Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/290

206 This idea bears out the alternation of daylight and darkness, and the analogy between the days and nights of equal duration before mentioned.

Jupiter further rewarded their fraternal attachment by changing them both into a constellation, under the name of "Gemini," the Twins, which it is strangely pretended never appear together, but when one rises the other sets, and so on alternately.

Castor and Pollux were worshipped both by the Greeks and Romans, who sacrificed white lambs upon their altars to them. In the Hebrew zodiac the constellation of the Twins refers to the tribe of Benjamin; and according to Dr. Seiss, the Gemini represented the mystic union of Christ and His redeemed. Schiller regarded the constellation as representing St. James the Elder.

The Egyptians represented the Twins as the two gods, Horus, the Elder, and the Younger, and strangely enough also regarded them as Two Sprouting Plants.

The Gemini have also been called "David and Jonathan," "Adam and Eve," "the Twin Sons of Rebecca," Jacob and Esau. The Eskimos recognise in Castor and Pollux the two door-stones of an igloo, the name for their snow huts. The Arabs regarded these twin stars as two Peacocks, and on the Euphratean star list they appear as "the Great Twins," and "the Heaven and Earth Pair."

Allen tells us that in India they always were prominent as "the Aswins," or "Horsemen," a name also found in other parts of the sky for other Hindu twin deities. A Buddhist zodiac had in their place a woman holding a golden cord. Castor and Pollux were regarded as twins by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and the aborigines of the South Pacific Islands.

In Australia they were called "the Young Men." The South African Bushmen on the contrary called them "the Young Women, the wives of the eland," their great antelope.