The Scorpion
In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent.
In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines,
And fills the place of two celestial signs.
Ovid.
This is the famous Scorpion which sprang out of the earth at the command of Juno, and stung Orion, the mighty hunter, of which wound he died.
It has been suggested that the inventors of the constellations might have placed the Scorpion in this region of the zodiac to denote that when the sun enters this sign, the diseases incident to the fruit season would prevail, since autumn, which abounded in fruit, often brought with it a great variety of diseases, and might be thus fitly represented by that venomous creature the Scorpion, who, as he recedes, wounds with a sting in his tail. However, there seems a deeper significance for the name and position of this constellation, which Maunder points out. At midnight at the spring equinox, the Scorpion was for the ancients who designed the star groups on the meridian in the south, and the Dragon was in like manner on the meridian in the north, so they provided another hero, the Serpent Holder, to trample down the Scorpion in the south, just as Hercules treads on the Serpent in the north, the heads of the two heroes being represented by stars in the zenith. Both the unknown warriors therefore were pictured in those primitive ideas as erect, but for many generations Hercules has appeared to us hanging downwards in the sky.
There can be little doubt that these four figures are
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