The Greeks, according to a well-attested tradition, made acquaintance with the Lesser Bear through Phœnician communication, of which Thales was the medium. Hence the designation of the group as _Phoinike_. Aratus (who versified the prose of Eudoxus) has accordingly two Bears, lying (in sailors’ phrase) ‘heads and points’ on the sphere; while he expressly states that the Greeks still (about 270 B.C.) continued to steer by _Helike_ (the Twister, Ursa Major), while the expert Phœnicians directed their course by the less mobile _Kynosoura_ (Ursa Minor). The absence of any mention of a Pole-star seems at first sight surprising. Even the Iroquois Indians directed their wanderings from of old by the one celestial luminary of which the position remained sensibly invariable.[31] Yet not the gods themselves, in Homer’s time, were aware of such a guide. It must be remembered, however, that the axis of the earth’s rotation pointed, 2800 years ago, towards a considerably different part of the heavens from that now met by its imaginary prolongation. The precession of the equinoxes has been at work in the interval, slowly but unremittingly shifting the situation of this point among the stars. Some 600 years before the Great Pyramid was built, it was marked by the close vicinity of the brightest star in the Dragon. But this in the course of ages was left behind by the onward-travelling pole, and further ages elapsed before the star at the tip of the Little Bear’s tail approached its present position. Thus the entire millennium before the Christian era may count for an interregnum as regards Pole-stars. Alpha Draconis had ceased to exercise that office; Alruccabah had not yet assumed it. Footnote 31: Lafitau, _Mœurs des Sauvages Américains_, p. 240. The most ancient of all the constellations is probably that which Homer distinguishes as never-setting (it then lay much nearer to the pole than it now does). In his time, as in ours, it went by two appellations—the Bear and the Wain. Homer’s Bear, however, included the same seven bright stars constituting the Wain, and no more; whereas our Great Bear stretches over a sky-space of which the Wain is only a small part, three of the striding monster’s far-apart paws being marked by the three pairs of stars known to the Arabs as the ‘gazelle’s springs.’ How this extension came about, we can only conjecture; but there is evidence that it was fairly well established when Aratus wrote his description of the constellations. Aratus, however, copied Eudoxus, and Eudoxus used observations made—doubtless by Accad or Chaldean astrologers—above 2000 B.C.[32] We infer, then, that the Babylonian Bear was no other than the modern Ursa Major.[33] Footnote 32: According to Mr. Proctor’s calculation. See R. Brown, _Eridanus: River and Constellation_, p. 3. Footnote 33: See Houghton, _Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch._ vol. v. p. 333.