The Charioteer
The Charioteer who gained by skill of old
His name and heaven as first his steeds he drove,
With flying wheels, seen and installed by Jove.
Manilius.
The origin of this ancient constellation is lost. It has been represented for ages as a mighty man seated on the Milky Way, and like a shepherd carrying a goat on his shoulder, and a pair of little kids in his hand. The first magnitude star Capella shines in the heart of the imaginary goat.
Allen says: "The results of modern research give us reason to think that this constellation originated on the Euphrates, in much the same form as we have it to-day. It certainly was a well established sky figure there millenniums ago. A sculpture from Nimroud is an almost exact representation of Auriga, with the goat carried on the left arm."
On the Assyrian tablets Auriga was the "Chariot," and in accordance with this in Græco-Babylonian times the constellation "Rukubi," the Chariot, lay here nearly coincident with our Charioteer.
Seen rising in the north-east, it needs but little imagination to trace in the stars of Auriga a resemblance to an ancient Roman chariot, so that the title "Chariot" seems more appropriate than "Charioteer."
Ideler thinks that the original figure was made up of the five stars α, β, ε, ζ, η. The driver (represented by the
63
