Eratosthenes and Hyginus both affirm that
the lion was placed in the sky because it is the king of
beasts. Mythologically speaking, this is reputed to be the lion
of Nemea, slain by Heracles as the first of his 12 labours.
Nemea is a town some way south-west of Corinth. There the lion
lived in a cave with two mouths, emerging to carry off the
local inhabitants, who were becoming scarce. The lion was an
invulnerable beast of uncertain parentage; it was variously
said to have been sired by the dog Orthrus, the monster Typhon
or even to be the offspring of Selene, the Moon goddess. Its
skin was proof against all weapons, as Heracles found when he
shot an arrow at the lion and saw that it simply bounced off.
Undeterred, Heracles heaved up his mighty
club and made after the animal, which retreated into its cave.
Heracles blocked up one of the entrances and went in through
the other. He grappled with the lion, locking his huge arm
around its throat and choking the beast to death. Heracles
carried the lion’s corpse away in triumph on his
shoulders. Later he used the creature’s own razor-sharp
claws to cut off its pelt, which he wore as a cloak. The
lion’s gaping mouth bobbing above his own head made
Heracles look more fearsome than ever.
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Leo shown ready to pounce in the Atlas Coelestis of John Flamsteed (1729).
In his chest can be found the bright star
Regulus, labelled Alpha. Leo lies
on the Sun’s path around the sky, the ecliptic, here marked by a
on the Sun’s path around the sky, the ecliptic, here marked by a
dashed line.
It is easy to make out the shape of a
crouching lion in the stars of Leo, its head being outlined by
a sickle-shape of stars. Marking the lion’s heart (where
Ptolemy located it) is the constellation’s brightest
star, Alpha Leonis, called Regulus, Latin for ‘little
king’; its Greek name, Basiliscos, had the same meaning.
The tail is marked by the star Beta Leonis, called Denebola
from the Arabic for ‘the lion’s tail’. Gamma
Leonis is called Algieba, from the Arabic meaning ‘the
forehead’; this seems puzzling, since according to
Ptolemy it lies in the lion’s neck, but the Arabs saw
here a very much larger lion than the one visualized by the
Greeks. Gamma Leonis is a celebrated double star, consisting of
a pair of yellow giant stars divisible in small telescopes.
Delta Leonis is called Zosma from a Greek word meaning
‘girdle’ or ‘loin cloth’, mistakenly
applied to this star in Renaissance times.
© Ian Ridpath. All rights reserved
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