Myths and monsters
How the ancient Greeks wove lasting legends into the sky
Though some constellations were borrowed from the Babylonians – brought to Greece by Eudoxus of Cnidus in the 4th century BCE – ancient Greek scholars considered astronomy to be a mathematic art, a way to use geometry to predict the motion of the heavens. Many ancient Greek scholars mapped and wrote about the stars above and their motions, but the most well known today is Ptolemy’s book
Almagest. In it he identified the 12 constellations of the Zodiac, 21 to the north of the ecliptic and 15 to the south, naming them after heroes and beasts alike from famous poems and myths, whose deeds had allowed them to be made immortal among the stars and revered as semi-divine spirits.