star Capella) is imagined as standing on an antique sloping chariot, marked by β. The other stars represent the reins. The illustration, although contrary to Ideler's conception, seems a much easier figure to trace. Here as in Ideler's figure Capella represents the driver's head. (See p. 69.)
Plunket suggests 3000 b.c. as the date of the invention of the constellation Auriga, for then Capella, the brightest star in this region of the sky, was on the meridian in conjunction with the sun at noon of the spring equinox, and in opposition at midnight of the autumnal equinox.
Capella has by several writers been identified with the star "Icu of Babylon," mentioned in many of the Babylonian texts, and the star of Marduk. If this is correct we should credit the Babylonian astronomers with the delineation of the figure of Auriga.
Auriga has also been identified with Erichthonius, the son of Vulcan and Minerva, who being deformed and unable to walk invented the chariot, an achievement that secured him a place in the sky.
Four horses for the rapid race designed,
And o'er the dusty wheels presiding sate.
Dryden.
Swinburne sings of this famous inventor in the following lines:
with affright,
To the race of a course that we know not on ways that are hid from our
sight;
As a wind through the darkness the wheels of their chariot are whirled,
And the light of its passage is night on the face of the world.
Manilius thus refers to the Charioteer
Whose skill conferr'd his honour and his names.
