Thursday, August 13, 2009

Dog Days

It's been in the high 90s this week and I think it hit 100 on Monday so we're definitely deep into the dog days of summer. I always knew that the "dogs days" were typically the hottest part of the season but I never knew where the name came from.

From Wikipedia...
The brightest of the stars is Sirius (the "Dog Star"), which also happens to be the brightest star in the night sky. It is so bright that the ancient Romans thought that the earth received heat from it.

In the summer, Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the Romans believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, “dog days” after the dog star. The Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius.

Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813.

In Ancient Rome, the Dog Days extended from July 24 through August 24. In many European cultures this is still the period to be the time of the Dog Days.

I'm just waiting for my phrensy to kick in.

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