I conceive that Homer, in his eastern travels, visited imposing temples devoted to astronomical observation and star-worship; and that nearly every line in both ‘shields’ is borrowed from a poem in which he described a temple of this sort, its domed zodiac, and those illustrations of the labours of different seasons and of military or judicial procedures which the astrological proclivities of star-worshippers led them to associate with the different constellations. I think there are arguments of some force to be urged in support of this theory, fanciful as it may seem at a first view. In the first place, it is necessary that the constellations recognised in Homer’s time (not necessarily, or probably, _by_ Homer) should be distinguished from later inventions. Aratus, writing long after Homer’s date, mentions forty-five constellations. These were probably derived, without exception, from the globe of Eudoxus. Remembering the tendency which astronomers have shown, in all ages, to add to the list of constellations, we may assume that in Homer’s time the number was smaller. Probably there were some fifteen northern and ten southern constellations, besides the twelve zodiacal signs. The smaller constellations mentioned by Aratus doubtless formed parts of larger figures. Anyone who studies the heavens will recognise the fact that the larger constellations have been robbed of their just proportions to form the smaller asterisms. Corona Borealis was the right arm of Bootes, Ursa Minor was a wing of Draco (now wingless, and no longer a dragon), and so on.