Bootes
One of the 88 IAU constellations. The term
Etymology and History
The Greek constellation ...
Origin of Constellation
Babylonian
Greco-Roman
Aratos
[91] Behind Helice there comes, like a man driving, Arctophylax, whom men call Bootes, because he is seen to be just touching the Wagon-Bear. All of him is very conspicuous; below his belt circles Arcturus itself, a star distinct from the rest.
[580?] No longer great on both sides of the horizon is Arctophylax but only the lesser portion is visible, while the greater part is wrapt in night. For with four signs of the Zodiac Boötes sets and is received in the bosom of ocean; and when he is sated with the light he takes till past midnight in the loosing of this oxen, in the season when he sets with the sinking sun. Those nights are named after his late setting. So these stars are setting, but another, facing them, no dim star, even Orion with glittering belt and shining shoulders and trusting in the might of his sword, and brining all the River, rises from the other horn, the East.
[607] Nor can the rising Claws [Libra], though faintly shining, pass unremarked, when at a bound the mighty sign of Boötes rises, jeweled with Arcturus.
(Kidd 1997)
Eratosthenes
Var. 1:
Var. 2:
(Pamias and Zucker 2013)
Hipparchus
Hyginus, Astronomica
He is said to be Arcas, the son of Jove and Callisto, whom Lycaon served at a banquet, cut up with other meat, when Jupiter came to him as a guest. For Lycaon wanted to know whether the one who had asked for his hospitality was a god or not. For this deed he was punished by no slight punishment, for Jupiter, quickly overturning the table, burned the house with a thunderbolt, and turned Lycaon himself into a wolf. But the scattered limbs of the boy he put together, and gave him to a certain Aitolian to care for. When, grown to manhood, he was hunting in the woods, he saw his mother changed to bear form, and did not recognize her. Intent on killing her, he chased her into the temple of Jove Lycaeus, where the penalty for entering is death, according to Arcadian law. And so, since both would have to die, Jupiter, out of pity, snatched them up and put them among the stars, as I have said before. As a result, Arcas is seen following the Bear, and since he guards Arctos, he is called Arctophylax.
Some have said that he is Icarus, father of Erigone, to whom, on account of his justice and piety, Father Liber gave wine, the vine, and the grape, so that he could show men how to plant the vine, what would grow from it, and how to use what was produced. When he had planted the vine, and by careful tending with a pruning-knife had made it flourish, a goat is said to have broken into the vineyard, and nibbled the tenderest leaves he saw there. Icarus, angered by this, took him and killed him and from his skin made a sack, and blowing it up, bound it tight, and cast it among his friends, directing them to dance around it. And so Eratosthenes says: Around the goat of Icarus they first danced.
Others say that Icarus, when he had received the wine from Father Liber, straightway put full wineskins on a wagon. For this he was called Bootes. When he showed it to the shepherds on going round through the Attic country, some of them, greedy and attracted by the new kind of drink, became stupefied, and sprawling here and there, as if half-dead, kept uttering unseemly things. The others, thinking poison had been given the shepherds by Icarus, so that he could drive their flocks into his own territory, killed him, and threw him into a well, or, as others say, buried him near a certain tree. However, when those who had fallen asleep, woke up, saying that they had never rested better, and kept asking for Icarus in order to reward him, his murderers, stirred by conscience, at once took to flight and came to the island of the Ceans. Received there as guests, they established homes for themselves.
But when Erigone, the daughter of Icarus, moved by longing for her father, saw he did not return and was on the point of going out to hunt for him, the dog of Icarus, Maera by name, returned to her, howling as if lamenting the death of its master. It gave her no slight suspicion of murder, for the timid girl would naturally suspect her father had been killed since he had been gone so many months and days. But the dog, taking hold of her dress with its teeth, led her to the body. As soon as the girl saw it, abandoning hope, and overcome with loneliness and poverty, with many tearful lamentations she brought death on herself by hanging from the very tree beneath which her father was buried. And the dog made atonement for her death by its own life. Some say that it cast itself into the well, Anigrus by name. For this reason they repeat the story that no one afterward drank from that well. Jupiter, pitying their misfortune, represented their forms among the stars. And so many have called Icarus, Bootes, and Erigone, the Virgin, about whom we shall speak later. The dog, however, from its own name and likeness, they have called Canicula. It is called Procyon by the Greeks, because it rises before the greater Dog. Others say these were pictured among the stars by Father Liber.
In the meantime in the district of the Athenians many girls without cause committed suicide by hanging, because Erigone, in dying, had prayed that Athenian girls should meet the same kind of death she was to suffer if the Athenians did not investigate the death of Icarus and avenge it. And so when these things happened as described, Apollo gave oracular response to them when they consulted him, saying that they should appease Erigone if they wanted to be free from the affliction. So since she hanged herself, they instituted a practice of swinging themselves on ropes with bars of wood attached, so that the one hanging could be moved by the wind. They instituted this as a solemn ceremony, and they perform it both privately and publicly, and call it aletis, aptly terming her mendicant who, unknown and lonely, sought for her father with the god. The Greeks call such people aletides.
In addition to this, Canicula, rising with its heat, scorched the land of the Ceans, and robbed their fields of produce, and caused the inhabitants, since they had welcomed the bandits, to be plagued by sickness, and to pay the penalty to Icarus with suffering. Their king, Aristaeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene, and father of Actaeon, asked his father by what means he could free the state from affliction. The god bade them expiate the death of Icarus with many victims, and ask from Jove that when Canicula rises he should send wind for forty days to temper the heat of Canicula. This command Aristaeus carried out, and obtained from Jove the favour that the Etesian winds should blow. Some have called them Etesian because they spring up at a certain time each year, for etos in Greek is annus in Latin. Some, too, have called them Etesian because they were "asked for" from Jove, and so obtained. But we shall leave this undecided, lest we be though to have anticipated everything.
To return to the matter at hand, Hermippus, who wrote about the stars, says that Ceres lay with Iasion, son of Thuscus. Many agree with Homer that for this he was struck with a thunderbolt. From them, as Petellides, Cretan writer of histories, shows, two sons were born, Philomelus and Plutus, who were never on good terms, for Plutus, who was richer, gave nothing of his wealth to his brother. Philomelus, however, compelled by necessity, bought two oxen with what he had, and became the inventor of the wagon. So, by plowing and cultivating the fields, he supported himself. His mother, admiring his invention, represented him plowing among the stars, and called him Bootes. From him they say Parias was born, who called the people Parians and the town Parion from his own name. (Mary Ward 1960)
Geminos
Almagest Boώrης
| id | Greek
(Heiberg 1898) |
English
(Toomer 1984) |
ident. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Βοώτου ἀστερισμός. | Constellation of Bootes | ||
| 1 | τῶν ἐν τῇ ἀριστερᾷ χειρὶ γ’ ὁ προηγούμενος. | The most advanced of the three in the left arm | kap Boo |
| 2 | ὁ μέσος καὶ νοτιώτερος τῶν τριῶν | The middle and southernmost of the three | iot Boo |
| 3 | ὁ ἑπόμευος τῶν τριῶν. | The rearmost of the three | tet Boo |
| 4 | ὁ ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀριστεροῦ ἀγκῶνος. | The star on the left elbow | lam Boo |
| 5 | ὁ ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀριστεροῦ ὥμου | The star on the left shoulder | gam Boo |
| 6 | ὁ ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς: | The star on the head | bet Boo |
| ὁ ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ ὥμου | The star on the right shoulder | del Boo | |
| ὁ βορειότερος αὐτῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ κολλορόβου | The one to the north of these, on the staff | mu Boo | |
| ὁ ἔτι τούτου βορειότερος ἐπ’ ἄκρου τοῦ κολλορόβου. | The one farther to the north again of th is, on the tip of the staff | nu Boo | |
| τῶν ὑποκάτω τοῦ ὤμου ἐν τῷ ῥοπάλῳ β ὁ βορειότερος. | The northernmost of the two stars below the shoulder, m the club | eta Boo | |
| ὁ νοτιώτερος αὐτῶν. | The southernmost of them | omi Boo | |
| ὁ ἐπ’ ἄκρας τῆς δεξιᾶς χειρός | The star on the end of the right arm | 45 Boo | |
| ὁ τῶν ἐν τῷ καρπῷ δύο ὁ ἠγούμενος | The more advanced of the two stars in the wrist | psi Boo | |
| ὁ ἐπόμενος αὐτῶν | The rearmost of them | 46 Boo | |
| ὁ ἐπ’ ἄκρας τῆς λαβῆς τοῦ κολλορόβου. | The star on the end of the handle of the staff | omega Boo | |
| ὁ ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ μηροῦ ἐν τῷ περιξώματι | The star on the right thigh, in the apron | eps Boo | |
| τῶν ἐν τῇ ζώνῃ δύο ὁ ἐπόμευος. | T he· rearmost of the two stars in the belt | sig Boo | |
| ὁ προηφούμενος αὐτῶν. | T he· rearmost of the two stars in the belt | rho Boo | |
| ὁ ἐπὶ τῆς δεξιᾶς πτέρυης | The star on the right heel | zet Boo | |
| τῶν ἐν τῇ ἀριστερᾷ κυήμῃ ἡ’ ὁ βόρειος | The northernmost of the 3 stars in the left lower leg | eta Boo | |
| ὁ μέσος τῶν τριῶν | The middle one of the three | tau Boo | |
| ὁ φότιος αὐτῶν. | The southernmost of them | ups Boo | |
| ἀστέρες κβ, ὥν γ μεγέθους ὅ, δ’ ὅ, ε θ. | 22 stars, 4 of the third magnitude, 9 of the fourth, 9 of the fifth | ||
| Ὁ ὑπ’ αὐτὸν ἀμόρφωτος. | |||
| ὁ μεταξὺ τῶν μηρῶν ὁ καλούμενος Ἀρκτοῦρος ὑπόκιρρος | The star between the thighs, called 'Arcturus', reddish | alf Boo | |
| ἀστὴρ α μεγέθους α' | 1 star of the first magnitude |
