these figures are represented the altar of Noah, erected after the Deluge.
In Brown's Euphratean star list Libra is designated "the Claws," "the Life Maker of Heaven," and "the Lofty Altar."
Libra has been a great favourite with the poets of all ages. Manilius thus alludes to the Starry Balance:
Equal a while.
Milton refers to the constellation in his Paradise Lost:
Hung forth in heav'n his golden scales yet seen
Betwixt Astræa and the Scorpion sign,
Wherein all things created first he weighed.
And Homer sings:
His golden Scales aloft.
But Allen thinks this is not a reference to our Libra. Longfellow in his "Occupation of Orion" wrote:
Silently with the stars ascended.
And in his "Poet's Calendar" for September we read:
The night and day.
In India Libra was regarded as a Balance, and in the zodiac of that country it is figured as a man bending on one knee and holding a pair of scales.
In China this constellation first represented a dragon, but afterwards a celestial Balance. In their early solar zodiac it was the Crocodile, or Dragon, the national emblem.
The early Hebrews also regarded Libra as a Scale-beam, as did the Egyptians, and it plainly appears as such on the Denderah planisphere. "The Libra of the zodiac,"
