the notion that the stars are men and women is found
in the _Pax_ of Aristophanes. Trygaeus in that comedy has just made an
expedition to heaven. A slave meets him, and asks him: 'Is not the
story true, then, that we become stars when we die?' The answer is,
'Certainly'; and Trygaeus points out the star into which Ion of Chios
has just been metamorphosed." Mr. Lang added: "Aristophanes is making
fun of some popular Greek superstition". The Eskimos, Persians,
Aryo-Indians, Germans, New Zealanders, and others had a similar
superstition.[345]

Jastrow goes on to say that the Greeks "imparted their scientific view
of the Universe to the East. They became the teachers of the East in
astronomy as in medicine and other sciences, and the credit of having
discovered the law of the precession of the equinoxes belongs to
Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer, who announced this important theory
about the year 130 B.C."[346] Undoubtedly the Greeks contributed to
the advancement of the science of astronomy, with which, as other
authorities believe, they became acquainted after it had become well
developed as a science by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

"In return for improved methods of astronomical calculation which,"
Jastrow says, "_it may be assumed_ (the italics are ours), contact
with Greek science gave to the Babylonian astronomers, the Greeks
accepted from the Babylonians the names of the constellations of the
ecliptic."[347] This is a grudging admission; they evidently accepted
more than the mere names.

Jastrow's hypothesis is certainly interesting, especially as he is an
Oriental linguist of high repute. But it is not generally accepted.
The sudden advance made by the Tigro-Euphratean astronomers when
Assyria was at the height of its glory, may have been due to the
discoveries made by great native scientists, the Newtons and the
Herschels of past ages, who had studied the data accumulated by
generations of astrologers, the earliest recorders of the movements of
the heavenly bodies. It is hard to believe that the Greeks made much
progress as scientists before they had identified the planets, and
become familiar with the Babylonian constellations through the medium
of the Hittites or the Phoenicians. What is known for certain is that
long centuries before the Greek science was heard of, there were
scientists in Babylonia. During the Sumerian period "the forms and
relations of geometry", says Professor Goodspeed, "were employed