[26]. Iliad, xxiii. 226-27.
[27]. Theogony, 381.
There is a single passage in the Iliad, and a parallel one in the Odyssey, in which the constellations are formally enumerated by name. Hephæstus, we are told, made for the son of Thetis a shield great and strong, whereon, by his exceeding skill, a multitude of objects were figured.
‘There wrought he the earth, and the heavens, and the sea, and the unwearying sun, and the moon waxing to the full, and the signs every one wherewith the heavens are crowned, Pleiads, and Hyads, and Orion’s might, and the Bear that men call also the Wain, her that turneth in her place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.’[[28]]
[28]. Iliad, xviii. 483-89.
The corresponding lines in the Odyssey occur in the course of describing the hero’s voyage from the isle of Calypso to the land of the Phæacians. Alone, on the raft he had constructed of Ogygian pine-wood, he sat during seventeen days, ‘and cunningly guided the craft with the helm; nor did sleep fall upon his eyelids, as he viewed the Pleiads and Boötes, that setteth late, and the Bear, which they likewise call the Wain, which turneth ever in one place, and keepeth watch upon Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.’[[29]]
[29]. Odyssey, v. 271-75.
The sailing-directions of the goddess were to keep the Bear always on the left—that is, to steer due east.
It is clear that one of these passages is an adaptation from the other; nor is there reason for hesitation in deciding which was the model. Independently of extrinsic evidence, the verses in the Iliad have the strong spontaneous ring of originality, while the Odyssean lines betray excision and interpolation. The ‘Hyads and Orion’s might’ are suppressed for the sake of introducing Boötes. Variety was doubtless aimed at in the change; and the conjecture is at least a plausible one, that the added constellation may have been known to the poet of the Odyssey (admitting the hypothesis of a divided authorship), though not to the poet of the Iliad—known, that is, in the sense that the stars comprising the figure of the celestial Husbandman had not yet, at the time and place of origin of the Iliad, become separated from the anonymous throng circling in the ‘murk of night.’
The constellation Boötes—called ‘late-setting,’ probably from the perpendicular position in which it descends below the horizon—was invented to drive the Wain, as Arctophylax to guard the Bear, the same group in each case going by a double name. For the brightest of the stars thus designated we still preserve the appellation Arcturus (from arktos, bear, oûros, guardian), first used by Hesiod, who fixed upon its acronycal rising, sixty days after the winter solstice, as the signal for pruning the vines.[[30]] It is not unlikely that the star received its name long before the constellation was thought of, forming the nucleus of a subsequently formed group. This was undoubtedly the course of events elsewhere; the Great and Little Dogs, for instance, the Twins, and the Eagle (the last with two minute companions) having been individualised as stars previous to their recognition as asterisms.