Astronomical Myths. Camille Flammarion

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ being the daughter of the Ethiopians, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Not one of the drawings indicates this; indeed they all take after their local beauties.

       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.

       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 Ἄρκτος, 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 ὗες, sows, so they called them suculæ, or little sows; whereas the original name was derived from ὕειν, 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 Coronæ) in a saint—S. Marguerite.

      The names may have had many origins whose signification is lost, owing to their being misunderstood. Thus figurative language may have been interpreted as real, as when a conjunction is called a marriage; a disappearance, death; and a reappearance, a resurrection; and then stories must be invented to fit these words; or the stars that have in one country given notice of certain events lose the meaning of their names when these are used elsewhere; as when a boat painted near the stars that accompany an inundation, becomes the ship Argo; or when, to represent the wind, the bird's wing is drawn; or those stars that mark a season are associated with the bird of passage, the insect or the animal that appears at that time: such as these would soon lose their original signification.

      The celestial sphere, therefore, as we now possess it, is not simply a collection of unmeaning names, associated with a group of stars in no way connected with them, which have been imposed at various epochs by capricious imagination, but in most instances, if not in all, they embody a history, which, if we could trace it, would probably lead us to astronomical facts, indicating the where and the when of their first introduction; and the story of their changes, so far as we can trace it, gives us some clue to the mental characteristics or astronomical progress of the people who introduced the alterations.

      We shall find, indeed, in a subsequent chapter, that many of our conclusions as to the birth and growth of astronomy are derived from considerations connected with the various constellations, more especially those of the zodiac.

      With regard to the date when and the country where the constellations of the sphere were invented, we will here give what evidence we possess, independent of the origin of the zodiac.

      In the first place it seems capable of certain proof that they were not invented by the Greeks, from whom we have received them, but adopted from an older source, and it is possible to give limits to the date of introduction among them.

      Newton, who attributes its introduction to Musæus, a contemporary of Chiron, remarks, that it must have been settled after the expedition of the Argonauts, and before the destruction of Troy; because the Greeks gave to the constellation names that were derived from their history and fables, and devoted several to celebrate the memory of the famous adventurers known as the Argonauts, and they would certainly have dedicated some to the heroes of Troy, if the siege of that place had happened at the time. We remark that at this time astronomy was in too infant a state in Greece for them to have fixed with so much accuracy the position of the stars, and that we have in this a proof they must have borrowed their knowledge from older cultivators of the science.

      The various statements we meet with about the invention of the sphere may be equally well interpreted of its introduction only into Greece. Such, for instance, as that Eudoxus first constructed it in the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C., or that by Clement of Alexandria, that Chiron was the originator.

      The oldest direct account of the names of the constellations and their component stars is that of Hesiod, who cites by name in his Works and Days the Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion, and Sirius. He lived, according to Herodotus, about 884 years before Christ.

      The knowledge of all the constellations did not reach the Greeks at the same time, as we have seen from the omission by Homer of any mention of the Little Bear, when if he had known it, he could hardly have failed to speak of it. For in his description of the shield of Achilles, he mentions the Pleiades, the Hyades, Orion and the Bear, "which alone does not bathe in the Ocean." He could never have said this last if he had known of the Dragon and Little Bear.

      We may then safely conclude that the Greeks received the idea of the constellations from some older source, probably the Chaldeans. They received it doubtless as a sphere, with figured, but nameless constellations; and the Greeks by slight changes adapted them to represent the various real or imaginary heroes of their history. It would be a gracious task, for their countrymen would glory in having their great men established in the heavens. When they saw a ship represented, what more suitable than to name it the ship Argo? The Swan must be Jupiter transformed, the Lyre is that of Orpheus, the Eagle is that which carried away Ganymede, and so on.

      This would be no more than what other nations have done, as, for example, the Chinese, who made greater changes still, unless we consider theirs to have had an entirely independent origin.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wBDAAMCAgMCAgMDAwMEAwMEBQgFBQQEBQoHBwYIDAoMDAsK CwsNDhIQDQ4RDgsLEBYQERMUFRUVDA8XGBYUGBIUFRT/2wBDAQMEBAUEBQkFBQkUDQsNFBQUFBQU FBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBT/wAARCAWgA4QDASIA AhEBAxEB/8QAHgAAAgEEAwEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQACAwQFBgkHCAr/xABtEAABAwMCBAQDBQYCAQsO AB8BAgMRAAQSIQUxBhNBUQciYRQIMglCgSNxwaGRFTOxUhZighfRkqIkcuEYtLLwOEOTs3PxNIPT diVTddKUGSZVY3TCN6M2VFY1RFfDxCdFR2RlhJXUKEZmpOP/xAAZAQEBAQEBAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AQIDBAX/xAAsEQEAAgEDAwMEAgMBAQEAAAAAARExIQJBYXFREgMisTJCgaFSYpETBHKS/9oADAMB AAIRAxEAPwDi6db6jahEkaigw0ptuSNSdTRYS4EHMzrVSF9NRSYHvQUn2VONyBqDoamEdNIERpUi F9NORke1Kw5ijUAT38KCi5bKU8gxoeOvGqsGYjXwqSwrPXU0w51vqHD8ZoKDdupDyzGg4e1VFN9R KhE6VNAUVaaGggLxXJ

СКАЧАТЬ