HOMERIC ASTRONOMY.
THE Homeric ideas regarding the heavenly bodies were of the simplest
description. They stood, in fact, very much on the same level with those
entertained by the North American Indians, when first brought into
European contact. What knowledge there was in them was of that ‘broken’
kind which (in Bacon’s phrase) is made up of wonder. Fragments of
observation had not even begun to be pieced in one with the other, and
so fitted, ill or well, into a whole. In other words, there was no
faintest dawning of a celestial science.
But surely, it may be urged, a poet is not bound to be an astronomer.
Why should it be assumed that the author (or authors) of the Iliad and
Odyssey possessed information co-extensive on all points with that of
his fellow-countrymen? His profession was not science, but song. The
argument, however, implies a reflecting backward of the present upon the
past. Among unsophisticated peoples, specialists, unless in the matter
of drugs or spells, or some few practical processes, do not exist. The
scanty stock of gathered knowledge is held, it might be said, in common.
The property of one is the property of all.
More especially of the poet. His power over his hearers depends upon his
presenting vividly what they already perceive dimly. It was part of the
poetical faculty of the Ithacan bard Phemius that he ‘knew the works of
gods and men.’[15] His special function was to render them famous by his
song. What he had heard concerning them he repeated; adding, of his own,
the marshalling skill, the vital touch, by which they were perpetuated.
He was no inventor: the actual life of men, with its transfiguring
traditions and baffled aspirations, was the material he had to work
with. But the life of men was very different then from what it is now.
It was lived in closer contact with Nature; it was simpler, more
typical, consequently more susceptible of artistic treatment.
Footnote 15:
_Odyssey_, i. 338.
It was accordingly looked at and portrayed as a whole; and it is this
very _wholeness_ which is one of the principal charms of primitive
poetry—an irrecoverable charm; for civilisation renders existence a
labyrinth of which it too often rejects the clue. In olden times,
however, its ways were comparatively straight, and its range limited. It
was accordingly capable of being embraced with approximate entirety.
Hence the encyclopædic character of the early epics. _Humani nihil
alienum._ Whatever men thought, and knew, and did, in that morning of
the world when they spontaneously arose, found a place in them.
Now, some scheme of the heavens must always accompany and guide human
existence. There is literally no choice for man but to observe the
movements, real or apparent, of celestial objects, and to regulate his
actions by the measure of time they mete out to him. Nor had he at first
any other means of directing his wanderings upon the earth save by
regarding theirs in the sky. They are thus to him standards of reference
and measurement as regards both the fundamental conditions of his
being—time and space.
This intimate connexion, and, still more, the idealising influence of
the remote and populous skies, has not been lost upon the poets in any
age. It might even be possible to construct a tolerably accurate
outline-sketch of the history of astronomy in Europe without travelling
outside the limits of their works. But our present concern is with
Homer.
To begin with his mode of reckoning time. This was by years, months,
days, and hours.[16] The week of seven days was unknown to him; but in
its place we find[17] the triplicate division of the month used by
Hesiod and the later Attics, implying a month of thirty, and a year of
360 days, corrected, doubtless, by some rude process of intercalation.
These ten-day intervals were perhaps borrowed at an early stage of
Achæan civilisation from Egypt, where they correspond to the Chaldean
‘decans’—thirty-six minor astral divinities presiding over as many
sections of the Zodiac.[18] But no knowledge of the Signs accompanied
the transfer. A similar apportionment of the hours of night into three
watches (as amongst the Jews before the Captivity), and of the hours of
day into three periods or stages, prevails in both the Iliad and
Odyssey. The seasons of the year, too, were three—spring, summer, and
winter—like those of the ancient Egyptians and of our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers;[19] for the Homeric _Opora_ was not, properly speaking, an
autumnal season, but merely an aggravation of summer heat and drought,
heralded by the rising of Sirius towards the close of July. It, in fact,
strictly matched our ‘dog-days,’ the _dies caniculares_ of the Romans.
The first direct mention of autumn is in a treatise of the time of
Alcibiades ascribed to Hippocrates.[20] This rising of the dog-star is
the only indication in the Homeric poems of the use of a stellar
calendar such as we meet full-grown in Hesiod’s Works and Days. The same
event was the harbinger of the Nile-flood to the Egyptians, serving to
mark the opening of their year as well as to correct the estimates of
its length.
Footnote 16:
_Odyssey_, x. 469; xi. 294.
Footnote 17:
_Ib._ xix. 307.
Footnote 18:
Brugsch, _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_,
Bd. ix. p. 513.
Footnote 19:
Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 11. Tacitus says of the
Germans, ‘Autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur’ (_Germania_, cap.
xxvi.)
Footnote 20:
Smith’s _Dictionary of Antiquities_, article ‘Astronomy.’
The annual risings of stars had formerly, in the absence of more
accurate means of observation, an importance they no longer possess.
Mariners and husbandmen, accustomed to watch, because at the mercy of
the heavens, could hardly fail no less to be struck with the successive
effacements by, and re-emergences from, the solar beams, of certain
well-known stars, as the sun pursued his yearly course amongst them,
than to note the epochs of such events. Four stages in these periodical
fluctuations of visibility were especially marked by primitive
observers. The first perceptible appearance of a star in the dawn was
known as its ‘heliacal rising.’ This brief glimpse extended gradually as
the star increased its seeming distance from the sun, the interval of
precedence in rising lengthening by nearly four minutes each morning. At
the end of close upon six months occurred its ‘acronycal rising,’ or
last visible ascent from the eastern horizon after sunset. Its
conspicuousness was then at the maximum, the whole of the dark hours
being available for its shining. To these two epochs of rising succeeded
and corresponded two epochs of setting—the ‘cosmical’ and the
‘heliacal.’ A star set cosmically when, for the first time each year, it
reached the horizon long enough before break of day to be still
distinguishable; it set heliacally on the last evening when its rays
still detached themselves from the background of illuminated western
sky, before getting finally immersed in twilight. The round began again
when the star had arrived sufficiently far on the other side of the sun
to show in the morning—in other words, to rise heliacally.
Wide plains and clear skies gave opportunities for closely and
continually observing these successive moments in the revolving
relations of sun and stars, which were soon found to afford a very
accurate index to the changes of the seasons. By them, for the most
part, Hesiod’s prescriptions for navigation and agriculture are timed;
and although Homer, in conformity with the nature of his subject, is
less precise, he was still fully aware of the association.
His sun is a god—Helios—as yet unidentified with Apollo, who wears his
solar attributes unconsciously. Helios is also known as Hyperion, ‘he
who walks on high,’ and Elector, ‘the shining one.’ Voluntarily he
pursues his daily course in the sky, and voluntarily he sinks to rest in
the ocean-stream—subject, however, at times to a higher compulsion; for,
just after the rescue of the body of Patroclus, Heré favours her Achæan
clients by precipitating at a critical juncture the descent of a still
unwearied and unwilling luminary.[21] On another occasion, however,
Helios memorably asserts his independence, when, incensed at the
slaughter of his sacred cattle by the self-doomed companions of Ulysses,
he threatens to ‘descend into Hades, and shine among the dead.’[22] And
Zeus, in promising the required satisfaction, virtually admits his power
to abdicate his office as illuminator of gods and men.
Footnote 21:
_Iliad_, xviii, 239.
Footnote 22:
_Odyssey_, xii. 383.
Once only, the solstice is alluded to in Homeric verse. The swineherd
Eumæus, in describing the situation of his native place, the Island of
Syriê, states that it is over against Ortygia (Delos), ‘where are the
turning-places of the sun.’[23] The phrase was probably meant to
indicate that Delos lay just so much south of east from Ithaca as the
sun lies at rising on the shortest day of winter. But it must be
confessed that the direction was not thus very accurately laid down, the
comprised angle being 15⅓°, instead of 23½°.[24] To those early students
of nature, the travelling to and fro of the points of sunrise and sunset
furnished the most obvious clue to the yearly solar revolution; so that
an expression, to us somewhat recondite, conveyed a direct and
unmistakable meaning to hearers whose narrow acquaintance with the
phenomena of the heavens was vivified by immediate personal experience
of them. And in point of fact, the idea in question is precisely that
conveyed by the word ‘tropic.’
Footnote 23:
_Ib._ xv. 404.
Footnote 24:
Sir W. Geddes believes that the solstitial place of the setting sun,
as viewed from the Ionic coast, is that used to define the position of
Ortygia.—_Problem of the Homeric Poems_, p. 294.
Selene first takes rank as a divine personage in the pseudo-Homeric
Hymns. No moon-goddess is recognised in the Iliad or Odyssey. Nor does
the orbed ruler of ‘ambrosial night,’ regarded as a mere light-giver or
time-measurer, receive all the attention that might have been expected.
A full moon is, however, represented with the other ‘heavenly signs’ on
the shield of Achilles, and figures somewhat superfluously in the
magnificent passage where the Trojan watch-fires are compared to the
stars in a cloudless sky:
As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And eating hoary grain and pulse, the steeds,
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.[25]
Footnote 25:
_Iliad_, viii. 551-61 (Tennyson’s translation).
Here, as elsewhere, the simile no sooner presents itself than the poet’s
imagination seizes upon and develops it without overmuch regard to the
illustrative fitness of its details. The multitudinous effect of a
thousand fires blazing together on the plain inevitably suggested the
stars. But with the stars came the complete nocturnal scene in its
profound and breathless tranquillity. The ‘rejoicing shepherd,’
meantime, who was part of it, would have been ill-pleased with the
darkness required for the innumerable stellar display first thought of.
And since, to the untutored sense, landscape is delightful only so far
as it gives promise of utility, brilliant moonlight was added, for his
satisfaction and the safety of his flock, as well as for the perfecting
of that scenic beauty felt to be deficient where human needs were left
uncared for. Just in proportion, however, as rocks, and peaks, and
wooded glens appeared distinct, the lesser lights of heaven, and with
them the fundamental idea of the comparison, must have become effaced;
and the poet, accordingly, as if with a misgiving that the fervour of
his fancy had led him to stray from the rigid line of his purpose,
volunteered the assurance that ‘all the stars were visible’—as, to his
mind’s eye, they doubtless were.
Of the ‘vivid planets’ thrown in by Pope there is no more trace in the
original, than of the ‘glowing pole.’ Nor could there be; since Homer
was totally ignorant that such a class of bodies existed. This curious
fact affords (if it were needed) conclusive proof of the high antiquity
of the Homeric poems. Not the faintest suspicion manifests itself in
them that Hesperus, ‘fairest of all stars set in heaven,’ is but another
aspect of Phosphorus, herald of light upon the earth, ‘the star that
saffron-mantled Dawn cometh after, and spreadeth over the salt sea.’[26]
The identification is said by Diogenes Laertius to have been first made
by Pythagoras; and it may at any rate be assumed with some confidence
that this elementary piece of astronomical knowledge came to the Greeks
from the East, with others of a like nature, in the course of the
seventh or sixth century B.C. Astonishing as it seems that they should
not have made the discovery for themselves, there is no evidence that
they did so. Hesiod appears equally unconscious with Homer of the
distinction between ‘fixed’ and ‘wandering’ stars. According to his
genealogical information, Phosphorus, like the rest of the stellar
multitude, sprang from the union of Astræus with the Dawn,[27] but no
hint is given of any generic difference between them.
Footnote 26:
_Iliad_, xxiii. 226-27.
Footnote 27:
_Theogony_, 381.
There is a single passage in the Iliad, and a parallel one in the
Odyssey, in which the constellations are formally enumerated by name.
Hephæstus, we are told, made for the son of Thetis a shield great and
strong, whereon, by his exceeding skill, a multitude of objects were
figured.
‘There wrought he the earth, and the heavens, and the sea, and the
unwearying sun, and the moon waxing to the full, and the signs every one
wherewith the heavens are crowned, Pleiads, and Hyads, and Orion’s
might, and the Bear that men call also the Wain, her that turneth in her
place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of
Ocean.’[28]
Footnote 28:
_Iliad_, xviii. 483-89.
The corresponding lines in the Odyssey occur in the course of describing
the hero’s voyage from the isle of Calypso to the land of the Phæacians.
Alone, on the raft he had constructed of Ogygian pine-wood, he sat
during seventeen days, ‘and cunningly guided the craft with the helm;
nor did sleep fall upon his eyelids, as he viewed the Pleiads and
Boötes, that setteth late, and the Bear, which they likewise call the
Wain, which turneth ever in one place, and keepeth watch upon Orion, and
alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.’[29]
Footnote 29:
_Odyssey_, v. 271-75.
The sailing-directions of the goddess were to keep the Bear always on
the left—that is, to steer due east.
It is clear that one of these passages is an adaptation from the other;
nor is there reason for hesitation in deciding which was the model.
Independently of extrinsic evidence, the verses in the Iliad have the
strong spontaneous ring of originality, while the Odyssean lines betray
excision and interpolation. The ‘Hyads and Orion’s might’ are suppressed
for the sake of introducing Boötes. Variety was doubtless aimed at in
the change; and the conjecture is at least a plausible one, that the
added constellation may have been known to the poet of the Odyssey
(admitting the hypothesis of a divided authorship), though not to the
poet of the Iliad—known, that is, in the sense that the stars comprising
the figure of the celestial Husbandman had not yet, at the time and
place of origin of the Iliad, become separated from the anonymous throng
circling in the ‘murk of night.’
The constellation Boötes—called ‘late-setting,’ probably from the
perpendicular position in which it descends below the horizon—was
invented to drive the Wain, as Arctophylax to guard the Bear, the same
group in each case going by a double name. For the brightest of the
stars thus designated we still preserve the appellation Arcturus (from
_arktos_, bear, _oûros_, guardian), first used by Hesiod, who fixed upon
its acronycal rising, sixty days after the winter solstice, as the
signal for pruning the vines.[30] It is not unlikely that the star
received its name long before the constellation was thought of, forming
the nucleus of a subsequently formed group. This was undoubtedly the
course of events elsewhere; the Great and Little Dogs, for instance, the
Twins, and the Eagle (the last with two minute companions) having been
individualised as stars previous to their recognition as asterisms.
Footnote 30:
_Works and Days_, 564-70.
There is reason to believe that the stars enumerated in the Iliad and
Odyssey constituted the whole of those known by name to the early
Greeks. This view is strongly favoured by the identity of the Homeric
and Hesiodic stars. It is difficult to believe that, had there been room
for choice, the same list _precisely_ would have been picked out for
presentation in poems so widely diverse in scope and origin as the Iliad
and Odyssey on the one side, and the Works and Days on the other. As
regards the polar constellations, we have positive proof that none
besides Ursa Major had been distinguished. For the statement repeated in
both the Homeric epics, that the Bear _alone_ was without part in the
baths of Ocean, implies, not that the poet veritably ignored the
unnumbered stars revolving within the circle traced out round the pole
by the seven of the Plough, but that they still remained a nameless
crowd, unassociated with any terrestrial object, and therefore
attracting no popular observation.
The Greeks, according to a well-attested tradition, made acquaintance
with the Lesser Bear through Phœnician communication, of which Thales
was the medium. Hence the designation of the group as _Phoinike_. Aratus
(who versified the prose of Eudoxus) has accordingly two Bears, lying
(in sailors’ phrase) ‘heads and points’ on the sphere; while he
expressly states that the Greeks still (about 270 B.C.) continued to
steer by _Helike_ (the Twister, Ursa Major), while the expert Phœnicians
directed their course by the less mobile _Kynosoura_ (Ursa Minor). The
absence of any mention of a Pole-star seems at first sight surprising.
Even the Iroquois Indians directed their wanderings from of old by the
one celestial luminary of which the position remained sensibly
invariable.[31] Yet not the gods themselves, in Homer’s time, were aware
of such a guide. It must be remembered, however, that the axis of the
earth’s rotation pointed, 2800 years ago, towards a considerably
different part of the heavens from that now met by its imaginary
prolongation. The precession of the equinoxes has been at work in the
interval, slowly but unremittingly shifting the situation of this point
among the stars. Some 600 years before the Great Pyramid was built, it
was marked by the close vicinity of the brightest star in the Dragon.
But this in the course of ages was left behind by the onward-travelling
pole, and further ages elapsed before the star at the tip of the Little
Bear’s tail approached its present position. Thus the entire millennium
before the Christian era may count for an interregnum as regards
Pole-stars. Alpha Draconis had ceased to exercise that office;
Alruccabah had not yet assumed it.
Footnote 31:
Lafitau, _Mœurs des Sauvages Américains_, p. 240.
The most ancient of all the constellations is probably that which Homer
distinguishes as never-setting (it then lay much nearer to the pole than
it now does). In his time, as in ours, it went by two appellations—the
Bear and the Wain. Homer’s Bear, however, included the same seven bright
stars constituting the Wain, and no more; whereas our Great Bear
stretches over a sky-space of which the Wain is only a small part, three
of the striding monster’s far-apart paws being marked by the three pairs
of stars known to the Arabs as the ‘gazelle’s springs.’ How this
extension came about, we can only conjecture; but there is evidence that
it was fairly well established when Aratus wrote his description of the
constellations. Aratus, however, copied Eudoxus, and Eudoxus used
observations made—doubtless by Accad or Chaldean astrologers—above 2000
B.C.[32] We infer, then, that the Babylonian Bear was no other than the
modern Ursa Major.[33]
Footnote 32:
According to Mr. Proctor’s calculation. See R. Brown, _Eridanus: River
and Constellation_, p. 3.
Footnote 33:
See Houghton, _Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch._ vol. v. p. 333.
But the primitive asterism—the Seven Rishis of the old Hindus, the
Septem Triones of the Latins, the Arktos of Homer—included no more than
seven stars. And this is important as regards the origin of the name.
For it is impossible to suppose a likeness to any animal suggested by
the more restricted group. Scarcely the acquiescent fancy of Polonius
could find it ‘backed like a weasel,’ or ‘very like a whale.’ Yet a
weasel or a whale would match the figure equally well with, or better
than, a bear. Probably the growing sense of incongruity between the name
and the object it signified may have induced the attempt to soften it
down by gathering a number of additional stars into a group presenting a
distant resemblance to a four-legged monster.
The name of the Bear, this initial difficulty notwithstanding, is
prehistoric and quasi-universal. It was traditional amongst the
American-Indian tribes, who, however, sensible of the absurdity of
attributing a conspicuous protruding tail to an animal almost destitute
of such an appendage, turned the three stars composing it into three
pursuing hunters. No such difficulty, however, presented itself to the
Aztecs. They recognised in the seven ‘Arctic’ stars the image of a
Scorpion,[34] and named them accordingly. No Bear seems to have
bestridden their sky.
Footnote 34:
Bollaert, _Memoirs Anthrop. Society_, vol. i. p. 216.
The same constellation figures, under a divinified aspect, with the
title _Otawa_, in the great Finnish epic, the ‘Kalevala.’ Now, although
there is no certainty as to the original meaning of this word, which has
no longer a current application to any terrestrial object, it is
impossible not to be struck with its resemblance to the Iroquois term
_Okowari_, signifying ‘bear,’ both zoologically and astronomically.[35]
The inference seems justified that _Otawa_ held the same two meanings,
and that the Finns knew the great northern constellation by the name of
the old Teutonic king of beasts.
Footnote 35:
Lafitau, _op. cit._ p. 236.
It was (as we have seen) similarly designated on the banks of the
Euphrates; and a celestial she-bear, doubtfully referred to in the
Rig-Veda, becomes the starting-point of an explanatory legend in the
Râmâyana.[36] Thus, circling the globe from the valley of the Ganges to
the great lakes of the New World, we find ourselves confronted with the
same sign in the northern skies, the relic of some primeval association
of ideas, long since extinct.
Footnote 36:
Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_, vol. ii. p. 109.
Extinct even in Homer’s time. For the myth of Callisto (first recorded
in a lost work by Hesiod) was a subsequent invention—an effect, not a
cause—a mere embroidery of Hellenic fancy over a linguistic fact, the
true origin of which was lost in the mists of antiquity.
There is, on the other hand, no difficulty in understanding how the
Seven Stars obtained their second title of the Wain, or Plough, or Bier.
Here we have a plain case of imitative name-giving—a suggestion by
resemblance almost as direct as that which established in our skies a
Triangle and a Northern Crown. Curiously enough, the individual
appellations still current for the stars of the Plough, include a
reminiscence of each system of nomenclature—the legendary and the
imitative. The brightest of the seven, _α_ Ursæ Majoris, the Pointer
nearest the Pole, is designated _Dubhe_, signifying, in Arabic, ‘bear’;
while the title _Benetnasch_—equivalent to _Benât-en-Nasch_, ‘daughters
of the bier’—of the furthest star in the plough-handle, perpetuates the
lugubrious fancy, native in Arabia, by which the group figures as a
corpse attended by three mourners.
Turning to the second great constellation mentioned in both Homeric
epics, we again meet traces of remote and unconscious tradition: yet
less remote, probably, than that concerned with the Bear—certainly less
inscrutable; for recent inquiries into the lore and language of ancient
Babylon have thrown much light on the relationships of the Orion fable.
There seems no reason to question the validity of Mr. Robert Brown’s
interpretation of the word by the Accadian _Ur-ana_, ‘light of
heaven.’[37] But a proper name is significant only where it originates.
Moreover, it is considered certain that the same brilliant star-group
known to Homer no less than to us as Orion, was termed by
Chaldeo-Assyrian peoples ‘Tammuz,’[38] a synonym of Adonis. Nor is it
difficult to divine how the association came to be established. For,
about 2000 B.C., when the Euphratean constellations assumed their
definitive forms, the belt of Orion began to be visible before dawn in
the month of June, called ‘Tammuz,’ because the death of Adonis was then
celebrated. It is even conceivable that the heliacal rising of the
asterism may originally have given the signal for that celebration. We
can at any rate scarcely doubt that it received the name of ‘Tammuz’
because its annual emergence from the solar beams coincided with the
period of mystical mourning for the vernal sun.
Footnote 37:
_Myth of Kirke_, p. 146.
Footnote 38:
Lenormant, _Origines de l’Histoire_, t. 1. p. 247.
Orion, too, has solar connexions. In the Fifth Odyssey (121-24), Calypso
relates to Hermes how the love for him of Aurora excited the jealousy of
the gods, extinguished only when he fell a victim to it, slain by the
shafts of Artemis in Ortygia. Obviously, a sun-and-dawn myth slightly
modified from the common type. The post-Homeric stories, too, of his
relations with Œnopion of Chios, and of his death by the bite of a
scorpion (emblematical of darkness, like the boar’s tusk in the Adonis
legend), confirm his position as a luminous hero.[39] Altogether, the
evidence is strongly in favour of considering Orion as a variant of
Adonis, imported into Greece from the East at an early date, and there
associated with the identical group of stars which commemorated to the
Accads of old the fate of Dumuzi (_i.e._ Tammuz), the ‘Only Son of
Heaven.’
Footnote 39:
R. Brown, _Archælogia_, vol. xlvii. p. 352; _Great Dionysiak Myth_,
chap. x. § v.
It is remarkable that Homer knows nothing of stellar mythology. He
nowhere attempts to account for the names of the stars. He has no
stories at his fingers’ ends of translations to the sky as a ready means
of exit from terrestrial difficulties. The Orion of his acquaintance—the
beloved of the Dawn, the mighty hunter, surpassing in beauty of person
even the divinely-born Aloidæ—died and descended to Hades like other
mortals, and was there seen by Ulysses, a gigantic shadow ‘driving the
wild beasts together over the mead of asphodel, the very beasts which he
himself had slain on the lonely hills, with a strong mace all of bronze
in his hand, that is ever unbroken.’[40] His stellar connexion is
treated as a fact apart. The poet does not appear to feel any need of
bringing it into harmony with the Odyssean vision.
Footnote 40:
_Odyssey_, xi. 572-75.
The brightest star in the heavens is termed by Homer the ‘dog of Orion.’
The name _Seirios_ (significant of sparkling), makes its _début_ in the
verses of Hesiod. To the singer of the Iliad the dog-star is a sign of
fear, its rising giving presage to ‘wretched mortals’ of the
intolerable, feverish blaze of late summer (_opora_). The deadly gleam
of its rays hence served the more appropriately to exemplify the lustre
of havoc-dealing weapons. Diomed, Hector, Achilles, ‘all furnish’d, all
in arms,’ are compared in turn, by way of prelude to an ‘_aristeia_,’ or
culminating epoch of distinction in battle, to the same brilliant but
baleful object. Glimmering fitfully across clouds, it not inaptly
typifies the evanescent light of the Trojan hero’s fortunes, no less
than the flashing of his armour, as he moves restlessly to and fro.[41]
Of Achilles it is said:
Footnote 41:
_Iliad_, xi. 62-66.
Him the old man Priam first beheld, as he sped across the plain,
blazing as the star that cometh forth at harvest-time, and plain
seen his rays shine forth amid the host of stars in the darkness
of night, the star whose name men call Orion’s Dog. Brightest of
all is he, yet for an evil sign is he set, and bringeth much
fever upon hapless men. Even so on Achilles’ breast the bronze
gleamed as he ran.[42]
Footnote 42:
_Iliad_, xxii. 25-32.
In the corresponding passage relating to Diomed (v. 4-7), the _naïve_
literalness with which the ‘baths of Ocean’ are thought of is conveyed
by the hint that the star shone at rising with increased brilliancy
through having newly washed in them.
Abnormal celestial appearances are scarcely noticed in the Homeric
poems. Certain portentous darknesses, reinforcing the solemnity of
crises of battle, or impending doom,[43] are much too vaguely defined to
be treated as indexes to natural phenomena of any kind. Nevertheless,
Professor Stockwell finds that, by a curious coincidence, Ajax’s Prayer
to Father Zeus for death—if death was decreed—in the light, might very
well have been uttered during a total eclipse of the sun, the lunar
shadow having passed centrally over the Hellespont at 2h. 21 min. P.M.
on August 28, 1184 B.C.[44] Comets, however, have left not even the
suspicion of a trace in these early songs; nor do they embody any
tradition of a star shower, or of a display of Northern Lights. The rain
of blood, by which Zeus presaged and celebrated the death of
Sarpedon,[45] might, it is true, be thought to embody a reminiscence of
a crimson aurora, frequently, in early times, chronicled under that
form; but the portent indicated is more probably an actual shower of
rain tinged red by a microscopic alga. An unmistakable meteor, however,
furnishes one of the glowing similes of the Iliad. By its help the
irresistible swiftness and unexpectedness of Athene’s descent from
Olympus to the Scamandrian plain are illustrated.
Footnote 43:
_Iliad_, xv. 668; xvii. 366; _Odyssey_, xx. 356.
Footnote 44:
_Astronomical Journal_, Nos. 220, 221.
Footnote 45:
_Iliad_, xvi. 459; also xi. 53.
Even as the son of Kronos the crooked counsellor sendeth a star,
a portent for mariners or a wide host of men, bright shining,
and therefrom are scattered sparks in multitude; even in such
guise sped Pallas Athene to earth, and leapt into their
midst.[46]
Footnote 46:
_Iliad_, iv. 75-79.
In the Homeric verses the Milky Way—the ‘path of souls’ of
prairie-roving Indians, the mediæval ‘way of pilgrimage’[47]—finds no
place. Yet its conspicuousness, as seen across our misty air, gives an
imperfect idea of the lustre with which it spans the translucent vault
which drew the wondering gaze of the Achæan bard.
Footnote 47:
To Compostella. The popular German name for the Milky Way is still
_Jakobsstrasse_, while the three stars of Orion’s belt are designated,
in the same connexion, _Jakobsstab_, staff of St James.
The point of most significance about Homer’s scanty astronomical notions
is that they were of home growth. They are precisely such as would arise
among a people in an incipient stage of civilisation, simple, direct,
and childlike in their mode of regarding natural phenomena, yet
incapable of founding upon them any close or connected reasoning. Of
Oriental mysticism there is not a vestige. No occult influences rain
from the sky. Not so much as a square inch of foundation is laid for the
astrological superstructure. It is true that Sirius is a ‘baleful star’;
but it is in the sense of being a harbinger of hot weather. Possibly, or
probably, it is regarded as a concomitant cause, no less than as a sign
of the August droughts; indeed the _post hoc_ and the _propter hoc_
were, in those ages, not easily separable; the effect, however, in any
case, was purely physical, and so unfit to become the starting-point of
a superstition.
The Homeric names of the stars, too, betray common reminiscences rather
than foreign intercourse. They are all either native, or naturalised on
Greek soil. The transplanted fable of Orion has taken root and
flourished there. The cosmopolitan Bear is known by her familiar Greek
name. Boötes is a Greek husbandman, variously identified with Arcas, son
of Callisto, or with Icarus, the luckless mandatory of Dionysus. The
Pleiades and the Hyades are intelligibly designated in Greek. The former
word is usually derived from _pleîn_, to sail; the heliacal rising of
the ‘tangled’ stars in the middle of May having served, from the time of
Hesiod, to mark the opening of the season safe for navigation, and their
cosmical setting, at the end of October, its close. But this etymology
was most likely an after-thought. Long before rules for navigating the
Ægean came to be formulated, the ‘sailing-stars’ must have been
designated by name amongst the Achæan tribes. Besides, Homer is ignorant
of any such association. Now in Arabic the Pleiades are called _Eth
Thuraiyâ_, from _therwa_, copious, abundant. The meaning conveyed is
that of many gathered into a small space; and it is quite similar to
that of the Biblical _kîmah_, a near connexion of the Assyrian _kimtu_,
family.[48] Analogy, then, almost irresistibly points to the
interpretation of Pleiades by the Greek _pleiones_, many, or _pleîos_,
full; giving to the term, in either case, the obvious signification of a
‘cluster.’
Footnote 48:
R. Brown, _Phainomena of Aratus_, p. 9; Delitzsch, _The Hebrew
Language_, p. 69.
Of the Hyades, similarly, the ‘rainy’ association seems somewhat
far-fetched. They rise and set respectively about four days later than
the Pleiades; so that, as prognostics of the seasons, it would be
difficult to draw a permanent distinction between the two groups; yet
one was traditionally held to bring fair, the other foul weather. There
can be little doubt that an etymological confusion lay at the bottom of
this inconsistency. ‘To rain,’ in Greek is _huein_; but _hus_ (cognate
with ‘sow’) means a ‘pig.’ Moreover, in old Latin, the Hyades were
called _Suculæ_ (‘little pigs’); although the misapprehension which he
supposed to be betrayed by the term was rebuked by Cicero.[49] Possibly
the misapprehension was the other way. It is quite likely that ‘Suculæ’
preserved the original meaning of ‘Hyades,’ and that the pluvious
derivation was invented at a later time, when the conception of the
seven stars in the head of the Bull as a ‘litter of pigs’ had come to
appear incongruous and inelegant. It has, nevertheless, just that
character of _naïveté_ which stamps it as authentic. Witness the popular
names of the sister-group—the widely-diffused ‘hen and chickens,’ Sancho
Panza’s ‘las siete cabrillas,’ met and discoursed with during his famous
aërial voyage on the back of Clavileño, the Sicilian ‘seven
dovelets,’—all designating the Pleiades. Still more to the purpose is
the Anglo-Saxon ‘boar-throng,’ which, by a haphazard identification, has
been translated as Orion, but which Grimm, on better grounds, suggests
may really apply to the Hyades.[50] It is scarcely credible that any
other constellation can be indicated by a term so manifestly reproducing
the ‘Suculæ’ of Latin and Sabine husbandmen.
Footnote 49:
_De Naturâ Deorum_, lib. ii. cap. 43.
Footnote 50:
_Teutonic Mythology_ (Stallybrass), vol. ii. p. 729.
The Homeric scheme of the heavens, then (such as it is), was produced at
home. No stellar lore had as yet been imported from abroad. An original
community of ideas is just traceable in the names of some of the stars;
that is all. The epoch of instruction by more learned neighbours was
still to come. The Signs of the Zodiac were certainly unknown to Homer,
yet their shining array had been marshalled from the banks of the
Euphrates at least 2000 years before the commencement of the Christian
era. Their introduction into Greece is attributed to Cleostratus of
Tenedos, near, or shortly after, the end of the sixth century B.C. By
that time, too, acquaintance had been made with the ‘Phœnician’
constellation of the Lesser Bear, and with the wanderings of the
planets. Astronomical communications, in fact, began to pour into Hellas
from Egypt, Babylonia, and Phœnicia about the seventh century B.C. Now,
if there were any reasonable doubt that ‘blind Melesigenes’ lived at a
period anterior to this, it would be removed by the consideration of
what he lets fall about the heavenly bodies. For, though he might have
ignored formal astronomy, he could not have remained unconscious of such
striking and popular facts as the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus,
the Sidonian pilots’ direction of their course by the ‘Cynosure,’ or the
mapping-out of the sun’s path among the stars by a series of luminous
figures of beasts and men.
Thus the hypothesis of a late origin for the Iliad and Odyssey is
negatived by the astronomical ignorance betrayed in them. It has,
however, gradations; whence some hints as to the relative age of the two
epics may be derived. The differences between them in this respect are,
it is true, small, and they both stand approximately on the same
astronomical level with the poems of Hesiod. Yet an attentive study of
what they have to tell us about the stars affords some grounds for
placing the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Works and Days in a descending
series as to time.
In the first place, the division of the month into three periods of ten
days each is unknown in the Iliad, is barely hinted at in the Odyssey,
but is brought into detailed notice in the Hesiodic calendar. Further,
the ‘turning-points of the sun’ are unmentioned in the Iliad, but serve
in the Odyssey, by their position on the horizon, to indicate direction;
while the winter solstice figures as a well-marked epoch in the Works
and Days. Hesiod, moreover, designates the dog-star (not expressly
mentioned in the Odyssey) by a name of which the author of the Iliad was
certainly ignorant. Besides which an additional constellation (Boötes)
to those named in the Iliad appears in the Odyssey and the Works and
Days; while the title ‘Hyperion,’ applied substantively to the sun in
the Odyssey, is used only adjectivally in the Iliad. Finally, stellar
mythology begins with Hesiod; Homer (whether the Iliadic or the
Odyssean) takes the names of the stars as he finds them, without seeking
to connect them with any sublunary occurrences.
To be sure, differences of place and purpose might account for some of
these discrepancies, yet their cumulative effect in fixing relative
epochs is considerable; and, even apart from chronology, it is something
to look towards the skies with the ‘most high poet,’ and to retrace,
with the aid of our own better knowledge, the simple meanings their
glorious aspect held for him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------