Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/151

 pure white to black and forbade it to fly any longer among other birds. On another occasion this provoking little servant was given a cup and told to fetch some water for a sacrifice to Jupiter. Instead of attending to its duty, however, it loitered at a fig tree until the fruit became ripe, then returned to the God with a watersnake in his claws and a lie on his tongue. For punishment the crow was fixed in the sky with the cup and the snake, the latter being charged never to allow him to drink—although the constellation Hydra, which stretches over a quarter of the sky, is certainly not the same little reptile which the crow carried from the spring.



"The Charioteer" is an ancient title retained by the constellation Auriga, although in the star-maps one usually finds a man of huge stature carrying a goat and two frightened kids.

Auriga, according to the earliest Grecian legends, was a chariot-driver identified with Erechtheus, son of the God Vulcan. Erechtheus inherited lameness from his father who was twice thrown from Mount Olympus, the second time falling on the Island of Lemnos instead of the sea,—which broke his ankle. His son, fretting under the inconvenience caused by his deformity, invented the four-horse chariot which provided himself and others with