¹ For what Dr. Fotheringham might call an ‘instructive example’ of such pleadings I may cite an earlier attempt to supply the missing Ram to the Babylonian lists. In the old legend relating the fight between Merodach and Tiamat, or Chaos, the goddess of darkness is assisted by eleven monsters with names mostly unintelligible. But one of them was a Scorpion, and this was held enough to prove that the eleven—not twelve—helpers were the ubiquitous Signs of the Zodiac. Now another of them was a Kusarrikku, and when it was found that in the late Seleucid tablets the sign answering to our Aries is called Ku, the inference was drawn with cheerful confidence that Ku was short for Kusarrikku, and consequently that Kusarrikku meant ‘Ram.’ Unhappily it has turned out that Ku stands, not for Kusarrikku, but for Ku-mal, now translated ‘Hireling.’

² The earliest appearance of Ζυγός, in Hipparchus, is almost certainly a false reading, as the writer everywhere else uses Χηλαί.

³ Cf. his Handbuch der altorientischen Geisteakultur, 1913.

⁴ Sirius is 40°, Altair 30° from the ecliptic.

⁵ I am glad to see that Dr. Fotheringham appreciates this point, which has been missed even by careful writers.

⁶ At any rate people like Columella thought so.

⁷ Cf. Manilius, III. 218 sqq., and III. 483 sqq.

⁸ Sayce, in Soc. Bibl. Archaeol., Vol. III. 1874.Google Scholar

⁹ Seneca, , Nat. Quaest., vii. 25.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Maass, , Comment. in Arat., p. 75.Google Scholar