from blows or missiles. Achilles after striving in vain to wound Cicnus finally succeeded in smothering him. As he was about to rob his victim of his armour, Cicnus was suddenly changed into a swan.
According to Ovid, the constellation took its name froni Cygnus, a relative of Phaëton's, who deeply lamented the untimely fate of that youth, who was hurled into the river Eridanus after his disastrous ride. The legend relates that after Phaëton had disappeared beneath the waters of the river, Cygnus frequently plunged into the stream to seek him. The gods in wrath changed him into a swan, and therefore it is that the swan ever sails about in the most pensive manner, and frequently thrusts its head beneath the water.
Virgil in the 10th Book of his Æneid thus alludes to this fable:
And sung his loss in poplar groves alone,
Beneath the sister shades to soothe his grief.
Heaven heard his song and hastened his relief,
And changed to snowy plumes his hoary hair,
And winged his flight to sing aloft in air.
Allen tells us that this constellation may have originated on the Euphrates, for the tablets show a stellar bird of some kind. At all events the present figure did not originate with the Greeks, for the history of the constellation had been entirely lost to them.
In Arabia Cygnus was called "the Flying Eagle," and "the Hen," appearing under the latter title about 300 b.c. in Egypt.
Cygnus is generally represented in full flight along the Milky Way.
On some old maps the bird is apparently just rising from the ground. Aratos describes the Swan:
