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[488] The idea seems to be that when Orion is rising in the east, the Bear is on the horizon — which he just touches in North Greece; he then moves upward, as though the coming of the great hunter had scared him from taking his bath. It must, however, be remembered that the Great Bear lay in Homeric days much nearer the Pole than he does at present, owing to the precession of the equinoxes. There was no obvious Pole Star in the first millennium B.C. αὐτοῦ, in the same place, never disappearing.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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