NYT
June 24, 2008
Homecoming of Odysseus May Have Been in Eclipse
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

That Odysseus took his time, 19 years, getting home to Ithaca from the
Trojan War is the story Homer engraved in the “Odyssey.” But exactly
when did he rejoin his Penelope, who had been patient beyond belief?

Plutarch thought a crucial passage in the 20th book of the “Odyssey”
to be a poetic description of a total solar eclipse at the time of
Odysseus’ return. A century ago, astronomers calculated that such an
eclipse occurred over the Greek islands on April 16, 1178 B.C., the
only one in the region around the estimated date of the sack of Troy.
But nearly all classics scholars are highly skeptical of any
connection.

An analysis of astronomical references in the epic has led two
scientists to conclude that the homecoming of Odysseus, usually
considered a fictional character set in the context of a real
historical event, possibly coincided with the 1178 solar eclipse. If,
that is, Homer indeed had in mind an eclipse when he wrote of a seer
prophesying the death of Penelope’s waiting suitors and their entrance
into Hades.

The new interpretation of the eclipse hypothesis is reported in this
week’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by
Constantino Baikouzis and Marcelo O. Magnasco, scientists at the
Laboratory of Mathematical Physics at Rockefeller University in New
York and at the Astronomical Observatory of La Plata, in Argentina.

They concede that scholars of Homer are still not likely to give much
credence to the idea. But it makes for an intriguing story, one that
the blind bard, a mystery himself, would have appreciated.

Although an eclipse is not mentioned anywhere in the story, there are
omens and what Plutarch inferred was a poetic description of a total
solar eclipse. Odysseus has arrived home, disguised in beggar’s rags
and in hiding before revealing himself. It happens that, when
Penelope’s persistent suitors sit down for a noontime meal, they start
laughing uncontrollably and see their food spattered with blood.

At this strange moment, the seer Theoclymenus foretells their death,
ending with the sentence, “The Sun has been obliterated from the sky,
and an unlucky darkness invades the world.”

There are reasons to think that the darkness of a total eclipse had
just fallen on Ithaca. It was close to noon when the 1178 eclipse
occurred over the Ionian Sea. It was, as mentioned several times in
the story, at the time of a new moon, which the scientists point out
is “a necessary condition for a solar eclipse.” And what better
atmospherics to accompany a prophecy of doom than a total eclipse,
which was considered an ill omen?

Experts on Homer have previously discounted such conjecture. For one
thing, the earliest verified eclipse records are in the eighth century
B.C., about the time Homer was writing but long after the action in
what is known as the Trojan War, around the early 12th century B.C.
Scholars say there is no evidence supporting a view at the time,
widely quoted, that “a solar eclipse may mark the return of Odysseus.”

In their report, Dr. Baikouzis and Dr. Magnasco acknowledged the
speculative nature of their study, several times throwing in their own
caveats. “The notion that the passage could refer not just to an
allegorical eclipse used by the poet for literary effect but actually
to a specific historical one,” they agreed, “seems unlikely because it
would entail the transmission through oral tradition of information
about an eclipse occurring maybe five centuries before the poem was
cast in the form we know today.”

The two scientists derived a possible chronology from astronomical
references in the story, including the stars by which Odysseus
navigated, the sighting of Venus just before dawn as he arrives at
Ithaca, and the new moon on the night before the massacre of the
suitors and the presumed eclipse.

On the basis of their analysis, the scientists said, these three
“references ‘cohere,’ in the sense that the astronomical phenomena
pinpoint the date of 16 April 1178 B.C.,” adding, “The odds that
purely fictional references to these phenomena (so hard to satisfy
simultaneously) would coincide by accident with the only eclipse of
the century are minute.”