Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?

Abstract

Plutarch and Heraclitus believed a certain passage in the 20th book of the Odyssey (''Theoclymenus's prophecy'') to be a poetic description of a total solar eclipse. In the late 1920s, Schoch and Neugebauer computed that the solar eclipse of 16 April 1178 B.C.E. was total over the Ionian Islands and was the only suitable eclipse in more than a century to agree with classical estimates of the decade-earlier sack of Troy around 1192-1184 B.C.E. However, much skepticism remains about whether the verses refer to this, or any, eclipse. To contribute to the issue independently of the disputed eclipse reference, we analyze other astronomical references in the Epic, without assuming the existence of an eclipse, and search for dates matching the astronomical phenomena we believe they describe. We use three overt astronomical references in the epic: to Boö tes and the Pleiades, Venus, and the New Moon; we supplement them with a conjectural identification of Hermes's trip to Ogygia as relating to the motion of planet Mercury. Performing an exhaustive search of all possible dates in the span 1250 -1115 B.C., we looked to match these phenomena in the order and manner that the text describes. In that period, a single date closely matches our references: 16 April 1178 B.C.E. We speculate that these references, plus the disputed eclipse reference, may refer to that specific eclipse.

A quantitative philology of introspection

“…As it is the case with the oldest Judeo-Christian texts, it is difficult to precisely date the Homeric saga. Recent studies have dated with certain confidence the Trojan War and events related to the Odyssey around 1200 BCE (Baikouzis and Magnasco, 2008 ), while the compilation into a coherent corpus probably dates between 900 and 800 BCE, and the final composition in the newly introduced Greek alphabet between 700 and 650 BCE (Ong, 1982 ). While Jaynes dates the two epics roughly a century apart (Jaynes, 2000 ), we only assume some form of temporal precedence affected by the introspective transition hypothesis.…”

Beginnings—The Kidney and Nephrology in Ancient Mesopotamian Culture

“…), settled bones, lanced boils, and bandaged wounds (barber surgeon? ), and with the baru who examined the entrails of sacrificed animals (usually sheep), scrutinized their internal organs, and depending on their gross anatomy predicted outcomes (extispicy), a divinatory approach that was used in matters of governance and warfare as well as in medicine (44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50).…”

List of Abbreviations

“…5.44-54, 148) = mercury's westernmost rise-time azimuth Baikouzis and Magnasco 2008: 8827 regard this as a weak point in their argument on the grounds that the earliest association of Hermes with the planet Mercury is in Plato (Ti. 38d).…”

“…5.272 refers to "the Pleiades and late-setting Boötes" being in the sky simultaneously. Baikouzis andMagnasco 2008: 8825, following MacDonald 1967: 324-25, interpret "late-setting" to mean "setting later than the Pleiades" or at least "setting late in the course of the night." They therefore take the line as implying a constraint that this part of the Odyssey (the seventeen days of Odysseus's journey from Scheria up to his shipwreck) must take place between 17 February and 4 April.…”