“Him first king Priam saw with his old eyes, As o’er the plain he lightened, dazzling bright, Like to the star that doth in autumn rise, Whose radiant beams, pre-eminent to sight, Shine with their fellow stars at noon of night: Orion’s Dog we mortals call its name: Sign is it of much ill, thought clear its light, And mighty fever brings to man’s poor frame: So, as he ran, the brass upon his breast did flame”[468]. The lines refer to the morning rising of Sirius at the beginning of the fruit-harvest, which about 800 B. C. took place on the 28th of July (Julian). A modern reader, thinking only of the splendour of the star as it shines in the sky at night, entirely fails to understand the darker and more fateful side of the simile. Only when it is realised that the time of the morning rising of Sirius is the time of the greatest heat and sickness, a period believed to be induced by the rising of this star at the beginning of the fruit-harvest, is the right idea obtained. Like Sirius appearing in the sky in the morning twilight of later summer, Achilles stands out upon the battle-field, eclipsing all others and bringing destruction to the Trojans[469]. A difficulty has been found in the passage in that Sirius at his rising is only just visible and therefore does not shine in his brightest splendour. But Sirius is for the poet the typical brightest fixed star, just as he speaks of the heavens as ‘starry’ even when the sun is ascending in them[470]. On every day of the _opōre_ Sirius rises higher and shines more brightly--one must not think only of the actual first rising, the first day of the star’s appearance. Hence the star becomes the symbol of the _opōre_, ὀπωρινὸς ἀστήρ[471]. Since it is a star of evil omen it is also called ‘the disastrous-shining star’[472]. A star-setting is implied in the words ‘the late-setting Arcturus’[473]. The ‘late’ refers to the fact that the circle which Arcturus describes in the heavens is great, since he stands so far north. Here belongs also the observation that the Great Bear alone of the (greater) stars does not dip down into the ocean[474]. The stars further serve as a guide to navigation[475]:-- “And treacherous sleep ne’er fell on the eyes that were watchful still, For he kept the Pleiads in front, and the Herdman, who slowly doth gain His rest, and the Bear,--they are wont to call it moreover the Wain: Ever turning at bay, doth it glare on Orion’s falchion-gleam, And alone it hath no share in the baths of the Ocean-stream:-- For Calypso, the Goddess divine, had bidden him still to keep Over his left that sign as he fared on the face of the deep”. The Pleiades, the Hyades, and Orion are also mentioned, but not in any special connexion with the indication of time[476]. The morning-star helps to determine time on a night journey[477].