Note 10 — PREFACE.

I wish here to call attention to the fact that, as always (I believe) in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, the moon is on this ring also distinguished from the sun, not by its size, but by its being a crescent moon. In truth, the distinction of size, to the common eye, is variable; and is sometimes against the sun. Two full-formed globes of equal diameter would have presented a picture alike defective in composition and in meaning: and ancient art, not content with this, seized, more poetically as I think, upon the distinction of character in the two bodies respectively. Homer, as I contend, has exactly followed this form of representation in his σελήνην τε πλήθουσάν: and I venture to hope that the sense of growing, filling, waxing, or crescent moon will now be allowed to prevail over the more customary rendering of 'full' moon (Il. XVIII. 434).