The Twins
Over Orion's grave low down in the west.
Tennyson's Maud.
The ancient Chaldeans, and eastern nations generally, knew nothing of the zodiacal sign we call Gemini, or the Twins, although these stars have always been regarded as twins from remote antiquity.
Instead of twin brothers, however, the ancients imagined these stars represented two Kids. There was a significance in this title quite apart from its relation to the herds that they were daily concerned with.
We see in this region of the sky three ancient and important constellations named after domestic animals that figured prominently in the pastoral life of early times, the Ram, the Bull, and the Kids. Pluche tells us that "in the reproduction of species among the herds familiar to primitive man, the first produced in the vernal season are the lambs, then come the calves, and later the kids, so that it was natural that the ancients who devised the constellations should characterise in this order the three constellations through which the sun passed in the vernal season."
Brown considers that the constellations were designed to perpetuate the stories in which the ancients dramatised their conception of solar and lunar relations. He holds that Gemini is a stellar representation of the great Twin Brethren of the sky, the sun and the moon, who join in building a mysterious city. Although hostile to each other, they work together, and are only seen together by day.
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