s of the sky,

"A belted giant, who, with arm uplift, Threatening the throne of
Zeus, forever stands, Sublimely impious."

This, obviously, is merely a poetic symbol, a beautiful artifice
employed by the poets to perpetuate a legend by associating it
with the imperishable hieroglyphs of the galaxy. It is not
credible that men imagined that group of stars only outlined in
such shape by the help of arbitrary fancy to be literally the
translated hunter himself. The meaning simply was that he was
immortalized through the eternal linking of his name and form with
a stellar cluster which would always shine upon men. "The
reverence and gratitude of a weak world for the heroes and
benefactors they could not comprehend, named them divinities, whom
they did star together to an idolatrous immortality which
nationalized the heavens" with the shining shapes of the great and
brave. These types of poetry, symbols lent to infant science, were
never meant to indicate a literal translation and metamorphosis of
human souls, but were honors paid to the memories of illustrious
men, emblems and pledged securities of their unfading fame. With
what glorious characters, with what forms of deathless beauty,
defiant of decay, the sky was written over! Go out this evening
beneath the old rolling dome, when the starry scroll is outspread,
and you may still read the reveries of the marvelling minds of the
antique world, as fresh in their magic loveliness as when the
bards and seers of Olympus and the Agean first stamped them in
heaven. There "the great snake binds in his bright coil half the
mighty host." There is Arion with his harp and the charmed
dolphin. The fair Andromeda, still chained to her eternal rock,
looks mournfully towards the delivering hero whose conquering hand
bears aloft the petrific visage of Medusa. Far off in the north
the gigantic Bootes is seen driving towards the Centaur and the
Scorpion. And yonder, smiling benignantly upon the crews of many a
home bound ship, are revealed the twin brothers, joined in the
embrace of an undying friendship.

Thirdly, it is asserted by several Latin authors, in general
terms, that the ghost goes to Hades but the soul ascends to
heaven; and it has been inferred most erroneously that this
statement contains the doctrine of an abode for men after death on
high with the gods. Ovid expresses the real thought in full,
thus:

"Terra tegit carnem; tumulum circumvolat umbra; Orcus habet manes;