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, Like one who sinks he seems;” and again at line 614-- “The _Kneeler_ ... He who is ne’er far distant from the _Lyre_, Whoe’er this stranger of the heavenly forms May be.”[115] [115] _The Phainomena or “Heavenly Display” of Aratos, done into English verse_ by Robert Brown, Jun., F.S.A., line 669. 4600 B.C. no such difficult speculations could have presented themselves to the minds of those who, in the joyous springtime of the year, beheld in imagination, night after night, the grand and conquering figure of this god or hero, typifying for them, as we may easily suppose, the ever-increasing triumph at that season of the power of light over darkness. Plate XIX., fig. 2. It was perhaps at this same date that the cluster of stars “led round in circle”[116] close to the bow of Sagittarius, and exactly marking the equinoctial colure, was figured as a _crown_, and that so depicted, as I have contended at page 76, this constellation suggested the symbolic circle, crown, or wreath which sometimes takes the place of the bow in Assur’s hand, and which almost always is present in the hand of Ahura Mazda in Median representations of that figure. [116] _The Phainomena or “Heavenly Display” of Aratos, done into English verse_ by Robert Brown, Jun., F.S.A., line 401. At Plate XX., fig. 1, I have drawn the constellation Hydra as it would have appeared at the date 4667 B.C. At pages 117, 118, the reasons which led me to suppose that this constellation was then first imagined have been given.