Σκαιῇ means the left hand in Il. i. 501. xvi. 734. xxi. 490. This adjective is but once used in Homer except for the hand: viz., in Od. iii. 295 we have σκαιὸν ῥίον for ‘the foreland on the left.’ But Σκαιαὶ πύλαι may have meant originally the left hand gates of Troy. The application of δεξιὸς to the right hand (from which we may consider δεξιτερὸς as an adaptation for metrical purposes), is to be sufficiently accounted for, because it was the hand by which greetings were exchanged, and engagements contracted[661]. But it is not so with ἀριστερός: and while we contemplate the subject in regard only to the uses of the member, the word σκαιὸς remains perfectly unexceptionable, and even highly expressive and convenient, in its function of expressing the left hand. [661] Il. ii. 341. x. 542. It appears that the Greek augurs, in estimating the signification of omens, were accustomed to stand with their faces northwards; or rather, I presume, with their faces set towards a point midway between sunset and sunrise. The most common descriptions of omen in the time of Homer appear to have been (1) the flight of birds, and (2) the apparition of thunder and lightning. The test of a good moving omen was, that it should proceed from the west, and move to the east; and of a bad moving omen, that it should proceed from the east, and move to the west. Possibly we may trace in this conception the cosmogonical arrangement, which planted in the West the Elysian plain, and in the East the dismal and semi-penal domain of Aidoneus and Persephone. Possibly the brightness of the sun, which caused the East to be regarded as the fountain of light, may be the foundation of it: together, on the other hand, with that close visible association between the West and darkness, which the sunset of each day brought before the eyes of men; so that to lie πρὸς ζόφον meant to lie towards the West, and was the regular opposite of lying towards the sun[662]. [662] Od. ix. 25, 6.