Did Homer really get the astronomy right in telling the tale of Odysseus? On Tuesday (see previous post) many reporters, after reading a paper in PNAS and, most likely, the Rockefeller U. press release, wrote how astronomical clues in The Odyssey enforce old suggestions of a specific, dated solar eclipse as occurring during the returning king’s bloody episode of household archery.

Could be, but now at Science News Davide Castelvecchi reports a few scholars who aren’t so sure. There is no clear reason to think, his sources tell Castelvecchi, that at the time of the Odyssey’s setting Greek astronomy would permit Odysseus to have made the accurate observations that he, by inference, achieved. Ditto, no reason to think that, centuries later, Homer could have reconstructed the skies and fabulated his epic accordingly.

Looks like good opportunity for some learned society to arrange a friendly, after-dinner discussion-debate among these scholars.

-CP

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