Homer
Gazes Upwards
I
have stood outside a nomadic herder’s ger or yurt on the Mongolian steppe in
the middle of the night, knowing that the nearest light bulb was 35 miles away,
and gazed up in wonder at the night-time sky. Stars and planets and
constellations and dusty clouds of galaxies as far as the eye can see and so
close that you could reach out and touch them. I can imagine Homer (c. 745-700
BCE) doing the same and living in a world where the words ‘light pollution’ would
not be invented for millennia.
Just
like in the heavens when the stars shine brightly about the shining moon and
the sky is without wind and all the lookouts, high places and woodlands appear,
but then from heaven the great ether opens downwards and all the stars are seen
and the shepherd rejoices in his soul, so like this did the fires appear
between the ships and the River Xanthus with the Trojans kindling them in front
of Ilium.
Homer would have been
struck with awe at celestial bodies and events and would have been even more
mystified at what he saw, realizing that the gods lived in the sky that he was
watching and controlled what was happening there. There are so many references
to things from the world of astronomy in the Iliad and the Odyssey that one
cannot help but wonder if Homer was something of an amateur astronomer. The
philosopher Heraclitus (c. 535- c. 475 BCE) described him as ‘Homer the astronomer, considered wisest of
all Greeks.’
Mankind
has always been fascinated by what takes place in the skies and the heavens and
that fascination continues to today. I flipped open The New York Times today
and there on the same page were the headlines, ‘Stunning Views of the Heavens, at Our Fingertips’, ‘Spotting Potentially Dangerous Asteroids’,
and ‘Unlocking the Universe’s Darkest
Mysteries’. Elsewhere in the same edition I found, ‘Pakistani Astrologers See Bad Omen’. One of the reasons why
mankind accepted the presence of the divine was because lowly men, often
overwhelmed by what they saw around themselves and unable to explain it with
any satisfaction, always felt that they had to be part of something that was
bigger than themselves. The most natural place for them to find that ‘something
bigger’ was to look up and to raise their eyes above the world in which they
lived. And what they saw blew them away!
I
like to start a paper like this by calling up what Google AI might have to say
on the subject. I asked what modern astronomers might say about Homer’s
astronomy references. Some quite interesting responses were posted for me.
Astronomers
have analyzed Homer’s descriptions in the Iliad and Odyssey, particularly
regarding celestial events, to potentially date the poems and even the Trojan
War. Some researchers suggest that references to planets and constellations in
the Odyssey describe a solar eclipse that occurred in 1178 BC, which, if
accurate, would indicate a surprisingly detailed knowledge of astronomy for the
time.
Researchers
have analyzed astronomical references in the Odyssey, specifically focusing on
the timing of Venus, the Pleiades, and Mercury before a supposed massacre of
the suitors. By looking for periods where these celestial events align, they
found a potential match to April 16, 1178 BC. This date could potentially help
to date the fall of Troy and the events in the Odyssey.
One
of the loveliest turns of phrase in Homer’s works and perhaps in all of ancient
literature is the bard’s description of the coming of Dawn.
Ἠμος δ᾽ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος
Ἠώς
When
early-born rosy-fingered Dawn appeared
Imagine the surprise of
that first audience that heard the wandering minstrel pluck his lyre and sing
about “early-born rosy-fingered Dawn”. They must have shaken their heads in
wonder and amazement at words that so accurately captured what they witnessed
in the skies above them. But let us be clear about what Homer was describing.
This was not the time of daybreak or the “crack of dawn” as we know it, that
time of the morning when the first shaft of sunlight rises above the eastern
horizon. No, this is the time that precedes the first appearance of the sun,
when reflected colours of red and orange and yellow fill the sky with a palette
of glory, before we witness the actual appearance of the rising sun itself.
Sometimes Homer referred to Dawn as golden-throned,
or saffron-robed instead of rosy-fingered, but the image is always
as memorable and one that he painted often for his listeners.
There is evidence in ancient writings of the sighting of
Halley’s Comet in the year 466 BCE, but there is no scientific evidence that
such an event occurred during Homer’s lifetime. But he does reference something
celestial in Book IV of the Iliad and we can infer, given the lack of comet
activity that he must have been referring to a meteorite.
Just like a shining star which the
wily son of Cronos sends as a signal to sailors or to the wide armies of men,
with many sparks blazing off it, so like this star did Pallas Athena fall to
the earth and leap into the midst of them.
Homer uses another star reference to describe a summer star
rising at Dawn that looks like it is coming out of the sea and therefore
shining even more brilliantly. The planet Venus, many times called the Daystar,
is seen in the eastern sky at sunrise in Greece, especially during the month of
July.
Now when the brightest star arose, that one which heralds the
coming of the light of early Dawn, the seafaring ship approached the island.
Then Pallas Athena gave strength
and courage to Diomedes the son of Tydeus that he might become conspicuous
among all the Argives and achieve great fame. She blazoned his helmet and
shield with unwavering fire like the summer star which shines most brightly
after it has been dipped in the ocean. Such a fire she made blazing from his
head and chest and urged him into the middle of the fight where the multitude
were waging battle.
And he refers more
than once to the Evening Star, which we also know to be Venus, until such time as the late-setting
evening star comes.
Just
like the evening star, the brightest and loveliest of all that are set in the
heavens, goes forth among the stars in the darkness of night, even so did the
gleam from the point of the sharp spear that Achilles held in his right hand go
forth…
In the astronomy of Homer and the ancient Greeks, the sun god
Helios moved through the sky, rising in the east at rosy-fingered Dawn and
setting in the west. Homer refers to Helios
travelling on high and nightfall when the bright light of Helios fell into Oceanus and the darkness of night
was drawn over the much-giving land.
As long as the Sun went about the
middle of the heavens the missiles from both sides hit their targets and people
kept falling but when the Sun passed over the other side and it was time for
unyoking the oxen, then the Achaeans showed that they had the upper hand.
Aristarchus
of Samos, in the 3rd century BCE, was the first to suggest that the
sun was at the centre of our solar system but his views were not widely
accepted, and it wasn’t until Copernicus in the 16th century that
the idea of Helios driving his chariot across the daytime sky was abandoned.
The ancient Greeks observed the skies but did not understand what they were
seeing. As Odysseus tells his companions,
My friends, we do not know where the nether darkness is or the
dawn or where the sun that gives light to mortals goes to under the earth or
where it rises up…
The shield of Achilles,
which the god Hephaestus fashioned for him at his mother’s request, must have
looked like photographs lifted from a textbook on astronomy. Homer describes
the heavens that were displayed on the shield in great detail.
The
shield itself was made of five layers and on them he created many curious
embellishments, all finely crafted. Within these he fashioned the earth, the
heavens, the sea, the unwearied sun and the full moon and all the
constellations that circle around the heavens, the Pleiades, the Hyades and
mighty Orion and the Bear which some also call the Wagon that circles around
and watches over Orion and has no share in the baths of the Ocean.
In
a further reference to Orion, Homer describes the star called the Hound of
Orion, which we know as Canis Major, said to be the brightest star in the night
sky in the autumn.
Old
King Priam was the first to spot him as he shone like a star racing over the
plain, that star that shines more brilliantly than all the others at night at
harvest time, the one that men call the Hound of Orion. Brightest though it
might be, it makes an evil sign for man for it brings great heat and fever to
mortals. Even so did the armour of Achilles gleam on his breast as he sped
forward.
When
rosy-fingered Dawn appeared, the dear son of Odysseus rose from his bed and put
on his garments. Book II of the Odyssey starts with my
favourite Homeric epithet and in fact, this image occurs 20 times in the epic.
There are some scholars who argue that the epithet is only a formulaic pattern
that scans well in a poetic sense and is therefore just a mere piece of
compositional technique. There are others who suggest that it is one of the
most beautiful and descriptive phrases in classical literature. I tend to agree
with the latter interpretation. One simply cannot dismiss the beauty of a line
such as the one that starts Book III as just poetic contrivance. The Sun rose up
into the bronze-hued heavens and left the beautiful sea and shone light on the
immortal gods, mortal men and fields ripe with grain.
Odysseus
mentions going to the land of the Cimmerians, a place of constant gloom and
darkness. It is thought today that these lands lie north of the Black Sea in
present day Ukraine and Russia. But around the 8th century BCE, the
Cimmerians were pushed out by the Scythians and settled in modern day Turkey.
What is interesting to note is Homer’s description of the territory and its
place in the sun, or lack of it and the resulting effect on its people. It
sounds like a perpetual case of seasonal affective disorder, a type of
depression caused by a lack of sunshine, especially in the winter months.
The ship sailed on to the deep-flowing Oceanus that bounds the
edge of the earth and located there was the home and the city of the
Cimmerians, covered over in a great mass of clouds. The bright light of the sun
never shines down upon them, neither when he goes up and rises to the starry
heaven, nor when he returns back to earth from heaven, for deadly night
stretches over these wretched mortals.
Homer
wrote often about things that he saw or heard in the skies above, but he didn’t
always understand what it was he observed. He may have lacked a modern
astronomical understanding of things celestial, but that did not matter to him
because the explanation for him was quite simple – it was the work of the gods.
How many times have you heard the clap of thunder and there wasn’t a cloud in
sight? We are told that it might be distant lightning or caused by some other
phenomena like dust or smoke in the sky or a temperature inversion that allows
sound to travel a great distance. There is also a phenomenon known as dry
lightning. But Homer knew the answer:
“Father Zeus,
master of gods and men, you have thundered loudly from the star-sparkled sky
without a cloud in sight and this must be a portent for some man.”
As children we were told that
thunder was caused because the gods were bowling (it was always gods, not God),
or that Thor was playing his drums again and we accepted those explanations
without question. I don’t know what little kids are told today, because most of
them would never have heard of a bowling alley.
It turns out in Homer’s divine
explanation of things celestial that all things are not cut and dried. We just
assume that rosy-fingered Dawn rises of her own accord and that Helios drives
his chariot across the sky until he disappears in the west, when the goddess
Nyx and her consort Erebus bring on the night. But it seems that more powerful
gods and goddesses can control the arrival of the day and the night. Pallas
Athens was one goddess who had such powers as homer reports:
And
rosy-fingered Dawn would have risen on their weeping, had not the flashing-eyed
Athena made other plans. The long night she held back from its normal course
and likewise she held back the golden-throned Dawn from the streams of Oceanus
and she would not put the yoke on her swift-footed horses who bring light to mankind,
namely Lampus and Phaethon, the foals who bring the Dawn.
Then again the
goddess flashing-eyed Athena made another plan. When she had determined that
Odysseus and his wife had had their fill of love-making and sleep, right away
she roused golden-throned Dawn from Oceanus to bring light to men.
Homer
has been widely acknowledged and well-regarded throughout the ages for his
knowledge of astronomy and the cosmos. As mentioned before, Heraclitus (c.
535-475 BCE) referred to him as an astronomer and the wisest of the Greeks. The
keeper of the Library of Alexandria referred to two eminent astronomers/geographers
as successors of Homer. Crates of Mallus (2nd century BCE) pointed
to Homer as a source of scientific and philosophical learning. Strabo
(64BCE-AD20) acknowledged his celestial learning and Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79)
called him the prince and father of all learning. The study of the notion that
Homer was an astronomer continues to this day. When rosy-fingered Dawn appears
tomorrow, I trust that Zeus the Cloud-Gatherer will give you a happy day.
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