THE NAMING OF THE STARS

Abstract

We have seen that a few constellation-names used by us to-day make their appearance as far back as the Homeric poems, while the star-names Sirius and Arcturus are found in the works of Hesiod. We saw no reason to suppose that these early poets knew no names for other groups. They mentioned only those conspicuous heavenly objects that might occur in any general literature, as for example in the Old Testament books of Job and Amos. There are sporadic references to constellations in the extant works of the great Greek tragedians of the fifth century B.C., but these give us few additions to the Homeric list'. It is not till we come to the special literature of the subject that constellation-names appear in any quantity. The first specialist whose name stands out is the mathematician Eudoxus of Cnidus, a disciple of Plato, who lived in the first half of the fourth century B.C. He wrote a prose work entitled the “Phaenomena”, which, though unfortunately lost, was rendered into verse by the poet Aratus about 275 B.C.