For the Centaur the date in round numbers of 3500 B.C. ([fig. 1]) is suggested: at that date his huge figure would have well marked, in opposition, the beginning of the calendrical Aries-year; or, in conjunction with the sun, the beginning of the seventh month of the same year. It is not necessary, at that date, to attribute a low latitude to the astronomers who designed this figure: in that of 35° N., as shown in the diagram, the whole constellation would then have been well above the horizon. The much earlier epoch of 6000 B.C. might perhaps be claimed for the Centaur. At that date, as I have assumed, the calendrical and the solstitial year coincided. (Compare [Plate XVII.] and [Plate IX.]) As between 6000 and 3500 B.C. I have often hesitated, but on the whole I have come to think the later date, as here given, the more probable.
[Fig. 2].—Again at the date 3500 B.C. and in the latitude 35° N. I have drawn the constellation Ophiuchus as it would have appeared in opposition to the sun at the season of the spring equinox; triumphing over the powers of darkness—namely, the scorpion on which he treads and the serpent which he crushes with his hands. Although at the date in question Hercules’ position in the northern heavens was not quite so commanding and symmetrical as it was a thousand years earlier (see [Plate XIX.]), yet in the lower latitude given here ([Plate XXIII., fig. 2]) the heads of Hercules and of Ophiuchus would have been on the zenith, and these brothers might have been seen, one of them in the northern and the other in the southern quarter of the sky, strongly combating and conquering the forces of winter and darkness at the season of the spring equinox.
[Fig. 3].—For Auriga, I have suggested the later date of 3000 B.C., for then the bright star Capella, the most important star in the constellation and one of the brightest in that part of the sky, was on the meridian in conjunction with the sun at noon of the spring equinox—and in opposition at mid-night of the autumn equinox.
The star Capella has, by several writers, been identified with the star “Icu of Babylon” mentioned in many of the Babylonian astrological texts. If this identification of Capella and “Icu of Babylon” should be established as correct, we ought, I suppose, to credit Babylonian astronomers with the delineation of the figure Auriga.
[Fig. 4].—Unless we adopt on the authority of the Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Andromeda legend the date 3500 for Perseus, it will seem, I think, almost necessary to attribute the much later one of 1433 B.C. for the designing of this constellation. At the earlier date the position of Perseus—see [Plate XXII., fig. 2]—militates against the likelihood of its having then been imagined; as part of the figure of Perseus would have been visible in the northern and part in the southern hemisphere.
In favour of the later date we may note the way in which the figure of Perseus has been fitted in, as it were, between already-named constellations, so that though restricted to a small space it still retains heroic proportions.
The star Algol, whose strange alternations of magnitude may well have suggested to the ancients the winking of the eye of some malignant monster, was imagined by the astronomers who drew the figure of Perseus, as on the brow of the Gorgon Medusa. It will be seen in the [Plate] how, at the date there given, this mysterious star exactly marked the equinoctial meridian.
The northern latitude 40° N., suitable for the imagining of this constellation, and its name Perseus, seem to point to an Iranian school of astronomers as the probable originators of this figure.
PLATE XXIV.
It will be seen that by consulting the precessional globe it has been possible to suggest dates at which the various simple and composite human figures, represented on the (Grecian) sphere could have been originally imagined in an upright position, either on the northern or southern meridian at some well-marked time of the year—that is of either a cosmical or a calendrical year.