torchbearer who lights the way for radiant Aurora on her triumphal progress through the skies. Hence he was called Eosphorus, or Phosphorus, the bearer of the dawn, translated into Latin as Lucifer, the Light-bearer. The son of Eos, or Aurora, and the Titan Astraeus, he was of the same parentage as the other multitude of the starry host, to whom a similar origin was ascribed, and from whom in Greek mythology he was evidently believed to differ only in the superior order of his brightness. Homer, who mentions the planet in the following passage:
"But when the star of Lucifer appeared,
The harbinger of light, whom following close,
Spreads o'er the sea the saffron-robed morn."
(Lord Derby's "Iliad.")
recognizes no distinction between those celestial nomads, the planets, "wandering stars," as the Arabs call them, which visibly change their position relatively to the other stars, and the latter, whose places on the sphere are apparently fixed and immutable. In this he and his compatriots were far behind the ancient Egyptians, who probably derived their knowledge from still earlier speculators in Asia, for they not only observed the movements of some at least of the planets, but believed that Mercury and Venus revolved as satellites round the sun, which in its turn circled round our lesser world. Pythagoras is said to have been the first to identify Hesperus with Phosphor, as the
"Silver planet both of eve and morn,"
and by Plato the same fact is recognized. The other planets, all of which had, according to him, been originally named in Egypt and Syria, have each its descriptive title in his nomenclature. Thus the innermost, "the Star of Mercury," is called Stilbon, "the Sparkler," Mars, Pyroeis, "the Fiery One," while Jupiter, the planet of the slowest course but one, is designated as Phaeton, and Saturn, the tardiest of all, Phaenon. These names were in later times abandoned in favor of those of the divinities to whom they were respectively dedicated, unalterably associated now with the days of the week, over which they have been selected to preside.
The Copernican theory, which once and forever "brushed the cobwebs out of the sky," by clearing away the mists of pre-existing error, first completely explained the varying positions of the Shepherd's star, irradiating the first or last watch of night, according to her alternate function as the follower or precursor of the sun. As she travels on a path nearer to him by more than twenty-five and a half million miles than that of the earth, she is seen by us on each side of him in turn after passing behind or in front of him. The points at which her orbit expands most widely to our eyes—an effect of course entirely due to perspective, as her distance from the sun is not then actually increased—are called her eastern and western elongations; that at which she passes by the sun on the hither side her inferior, and on the farther side her superior conjunction. At both conjunctions she is lost to our view, since she accompanies the sun so closely as to be lost in his beams, rising and setting at the same time, and travelling with him in his path through the heavens during the day. When at inferior conjunction, or between us and the sun, she turns her dark hemisphere to us like the new moon, and would consequently be invisible in any case, but when in the opposite position, shows us her illuminated face, and is literally a day star, invisible only because effaced by the solar splendor. It is as she gradually separates from him, after leaving this latter position, circling over that half of her orbit which lies to the east of him, that she begins to come into view as an evening star, following him at a greater and greater distance, and consequently setting later, until she attains her greatest eastern elongation, divided from the sun about 45° of his visible circuit through the heavens, and consequently remaining above the horizon for some four hours after him. From this point she again appears to draw nearer to him until she passes on his hither side in inferior conjunction, from which she emerges on the opposite side to the westward, and begins to shine as a morning star, preceding him on his track, at a gradually increasing distance, until attaining her greatest westward elongation, and finally completing her cycle by returning to superior conjunction once more in a period of about five hundred and eighty-four days.
Venus is thus Hesperus or Vesper, the evening star, when following the sun as she passes from beyond him in superior conjunction to inferior conjunction where she is nearest to the earth. As she again leaves him behind in her course from this point to the opposite one of superior conjunction, she appears in her second aspect as Phosphorus or Lucifer, "the sun of morning," and herald of the day, shining as
"The fair star
That gems the glittering coronet of morn."