'Now,' quod he tho, 'cast up thyn ye; See yonder, lo, the Galaxye, Which men clepeth the Milky Wey, For hit is whyt: and somme, parfey, Callen hit Watlinge Strete: That ones was y-brent with hete, Whan the sonnes sone, the rede, That highte Pheton, wolde lede Algate his fader cart, and gye. The cart-hors gonne wel espye That he ne coude no governaunce, And gonne for to lepe and launce, And beren him now up, now doun, Til that he saw the Scorpioun, Which that in heven a signe is yit. And he, for ferde, loste his wit, Of that, and lest the reynes goon Of his hors; and they anoon Gonne up to mounte, and doun descende Til bothe the eyr and erthe brende; Til Iupiter, lo, atte laste, Him slow, and fro the carte caste.'[136] In narrating this story here, Chaucer may have been imitating Dante who refers to the myth in the _Divine Comedy_: "What time abandoned Phaeton the reins, Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched,"[137] and states its source and the use made of it by some philosophers in the _Convivio_: "For the Pythagoreans affirmed that the sun at one time wandered in its course, and in passing through other regions not suited to sustain its heat, set on fire the place through which it passed; and so these traces of the conflagration remain there. And I believe that they were influenced by the fable of Phaeton, which Ovid tells at the beginning of the second book of the _Metamorphoses_."[138] V ASTROLOGICAL LORE IN CHAUCER Astrology, though resembling a science in that it makes use of observation and seeks to establish laws governing its data, is in reality a faith or creed. It had its beginning, so tradition tells us, in the faith of the ancient Babylonians in certain astral deities who exerted an influence upon terrestrial events and human life. The basis of this faith was not altogether illogical but contained a germ of truth.