Endymion

Diana and Endymion by Walter Crane (1883)

Classical writers didn't have trouble accepting that knowledge of the heavens came from humble people. In the story alluded to by Pliny the Elder, the Greek Moon goddess Selene (or in the above Pre-Raphaelite painting, Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt and of the Moon--symbolized by the crescent shape of the bow) was taken with Endymion, a beautiful youth who tended his flocks on Mount Latmos. She asked Zeus to give Endymion immortal life. Zeus complied, but in doing so put the youth into perpetual sleep. The Moon goddess saw to it that her lover's flocks were protected.

Perhaps there is recognition here that, rather than later Chaldean astronomers, an ancient shepherd would be naturally well situated to be the first person to sort out the motions of the moon. As Pliny said, "Which several constitutions and motions in her, the first man that observed, was Endymion: and thereupon the voice went, that he was enamored with the moon."

Selene's love for Endymion was out of character for her, being known for her chasteness and disinterest in men, perhaps an allusion to the difficulty men had in predicting her heavenly travels. She was so aloof, in fact, that one unfortunate youth, Actaeon--a hunter--by accident happened upon Selene one day while she was bathing, becoming the first man to see her unclothed. Angered by this, Selene turned Actaeon into a deer, at which point his own dogs killed him. Even Endymion, with whom she did bear children, paid for the honor of being her husband with perpetual sleep. His immortality, in contrast with the mass of men who mark their days, in the words of Oscar Wilde, by a "rosary of suns," is an indication that the intervals marked by the Moon were seen as beyond ordinary, mundane time.

Besides Selene and Diana, the Moon goddess was sometimes identified as Hecate, the latter often depicted as a three-headed goddess, reflecting three aspects: Selene (heaven), Diana (Earth) and Hecate (underworld), further attesting to the complexity of the subject.

Ptolemy wrote in his classic textbook of 150 A.D. that "It is plausible to suppose that the ancients got their first notions on these topics from the following kind of observations. They saw that the sun, moon and other stars were carried from east to west along circles which were always parallel to each other, that they began to rise up from below the earth itself, as it were, gradually got up high, then kept going around in similar fashion and getting lower, until, falling to earth, so to speak, they vanished completely, then, after remaining invisible for some time, again rose afresh and set; and [they saw] the periods of these [motions], and also the places of rising and setting were, on the whole, fixed and the same. What chiefly led them to the concept of the sphere was the revolution of the ever-visible stars, which was observed to be circular, and always taking place about one centre, the same [for all]. For by necessity that point became [for them] the pole of the heavenly sphere..."

Joe Knapp 1/17/00

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from The Garden of Eros by Oscar Wilde:

Methinks these new Actaeons boast too soon
That they have spied on beauty; what if we
Have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon
Of her most ancient, chastest mystery,
Shall I, the last Endymion, lose all hope
Because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope!

What profit if this scientific age
Burst through our gates with all its retinue
Of modern miracles! Can it assuage
One lover's breaking heart? what can it do
To make one life more beautiful, one day
More godlike in its period? but now the Age of Clay

Returns in horrid cycle, and the earth
Hath borne again a noisy progeny
Of ignorant Titans, whose ungodly birth
Hurls them against the august hierarchy
Which sat upon Olympus; to the Dust
They have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must

Repair for judgment; let them, if they can,
From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance,
Create the new Ideal rule for man!
Methinks that was not my inheritance;
For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul
Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.

Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away
Her visage from the God, and Hecate's boat
Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day
Blew all its torches out: I did not note
The waning hours, to young Endymions
Time's palsied fingers count in vain his rosary of suns!