Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/408

294 dates from 3000, and the invention of the constellation a thousand years earlier.

In regard to the reversal of the figure, the general opinion is that the figure of the Horse which has come down to us is the original design.

There is a special significance in the star groups that combine two figures in one, or depict merely half a figure. Thus we have the constellation of the Centaur, half man, half horse. This shows that the figure of the horse was familiar to the inventors of the constellations. In Pegasus we find only a half horse; there certainly were plenty of stars and space sufficient to depict the perfect figure, therefore there was some good reason for leaving it out.

Again, we find among the constellation figures half a Bull, only part of a Ship, and a Sea Goat, half fish, half goat. Whatever was the intention in thus depicting these star groups, they certainly furnish additional evidence of a deliberate plan in the minds of the designers and inventors of the star pictures, as everywhere else in the starry skies we find complete figures.

A suggestion has been made, that only half the Horse is shown because the other half is supposed to be obscured by clouds, and that the figure thus depicted conveys a better idea of a horse soaring to the skies. This view is certainly a plausible one.

Allen tells us that Ptolemy mentions the wings of the Horse as well recognised in his day. The winged horse appears to have been a favourite decorative figure, and appears on early Etruscan vases, and on many pieces of pottery found in the valley of the Euphrates. It also appears on coins of Corinth from 500 to 430 and on a well-known Hittite seal.

The Greeks called the constellation, and in the Alphonsine Tables it was "Alatus," meaning "winged." Apparently at one time the foreleg of Pegasus was considerably extended, as π Cygni bears an Arab name signifying "the hoof of the horse.