I suppose it would be pedantic to comment that
Cheney's statement violated Newton's First Law, and that Bush's
contradicted general relativity, which denies the existence of any place
``beyond the stars'' since the stars create the space they occupy.
Napoleon, in the same vein, boasted towards the end
of his career: ``France will follow me to the stars if I give her
another victory!''
Napoleon, incidentally, was as fascinated by the
stars as he was ignorant about them. When the astronomer Laplace
presented him with his five-volume Celestial Mechanics, the
Emperor only leafed through it and complained that Laplace had written
this huge book about the universe without once mentioning its creator.
He was particularly moved by the appearance of Venus
(although, like everyone at the time, he had no idea that Venus was a
planet, not a star.) ``Go down to the sea shore,'' he said once. ``Look
at the morning star as it sets majestically on the breast of the
infinite. Melancholy will overcome you. No one can resist the melancholy
in nature.''
To Julius Caesar, the only star that mattered was
Polaris the North Star because---like himself---it alone remained still
while all others moved around it. As he boasted, in the words of
Shakespeare (which may have accurately reflected Caesar's thoughts):
I
am as constant as the northern star,
of
whose true-fixed and resting quality
There
is no fellow in the firmament.
The
skies are painted with unnumbered sparks;
The
are all fire and every one doth shine;
But
there's but one in all doth hold his place.
This kind of star worship existed also in prehistoric
times. Sisera, king of Canaan, expected an easy victory when he sent 900
war chariots against a few thousand Israelite foot soldiers (Judges,
Ch. 5). Then a sudden rainstorm turned the land into mud and rendered
the chariots immobile. The charioteers were slaughtered, and Sisera
fled. But the victors gave no credit to the rain or to their skill in
foreseeing it. ``The stars in their courses fought against Sisera,''
their chronicler boasted.
My favourite story of the personification of stars is
that of the constellation of Coma Berenice. When king Ptolemy Soter of
Egypt was away at war, his wife Berenice vowed to sacrifice her long
hair to the gods so that he might return victorious. She duly cut it off
and gave it to the temple.
When the king returned he was furious, for his wife's
hair had been admired throughout the land. He was about to massacre the
entire priesthood in his rage when the court astronomer rushed foward.
``Stop, your majesty!'' he cried. ``Look up into the sky.'' And there,
between Virgo and Leo, was the new constellation of Berenice's hair!
And nobody, of course, could remember having seen it
before.
