Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/535



The "V"-shaped group of stars in the constellation Taurus is known as "the Hyades," and has attracted the attention of all mankind. Its stars outline the face of the fierce Bull that lowers its massive head to gore the giant hunter Orion, and the ruddy first magnitude star Aldebaran, the lucida of the group, marks the eye of the enraged creature.

According to Allen the Greeks knew this star cluster as, which became Hyades with the cultured Latins, a title supposed by some to be derived from, "to rain," referring to the wet period attending their morning and evening setting in the latter parts of May and November, and this is their universal character in the literature of all ages.

The poets call these stars the "rainy Hyades" or the "watery Hyades." Thus Horace in his ode to the ship bearing Virgil to Greece sings:

Manilius refers to them as "sad companions of the turning year."

Pliny called them collectively "a violent and troublesome star, causing storms and tempests raging both on land and sea." 26