Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/110

64 star Capella) is imagined as standing on an antique sloping chariot, marked by β. The other stars represent the reins. The illustration, although contrary to Ideler's conception, seems a much easier figure to trace. Here as in Ideler's figure Capella represents the driver's head. (See p. .)

Plunket suggests 3000 as the date of the invention of the constellation Auriga, for then Capella, the brightest star in this region of the sky, was on the meridian in conjunction with the sun at noon of the spring equinox, and in opposition at midnight of the autumnal equinox.

Capella has by several writers been identified with the star "Icu of Babylon," mentioned in many of the Babylonian texts, and the star of Marduk. If this is correct we should credit the Babylonian astronomers with the delineation of the figure of Auriga.

Auriga has also been identified with Erichthonius, the son of Vulcan and Minerva, who being deformed and unable to walk invented the chariot, an achievement that secured him a place in the sky.

Swinburne sings of this famous inventor in the following lines:

Manilius thus refers to the Charioteer