Note 4 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
We may neglect the Pleiades, as introduced simply because they are in the Iliadic passage (xviii. 486-489) which the writer of the Odyssey is adopting with no other change than taking out the Hyades and Orion, and substituting Boötes. This she was bound to do, for she could not make Ulysses steer towards both the Bear and Orion, when she is just going to tell us, as the Iliad does, that Orion is on the other side of the sky. The Pleiades she has allowed to stand—which of us knows in what quarter of the heavens (let alone the Precession of the Equinoxes) they are to be looked for?—and it is made quite clear that the Bear is the constellation by which Ulysses is steering.