214
but that is not important at this level of observation. To any casual observer they
look utterly unconnected, as indeed most are in reality, being made by our eyes to
look as though they are lights on a two-dimensional canopy of the sky.
Yet some do seem to stand out for one reason or another in certain configurations,
perhaps because of the surrounding blackness of the sky once our eyes move outside
that thickly populated band which we call, with the Greeks and Romans, the Milky
Way. At other times we can assume that the ‘en-figuring’ of the night sky occurred in
the way it did because certain stars could be readily grouped into configurations
which were easily recognisable within certain cultures. The longevity of some configurations shows how some shapes have stood the test of time and culture: the
Scorpion is a good example in the Middle Eastern–Mediterranean worlds, since it
was devised by the Babylonians and passed on to the Greeks and Romans, all of
whom knew what a real scorpion looks like. Egyptian constellations, on the other
hand, seem not to have filtered across and remain today difficult to identify (cf. Lull
& Belmonte, 2006, 2009). The stars that we call Pegasus were seen by the
Babylonians, not unreasonably, as simply a Field, whereas the Greeks imagined
them as the body of a Horse, which eventually came to be identified with the mythological Pegasus (Boll & Gundel, 1924–1937: cols. 928–931; Kidd, 1997: 258–259).
It is not that the Babylonians were simply more prosaic than their Greek neighbours,
for they could certainly picture elaborate figures in the sky, and they could coordinate
these thematically, if they wished. The constellations which we call Aries, Auriga,
Taurus and Orion, for example, the Babylonians called the Hired Man, the [shepherd’s] Crook, the Bull, and the True Shepherd of Anu, all reflecting agricultural
influence and all rising at dawn in spring time, when work in the fields would start up
again (Hunger & Pingree, 1989: 137–138). But the Babylonians seem not to have
had an inclination to use mythological stories which connected one constellation
with another. This the Greeks did with gusto, creating thus a celestial carpet of interconnected catasterism myths linking the constellations with one another.
But again, this simply states the obvious, that the Greeks told stories through the
stars. Why did they do so? To answer that, we may start by asking: who are these
‘stars’ of the celestial stage?
The particular constellations relating to the myth of Perseus seem to have been
placed in the sky in what looks like a conscious project at the end of the fifth century
BCE (in what follows it will be clear that I do not follow the belief in a Bronze Age
date for the Classical Greek constellations). We find this reflected—not necessarily
initiated—in the plays of Sophokles and Euripides (according to pseudoEratosthenes, Catasterismi 15, 16, 17, 36, and Hyginus, Astronomica. 2.9–11), who
between them place as constellations in the sky the princess Andromeda, her mother
and father Cassiopeia and Cepheus, and the sea monster Cetus. Perseus must have
been sent up there too then or earlier, but the record does not survive to tell us so.
The constellation Perseus therefore belongs to a new class of figures in the sky
whose source lies in narrative mythology. Extensive areas of the sky were now
populated by inter-connected characters from Greek mythology. In this way the
heavens were mapped out in a manner which we continue to utilize today, and this
very process of mapping, this method of articulating a way through the whole panorama of the stars, is part of the reason why these catasterisms were invented.
R. Hannah
but that is not important at this level of observation. To any casual observer they
look utterly unconnected, as indeed most are in reality, being made by our eyes to
look as though they are lights on a two-dimensional canopy of the sky.
Yet some do seem to stand out for one reason or another in certain configurations,
perhaps because of the surrounding blackness of the sky once our eyes move outside
that thickly populated band which we call, with the Greeks and Romans, the Milky
Way. At other times we can assume that the ‘en-figuring’ of the night sky occurred in
the way it did because certain stars could be readily grouped into configurations
which were easily recognisable within certain cultures. The longevity of some configurations shows how some shapes have stood the test of time and culture: the
Scorpion is a good example in the Middle Eastern–Mediterranean worlds, since it
was devised by the Babylonians and passed on to the Greeks and Romans, all of
whom knew what a real scorpion looks like. Egyptian constellations, on the other
hand, seem not to have filtered across and remain today difficult to identify (cf. Lull
& Belmonte, 2006, 2009). The stars that we call Pegasus were seen by the
Babylonians, not unreasonably, as simply a Field, whereas the Greeks imagined
them as the body of a Horse, which eventually came to be identified with the mythological Pegasus (Boll & Gundel, 1924–1937: cols. 928–931; Kidd, 1997: 258–259).
It is not that the Babylonians were simply more prosaic than their Greek neighbours,
for they could certainly picture elaborate figures in the sky, and they could coordinate
these thematically, if they wished. The constellations which we call Aries, Auriga,
Taurus and Orion, for example, the Babylonians called the Hired Man, the [shepherd’s] Crook, the Bull, and the True Shepherd of Anu, all reflecting agricultural
influence and all rising at dawn in spring time, when work in the fields would start up
again (Hunger & Pingree, 1989: 137–138). But the Babylonians seem not to have
had an inclination to use mythological stories which connected one constellation
with another. This the Greeks did with gusto, creating thus a celestial carpet of interconnected catasterism myths linking the constellations with one another.
But again, this simply states the obvious, that the Greeks told stories through the
stars. Why did they do so? To answer that, we may start by asking: who are these
‘stars’ of the celestial stage?
The particular constellations relating to the myth of Perseus seem to have been
placed in the sky in what looks like a conscious project at the end of the fifth century
BCE (in what follows it will be clear that I do not follow the belief in a Bronze Age
date for the Classical Greek constellations). We find this reflected—not necessarily
initiated—in the plays of Sophokles and Euripides (according to pseudoEratosthenes, Catasterismi 15, 16, 17, 36, and Hyginus, Astronomica. 2.9–11), who
between them place as constellations in the sky the princess Andromeda, her mother
and father Cassiopeia and Cepheus, and the sea monster Cetus. Perseus must have
been sent up there too then or earlier, but the record does not survive to tell us so.
The constellation Perseus therefore belongs to a new class of figures in the sky
whose source lies in narrative mythology. Extensive areas of the sky were now
populated by inter-connected characters from Greek mythology. In this way the
heavens were mapped out in a manner which we continue to utilize today, and this
very process of mapping, this method of articulating a way through the whole panorama of the stars, is part of the reason why these catasterisms were invented.
R. Hannah