Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/203

 to do when certain stars rose and set, it would have been unpardonable not to have known the Pleiades. They thought that the gods had set the stars in the sky to keep the people from living in confusion. Thus Jupiter tells

The farmer and the sailor, especially, watched the rising and the setting of the stars and abided by the advice in Hesiod's "Works and Days":

"At the rising of the Atlas-born Pleiades begin harvesting but plowing when they set."

The rising of Orion an hour and a half later was also a sign from heaven that the season for threshing had arrived.

But when the giant is in midheaven it is time for vintage. At this time Orion has backed the Bull pretty far over in the west and