Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/79



is so closely identified with the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish," situated directly south of it, that a description of this asterism is worthy of notice in this place.

Piscis Australis, says Burritt, is supposed to have taken its name from the transformation of Venus into the shape of a fish, when she fled terrified at the horrible advances of the monster Typhon. It has been thought that the Southern Fish was the sky symbol of the god Dagon of the Syrians, the Phagre and Oxyrinque adored in Egypt, and it has even been associated with the still greater Oannes. It was especially mentioned by Avienus as the "Greater Fish," and Longfellow in the notes to his translation of the Divine Comedy, called it the "Golden Fish."

The Mosaicists held the asterism to represent the Barrel of Meal belonging to Sareptha's widow, but Schickard pronounces it to be the Fish taken by St. Peter with a piece of money in its mouth.

Aratos describes the figure as "on his back the Fish," but it generally appears in an upright position with mouth agape, drinking in the great stream which flows down the sky from the water-jar of Aquarius.

In the early legends the Southern Fish was the parent of the Northern and Western Fishes that make up the zodiacal constellation Pisces.

This constellation as a whole is inconspicuous in this hemisphere owing to its low position. Its lucida however, the brilliant first magnitude star Fomalhaut, rises well