Earlier in the Rubáiyát we find the Cup and the Bird mentioned in one quatrain:
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:
Nile's fertile deluge had attained its height.
