See the footnote at Works, 10.413. The conjecture by a ‘correspondent’ there interprets ‘eclocerunt’ as Capricorn, and ‘7Bre’ as a form of ‘Urna’ rather than an abbreviation of ‘septembre’, the water carrier and therefore Aquarius, rather than the month of September as conjectured by Ruskin. The derivation of the word read by Ruskin as ‘eclocerunt’, and read by his correspondent as ‘Aegloceruntis’, is apparently either from ‘Aigokeros’ - goat horned, the Greek astrological term for Capricorn, or, as Ruskin's correspondent suggests, from ‘aiglekeros’ - bright horn, and therefore Capricorn by implication, or perhaps some conflation of the two. It is interesting that at Works, 10.412 Ruskin had not seen the connection and remarked on what he saw as the omission of Capricorn from the capital. Urna, a water-vessel, is used by Ovid of the constellation Aquarius.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]