Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/32

14 dew, is also the goddess of the dark hours of night from which she regularly withdraws from time to time her silver light. This division of attributes favoured the introduction of the other planets (for the Sun and Moon were classed with the planets) into the cycle of the deities to be worshipped. In his benignant aspect the Sun was occasionally represented by Jupiter ; as a malignant god he was generally superseded by Saturn though Mars assumed some of his functions as hostile to the human race. On the other hand, Astarte was as often represented by the planet Venus as by the Moon. If Mercury played any part at all it was as a subordinate and inferior manifestation of goodness. In their supposed order of distance from the earth, the seven so-called planets were arranged as follows: Saturn, the most distant, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon. And assigning each of the 24 hours of the day and the night to a repeated series of the planets in this order, they found that if the first hour of a particular day was assigned to Saturn, the first hour of the following day would belong to the Sun, of the next day to the Moon, and so on in the order preserved to our times by the names of the days of the week. According to the Semitic mode of viewing the supremacy of the distant and gloomy Saturn, the seventh and last day was consecrated to him, and when it was discovered that the number six was a perfect number, it was inferred that no other period could be assigned to the creation of all things under his auspices. On the seventh day therefore the