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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2012
This paper deals with a leisure-time study of mine, from which I once before drew the subject of an essay for this Society. The representations of animal form in Ancient Art interest me chiefly in so far as they present to us a problem involving an unsolved question as to the whole spirit and motive with which such representations were designed. We may see expressed in them merely a tendency to portray familiar objects in appropriate associations, to use the fish, or the crab, or the cuttle-fish as the device of an habitation of fishermen or resort of mariners, or to employ those creatures and others—the ox, the sheep, and the goat, the lion, the wolf, and the eagle—as the more fanciful appanage of divinities whose imaginary attributes were the attributes of the sea, the plain, the mountain or the sky. But we err, in my opinion, if we fail to recognise in this antiquated symbolism a deeper intention, whose spirit is rather Oriental than Western, archaic than modern. I believe these representations for the most part to have been associated with specific notions or beliefs of astronomical or astrological science, of religion or superstition.
page 604 note * I am favoured by Dr Burgess with the following note:—Pushya, the Hindu Asterism corresponding to a large portion of Cancer (or long. 93° 20′ to 106° 40′ in A.D. 500), from the root püsh, “nourish, thrive,” is also called Tishya “auspicious” and sidhya “prosperous.” Its divinity is Beihaspati (Jupiter), the priest and teacher of the gods. Its three principal stars are δ Cancri (108° 42′) and γ, δ, Cancri, with the nebulous cluster Præsepe between. It is represented as an arrow and also as a crescent.
page 604 note † In the Calendar of Constantine (Uranol. Petav., p. 112) the Sun enters Cancer on June 15 (xvii. Kal. Jul.), and the solstice is placed on the 25th. Ptolemy fixes the Sun's entry into the sign on June 18th, and the solstice on the 26th.
page 606 note * See also Bérard, Cultes Arcadiens, p. 180.
page 606 note † Cf. Manil., ii. 442; also, int. al., Petersen, Das Zwölfgöttersystem der Gr. und R., Hamburg, 1853; Berlin, 1870.
page 608 note * Firmicus Maternus Math., ii. 4; Salmasii Plin. Ex., p. 460 f.
page 608 note † Cf. Aesch., Ag., λαμπούς δυνάστας, έμπρέποντας αίθέρι.
page 609 note * Vesperugo is the planet Venus, Hesperus, or Vespertinus: cf. Vitruv., ix. 4, “Veneris stella, post occasum solis apparens in Caelo, Vesperugo vocitatur, aliis autem temporibus eum antecurrens, et oriens ante lucem, Lucifer appellatur.
page 609 note † Cf. Avien., Arat., 383, “qua duro concava dorso Tegmina curvantur, geminos micat ardor in aures; Hos dixere asinos ortos Thesprotide terra, Et sidus, Lernæe, tuum.”
page 609 note ‡ For other references to the mythology of the Ass in relation to the sign Cancer, sec Dupuis, Orig. de tous, les cultes, i. p. 377, v. p. 104, ed. 1835, and other authorities there quoted.
page 611 note * Vide F. Legge, “A Coptic Spell of the Second Century,” Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archœol., May 1897.
page 611 note † Cf. R. Brown, jun., Semitic Influence in Hellenic Mythology, 1898, p. 158.