Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/99

Rh and sea, but unfortunately Helle neglected to secure her hold,and fell from her seat while the ram was flying across the strait which divides Europe from Asia. In memory of this catastrophe this strait was afterwards known as the Hellespont. Manilius thus refers to this episode:

Longfellow also alludes to Helle's fall:

Phrixus landed safely at Colchis, at the eastern end of the Black Sea. Out of gratitude for his safe deliverance, he sacrificed the ram and gave the golden fleece to the king of the country, who hung it in the sacred grove of Ares, under guard of a sleepless dragon.

The golden fleece has always been associated in Greek mythology with the voyage of the ship Argo, and the celebrated Argonautic expedition which set forth in search of it.

The theory has been advanced that the stellar symbols were intended simply as a record of this famous expedition. Even so good an astronomer as Sir Isaac Newton held this view, but Maunder on the contrary claims that there was nothing in the story of the neighbouring constellations to support the legend of the golden fleece.

Curiously enough Aries is the leading sign in all the systems of astrology which have come down to us through the Greeks, and it figures as the leading sign in most of the explanations of the constellation figures which are on record. Maunder considers that this fact proves that these astrological systems, and these theories concerning the constellation figures, not only took their rise at a later epoch, but that when they did so, the real origin and meaning of the designs had been wholly lost.