Let us turn once more to the Southern Cross to find the ancient constellations. It is both ancient and modern itself, for its stars were known to the Greeks of Alexandria, but were included in the Centaur. The latter, like all those shown in the accompanying illustration, is of great antiquity, and probably of Babylonian origin. The two stars which we call the Pointers to the Cross are Alpha and Beta of the Centaur, and mark his forefeet. Another conspicuous pair, Delta and Gamma, are on his horse’s body, while his man’s shoulders are marked by many bright stars, and the head is formed by a little group. His arm stretches out through bright Eta to Kappa, which is very close to Beta Lupi. For the Centaur and Lupus form one large and very brilliant group, and were perhaps connected with the little constellation of Ara, the Altar, upon which the Centaur seems to have been imagined as offering the creature which we now know as the Wolf, though its older name was simply the Beast. Aratus, a Greek poet of about 300 B.C., to whom we owe the earliest description extant of the ancient constellations, says of the Centaur: “His right hand he ever seems to stretch Before the Altar’s circle. The hand grasps Another creature, very firmly clutched, The Wild Beast,—so the men of old it named.” [Illustration: _The Old Constellation Figures of the Southern Hemisphere._] On the other side of the Cross is another splendid constellation, the Ship Argo, which covers a large space of the sky with many bright stars, among them Canopus, the brightest in the whole heavens except Sirius. For convenience this large constellation has been divided into four—the Keel, the Poop, the Mast, and the Sails. Sirius is north of Canopus, in the constellation of the Great Dog—Orion’s Dog, as it is often called, for Orion is a hunter with two dogs; but the Little Dog is in the northern hemisphere, and Orion himself has his head in the north and his feet in the south, his famous belt and sword lying just south of the equator. Thus he is visible all over the world, and only at the poles would his feet or his head never rise above the horizon. Beneath his feet is the little Hare, as Aratus says: “And ceaselessly beneath Orion’s feet The Hare is ever chased.” Four stars of the Hare (α, β, γ, δ), which form a small square, were called by the Arabs the “Throne of the Giant” (_i.e._ of Orion); or sometimes “those which quench the thirst of the camel,” in allusion to the river of the Milky Way which flows close by. Orion is mentioned in the books of Job and Isaiah, and also by Hesiod and Homer.