Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/307

Rh stones. Posidonius sagely remarks that it was a pity Jupiter did not rain the stones on the Ligurians in the first place, and save Hercules the trouble of picking them up.

Bayer represents Hercules as holding in addition to his club an apple branch, possibly to indicate his connection with the myth of the Golden Apples of the Garden of Hesperides. For his eleventh labour he was ordered to procure them.

Those who claim that Hercules represents Adam certainly have much to substantiate their theory, for associated with the figure we find a serpent, a garden, and the apple.

"In latitude 40° north, 4667 ," says Plunket, "Hercules culminated gloriously on the northern meridian at midnight of the spring equinox. Never since that date has he held so commanding a position in the sky." At the present time and in our latitude Hercules will ever rise reversed, and through the summer and autumn months his kneeling figure is always to be seen hanging downwards in the sky in anything but a dignified or commanding attitude. We may readily suppose that those who beheld this grand and conquering figure considered that it typified the ever increasing triumph at that season of the year of the power of light over darkness.

The Greek name "Herakles," for which there appears no Aryan derivation, is a rendering of the Phœnician "Harekhal" (the traveller), the Latin Hercules. Herakles was represented on coins of Cyzicus, about 500–450 It is perhaps the most familiar coin type throughout Hellas.

According to Maunder, the first suggestion that this kneeler was the great national Hellenic deity seems to have been due to Panyasis, the uncle of the great historian Herodotus. In a poem on the subject of the great national hero, in order to do him the greater honour, he sought to identify him with the unnamed wrestler of the constellation. The fact that, despite this effort, the identification had entirely failed of adoption two hundred years later, is as near positive proof as we can get, not merely that it was