Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/371

Rh of his profession, and accompanied the Argonautic expedition. Afterwards he became so skilled in practice that it is said he even restored the dead to life. His success in this latter achievement so alarmed Pluto that he persuaded Zeus to remove Æsculapius to the sky.

One of the last acts of Socrates was to offer a cock to Æsculapius, and the cock and serpent were ever sacred to this great physician. He was worshipped at Epidaurus, a city of Peloponnesus, and hence he is styled by Milton, "the god in Epidaurus."

In his Paradise Lost, Milton thus refers to Ophiuchus:

In the Middle Ages, the Serpent-Bearer was sometimes regarded as symbolising Moses with the Brazen Serpent, and Golius insisted that this sky figure represented a Serpent Charmer. Al-Sufi's title, "le Psylle," meaning one skilled in the cure of snake bites, seems to confirm this view.

Ophiuchus is also identified with Laocoōn, the priest of Neptune, who during the siege of Troy was attacked and strangled by sea serpents, for his irreverent treatment of the wooden horse.

Pliny regarded the stars in this constellation as dangerous to mankind, occasioning much mortality by poisoning.

The Serpent-Bearer has also been thought to represent Saint Paul, with the Maltese viper, Aaron, whose staff became a serpent. Saint Benedict, and the Great Physician.

The constellation is noted for the number of new stars (novæ) which have appeared within its borders,—one in 1230, "Kepler's Star" in 1604, and one in 1848. It would seem as if this part of the sky should be especially observed.

Hill calls attention to the fact, that, although Ophiuchus is not one of the zodiacal constellations, yet out of the twenty-five days from Nov. 21st to Dec. 16th, which the sun spends in passing from Libra to Sagittarius, only nine