[Footnote 177: “Catasterisms” was the technical term for these transfers, of which the _Coma Berenices_ is the best-known example. Cf. Bouché-Leclercq, _op. cit._, p. 23.]
[Footnote 178: The long-eared owl (_strix otus_). According to Ælian it had a reputation for stupidity, and was therefore a type of the easy dupe, Athenæus, _Deipnosophistæ_, IX, 44, 45, tells a similar story to that in the text about the bustard.]
[Footnote 179: Reading μετανάσσεται for μετανίσσεται or μετανείσεται.]
[Footnote 180: στρεπτούς, _volventes_, Cr. An attempt to pun on πόλος, the Pole.]
[Footnote 181: Job i. 7. The Book of Job according to some writers comes from an Essene school, which may give us some clue to the origin of these ideas. The Enochian literature to which the same tendency is assigned is full of speculations about the heavenly bodies. See _Forerunners_, I, p. 159, for references.]
[Footnote 182: ὁ ἐν γόνασιν. Aratus calls this constellation ὁ ἐν γόνασι καθήμενος, Cicero _Engonasis_, Ovid _Genunixus_, Vitruvius, Manilius and J. Firmicus Maternus, _Ingeniculus_.]
[Footnote 183: A perversion of the “it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel,” of Genesis iii. 15.]
[Footnote 184: From his attitude the Kneeler resembles the figure of Atlas supporting the world, who as Omophorus plays a great part in Manichæan mythology. Cumont derives this from a Babylonian original, for which and his connection with Mithraic cosmogony see his _Recherches sur le Manichéisme_, Brussels, 1908, I, p. 70, figs. 1 and 2. The constellation is now known as Hercules.]
[Footnote 185: Hippolytus here evidently quotes not from Aratus, but from some unnamed Gnostic or heretic writer, whom Cruice thinks must have been a Jew. Yet he was plainly a Christian, as appears from his remarks about the “Second Creation.” An Ebionite writer might have preserved many Essene superstitions.]
[Footnote 186: Cruice, following Roeper, says these words have slipped in from an earlier page.]
[Footnote 187: ὀφιοῦχος. The “Ophiuchus huge” of Milton or Anguitenens.]
[Footnote 188: Ἑλίκη. So Aratus and Apollonius Rhodius. Said to be so called from its perpetually revolving. Cruice remarks on this sentence that it does not seem to have been written by a Greek, and quotes Epiphanius as to the addiction of the Pharisees to astrology. But see last note but one.]