Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina have dated the revenge of Odysseus precisely, using mentions of astronomical phenomena in the Odyssey. The Odyssey covers a timespan of only forty days1, and each of the days is clearly noted in the epic. There are frequent mentions of planets, stars, and constellations, and coupled with Theoklymenos’s statement in Book 20, which they, and many others, interpret as a total solar eclipse, these scholars have assigned a date to the murder of the suitors: April 16, 1178 BCE.
τοῖσι δὲ καὶ μετέειπε Θεοκλύμενος θεοειδής:
“ἆ δειλοί, τί κακὸν τόδε πάσχετε; νυκτὶ μὲν ὑμέων
εἰλύαται κεφαλαί τε πρόσωπά τε νέρθε τε γοῦνα.
οἰμωγὴ δὲ δέδηε, δεδάκρυνται δὲ παρειαί,
αἵματι δ᾽ ἐρράδαται τοῖχοι καλαί τε μεσόδμαι:
εἰδώλων δὲ πλέον πρόθυρον, πλείη δὲ καὶ αὐλή,
ἱεμένων Ἔρεβόσδε ὑπὸ ζόφον: ἠέλιος δὲ
οὐρανοῦ ἐξαπόλωλε, κακὴ δ᾽ ἐπιδέδρομεν ἀχλύς.” (20.350-57)
(And godlike Theoklymenos spoke to them,
“Oh wretched men, what is this evil you suffer? Your heads and faces
and the knees beneath you are wrapped in night.
Wailing kindles in your breast, your cheeks are weeping,
and the walls and well-wrought beams are spattered with blood:
the forecourt is full of ghosts, the courtyard is full,
hastening to Erebus deep under the dark: and Helios
is blotted from the sky, and an evil gloom runs over us.”)
Magnasco and Baikouzis mention that they are assuming a close association between astronomical bodies and gods (in this case, Mercury and the god Hermes) that, while documented in Babylon around 1000 BCE, is not an idea thought to have reached Greece until somewhat later. This is not a particularly dangerous assumption, to my mind, but I can understand the desire to qualify conclusions based on this kind of speculation. Another of the team’s questions is that Homer (if there was an historical Homer) is usually thought to have lived several centuries later than the 1178 BCE date given; how then could he have so accurately depicted these phenomena? Indeed, several of the articles listed below mention that Magnasco and Baikouzis’s dating of the slaughter of the suitors may change our ideas about the dating of the Odyssey itself. It is generally accepted, however (among classicists, at any rate), that the Odyssey doesn’t have a firm date of composition, having evolved among competing lines of oral storytellers before a rough consensus was reached. The product of this consensus was further standardized and emended and then later written down, accounting for the generous mixture of details from disparate times. Regardless, Magnasco and Baikouzis’s decision to look at Mercury for the final piece of a puzzle that has been bothering scholars since Heraclitus and Plutarch was inspired, and their finding is as fascinating as their process.
More articles about Magnasco and Baikouzis’s work. Most of these say basically the same thing, but I thought you might like a little variety.
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1. “What?” I hear you saying–”forty days? But it took him ten years to get home!” Well, yes, but most of the journey is told in flashback. Like the Iliad, which is a snapshot of forty days from the ninth year of the war intended to signify in miniature the whole, the portions of Odysseus’s journey which we see and hear about are essentially the “good parts” version, like Goldman’s Princess Bride, a book made entirely of the good parts.
