"The River"
Mythology:
There is very little debate that Eridanus is a constellation depicting
a river. What is interesting is what river it could represent.
One of the more interesting stories concerns that of the friends Cygnus
and Phaethon. Phaethon was the son of Helios, the Sun God,
(Apollo is some stories) and one day he asked his father if he could drive
the Sun Chariot across the sky. Phaethon did a poor job controlling
the four stallion that moved the Sun across the sky. As Phaethon
lost control, he was further frightened by Scorpius ahead in the night
sky. As a result, the Sun did not make a smooth arc across the daytime
sky. Some of the consequences, according to legend, is that Libya
was burned and became a desert, the water in Africa evaporated, and the
Ethiopian people all had their skin burned dark. Zeus was so angry
that he knocked Phaethon from the Sun Chariot, where he fell to Earth and
drowned in the River Eridanus. Some stories have Cygnus diving into
the River to recover the body, while others claim it was Jason and the
Argonauts that found the body. When Jason did find the body it was
still hot and emitting poisonous gases.
To the Egyptians, this constellation represented the Nile River; to the
Babylonians, it is the Euphrates River. Finally, there is a reference
that associates this constellation with the River Po in Italy.