They say, moreover, that Tiresias, a Boeotian
man, whose fame as touching prophecie is greatly
cried up, declared, unto the Greeks that of the errant
stars some are masle, some female, and that they
do not engender like effects; wherefore they fable
that Tiresias himself was bisexous and amphibious,
now masle, now female. Here again we have “indepeniiont thought.” A widely variant explanation of the myth had previously been offered by Cephalio (cf. J. Malalas, Chron., p. 40, 1, in the Bonn ition), according to which Tiresias was a student of medicine who concerned himself with the mysteries of parturition. 
 
When Atreus and Thyestes contended for the
throne of their fathers, even then, it is plain, the
Greeks set great store by astrologie and celestial
lore; and the commonwealth of Argos determined
that which ever of them was more excellent than the
other in this lore should bear rule. Thereupon
Thyestes indicated and made manifest unto them the
Ram in the heavens, in consequence whereof they
fable that Thyestes had a golden lamb. But Atreus
declared the doctrine of the sun and its risings, that
the sun and the First Movable The firmament, or orb, of the fixed stars. This was thought of as revolving from East to West. The sun particited, to be sure, in its motion, but had a contrary motion of is own, which was compared to that of an ant walking on the rim of a moving wheel in the direction contrary to the wheel’s motion. do not course in the
same direction, but rowle contrariwise to one another




 

and that which now seemeth his setting, being a
setting of the First Movable, is a rising of the sun.
At his saying this, the men of Argos made him their
king, and great renown for learning became his. Previous authors left this topic to Lucian “incomplete.” That Atreus owed his kingship to his discovery of the retrograde motion of the sun was known not only to Polybius (XXXIV, beginning) but even to Sophocles and Euripides, according es enter on arate (Achilleus: Maass, Comm. in Arat., p. 28). It remained for Lucian to point out that Thyestes was an astronomer also, the discoverer of the constellation Aries, and to add a touch of paradox to the other doctrine with his suggestion that inasmuch as the sun’s proper motion is from West to East, he is really going upward, and therefore rising, when he sets, and downward, or setting, when he rises. 
 
Concerning Bellerophon also I am of this opinion:
that he had a volatile as horse I do not at all believe,
but conceive that he pursued this wisdom and raised
his thoughts on high and held conversation with the
stars, and thus ascended unto heaven by means
not of his horse but of his wit.
 
The same may be said of Phrixus, the son of
Athamas, that is fabled to have ridden through the
ayr upon a golden ram. And certainly of Daedalus
the Athenian; although his story be strange, yet
methinks it is not without relation unto astrology, but
rather he practised it constantly himself and taught
it unto his son.
 
But because Icarus was governed
by youth and audacity, and sought not the attainable
but let his minde carry him into the zenith, he came
short of truth and defected from reason and was
precipitated into a sea of unfathomable perplexities.
But the Greeks tell an idle myth of him and loosely
call a golfe of their sea Icarian after his name.