PLATES XIX. AND XX.
In [Plate XIX., fig. 1], it is the constellation known in the Grecian sphere as Hercules that claims our attention. At the date and latitude above named, this constellation, if then it had already been imagined, culminated gloriously on the northern meridian at midnight of the spring equinox. The head of the hero, or demi-god, touched the very zenith, and with his club brandished aloft he must have seemed well fitted to triumph over, not only the dragon coiled beneath his feet, but over every opposing power.
As was said at p. 223 about Bootes, 6000 B.C., so it may here be repeated of Hercules, 4667 B.C., “never since that date has he held so commanding a position in the sky.”
At the present date of writing, and in our English latitudes, Hercules “will ever rise reversed,”[114] and through the summer and autumn months his kneeling figure is always to be seen hanging head downwards in the southern quarter of the sky.
[114] The Phainomena or “Heavenly Display” of Aratos, done into English verse by Robert Brown, Jun., F.S.A., line 669.
Grecian writers, some centuries B.C., were already puzzled to account for this “reversed” position of “the Kneeler.” Aratos, from whom I have quoted above, thus further wonders as to this constellation. At line 63 we read:—
“... like a toiling man, revolves
A form. Of it can no one clearly speak,
Nor to what toil he is attached; but, simply,
Kneeler they call him. Labouring on his knees,