Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/841

Rh D Z O D 791 Bohemia on the site of Znojmo, the ancient capital of the tributary margraves of Moravia, which had been destroyed in 1145. Znaim is best known to history for the armistice concluded here in 1809 after the battle of AVagram between Napoleon I. and the archduke Charles. In 1866 the Prussians occupied the town from July 13th till September 3d. The novelist Karl Postel (1793-1864), who wrote under the pseudonym of Charles Sealsfield, was born at Pop- pitz, 2J miles to the south-west. efirii ZODIAC (o (wSiaKos KVKOS, from fwSiov, &quot; a little ou&amp;gt; animal &quot;), an imaginary zone of the heavens within which lie the paths of the sun, moon, and principal planets. It is bounded by two circles equidistant from the ecliptic, about eighteen degrees apart ; and it is divided into twelve signs, and marked by twelve constellations. The signs gns the Greek SwSe/caT^/zopta are geometrical divisions thirty id con- degrees in extent, counted from the spring equinox in the ella &quot; direction of the sun s progress through them. The whole series accordingly shifts westward through the effect of precession by about one degree in seventy-two years. At the moment of crossing the equator towards the north the sun is said to be at the first point of Aries ; some thirty days later it enters Taurus, and so on through Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces (see ASTRONOMY, vol. ii. p. 771). The constellations bearing the same names coin cided approximately in position, when Hipparchus observed them at Rhodes, with the divisions they designate. The discrepancy now, however, amounts to the entire breadth of a sign, the sun s path in Aries lying among the stars of Pisces, in Taurus among those of Aries, &c. hioden- The twelvefold division of the zodiac was evidently sug- ry di- gested by the occurrence of twelve full moons in successive lon&amp;gt; parts of it in the course of each year. This approximate relation was first systematically developed by the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and formed the starting-point for all their divisions of time. As the year separated, as it were of itself, into twelve months, so the day was divided into twelve &quot;double hours,&quot; and the great cosmi- cal period of 43,200 years into twelve &quot;sars.&quot; Each sar, month, and hour was represented at once visibly and sym bolically by a twelfth part of the &quot; furrow &quot; drawn by the solar Bull across the heavens. The idea of tracing the sun s path among the stars was, when it occurred to Chaldaean astronomers, an original and, relatively to their means, a recondite one. We owe to its realization by them the constitution and nomenclature of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Assyrian cylinders and inscriptions indicate for the familiar series of our text-books an antiquity of some four thousand years. Ages before Asurbanipal reigned at Nineveh the eighth month (Marchesvan) was known as &quot; the month of the star of the Scorpion,&quot; the tenth (Tebet) belonged to the &quot;star of the Goat,&quot; the twelfth (Adar) to the &quot;star of the Fish of Hea.&quot; l The motive underlying the choice of symbols is in a few cases obvious, but in most remains conjectural. The attributes of the deities appointed to preside over the months and signs were to some extent influential. Two of them, indeed, took direct possession of their respective portions of the sky. The zodiacal Virgo is held to represent the As syrian Venus, Ishtar, the ruling divinity of the sixth month, and Sagittarius the archer-god Nergal, to whom the ninth month was dedicated. But no uniform system of selection was pursued ; or rather perhaps the results of several, adopted at various epochs, and under the influence of varying currents of ideas, became amalgamated in the final series. First This, there is reason to believe, was the upshot of a sign. prehistoric reform. So far as positive records go, Aries was always the first sign. But the arrangement is, on the face of it, a comparatively modern one. None of the 1 Leiiorraant, Oriyines de I Uiatuire, vol. i. p. 236. brighter stars of the constellation could be said even roughly to mark the equinox much before 1800 B.C. ; during a long stretch of previous time the leading position belonged to the stars of Taurus. 2 Numerous indications accordingly point to a corresponding primitive zodiac. Setting aside as doubtful evidence derived from interpret ations of cuneiform inscriptions, we meet, in connexion with Mithraic and Mylittic legends, reminiscences of a zodiac and religious calendar in which the Bull led the way. 3 Virgil s Candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum Taurus perpetuates the tradition. And we shall see presently that the Pleiades, not only were originally, but continued to be until well within historical memory, the first asterism of the lunar zodiac. In the Chaldsean signs fragments of several distinct strata of thought appear to be embedded. From one point of view, they shadow out the great epic of the destinies of the human race ; again, the universal solar myth claims a share in them ; hoary traditions were brought into ex post facto connexion with them ; or they served to com memorate simple meteorological and astronomical facts. The first Babylonian month Nisan, dedicated to Anu Second and Bel, was that of &quot;sacrifice&quot;; and its association with sign, the Ram as the chief primitive object of sacrifice is thus intelligible. 4 According to an alternative explanation, how ever, the heavenly Ram, placed as leader in front of the flock of the stars, merely embodied a spontaneous figure of the popular imagination. An antique persuasion, that the grand cycle of creation opened under the first sign, has been transmitted to modern cognizance by Dante (Inf., i. 38). The human race, on the other hand, was supposed to have come into being under Taurus. The solar inter pretation of the sign goes back to the far-off time when the year began with Taurus, and the sun was conceived of as a bull entering upon the great furrow of heaven as he ploughed his way among the stars. In the third month Third to and sign the building of the first city and the fratricidal s j xtn brothers the Romulus and Remus of Roman legend were brought to mind. The appropriate symbol was at first indifferently a pile of bricks or two male children, always on early monuments placed feet to feet. The retro grade movement of a crab typified, by an easy association of ideas, the retreat of the sun from his farthest northern excursion, and Cancer was constituted the sign of the summer solstice. The Lion, as the symbol of fire, repre sented the culmination of the solar heat. In the sixth month, the descent of Ishtar to Hades in search of her lost husband Tammuz was celebrated, and the sign of the Virgin had thus a purely mythological signification. The history of the seventh sign is somewhat complicated. Seventh The earlier Greek writers, Eudoxus, Eratosthenes, Hip- an(1 parchus, knew of only eleven zodiacal symbols, but made e !&amp;lt; one do double duty, extending the Scorpion across the seventh and eighth divisions. The Balance, obviously indicating the equality of day and night, is first mentioned as the sign of the autumnal equinox by Geminus and Varro, and obtained, through Sosigenes of Alexandria, official recognition in the Julian calendar. Nevertheless, Virgil (Georg., i. 32) regarded the space it presided over as so much waste land, provisionally occupied by the &quot; Claws &quot; of the Scorpion, but readily available for the 2 The possibility should not, however, be overlooked that the &quot; stars of the months &quot; were determined by their heliacal risings (see Bosan- quet and Sayce on Babylonian astronomy, in Monthly Notices Roy. Astr. Soc., vol. xl. p. 117). Tliis would give a further extension backwards of over 1000 years, during which the equinox might have occurred in the month of the Ram. 3 Lajard, Recherches sur le Culte de Mithra, p. 605. 4 Sayce, Trans. Society of Biblical Archteoloyy, vol. iii. p. 162.