Epitome 41. Water-snake, on Which the Bowl and Crow are Set
THIS constellation is combined with others because of a remarkable episode. The crow is honoured in association with Apollo, for each of the gods has a bird that is consecrated to him. When the gods were once preparing to offer a sacrifice, the crow was sent to fetch water for use in a libation, and on seeing a fig-tree by the spring which bore figs which were not yet ripe, the crow waited for them to ripen. When, after a certain length of time, the figs had ripened and the crow had eaten them, it realized that it had committed a fault, and snatching up the water-snake that was in the spring, the crow carried it off along with the cup, and claimed that the snake had drunk all the water that the spring had brought forth each day. But Apollo, who realized what had really happened, imposed due punishment on the crow, by causing it to suffer thirst among men during that time of year, as Aristotle has recorded in his treatise On Animals.* To ensure that the offence that the crow had committed against the gods would be clearly remembered, Apollo represented amongst the constellations the Water-snake, the Bowl, and the Crow, which can neither drink [from the Bowl] nor approach it.
Hyginus
The Constellation
The Water-snake, which extends over the length of three constellations, the Crab, Lion, and Maiden, is located between the equator and the winter tropic, in such a way that its head—which stretches toward the constellation known as Procyon—and almost a quarter of the entire snake can be seen between the winter tropic and the equator. The end of its tail almost touches the head of the Centaur, and [on its back] it carries the Crow, which pecks at it with its beak and stretches out its entire body toward the Bowl, which is set some distance away, almost between the Lion and the Maiden, leaning somewhat toward the head of the Water-snake. The Snake sets at the rising of the Water-pourer and the Fishes, and rises with the signs that we have just mentioned above.
It has three small stars on its head, six on the first curve after its head, of which the last is the brightest, and three stars on the second curve, four on the third, two on the fourth, and nine on the fifth up to the end of its tail, all of them faint. In all, twenty-seven.
The Crow has one star on its throat, two on its wing, two below the wing toward its tail, and one on each foot. In all, seven.
The Bowl, positioned above the first coil from the snake’s head, has two stars on its rim, two faint stars on its handles, two in the middle of the cup, and two at its base. That makes eight in all.
The Mythology
On [the Water-snake] the Crow is perched and the Bowl is set, so it is thought; the following story has been handed down in explanation of it. When Apollo, under whose protection the crow stands, was once offering a sacrifice, he sent the bird to a spring to fetch some pure water. On seeing several fig-trees there whose fruit was not yet ripe, it settled on one of the trees to wait for it to ripen; and some days later, after the figs were ready and the crow had eaten a good number of them, Apollo, who was waiting, saw it arrive in all haste with a bowl full of water. To punish it for its fault in having delayed for so long, Apollo, who had been obliged to use other water because of what the crow had done, inflicted the following disgrace on it, so the story goes: throughout the period while figs are ripening, the crow is unable to drink, because it has a sore throat during that time of year. So wanting to portray the thirst of the crow, the god placed the bowl among the constellations, setting the water-snake beneath it to hold back the thirsty crow. For the Crow seems to be pecking at the end of its tail, so as to be granted access to the Bowl.
According to Istros and several others, Coronis* was the daughter of Phlegyas, and she bore Asclepios to Apollo, but Ischys, son of Elatos, later slept with her; and the crow saw this, and reported the matter to Apollo. As a bearer of bad news, Apollo turned it black, instead of white as before, and he transfixed Ischys with his arrows.
As regards the Bowl, Phylarchos* recounts the following tale about it. In the Chersonnese, near Troy, where many authors have said that the tomb of Protesilaos* is to be found, there lies a city called Elaiousa. While it was under the rule of a certain Demophon, it was suddenly struck by a plague which caused the citizens to die in extraordinary numbers. Demophon, being greatly disturbed by this, sent a deputation to the oracle of Apollo to seek a remedy for the devastation; and the oracle responded by saying that a maiden of noble birth should be sacrificed to the guardian deities of the city each year. Demophon chose them by lot from all the girls apart from his own daughters, and had them killed, until the day came when a citizen of very noble birth took exception to Demophon’s procedure, and refused to allow his own daughter to be entered into the draw unless the daughters of the king were also included. This so enraged the king that he had the man’s daughter put to death without drawing any lots. Mastousios (for that was the name of the girl’s father) pretended not to take offence at this for the present out of patriotic feeling, since she might have been drawn by lot afterwards and put to death; and by degrees that king came to forget the episode. And so when the father of the young girl had made a show of being just about the best friend of the king, he said that he was going to offer an annual sacrifice and invited the king and his daughters to the ceremony. Suspecting nothing untoward, the king sent his daughters on ahead; being held back for his own part by affairs of state, he would come along later. Everything worked out just as Mastousios had hoped, he killed the king’s daughters, mixed their blood in with some wine in a bowl, and when the king arrived, had this served up to him as a drink. When the king asked after his daughters and discovered what had happened to them, he ordered that Mastousios should be thrown into the sea together with the bowl. As a consequence, the sea into which he was thrown was named the Mastousian Sea in memory of him; and the harbour is known as Crater (the Bowl) to this day. The ancient astronomers represented it in the sky to remind people that no one can profit with impunity from a crime, and that personal hatreds cannot usually be forgotten.
Others claim, along with Eratosthenes, that this is the bowl that Icarios made use of when he revealed wine to human beings; and others that it is the jar into which Ares was thrown by Otos and Ephialtes.
Commentary
(i) The crow was regarded as a messenger of Apollo from an early period (Hes. fr. 40), and it had a well-known myth associated with it, a ‘just-so story’ in which the god was said to have turned the bird black for reporting bad news (Ap. 2.5.2). The hoarse croaking of crows was interpreted as a sign of thirst, and a story of similar nature was devised to account for that too, in which Apollo was said to have punished it with that thirst because it had once delayed to feed when it was sent to fetch water for a sacrifice (Aelian, Nature of Animals 1.47; in this version it waited for some corn to ripen, and then claimed that a snake had blocked the spring). Eratosthenes made use of this story, which was plainly not of his own invention, to provide a joint mythical explanation for the origin of this group of three constellations, the Water-snake along with the Crow and Bowl (which Aratus had already described as being closely interconnected, 448–9), by suggesting that Apollo had placed the entire group in the sky to commemorate the disgrace of the crow. The crow had compounded its fault by trying to lie to the god of prophecy, a point that is underlined in Ovid’s account (Fasti 2.243 ff.).
(ii) Two further explanations were offered for the origin of the Water-snake, taken on its own, both reported in schol. Arat. 443. (a) It is the hydra of Lerna which was killed by Heracles as his second labour (see pp. 66–7), an idea that seems to have found little favour, probably because that beast differed from the constellation figure in being pictured as a many-headed monster. (b) As a figure with a winding course, this could also be interpreted as being a river, and it was suggested accordingly that it represents the Nile; in support of that notion, an ingenious scheme was developed in which different sections of the constellation were aligned to different signs of the zodiac, and thence to the changes in the level of the Nile at different times of the year.
(iii) As for the Bowl, Hyginus records three alternative myths for that constellation taken in isolation. (a) One is an obscure local legend set in the city of Elaiousa at the southern end of the Chersonnese opposite Troy, a tale devised to explain the name of the harbour there, which was called the Bowl of the Achaeans (pseudo-Scylax 96), evidently because of its bowl-like shape. This was a revenge-tale with no pretence to originality, following the pattern of the famous myth of Atreus and Thyestes (Ap. Epit. 2.10–13). To work the bowl-like constellation into that legend, it was suggested that ancient astronomers had devised the figure in the sky to point the moral of the tale. (b) Or this is the bowl that was used by Icarios when he was spreading Dionysos’ gift of wine; in that case, this constellation is worked into the astral myth that identified Bootes and the Maiden with Icarios and Erigone (see pp. 37–8). (c) Or this was the vessel, strictly a large bronze jar, in which Otos and Ephialtes—two giants who entered into conflict with the gods, trying to storm Olympos among other things (Ap. 1.7.4)—had once imprisoned the god Ares for thirteen months, an episode that was recorded by Homer, though without any explanation of the circumstances.