(Posted for Michael Chase, -- andreas) *************************************** On the Milky way " Milky Way " was said (c. 22) because it is the only visible and sensible thing on the sphere, everything else being intelligible. With regard to it, Eratosthenes says, rather mythically, in the Katasterismos that the Milky Way came about from Hera's milk. For when Herakles was still an infant and sucking at Hera's breast, he gave it as especially violent squeeze, and the milk squirted out and became the Milky Way when it congealed. The actual text of Eratosthenes reads as follows (Catasterismi, ed. A. Olivieri, Pseudo-Eratosthenis catasterismi [Mythographi Graeci 3.1. Leipzig: Teubner, 1897]: The Milky Way Thus there comes about in the visible circles the one they say is called the Milky Way. For it was not possible for the sons of Zeus to have a share of the heavenly honors unless one of them sucked on Hera's breast. Therefore they say that Hermes brought Heracles after his birth and set him to Hera's breast, and he sucked. But when Hera became aware of this, she shook him off, and this, when the excess milk flowed out, the Milky Way was formed. M.C. Writing about eight centuries after Erastosthenes, John Philoponus (In Aristotelis meteorologicorum librum primum commentarium, ed. M. Hayduck, [Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 14.1. Berlin: Reimer, 1901] p. 115, 16 ff.) knows a version of the story in which it is Athena who sets Heracles to Hera's breast while she was asleep, knowing that he will thereby become immortal. A sharp pain awoke Hera, who snatched her breast from his lips, and the resulting spurt formed the Milky Way. Philoponus, as a good hard-headed Aristotelian, rejects all this as childish mythical nonsense : "for one thing," he says, "milk does not spurt forth constantly ; and for another it is not the case that it is always the same number of souls arising and descending, so that their luminous bodies would always occupy the same space". Philoponus thus has a perfectly good idea of the Milky Way *really* is : it's a kind of celestial waiting-room, from which souls, bright with their luminous astral bodies, descend from the heavens to be incarnated on earth, and to which they rise once more after the death of their bodies. This, by the way, is a Pythagorean idea. Another Pythagorean name for the Milky Way was "the people of dreams" (*dêmos oneirôn* acording to Homer, Odyssey 24, 12 ; cf. Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs, 28, quoted byc Proclus, Commentary on the Republic, II, p. 129, 21 ff. Kroll), and another one "Hades"; and this is why many people offer milk to the dead, and also why milk is the first food of the newly born. By the way, some of you may be concerned about poor Hera. Never fear : later on, according to Libanius (Progymnasma 2, 8, 1) by crossing her hands over her knees she stopped up Heracles' rectum, thus giving him a case of constipation of mythic proportions. Best, Mike (idly translating obscure Greek texts when I should be correcting proofs. Don't tell anyone!) ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html