Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/259



is no doubt that Draco dates from the earliest times, as Eudoxus and Aratos both mention this constellation, and many believe that it represents the crooked serpent of Job xxvi., 13.

Of all creatures the serpent is historically the most interesting. It is referred to in myth and legend more often than any other, and connected as it is with the very story of Eden, it is linked with the earliest history of man as no other creature is. That it should have found a place amid the constellations is a matter of course, but it seems strange that a creature abhorred instinctively by men of all ages should have been so highly esteemed by the inventors of the constellations as to have been placed by them at the very throne of the heavens.

Burritt says: "Whoever attends to the situation of Draco, surrounding as it does the pole of the ecliptic, will perceive that its tortuous windings are symbolical of the oblique course of the stars. Draco also winds around the pole of the world as if to indicate in the symbolical language of Egyptian astronomy the motion of the pole of the equator around the pole of the ecliptic produced by the precession of the heavens."

In all probability, the twelve signs of the zodiac were the first star groups to be mapped out. The northern stars