‘On a voyage stars alight on the yards and other parts of the ship… If there are two of them, they denote safety and portend a successful voyage… for this reason they are called Castor and Pollux, and people pray to them as gods for aid at sea.’īy contrast, a single glow was called Helena and was considered a sign of disaster.Ĭastor and Pollux clashed with another pair of twins, Idas and Lynceus, over two beautiful women. Mariners believed that during storms at sea the twins appeared in a ship’s rigging in the form of the electrical phenomenon known as St Elmo’s fire, as described by Pliny, the Roman writer of the first century AD, in his book Natural History :

Hyginus said that the twins were given the power to save shipwrecked sailors by Poseidon, the sea god, who also presented them with the white horses that they often rode. Ever since this episode, says Apollonius – and he assures us there were other voyages on which they were saviours – the twins have been the patron saints of sailors.

Presumably a storm was involved, but he does not elaborate on the circumstances. Apollonius Rhodius tells us briefly that during the voyage from the mouth of the Rhone to the Stoechades Islands (the present-day Îles d’Hyères off Toulon) the Argonauts owed their safety to Castor and Pollux. On the Argonauts’ homeward trip with the golden fleece Castor and Pollux were of further value to the crew. Pollux easily avoided the rushes of his opponent, like a matador side-stepping a charging bull, and felled Amycus with a blow to the head that splintered his skull. Pollux, stirred by the man’s arrogance, accepted at once and the two pulled on leather gloves. He stamped down to the shore where the Argo lay and challenged the crew to put up a man against him. Amycus, the world’s greatest bully, would not allow visitors to leave until they had fought him in a boxing match, which he invariably won. The boxing skills of Pollux came in use when the Argonauts landed in a region of Asia Minor ruled by Amycus, a son of Poseidon. The inseparable twins joined the expedition of Jason and the Argonauts in search of the golden fleece. Castor was a famed horseman and warrior who taught Heracles to fence, while Pollux was a champion boxer. They were said to look alike and even to dress alike, as identical twins often do. In the most commonly accepted version, Pollux and Helen (later to become famous as Helen of Troy) were children of Zeus, and hence immortal, while Castor and Clytemnestra were fathered by Tyndareus, and hence were mortal.Ĭastor and Pollux grew up the closest of friends, never quarrelling or acting without consulting each other. Both unions were fruitful, for Leda subsequently gave birth to four children. That same night she also slept with her husband, King Tyndareus. Their mother was Leda, Queen of Sparta, whom Zeus visited one day in the form of a swan (now represented by the constellation Cygnus). However, mythologists disputed whether both really were sons of Zeus, because of the unusual circumstances of their birth. The Greeks referred to them jointly as the Dioskouroi (Dioscuri in Latin), literally meaning ‘sons of Zeus’. The Latinized forms of their names are Castor and Pollux (sometimes Polydeuces), by which they are now generally known. Gemini represents the mythical Greek twins Kastor ( Κάστωρ) and Polydeukes ( Πολυδεύκης). Origin: One of the 48 Greek constellations listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest

Gemini brightest star