Capricorn, the fish-tailed goat: from Ea to Pan and Augustus
The Babylonian goat-fish, Pan diving into the Nile to escape Typhon, the coin of Augustus: the origins and symbols of the sign of Capricorn.
Capricorn is the only animal of the zodiac that does not exist in nature. Its traditional figure joins the front of a goat, with horns and legs, to a long, coiled fish tail. This hybrid creature has a very long history, passing from Mesopotamia through Greece to the coins of imperial Rome, changing meaning at every stage without ever losing its singular form.
The goat-fish of Babylon
Babylonian astronomical lists already knew this constellation by a name meaning “goat-fish”. The figure was linked to Ea, called Enki by the Sumerians, god of the fresh underground waters, of wisdom and of the crafts, and it appears on boundary stones and seals. The union of a mountain animal and a water animal suited a deity who governed the springs and rivers on which the life of the Mesopotamian countryside depended.
When the Greeks adopted the zodiac of Eastern origin, they kept the hybrid figure and called it Aigokeros, “goat-horned”. The Latin name Capricornus is its direct translation. It remained, however, to explain with their own myths why a goat had the tail of a fish, and the mythographers proposed several answers.
Pan fleeing Typhon
The most widespread account, reported among others by Hyginus, sets the scene in Egypt. The gods were gathered by the Nile when Typhon appeared, the most terrible monster born of the Earth. Each fled by changing shape: Pan, the shepherds' god with the legs and horns of a goat, threw himself into the river, and the part of his body left out of the water kept the shape of a goat, while the submerged part became that of a fish.
Zeus, admiring the cunning, is said to have placed that image among the stars. Other versions link Capricorn to Aegipan, a figure akin to Pan who helped Zeus in the struggle against Typhon, or to the goat Amalthea, who suckled the infant Zeus hidden in a cave on Crete. The many explanations show how ancient the figure was and how hard the Greeks tried to fit it into their own world.
The gate of winter and the sign of Augustus
In antiquity the Sun entered Capricorn at the winter solstice, on the shortest day of the year; this is why the southern parallel over which the Sun passes at the zenith on that date is called the Tropic of Capricorn. Macrobius, in the Saturnalia, interpreted the sign as an image of the Sun which from that moment begins to climb again, like a goat scrambling towards the peaks.
Suetonius reports that the emperor Augustus, after consulting the astrologer Theogenes, made his horoscope public and had a silver coin struck with the sign of Capricorn. Since Augustus was born on 23 September, scholars still debate the reason for this choice. Capricorn nonetheless appears on coins, gems and insignia linked to his power, becoming one of the symbols of the Augustan age.
Capricorn retains the trace of all these stories: the Babylonian god of the waters, the fleeing shepherd god, the Sun reborn after the solstice, the prince who wished to bind his destiny to the stars. In later astrological tradition the sign has been associated with perseverance and ambition, but its origin remains that of a gentle monster born from the meeting of mountain and sea.