In the Zend Avesta Thrita corresponds in many points with the Vedic Trita. Thraetona also represents Trita under some of his other aspects, and mention is made of Thraetona’s “two brothers who seek to slay him on the way.”[91] From these facts it may be inferred that the Trita myth is pre-Vedic. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find traces of it in European mythologies. The name of Trita, with only a change of termination, appears as the Greek Triton, and we may guess at an allusion in the sculptured forms of Greek and Roman Tritons--half men and half fish--to the two watery constellations, Aquarius and Pisces, in which the Vedic Trita Aptya (son of waters) made his abode. The Roman rendering of these composite figures, especially, may recall to our minds the Zodiacal basis of the myth--the two fish of Pisces appearing in Italian art, as the two fish-tails which terminate the human-headed figure of the Triton. Again Hecate, as has been pointed out by scholars, bears a close resemblance in name to Ekata. Hecate was a lunar divinity; she was worshipped and sacrificed to at the close of the month. We may therefore suppose she represented the waning moon. She is further said to have been the daughter of Perseus and Asteria. Looking at the figures of the celestial sphere (see Plate), we may trace the third part of the moon’s course--the ten days of its waning appropriated to Ekata--and observe how this portion of its course began close to the _constellation Perseus_. Thus the Sanscrit Trita myth may explain the name and parentage of the Grecian Hecate.[92] [91] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 69. [92] It is not to be supposed that only the month of the summer solstice was divided into the three parts, personified by Ekata, Dvita, and Trita: the legend of Trita Aptya, that is, Trita in the waters (or, of the waters), is necessarily restricted to that season in which the moon came to its full in the constellations Aquarius or Pisces. Some interesting indications in Indian and Greek mythology seem to point to a similar division of other months, but the subject is surrounded with uncertainties and difficulties.