Heyne observes, “they sink below the region of the West, at the same time that the sun emerges from the East;” the _cosmical_ setting described by Hesiod. The receding of the bright star of the crown of Ariadne, which Virgil mentions, is its receding from the sun; that is, its heliacal rising. The heliacal rising is a star’s emersion out of the sun’s rays; that is, a star rises heliacally when, having been in conjunction with the sun, the sun passes it and recedes from it. The star then emerges out of the sun’s rays so far that it becomes again visible, after having been for some time lost in the superiority of day-light. The time of day in which the star rises heliacally is at the dawn of day; it is then seen for a few minutes near the horizon, just out of the reach of the morning light; and it rises in a double sense from the horizon and from the sun’s rays. Afterwards, as the sun’s distance increases, it is seen more and more every morning. The heliacal rising and setting is then, properly, an apparition and occultation. With respect to the Pleiads, it appears that different authors vary in fixing the duration of their occultation from about thirty-one days to above forty. In a note by Holdsworth on Warton’s Georgics, it is observed that the _heliacal_ setting of these stars is pointed out by the word _abscondantur_. But this is a contradiction; for _Eoæ absconduntur_ is the same as _occidunt matutinæ_, set in the morning; but the time of day in which a star sets heliacally is in the evening, just after sun-set, when it is seen only for a few minutes in the west near the horizon, on the edge of the sun’s splendour, into which in a few days more it sinks. [80] _Plough naked still._] Virgil copies this direction, Georg. i: Plough naked swain! and naked sow the land, For lazy winter numbs the labouring hand. DRYDEN.