Of the ‘vivid planets’ thrown in by Pope there is no more trace in the original, than of the ‘glowing pole.’ Nor could there be; since Homer was totally ignorant that such a class of bodies existed. This curious fact affords (if it were needed) conclusive proof of the high antiquity of the Homeric poems. Not the faintest suspicion manifests itself in them that Hesperus, ‘fairest of all stars set in heaven,’ is but another aspect of Phosphorus, herald of light upon the earth, ‘the star that saffron-mantled Dawn cometh after, and spreadeth over the salt sea.’[26] The identification is said by Diogenes Laertius to have been first made by Pythagoras; and it may at any rate be assumed with some confidence that this elementary piece of astronomical knowledge came to the Greeks from the East, with others of a like nature, in the course of the seventh or sixth century B.C. Astonishing as it seems that they should not have made the discovery for themselves, there is no evidence that they did so. Hesiod appears equally unconscious with Homer of the distinction between ‘fixed’ and ‘wandering’ stars. According to his genealogical information, Phosphorus, like the rest of the stellar multitude, sprang from the union of Astræus with the Dawn,[27] but no hint is given of any generic difference between them. Footnote 26: _Iliad_, xxiii. 226-27. Footnote 27: _Theogony_, 381. There is a single passage in the Iliad, and a parallel one in the Odyssey, in which the constellations are formally enumerated by name. Hephæstus, we are told, made for the son of Thetis a shield great and strong, whereon, by his exceeding skill, a multitude of objects were figured. ‘There wrought he the earth, and the heavens, and the sea, and the unwearying sun, and the moon waxing to the full, and the signs every one wherewith the heavens are crowned, Pleiads, and Hyads, and Orion’s might, and the Bear that men call also the Wain, her that turneth in her place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.’[28] Footnote 28: _Iliad_, xviii. 483-89. The corresponding lines in the Odyssey occur in the course of describing the hero’s voyage from the isle of Calypso to the land of the Phæacians. Alone, on the raft he had constructed of Ogygian pine-wood, he sat during seventeen days, ‘and cunningly guided the craft with the helm; nor did sleep fall upon his eyelids, as he viewed the Pleiads and Boötes, that setteth late, and the Bear, which they likewise call the Wain, which turneth ever in one place, and keepeth watch upon Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.’[29] Footnote 29: _Odyssey_, v. 271-75. The sailing-directions of the goddess were to keep the Bear always on the left—that is, to steer due east.