Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/542

408 an emotion suggesting something romantic and sad. The Pleiades form in truth a delightful group of twinkling unfathomable stars, singularly fascinating and singularly persistent in their brilliancy." — Mrs. Martin.

On the Euphrates the Pleiades and the Hyades were known as "the Great Twins of the Ecliptic." The Babylonians and Assyrians regarded them as a family group without dreaming of the full significance of the title, for modern science has proved that this group of suns have a common proper motion, that is, they are moving through space in the same direction, and are obviously part of one great system that holds them fast in bonds immutable.

The patriarch Job is thought to refer to the Pleiades in his word "Kimah," meaning "a cluster or heap," which occurs in the Biblical passages: "[God] maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades and the Chambers of the South," and the familiar query: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?"

The meaning of this inquiry has been the cause of much conjecture and many attempts have been made to interpret the sense of it. Maunder thus explains the passage: When the constellations were first designed the Pleiades rose heliacally at the beginning of April and were the sign of the return of spring. Aratos wrote of them:

The Pleiades which thus heralded the return of this genial season were poetically taken as representing the power and influence of spring. Their "sweet influences" were those that rolled away the gravestone of snow and ice which had lain upon the winter tomb of nature.

The question of Job was in effect, "What control hast thou over the powers of nature? This is God's work, what canst thou do to hinder it?" Of the sweet influence of these fair stars we read again in Milton's Paradise Lost, where the poet sings of the Pleiades in the morning skies: