ARIES

, or the Ram, in Astronomy, one of the constellations of the northern hemisphere, and the first of the old twelve signs of the zodiac, and marked g in imitation of a ram's head. It gives name to a twelfth part of the ecliptic, which the sun enters commonly about the 20th of March.—The stars of this constellation in Ptolemy's catalogue are 18, in Tycho Brahe's 21, in Hevelius's 27, and in Flamsteed's 66: but they are mostly very small, only one being of the 2d magnitude, two of the 3d magnitude, and all the rest smaller.

The fabulous account of this constellation, as given by the Greeks, is to this effect. That Nephele gave Phryxus, her son, a ram, which bore a golden fleece, as a guard against the greatest dangers. Juno, the stepmother both of him and Helle, laid designs against their lives; But Phryxus, remembering the admonition of his mother, took his sister with him, and getting upon the back of the ram, they were carried to the sea. The ram plunged in, and the youth was carried over; but Helle dropped off, and was drowned, and so gave name to the Hellespont. When he arrived in Colchis, Æeta, the king, received him kindly; and, sacrificing the ram to Jupiter, dedicated the fleece to the god; which was afterwards carried off by Jason. The animal itself, they say, Jupiter snatched up into the heavens, and made of it the constellation Aries. They have other fables also to account for its origin. But it is most probable that the inventors of this sign, placed it there as the father of those animals which are brought forth about the time the sun approaches to that part of the heavens, and so marking the beginning of spring.

Aries also denotes a battering ram; being a military engine with an iron head, much used by the ancients, to batter and beat down the walls of places besieged. See Ram, and Battering ram.

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Entry taken from A Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary, by Charles Hutton, 1796.

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AREOMETRY
AREOSTYLE
ARGENTICOMUS
ARGETENAR
ARGUMENT
* ARIES
ARISTARCHUS
ARISTOTELIAN
ARISTOTELIANS
ARISTOTLE
ARITHMETIC