Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/329

Rh in Leo, and a lion couchant with the sun rising at his back was sculptured on many of their palaces.

Among the Peruvians, Leo has the form of a puma springing upon his prey, and thus we find the primitive people of the eastern and western world viewing in this region of the heavens a gigantic feline creature.

The lion was the symbol of the tribe of Judah, and the constellation appears in the Hebrew zodiac. It was this tribal symbol of Judah that appeared emblazoned on the shield of Richard I. the Crusader. The association of Leo with Judah arose from the fact that Leo was Judah's natal sign. In the Bible there are frequent allusions to this connection between Leo and the tribe of Judah. Thus we read: "Judah is a Lion's whelp," and again, "The Lion of the Tribe of Judah hath prevailed."

Christians of the Middle Ages called Leo one of "Daniel's Lions," and distinct reference is made to Leo in an inscription on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes. To Schiller Leo represented St. Thomas.

According to Greek fable, this Lion represents the formidable animal which infested the forest of Nemæa. It was slain by Hercules, his first labour, and placed by Jupiter among the stars in commemoration of that dreadful conflict. Hercules is generally represented as wearing the lion's skin, and he is said to have reclined on it as he awaited his doom on the funeral pyre. Some aver that Hercules strangled the lion with his hands, but according to another legend he seized the lion by its jaws, and drove his heavy club down the creature's throat.

Maunder points out a curious relationship between four of the zodiacal constellations, one of which is Leo. He says: "The four most important signs of the zodiac are those in which the sun is located on the longest and the shortest days, and on the two days when the days and nights are of equal length. These four signs in the days of Noah were the Bull, the Lion, the Scorpion, and the Water-Pourer.