The starry lights that heav'n's high convex crown'd The Pleiads, Hyads, and the northern beam, And great Orion's more refulgent beam,-- To which, around the cycle of the sky, The bear revolving, points his golden eye,-- Still shines exalted. And so forth. The Shield of Hercules displayed at its centre the polar constellation the Dragon. We read also that-- There was the knight of fair-hair'd Danae born, Perseus. Orion is not specially mentioned, but Orion, Lepus, and the Dogs seem referred to:-- Men of chase Were taking the fleet hares; two keen-toothed dogs Bounded beside. Homer would find no difficulty in pluralising the mighty Hunter and the hare into huntsmen and hares when utilising a description originally referring to the constellation. I conceive that the original description related to one of those zodiac temples whose remains are still found in Egypt, though the Egyptian temples of this kind were probably only copies of more ancient Chaldæan temples. We know from Assyrian sculptures that representations of the constellations (and especially the zodiacal constellations) were common among the Babylonians; and, as I point out in the essay above referred to, 'it seems probable that in a country where Sabæanism or star-worship was the prevailing form of religion, yet more imposing proportions would be given to zodiac temples than in Egypt.' My theory, then, respecting the two famous 'Shields' is that Homer in his eastern travels visited imposing temples devoted to astronomical observation and star-worship, and that nearly every line in both descriptions 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. For the arguments on which this theory is based I have not here space. They are dealt with in the essay from which I have quoted. One point only I need touch upon here, besides those I have mentioned already. It may be objected that the description of a zodiac temple has nothing to connect it with the subject of the Iliad. This is certainly true; but no one who is familiar with Homer's manner can doubt that he would work in, if he saw the opportunity, a poem on some subject outside that of the Iliad, so modifying the language that the description would correspond with the subject in hand. There are many passages, though none of such length, in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, which seem thus to have been brought into the poem; and other passages not exactly of this kind yet show that Homer was not insensible to the advantage of occasionally using memory instead of invention.