It’s the dog days of summer in the northern hemisphere. For
those of you reading outside the U.S., the dog days of summer is
what we Americans describe as the hottest days of summer. But it
turns out that the saying has Greek and Roman origins. According
to Wikipedia: The Romans referred to the dog days as diēs
caniculārēs and associated the hot weather with the star Sirius.
They considered Sirius to be the “Dog Star” because it is the
brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Large Dog).
Sirius is also the brightest star in the night sky. The term
“Dog Days” was used earlier by the Greeks. The Dog Days
originally were the days when Sirius rose just before or at the
same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true,
owing to precession of the equinoxes. The Romans sacrificed a
brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage
of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot,
sultry weather. Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil
time “when the seas boiled,