Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/98

 although it is also viewed to good advantage when passing the meridian during the evenings of October and November. Pisces lies in a region which in early times was known as "the Sea" because several other sea-creatures such as the Dolphin, which lies west of the Square, the Sea-goat and the Whale are found here.

Some authorities claim that when the fire-breathing giant Typhon appeared in Thessaly, the horrible creature so frightened the inhabitants of Olympus that they fled to the Nile where they concealed themselves under assumed shapes. Here the great god Jupiter

and the fun loving Pan into a sea-goat, now the constellation Capricornus, while the goddess Venus and her son Cupid threw themselves into the river and were changed into two fishes, which are now represented by Pisces, in the sky. The fate of Typhon has already been mentioned, and even modern Sicilians have seen Etna burst its crown to let out his fiery breath.

Just below Andromeda and above the head of Cetus is a long slim triangle-shaped figure called Triangulum, the Triangle, and a crooked line formed by a large star and two smaller ones called Aries, the Ram.

In legend, Aries was a great ram with a golden fleece and possessed the ability to fly. Mercury brought this beautiful creature to Helle and Prixus, the persecuted children of the King of Thessaly, so that they might climb upon its back and escape across the sea from their cruel stepmother. On the way over, Helle lost her hold on the fleece, sank under the waves and was drowned. Commemorating this tragedy, the sea was ever after called the Sea of Helle or the Hellespont but in modern days, the Dardanelles. The Dardanelles is a narrow channel separating Europe from Asia, and is the "Hellespont" that Leander so faithfully swam when