Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/142

 This particular eagle stood by the throne in the palace on Mount Olympus and carried the thunderbolts in his claws.

The Eagle pictured on the star maps is a very large bird, but the only portion of him not difficult to locate in the sky are the three bright stars which hang like a bar across his neck. These stars alone suggest a bird flying with outstretched wings. This is a region of birds, for the great Cross with Cygnus, the Swan, drifts down the Milky Way between the two Eagles. The "three birds" are most effective and easily located when seen on the meridian in midsummer, for they then form a large triangle across the star stream, Lyra and Aquila being at the edges of the stream and at the base of the triangle with the center of the Cross at its peak.

One day Jupiter sent this eagle who is now in the sky down from Mount Olympus to seize a beautiful youth named Ganymede who was tending his father's flocks on Mount Ida. This youth was then carried up to the palaces of the Gods and given the position of cupbearer. The Greeks believed that Jupiter gave Ganymede's grieving father a pair of divine horses as a compensation for kidnaping his boy and comforted him at the same time by saying that Ganymede had now become immortal and free from all earthly ills. The eagle was rewarded for its daring by being placed among the constellations. Ganymede was also, in due time, honored in the same manner and is represented by the constellation Aquarius, the Waterbearer, despite the fact that it was nectar, and not water, that this youth poured in the cups of the gods. Aquarius lies east of Aquila.

The large white star in the center of the three stars which hang