Star Lore Of All Ages/Crater

by William Tyler Olcott

Crater

The Cup

Crater

Crater
The Cup

Midway
His volume is the Cup.
Aratos, referring to Hydra.

Closely identified with Corvus is the constellation Crater, the Cup, an inconspicuous group of stars bounding Corvus on the west. An imaginary line, drawn through the brighter stars in Crater, traces out a bowl-shaped figure, whence its fancied resemblance to a Cup, the title the constellation has borne from time immemorial.

In the old atlases, the Cup is usually represented in the form of a large urn elaborately ornamented, with two handles set opposite each other and rising above the rim of the bowl, resting insecurely on the coils of the great sea serpent Hydra.

This was the cup fabled to belong to Bacchus, and Manilius thus refers to it:

the generous Bowl
Of Bacchus flows and cheers the thirsty Pole.

The original connection of Crater and Corvus is with Hydra, the storm and ocean monster. Crater was the symbol of the vault of heaven, wherein at times storm winds, clouds, and rain were chaotically mixed, while Corvus, as we have seen, was known as the Great Storm Bird."

Omar in the following familiar lines employs the simile respecting Crater and the dome of heaven:

And that inverted Bowl they call the sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die.

Earlier in the Rubáiyát we find the Cup and the Bird mentioned in one quatrain:

Come fill the Cup and in the fire of Spring
Your winter garments of Repentance fling:
 The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the wing.

It is possible that no astronomical significance was intended here by this reference to the Bird and Cup, as the Bird is clearly Time and not the Raven, but the Bird and Cup were so closely identified in the astronomical lore of the Orient, that the Persian poet may well have considered the simile more fitting than would at first appear. It is certainly a curious coincidence.

Allen tells us that in the early Greek days Crater represented the κάνθαρος or "Goblet of Apollo," which universally was called κρατηρ. The Greeks also called the Cup κάλπη, a "cinerary urn," and ῾γδρία, a "water bucket."

One Greek legend connected Crater (the Mixing Bowl) with the Cup of Icarius, to whom Bacchus gave the wine, and who was translated to the sky as the constellation Boötes. Another, originating in Asia Minor, connected the Cup with the mixing of human blood with wine in a bowl.

In China the constellation figured strangely enough as a dog.

In the Euphratean star list. Crater is called "the Bowl of the Snake." Other names for it are the Cup of Herakles, of Achilles, of Dido, of Medea.

No allusions to this constellation have as yet been foand in the excavated relics of ancient Egypt, although Allen informs us that there is an ancient vase in the Warwick collection on which is the following inscription:

Wise ancients knew when Crater rose to sight,
Nile's fertile deluge had attained its height.

Photo by Brogi
Medea
National Museum, Naples There certainly would seem to be a significance attached to Crater in Egyptian star lore, as Hydra, so intimately connected with Crater, has been regarded as the inhabitant of the Nile, and in fact its representative. In all probability, evidence connecting this constellation with Egyptian astronomy will come to light in the near future, as the work of excavation is rapidly going on in that rich land of buried treasure.

In early Arabia this constellation was known as "the Stall," a figure much resembling the Manger in the constellation Cancer. Hewitt connects the Cup with the Soma Cup of prehistoric India. It has also been identified with the cup that Joseph found in Benjamin's sack, with Noah's wine cup, and the cup of Christ's Passion. Dr. Seiss regarded it as the Cup of Wrath of the Revelations.^[1]

The constellation contains no stars of special interest.

Inasmuch as Crater was regarded in ancient times as the symbol of the vault of heaven, it may be well to remark here an interesting fact, often lost sight of, concerning the stars in their relation to our planet, which a recent writer has pointed out.

To the individual, the heavens resemble nothing so much as "the inverted Bowl" of which Omar sings, with its rim resting on the hills, and other irregular surface features that limit our view of the horizon, but it is obvious that the sky is much more extended, as it covers half the earth, and is not bounded by the individual's horizon.

Therefore, when we look at the stars, some of them are twinkling above the billows of the mighty oceans, the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian. Others look down on the lofty Andes, with their snow peaks, and pierce the gloom of the tropical forest in the valley of the Amazon. Still other suns glitter above the bergs and field ice of the frozen polar seas, on scenes of frigid desolation, and some of the stars we nightly gaze upon are mingling their beams with the arc lights of our great and populous cities.

"Every point in the sky is directly above some point on the earth, and as is the proportion of a given area to the whole sky, so is the proportion of the area it overhangs to the whole surface of the earth." Thus the Pleiades, the famous cluster in Taurus, cover a space about equal to Westchester County, N. Y.

1. Early Christians believed that the constellations Corvus and Crater represented the Ark of the Covenant.