Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens" — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens"
John Stuart Mill · en
These changes are sometimes very curious, as, for example, in a coloured
chart, printed at Paris in 1650, we have the Charioteer drawn in the
costume of Adam, with his knees on the Milky Way, and turning his back
to the public; the she-goat appears to be climbing over his neck, and
two little she-goats seem to be running towards their mother. Cassiopeia
is more like King Solomon than a woman. Compare this with the _Phenomena
of Aratus_, published 1559, where Cassiopeia is represented sitting on
an oak chair with a ducal back, holding the holy palm in her left hand,
while the Coachman, "Erichthon," is in the costume of a minion of Henry
the Third of France. Now compare the Cassiopeia of the Greeks with that
drawn in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or the Coachman of the
same periods, and we can easily see the fancies of the painters have
been one of the most fertile sources of change. They seem, too, to have
had the fancy in the middle ages to draw them all hideous and turning
their backs. Compare, for instance, the two pictures of Andromeda and
Hercules, as given below, where those on one side are as heavy and gross
as the others are artistic and pretty. Unfortunately for the truth of
Andromeda's beauty, as depicted in these designs, she was supposed to
be a negress, being the daughter of the Ethiopians, Cepheus and
Cassiopeia. Not one of the drawings indicates this; indeed they all take
after their local beauties.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
In Flamsteed's chart, as drawn above, the Coachman is a female; and
instead of the she-goat being on the back, she holds it in her arms. No
one, indeed, from any of the figures of this constellation would ever
dream it was intended to represent a coachman.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
One more fundamental cause of changes has been the confusion of names
derived by one nation from another, these having sometimes followed
their signification, but at others being translated phonetically. Thus
the Latins, in deriving names from the Greek [Greek: Arktos], have
partly translated it by Ursa, and partly have copied it in the form
Arcticus. So also with reference to the three stars in the head of the
Bull, called by the Greeks Hyades. The Romans thought it was derived
from [Greek: hyes], sows, so they called them _suculae_, or little sows;
whereas the original name was derived from [Greek: hyein], to rain, and
signified stars whose appearance indicated the approach of the rainy
season.
More curious still is the transformation of the Pearl of the Northern
Crown (Margarita Coronae) in a saint--S. Marguerite.