Ariones harpe fyn.
Chaucer's Hous of Fame.
Lyra, is the Leier of Germany, Lira of Italy, and Lyre of France, and anciently represented the fabled instrument invented by Hermes and given to his half-brother Apollo, who in turn transferred it to his son Orpheus, the musician of the Argonauts, of whom Shakespeare wrote:
While Manilius said that its service in its last owner's hands, in the release of Eurydice from Hades,
Gain'd it Heaven, and still its force appears,
As then the Rocks it now draws on the Stars.
From its ownership by these divinities came various adjectival titles: Ἑρμαίη and Κυλλεναίη, referring to Hermes and his birthplace; Cicero's Clara Fides Cyllenea and Mercurialis, that Varro also used; I've been unable to find clara Fides or Mercurialis in either the de Lingua Latina or the de Re Rustica, but Varro refers to the constellation as just plain Fides in R. R. II.5.12. The word, by the way, is not to be taken as meaning "faith"; it's the word for a stringed instrument, that has given the English word fiddle: see the article Fidicula in Daremberg & Saglio, and "Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned" (CJ 42:211‑217), and the Cithara, or Lyra, Apollinis, Orphei, Orphica, and Mercurii. It also was Lyra Arionis and Amphionis, from those skilful players; but usually it was plain Lyra and, later on, Cithara; Fides, — the Fidis of Columella, who, with Pliny, also used Fidicula; Decachordum; and Tympanum. In this same connection we see Fidicen, the Lyrist; Deferens Psalterium; and Canticum, a Song.
The occasional early title Aquilaris was from the fact that the instrument was often shown hanging from the claws of the Eagle also imagined in its stars.
In Greece it was Κιθάρα; the ancient Φόρμιγξ, the first stringed instrument of the Greek bards; and Λύρα or Λύρη, and Λύρα κατοφερής, the Pendent Lyre.
Ovid mentioned its seven strings as equaling the number of the Pleiades; Longfellow confirming this number in his Occultation of Orion:
with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Aeolian Lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixéd stars.
Still it has been shown with but six, and a vacant space for the seventh, which Spence, in the Polymetis, referred to the Lost Pleiad.
Manilius seems to have made two distinct constellations of this, — Lyra and Fides, — although we do not know their boundaries, and the subject is somewhat confused in his allusions to it.
The Persian Hafiz called it the Lyre of Zurah, and his countrymen translated Κιθάρα by Ṣanj Rūmi; the Arabians turning this into Al Ṣanj, from which Hyde and others derived Asange, Asenger, Asanges, Asangue, Sangue, and Mesanguo, all titles for Lyra in Europe centuries ago. But Assemani thought that these were from Schickard's Azzango, a Cymbal. The reproduced Alfonsine Tables of 1863‑67 give Alsanja; while Ṣanj was again turned into Arnig and Aznig in the translation of Reduan's Commentary, and into the still more unlikely Brinek, as has been explained by Ideler.
In Bohemia our Lyre was Hauslicky na Nebi, the Fiddle in the Sky; but the Teutons knew it as Harapha, and the Anglo-Saxons as Hearpe, which Fortunatus of the 6th century, the poet-bishop of Poitiers, called the barbarians' Harpa. With the early Britons it was Talyn Arthur, that hero's Harp. Novidius said that it was King David's Harp; but Julius Schiller, that it was the Manger of the Infant Saviour, Praesepe Salvatoris.
Jugum has been wrongly applied to it, from the Ζυγόν of Homer, but this was for the Yoke, or Cross-bar, of the instrument, with no reference to the constellation, which Homer probably did not know; still the equivalent Ζύγωμα was in frequent use for it by Hipparchos.
Sundry other fancied figures have been current for these stars.
Acosta mentioned them as Urcuchillay, the parti-colored Ram in charge of the heavenly flocks of the ancient Peruvians; Albegala and Albegalo occur with Bayer and Riccioli, like the Arabic Al Baghl, a Mule, although their appropriateness is not obvious; and Naṣr al Dīn wrote of α, ε, and ζ collectively as Dik Paye among the common people of Persia; this was the Χυτρό-πους, or Greek tripod, and the Uthfiyyah of the nomad Arabs.
Chirka, also attributed to Naṣr al Dīn, was, by some scribe's error for Ḣazaf, figured in this location on the Dresden globe as a circular vessel with a flat bottom and two handles; but on the Borgian it is a Scroll, commonly known, according to Assemani, as Rabesco.
The association of Lyra's stars with a bird perhaps originated from a conception of the figure current for millenniums in ancient India, — that of an Eagle or Vulture; and, in Akkadia, of the great storm-bird Urakhga before this was there identified with Corvus. But the Arabs' title, Al Naṣr al Wāḳiʽ,These are two of the few instances in Arab astronomy where more than one star were utilized to represent an animate object — Chilmead's Alvaka, — referring to the swooping Stone Eagle of the Desert, generally has been attributed to the configuration of the group α, ε, ζ, which shows the bird with half-closed wings, in contrast to Al Naṣr al Ṭāʼir, These are two of the few instances in Arab astronomy where more than one star were utilized to represent an animate object the Flying Eagle, our Aquila, whose smaller stars, β and γ, on either side of α, indicate the outspread wings. Scaliger cited the synonymous Al Naṣr al Sākiṭ, from which came the Nessrusakat of Bayer and Nessrusakito of Assemani.
Al Sufi, alone of extant Arabian authors, called it Al Iwazz, the Goose.
Manilius seems to have made two distinct constellations of this, — Lyra and Fides, — although we do not know their boundaries, and the subject is somewhat confused in his allusions to it.
The Persian Hafiz called it the Lyre of Zurah, and his countrymen translated Κιθάρα by Ṣanj Rūmi; the Arabians turning this into Al Ṣanj, from which Hyde and others derived Asange, Asenger, Asanges, Asangue, Sangue, and Mesanguo, all titles for Lyra in Europe centuries ago. But Assemani thought that these were from Schickard's Azzango, a Cymbal. The reproduced Alfonsine Tables of 1863‑67 give Alsanja; while Ṣanj was again turned into Arnig and Aznig in the translation of Reduan's Commentary, and into the still more unlikely Brinek, as has been explained by Ideler.
In Bohemia our Lyre was Hauslicky na Nebi, the Fiddle in the Sky; but the Teutons knew it as Harapha, and the Anglo-Saxons as Hearpe, which Fortunatus of the 6th century, the poet-bishop of Poitiers, called the barbarians' Harpa. With the early Britons it was Talyn Arthur, that hero's Harp. Novidius said that it was King David's Harp; but Julius Schiller, that it was the Manger of the Infant Saviour, Praesepe Salvatoris.
Jugum has been wrongly applied to it, from the Ζυγόν of Homer, but this was for the Yoke, or Cross-bar, of the instrument, with no reference to the constellation, which Homer probably did not know; still the equivalent Ζύγωμα was in frequent use for it by Hipparchos.
Sundry other fancied figures have been current for these stars.
Acosta mentioned them as Urcuchillay, the parti-colored Ram in charge of the heavenly flocks of the ancient Peruvians; Albegala and Albegalo occur with Bayer and Riccioli, like the Arabic Al Baghl, a Mule, although their appropriateness is not obvious; and Naṣr al Dīn wrote of α, ε, and ζ collectively as Dik Paye among the common people of Persia; this was the Χυτρό-πους, or Greek tripod, and the Uthfiyyah of the nomad Arabs.
Chirka, also attributed to Naṣr al Dīn, was, by some scribe's error for Ḣazaf, figured in this location on the Dresden globe as a circular vessel with a flat bottom and two handles; but on the Borgian it is a Scroll, commonly known, according to Assemani, as Rabesco.
The association of Lyra's stars with a bird perhaps originated from a conception of the figure current for millenniums in ancient India, — that of an Eagle or Vulture; and, in Akkadia, of the great storm-bird Urakhga before this was there identified with Corvus. But the Arabs' title, Al Naṣr al Wāḳiʽ,These are two of the few instances in Arab astronomy where more than one star were utilized to represent an animate object — Chilmead's Alvaka, — referring to the swooping Stone Eagle of the Desert, generally has been attributed to the configuration of the group α, ε, ζ, which shows the bird with half-closed wings, in contrast to Al Naṣr al Ṭāʼir, These are two of the few instances in Arab astronomy where more than one star were utilized to represent an animate object the Flying Eagle, our Aquila, whose smaller stars, β and γ, on either side of α, indicate the outspread wings. Scaliger cited the synonymous Al Naṣr al Sākiṭ, from which came the Nessrusakat of Bayer and Nessrusakito of Assemani.
Al Sufi, alone of extant Arabian authors, called it Al Iwazz, the Goose.
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