We may note here that the inconstancy[110] of the moon is the subject of various myths, of which Mr. Tylor has given the following examples: Thus, an Australian legend says that Mityan, the moon, was a native cat, who fell in love with some one else’s wife, and was driven away to wander ever since. A Slavonic legend tells us that the moon, king of night, and husband of the sun, faithlessly loved the morning star, wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, as we see him in the sky. The Khasias of the Himalaya say that the moon falls monthly in love with his mother-in-law, who throws ashes in his face, whence his spots.[111]
As in the case of the sun, an eclipse of the moon was formerly considered ominous. The Romans[112] supposed it was owing to the influence of magical charms, to counteract which they had recourse to the sound of brazen instruments of all kinds. Juvenal alludes to this practice in his sixth Satire (441), when he describes his talkative woman:
“Jam nemo tubas, nemo æra fatiget,
Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunæ.”
Indeed, eclipses, which to us are well-known phenomena witnessing to the exactness of natural laws, were, in the earlier stages of civilization, regarded as “the very embodiment of miraculous disaster.” Thus, the Chinese believed that during eclipses of the sun and moon these celestial bodies were attacked by a great serpent, to drive away which they struck their gongs or brazen drums. The Peruvians, entertaining a similar notion, raised a frightful din when the moon was eclipsed,[113] while some savages would shoot up arrows to defend their luminaries against the enemies they fancied were attacking them. It was also a popular belief that the moon was affected by the influence of witchcraft, a notion referred to by Prospero in “The Tempest” (v. 1), who says:
“His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control the moon.”
In a former scene (ii. 1) Gonzalo remarks: “You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would lift the moon out of her sphere.” Douce[114] quotes a marginal reference from Adlington’s translation of “Apuleius” (1596), a book well known to Shakespeare: “Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could put downe the moone by their inchantment.”[115] One of the earliest references to this superstition among classical authorities is that in the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, where Strepsiades proposes the hiring of a Thessalian witch, to bring down the moon and shut her up in a box, that he might thus evade paying his debts by a month. Ovid, in his “Metamorphoses” (bk. xii. 263), says:
“Mater erat Mycale; quam deduxisse canendo
Sæpe reluctanti constabat cornua lunæ.”
Horace, in his fifth Epode (45), tells us:
“Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessala,
Lunamque cælo deripit.”[116]
Reverting again to the moon’s eclipse, such a season, being considered most unlucky for lawful enterprises, was held suitable for evil designs. Thus, in “Macbeth” (iv. 1), one of the witches, speaking of the ingredients of the caldron, says: