Applying this idea to the passage quoted above, it will mean “The nights are going southward,” for the sun in Aquarius is not far from the point where he crosses the equator to the north, therefore Night circling opposite to him is nearing the point where she goes south. Either interpretation is faithful to fact, but perhaps the circumstance that the plural noun is used favours the first. [Illustration: Fig. 41. The Ram on the Ecliptic. [_To face p. 279._ _From the “Cosmi Historia” of Robert Flud, a.d. 1612._ (_Reproduced from Brown’s Phainomena of Aratos._)] Conrad Malaspina prophesied to Dante that his favourable opinion of the Malaspina family would be justified “before the sun had come to rest again seven times in the bed which the Ram covers and bestrides with his four feet.” “Ed egli: Or va, che il Sol non si ricorca Sette volte nel letto che il Montone Con tutti e quattro i pie copre ed inforca Che cotesta cortese opinione ...”[228] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [228] “And he: Now go, for the sun shall not lie Seven times upon the pillow which the Ram With all his four feet covers and bestrides. Before that such a courteous opinion ...” _Purg._ viii. 133-136. (_Longfellow_). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The sun was at the time in the Ram, and Malaspina means that less than seven years would elapse, before his prophecy was fulfilled. The aptness of the description may be seen by the figure of Aries as portrayed in an old seventeenth century book in which the Ram is uncomfortably trying to sit on the ecliptic. Another instance is in the beautiful midwinter Ode, “Io son venuto al punto della rota.”[229] Each stanza pictures a feature of a severe winter—snow and rain, the absence of summer birds, bare trees and dead flowers, the favourite walk become a torrent; but the first describes the position of stars and planets. When the sun sets, the Twins appear on the eastern horizon, hence we know at once that the sun is in Sagittarius and the time is November or December. To confirm his melancholy, the poet adds that the Star of Love (Venus) is hidden from us by the sun’s rays which now shine athwart her, and that the planet which strengthens the cold (Saturn, the “frigida stella” of Virgil) displays himself in that arc of the sky in which all the seven planets cast the shortest shadow;[230] that is, either he is on the meridian at sunset, or he is in the most northerly part of the zodiac, in Gemini or Cancer. A planet in this place, as for instance the sun at midsummer, is visible longer, describes a longer arc, and casts shorter shadows, than in any other part of the zodiac. And as this is the part which rises over the eastern horizon as the sun sets, Saturn would also rise at that time and remain visible all night.