BOÖTES, VIRGO, AND HERCULES THE name of the constellation Boötes is interesting because of its great age, coming down to us from deep antiquity. It occurs in a line in Homer's Odyssey, sung probably a thousand years before Christ: "So he sat and cunningly guided the craft with the helm, nor did sleep fall upon his eyelids as he viewed the Pleiades and Boötes, that setteth late, and the Bear, which they likewise call the Wain, which turneth ever in one place and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean. This star, Calypso, the fair goddess bade him keep ever on the left as he traversed the deep."-Odyssey, Book V. Boötes has been represented as a plowman and as a herdsman, but is usually pictured as a tall man holding in leash two dogs, which are tugging away, trying to reach the Great Bear, and driving it round and round the pole. The dogs, known as the Hunting Dogs, have so few stars in them that they are not always shown on the maps as a constellation. Their brightest star, named Cor Caroli, is a beautiful star of the third magnitude, and can be found just back of the handle of the Big Dipper. Its name means "Charles's Heart," and was given it by the astronomer Halley because it is said to have shone out with unusual brilliancy at the time of the coronation of Charles II. "That star that at your birth shone out so bright, Did once again its potent fires renew, Guiding our eyes to find and worship you." The Hunting Dogs, or Canes Venatici, were invented by Helvetius in the seventeenth century; consequently they possess no mythology, even though they are associated with English history. A line curving downward from the end star in the handle of the Big Dipper will reach the wonder, Arcturus, a star in Boötes, the one firstmagnitude star of the constellation, and the rival of Vega and Capella in brightness. These three stars are of almost exactly the same magnitude, all being a very little below the standard zero magnitude. Arcturus is classed in color with the red stars, and when near the horizon it flames splendidly, but when high in the heavens its color seems to fade. It is a great sun, exceeding ours in intrinsic brilliancy at least one hundred times, and showing by its spectrum that it is older than our sun. Arcturus is one of the runaway stars,' and is moving so rapidly-from two hundred to three hundred miles per second!-that since the days of Ptolemy it has seemed to move the distance of twice the disk of the moon. 66 66 South of Boötes is the large constellation which has borne the name of the Virgin (Virgo in Latin) among people in all parts of the earth; in China, for example, it is the Frigid Maiden. In pictures the Virgin is usually drawn with a head of wheat in her left hand. In the constellation the wheat is represented by Spica the name signifying a "wheat ear"-the only first-magnitude star of the group. Four bright stars, Spica in Virgo, Denebola in the Lion's tail, Cor Caroli in the Hunting Dogs, and Arcturus in Boötes, form a geometrical figure called the "Diamond of Virgo." Spica, like Sirius, Rigel, and Vega, belongs to the younger order of suns, and is also of enormous size like them. Between Boötes and Lyra, and about equally as far as they are from the Pole, is a large constellation with no striking configurations and no first-magnitude stars. Its Beta is of the second magnitude, and there are several stars of the third. In spite of all this, however, the constellation has attracted attention; many people in many lands have had myths and legends about it, and have used many names for it. We now call it Hercules, after the hero of whom the ancient Greeks tell many marvelous tales. And they are extremely interesting tales, too; I have already related one, and I wish I might tell you many, but only enough space is left for me to indicate them briefly. You should by all means try to learn more of them for yourself. Hercules was the great-grandson of Perseus. The disasters of his life were brought upon him through the dislike of Juno, who became jealous of his mother. When he was a babe in the cradle, she sent two serpents to kill him, but he strangled both of them. Twice Juno sent fits of insanity upon him; in the first he killed his own three children, and in the second he slew his friend Iphitus. These fearful crimes had to be expiated. For the first he became the servant of his cowardly cousin Eurystheus, and by him was made to perform the famous "Twelve Labors," some of which were slaying the Nemaean lion, killing the Lernaean hydra, cleansing the Augean stables, fetching the girdle of the Queen of the Amazons, stealing the apples of the Hesperides, and seizing and bringing the dog Cerberus from Hades to the upper world. For his second crime he had to become slave to the Queen of the Lydians, who disgraced him by giving him a distaff and setting him to spin among her maidens for three years. His physical strength was most extraordinary. Once he supported on his own shoulders the whole dome of heaven to enable Atlas to get away to wade through the ocean to the Garden of the Hesperides for him. His kindness of heart was still greater. In ignorance he once made an unseemly noise in the house of Admetus just as Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, was being buried; when informed of the truth, he was so sorry that he atoned for his fault by leaping into the open grave and following her spirit to the lower regions, where he compelled Pluto to restore Alcestis alive to her husband. greatest of all was his pity and his sense of justice. Led by a voice of agony, he climbed the steepest, most rugged heights of the Caucasus mountains, to the rock where Prometheus was bound with chains to a precipice. Hercules slew the vulture of Remorse, that ate ever at the heart of the giant; and struck the icy chains off the wrists and ankles of Prometheus (whose name means "Foresight "), the kindest friend mankind had ever had. When the time came to die, Hercules heaped up a huge pile of wood, set fire to it, and placed himself on its top; but just as the flames were about to reach the hero's tortured body, a cloud came down from the sky and bore him off to heaven. But BOÖTES AND VIRGO HARD on the traces of the greater Bear Presses Boötes in his swift career. 'Mong many gems, more brilliant than the rest, Arcturus glows upon his belted waist. Through the long day he drives the Arctic Wain, Rising beneath Boötes' feet, admire No sailor ventur'd then to distant clime, And brought back foreign wealth and foreign crime. Of silver race. Then to the mountain's glen |