a river celebrated in ancient mythology as that into which Phaethon is said to have fallen when struck by the lightning of Jupiter, and on whose banks his sisters bewailed his loss so bitterly that they were changed into long and slender poplars, and their tears into amber. By the later writers this river has been identified with the Padus or Po, but the absence of amber there, and other circumstances, have led to the belief that the Eridanus of the earlier writers is to be sought for among the more northern rivers of Europe. Cluverius has suggested that the Eridanus of Herodotus may be the Rhodane, a tributary of the Vistula; whilst others, knowing that amber was the staple production of the Baltic, are inclined to believe it to be the name applied to that sea by mythologists, who were little acquainted with geography.

in Astronomy, a constellation of the southern hemisphere, containing 84 stars.