Star Lore Of All Ages/Auriga

by William Tyler Olcott

Auriga

The Charioteer

Auriga

Auriga
The Charioteer

Close by the kneeling Bull behold
The Charioteer who gained by skill of old
His name and heaven as first his steeds he drove,
With flying wheels, seen and installed by Jove.
Manilius. 

The origin of this ancient constellation is lost. It has been represented for ages as a mighty man seated on the Milky Way, and like a shepherd carrying a goat on his shoulder, and a pair of little kids in his hand. The first magnitude star Capella shines in the heart of the imaginary goat.

Allen says: "The results of modern research give us reason to think that this constellation originated on the Euphrates, in much the same form as we have it to-day. It certainly was a well established sky figure there millenniums ago. A sculpture from Nimroud is an almost exact representation of Auriga, with the goat carried on the left arm."

On the Assyrian tablets Auriga was the "Chariot," and in accordance with this in Græco-Babylonian times the constellation "Rukubi," the Chariot, lay here nearly coincident with our Charioteer.

Seen rising in the north-east, it needs but little imagination to trace in the stars of Auriga a resemblance to an ancient Roman chariot, so that the title "Chariot" seems more appropriate than "Charioteer."

Ideler thinks that the original figure was made up of the five stars α, β, ε, ζ, η. The driver (represented by the star Capella) is imagined as standing on an antique sloping chariot, marked by β. The other stars represent the reins. The illustration, although contrary to Ideler's conception, seems a much easier figure to trace. Here as in Ideler's figure Capella represents the driver's head. (See p. 69.)

Plunket suggests 3000 b.c. as the date of the invention of the constellation Auriga, for then Capella, the brightest star in this region of the sky, was on the meridian in conjunction with the sun at noon of the spring equinox, and in opposition at midnight of the autumnal equinox.

Capella has by several writers been identified with the star "Icu of Babylon," mentioned in many of the Babylonian texts, and the star of Marduk. If this is correct we should credit the Babylonian astronomers with the delineation of the figure of Auriga.

Auriga has also been identified with Erichthonius, the son of Vulcan and Minerva, who being deformed and unable to walk invented the chariot, an achievement that secured him a place in the sky.

Bold Erichthonius was the first who join'd
Four horses for the rapid race designed,
And o'er the dusty wheels presiding sate.
Dryden. 

Swinburne sings of this famous inventor in the following lines:

Thou hast loosened the necks of thine horses, and goaded their flanks
 with affright,
To the race of a course that we know not on ways that are hid from our
 sight;
As a wind through the darkness the wheels of their chariot are whirled,
And the light of its passage is night on the face of the world.

Manilius thus refers to the Charioteer

Near the bent Bull a seat the Driver claims,
Whose skill conferr'd his honour and his names.
His art great Jove admired, when first he drove
His rattling Car, and fix't the Youth above.

According to Lemprière, Erichthonius became the constellation Boötes instead of Auriga.

Brown identifies Erichthonius with Poseidon, the lord of the abyss below the surface of the earth, the stormy earth-shaking divinity, and thus accounts for the stormy influence that the Greeks attributed to Capella, the Goat-star.

The Greek name for Auriga was Ἑνιοχος, "the holder of the reins," a name preserved for us in the Arab name for Beta Aurigæ, "Menkalinan," meaning "the shoulder of the rein-holder."

Blake^[1] thinks that the proximity of the chariot (Ursa Major) accounts for the name of the Charioteer applied to the constellation.

On a French chart of 1650 Auriga figures as Adam with his knees on the Milky Way, and the she-goat climbing over his neck.

Dr. Seiss claims that Auriga represented to the Greeks the Good Shepherd, a symbol foretelling the coming of Christ.

Cassius likened it to Jacob deceiving his father with the flesh of his kids.

Auriga has also been identified with Myrtilus, the charioteer of Œnomaus, with Cillas, Pelethronius, Hippolytus, Bellerophon, and St. Jerome, while Jamieson is of the opinion that Auriga is a mere type or scientific symbol of the beautiful fable of Phaëton, because he was the attendant of Phœbus at the remote period when Taurus opened the year.

Auriga in its glorious lucida Capella contains a star famous in the history of all ages. To the early Arabs Capella was known as the " Driver," because it appears in the evening twilight earlier than the other stars, and so apparently watches over them, or still more practically as the " Singer" who rides before the procession cheering on the camels, which last were represented by the Pleiades. They also called it "the Guardian of the Pleiades."

Capella is a singularly beautiful object, and lies nearer the Pole than any other of the first magnitude stars. It rises almost exactly in the north-east, and July is the only month in the year when it is not visible in these latitudes sometime before midnight.

Seen in the cool evenings of early fall, flashing its wonderful prismatic rays from the low eastern sky, it seems like a herald of old announcing the coming of a mighty host, the brilliant stellar pageant that graces our clear winter nights, and renders them gorgeous with light and life.

Mrs. Martin thus refers to the rising of this famous star, a star which Tennyson designates as "a glorious crown": "When you watch the birds congregating in noisy flocks in the morning for the fall migration, and in the afternoon gather the first fringed gentians, look for Capella in the north-eastern sky in the evening... the fair, golden, bright Capella, that decks the sky in its season. We follow it in its course visible to us across the heavens, we joy in its beauty, and feel the kindly influence that astrologers have always ascribed to it."

Eudosia thus alludes to the brilliance of Capella:

And scarce a star with equal radiance beams
Upon the earth.

Capella means "the little she-goat," the goat which suckled the infant Jupiter. The story runs that having in his play broken off one of the goat's horns, Jupiter endowed the horn with the power of being filled with whatever the possessor might wish, whence it was called "the Cornucopia," or "horn of plenty." This title is also applied to the horn of Capricornus the Sea Goat.

In India, Capella was worshipped as the Heart of Brahma. The ancient Peruvians called it "Colca," and connected it with the affairs of shepherds. English poets have alluded to it as "the Shepherds' Star." These allusions have reference doubtless to the time of Capella's culmination, which corresponded with the season when the shepherds watched their flocks.

Probably the oldest allusion to Capella extant is that which was found on an old tablet in Akkadian, which has been translated as follows: "When on the first day of the month Nisan the star of stars (or Dilgan) and the moon are parallel, that year is normal. When on the third day of the month Nisan the star of stars and the moon are parallel, that year is full."

"The star of stars" of the inscription, says Maunder, is no doubt Capella, and the year thus determined by the setting together of the moon and Capella would begin on the average with the spring equinox about 2000 b.c. The date of the Akkadians is about 4000 years ago.

Allen tells us that Capella's place on the Denderah zodiac is occupied by a mummied cat in the outstretched hand of a male figure crowned with feathers. While always an important star in the temple worship of the great Egyptian god Ptah, the Opener, it is supposed to have borne the name of that divinity, and probably was observed at its setting 1700 b.c. from his temple, the noted edifice at Karnak near Thebes. Another recently discovered sanctuary of Ptah, at Memphis, was also oriented to Capella. Lockyer thinks at least five temples were oriented to its setting.

A stormy character has been attributed to Capella, and hence it has sometimes been called "the rainy Goat-starre." Aratos alludes thus to its stormy influences:

Capella's course admiring landsmen trace,
But sailors hate her inauspicious face.

Similarly the poet Callimachus who lived about 240 b.c. wrote:

Tempt not the winds forewarned of dangers nigh,
When the kids glitter in the western sky.

The Kids are represented by the three fourth magnitude stars, ε, ζ, and η Aurigæ, which form a small isosceles triangle close to Capella and serve to identify that star. They were sometimes called "the stormy Hædi," and were so much dreaded as presaging the stormy season on the Mediterranean, that their rising early in October evenings was the signal for the closing of navigation.

All classical authors who mentioned the stars, says Allen, alluded to the direful influence of Capella, and a festival, the "Natalis Navigationis, " was held when the days of that influence were past.

Astrologically Capella portended civic and military honours, and wealth.

Some astronomical facts relative to Capella may be of interest. Capella in its spectrum almost exactly resembles the sun. It is a spectroscopic binary, its duplicity being alone revealed by the spectroscope. Its period of revolution is 104 days, and its unseen companion has a spectrum resembling that of Procyon, a star further advanced in the order of development than Capella.

In brightness Capella ranks third of all the stars we see in these latitudes, and fifth of all the stars in the firmament. Its mass is eighteen times that of the sun.

Dr. Elkins gives its parallax, that is its distance from the earth, as approximately thirty-four light years. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, at the terrific speed of 186,000 miles a second.

Capella is receding from the earth at the rate of about fifteen miles a second, and in about 3,000,000 years will appear as a second magnitude star.

The Temple of Khonsu, Karnak
From Piers's "Inscriptions of the Nile Monuments" Ptolemy, El Fergani (10th century), and Riccioli have called Capella red.

If the earth were midway between Capella and the sun, we should receive 250 times as much light from Capella as from our little solar star. According to Newcomb, Capella is 120 times as bright as the sun, and the sun at the distance of Capella would appear as a 5.5 magnitude star. The star culminates at 9 p.m. on Jan. 19th.

"Beta Aurigas is supposed to be a very close binary. The two practically equal stars that compose the pair are estimated to be only seven and one half millions of miles apart, and revolving in a period of about four days with a relative velocity of fully 150 miles a second according to Prof. Pickering. It is receding from the earth at the rate of about seventeen miles a second."

Gamma Aurigas, called by the Arabs "Al-Nath," is common to the constellations Taurus and Auriga, and marks the tip of the Bull's right horn.

The remaining stars in the constellation call for no special comment, but Auriga is rich in star clusters, M. 37 being especially noteworthy. Smith calls this "a magnificent object, the whole field being strewed, as it were, with sparkling gold dust; and the group is resolvable into about 500 stars. Even in small instruments this cluster is extremely beautiful, one of the finest of its class."

1. Astronomical Myths by J. F. Blake.