View the Stars like a Greek!

We are bounded in a nutshell of Infinite Space: Free Form #5: View the Stars like a Greek!

The Greek civilization is perhaps the best to refer to when describing ancient Astronomy, in part because of the incredible amount of records which have been kept across millennia. Aside from the wonderful stories which describe how certain stellar constellations got their names, there are a couple of stories which describe some of the basic tenets which were held for centuries and millennia. This is the case of the origin for the word Galaxy.

As the myth goes, Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, ruler of the skies and Olympus, would impregnate mortal women, and his children through them were the greatest heroes ever to walk the face of the Earth. One such case was Heracles (‘Ηρακλε’ως), the son of Zeus and Alcmene, who was gifted with god-like strength, endurance, and hubris. However, when Heracles was being raised, Zeus wished he would be yearned with the mother’s milk of a goddess, specifically: Hera. Aside, Heracles is an interesting word play in ancient Greek, since his name literally means, the Glory of Hera, but if you remember anything about their stories, you know they mutually hated each other, to the point Hera caused the incident which led to Heracles’ 12 labors, as well as turning Alcmene into a cow. Anyways, Zeus attempted to have Heracles suckle Hera when we was a baby, placing him on her while she was asleep. As the infant gained the powers of a god, Hera would wake and swat him aside, but her milk would spill from her home in the skies. This spill would be the group of stars concentrated around a patch in the sky, which was the Milky Way, both figuratively and literally.  After all, the word Galaxy comes from the Greek Γαλα’χτος, which literally means “of milk”.

Jacopo Tintoretto -The Origin of the Milky Way
from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Jacopo_Tintoretto_-_The_Origin_of_the_Milky_Way_-_Yorck_Project.jpg

One more story for this time: Orion, the hunter. Orion was one of the best hunters in all of Greece, so great that he rivaled one of the gods with his prowess, Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, maidens, and the moon. Orion and she would go on to become great friends, hunting the greatest beasts in mythical lore, so much so Apollo, Artemis’s brother, became jealous. Apollo would send a giant scorpion to lead Apollo to the sea, while he convinced Artemis that Orion had raped her priestesses. Artemis would seek out and kill Orion as he swam into a lagoon, but later finding her priestess all right and the treachery unmasked, she placed the mighty hunter among the stars. This figure, the three stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka making up its belt, is one of the most prominent groupings of stars in the night sky, co much so every major civilization we know of built temples to represent them (i.e. the Great Pyramids of Giza), and have remained a staple of the coming of winter, and for many Hispanic cultures, the arrival of the Three Wise Men to bring gifts to children who remember their story.

There are millennia’s worth of stories written on the stars, one only needs a little searching to hear them again, as they once were on the isle of Lesbos.  

References: 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Jacopo_Tintoretto_-_The_Origin_of_the_Milky_Way_-_Yorck_Project.jpg

http://www.comfychair.org/~cmbell/myth/myth.html

http://people.ucsc.edu/~rosewood/writing/tales/orion.htm

http://www.ancient-code.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/76c29uIpyz-min.jpg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mario-livio/our-home-galaxy-myths-and-facts_b_1914174.html