The Eagle
Divides the ether with her ardent wing
Beneath the Swan, not far from Pegasus,
Poetic Eagle.
The history of the constellation Aquila, the Eagle, is especially interesting both because in this case we can trace it back very clearly to the earliest times, and the original Euphratean name has been preserved.
The Sumerian-Akkadian Eagle was "Alula" (the great spirit), the symbol of the noontide sun, and in all probability the origin of the present constellation. On a Euphratean uranographic stone of about 1200 b.c., there is a bird figured, known as the Eagle, which is supposed to represent the constellation of Aquila.
The Latins knew this constellation as Aquila, and their poets called it "Jovis Ales" and "Jovis Nutrix," the "Bird" and the "Nurse of Jove." Ovid called it "Merops," King of the island of Cos, in the Archipelago, turned into the Eagle of the sky, and placed among the stars by Juno. Others thought it some Æthiopian king like Cepheus.
Aquila is generally joined with Antinoüs, an asterism invented by Tycho Brahe. Antinous was a youth of Bithynia in Asia Minor, who came to an untimely death by drowning in the river Nile. So greatly was his death lamented by the Emperor Adrian, that he erected a temple to his memory, and built in honour of him a splendid city on the banks of the Nile.
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