Prof. Sayce thinks that the “signs of the Zodiac” had their origin in the plains of Mesopotamia in the twentieth or twenty-third century B.C., and Brown gives the probable date as 2084 B.C.[384]
According to Seneca, the study of astronomy among the Greeks dates back to about 1400 B.C.; and the ancient constellations were already classical in the time of Eudoxus in the fourth century B.C. Eudoxus (408-355 B.C.) observed the positions of forty-seven stars visible in Greece, thus forming the most ancient star catalogue which has been preserved. He was a son of Eschinus, and a pupil of Archytas and probably Plato.
The work of Eudoxus was put into verse by the poet Aratus (third century B.C.). This poem describes all the old constellations now known, except Libra, the Balance, which was at that time included in the Claws of the Scorpion. About B.C. 50, the Romans changed the Claws, or Chelæ, into Libra. Curious to say, Aratus states that the constellation Lyra contained no bright star![385] Whereas its principal star, Vega, is now one of the brightest stars in the heavens!
With reference to the origin of the constellations, Aratus says—
“Some men of yore
A nomenclature thought of and devised
And forms sufficient found.”
This shows that even in the time of Aratus the constellations were of great antiquity.
Brown says—
“Writers have often told us, speaking only from the depths of their ignorance, how ‘Chaldean’ shepherds were wont to gaze at the brilliant nocturnal sky, and to imagine that such and such stars resemble this or that figure. But all this is merely the old effort to make capital out of nescience, and the stars are before our eyes to prove the contrary. Having already certain fixed ideas and figures in his mind, the constellation-former, when he came to his task, applied his figures to the stars and the stars to his figures as harmoniously as possible.”[386] “Thus e.g. he arranged the stars of Andromeda into the representation of a chained lady, not because they naturally reminded him (or anybody else) of such a figure, but because he desired to express that idea.”
A coin of Manius Aquillus, B.C. 94, shows four stars in Aquila, and seems to be the oldest representation extant of a star group. On a coin of B.C. 43, Dr. Vencontre found five stars, one of which was much larger than the others, and concludes that it represents the Hyades (in Taurus). He attributes the coin to P. Clodius Turrinus, who probably used the constellation Taurus or Taurinus as a phonetic reference to his surname. A coin struck by L. Lucretius Trio in 74 B.C., shows the seven stars of the Plough, or as the ancients called them Septem Triones. Here we have an allusion to the name of the magistrate Trio.[387]
In a work published in Berne in 1760, Schmidt contends that the ancient Egyptians gave to the constellations of the Zodiac the names of their divinities, and expressed them by the signs which were used in their hieroglyphics.[388]