Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/166

110 Schiller thought the figure represented the Paschal Lamb.

The traditional figure of Canis Minor represents it as a well-trained house or watch dog, in contrast with the fierce aspect of the Greater Dog, which is generally depicted as rearing on his hind legs, with the star Sirius blazing in his wide-stretched jaws.

This constellation was included in the great figure of the Lion known to the Arabs, but they called the star Procyon, the lucida of the constellation, "the forerunner of the Greater Dog," and "the blear-eyed Sirius." According to Gore, the Arabs also called Procyon "the Syrian Sirius," because it set in the direction of Syria.

The Romans sometimes called the constellation "Canis" or "Catellus," meaning "the puppy."

Ptolemy accords Canis Minor only two stars, Procyon, and Gomeisa or Gomelza, while Burritt's and Argelander's maps show fourteen and fifteen stars here.

The constellation owes its fame to the first magnitude star Procyon, one of the most interesting stars in the heavens.

"See Procyon too glittering beneath the Twins," says Aratos.

The Greeks called this star, meaning "before the Dog," the Latin "Antecanis" or " Antecanem," a reference to its rising prior to Sirius. As the rising of Sirius was a warning sign to the Egyptians of the inundation of the Nile, so the appearance of Procyon, the brilliant in the Lesser Dog, warned them still farther in advance of this all-important event. The Babylonians knew Procyon as "the Sceptre of Bel."

In these two constellations of the Greater and Lesser Dogs, we have very good examples of the practical use the stars played in the everyday life of the ancients, and in a measure we see a reason for some of the names of the constellations, which in so many cases seem absurd and irrelevant. Here, as in many of the constellations, there is no resemblance in the configurations of the stars to the figures they are supposed to represent. In Canis Minor