ASTRAEA

astraea, in greek legend, the "star maiden," daughter of zeus and themis, or of astraeus the titan and eos, in which case she is identified with dike. during the golden age she remained among men distributing blessings, but when the iron (or bronze) age came on, she was forced to withdraw, being the last of the goddesses to quit the earth. in the heavens she is amongst the signs of the zodiac as the constellation virgo. she is usually represented with a pair of scales and a crown of stars. ov. _met._ i. 150; juv. vi. 19; aratus, _phaenomena_, 96. astragal (from the gr. [greek: astragalos], the ankle-joint), an architectural term for a convex moulding. this term is generally applied to small mouldings, "torus" (q.v.) to large ones of the same form. the lesbian astragal referred to by vitruvius, bk. iv. ch. vi., was in all probability an astragal carved with a bead and reel enrichment.