215
4 Navigation
Navigation has been posited as a cause for early mapping of the sky, whether one
was traversing the Middle Eastern deserts or the Mediterranean Sea. But that begs
the question why should people need to navigate their way through the sky. One
obvious answer lies in the need for peoples in the Mediterranean to find their way
from one landfall to another in their seafaring journeys (see Pimenta, 2014 for a
good overview; and for detailed examples Bilić, 2005, 2009, 2014; Medas, 2004;
Coldstream & Huxley, 1996; Fresa, 1969). This is illustrated early on in Greek literature in a famous, if contentious, passage in Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus
is given sailing instructions by the goddess, Athena:
Glad with the wind, noble Odysseus spread sails. Sitting down, he skillfully held it straight
with the steering-paddle, and sleep did not fall on his eyelids as he looked to the Pleiades
and late-setting Boötes, and the Bear, whom they also name Wagon, which turns round
about there and watches Orion closely, and alone is without a share in the baths of Ocean.
For Kalypso, noble among goddesses, commanded him to pass over the sea, keeping the
Bear on his left hand. Seventeen days he sailed, passing over the sea, and on the eighteenth
day there appeared the shadowy mountains of the land of the Phaiakians, where it was nearest to him, and it looked like a shield on the sky-like sea.
Homer, Odyssey 5.269-81 (trans. Hannah)
I have attempted to interpret this passage from a practical point of view, even though
the literary context is one of fantasy in the story of Odysseus, and I believe the interpretation has its merits (Hannah, 1997).
2
Certainly in the realm of sailing the use of
large constellations rather than tiny pinpoints of single stars makes a great deal of
sense, as research on star navigation methods in other cultures, like those of the
Polynesians, has demonstrated (Lewis, 1994; Lusby, Hannah, & Knight, 2010a,
2010b). But lists of constellations are more likely to have been kept in seafarers’
heads than in city centres, and yet it is precisely in city centres—arguably Classical
Athens itself and certainly Hellenistic Miletos—where we happen to have found
them archaeologically (Hannah, 2001). These findspots demand another explanation for the peopling of the sky.
5 Agriculture
A traditional role of observational astronomy in ancient Greece was—at least in
literary form—to provide indications of pivotal moments of change in the seasonal
year. For Homer and Hesiod, at the dawn of Greek literature, the rising and setting
of just a handful of stars and constellations served as agricultural ‘event markers’,
much like calendar dates, signalling or reflecting the appropriate time for various
2 The brief and remarkably uninformative discussion of the navigational technique implied by
Homer in as authoritative a text as McGrail (2001): 101 is unfortunately typical of literature on this
passage.
The Stars in Ancient Greece
4 Navigation
Navigation has been posited as a cause for early mapping of the sky, whether one
was traversing the Middle Eastern deserts or the Mediterranean Sea. But that begs
the question why should people need to navigate their way through the sky. One
obvious answer lies in the need for peoples in the Mediterranean to find their way
from one landfall to another in their seafaring journeys (see Pimenta, 2014 for a
good overview; and for detailed examples Bilić, 2005, 2009, 2014; Medas, 2004;
Coldstream & Huxley, 1996; Fresa, 1969). This is illustrated early on in Greek literature in a famous, if contentious, passage in Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus
is given sailing instructions by the goddess, Athena:
Glad with the wind, noble Odysseus spread sails. Sitting down, he skillfully held it straight
with the steering-paddle, and sleep did not fall on his eyelids as he looked to the Pleiades
and late-setting Boötes, and the Bear, whom they also name Wagon, which turns round
about there and watches Orion closely, and alone is without a share in the baths of Ocean.
For Kalypso, noble among goddesses, commanded him to pass over the sea, keeping the
Bear on his left hand. Seventeen days he sailed, passing over the sea, and on the eighteenth
day there appeared the shadowy mountains of the land of the Phaiakians, where it was nearest to him, and it looked like a shield on the sky-like sea.
Homer, Odyssey 5.269-81 (trans. Hannah)
I have attempted to interpret this passage from a practical point of view, even though
the literary context is one of fantasy in the story of Odysseus, and I believe the interpretation has its merits (Hannah, 1997).
2
Certainly in the realm of sailing the use of
large constellations rather than tiny pinpoints of single stars makes a great deal of
sense, as research on star navigation methods in other cultures, like those of the
Polynesians, has demonstrated (Lewis, 1994; Lusby, Hannah, & Knight, 2010a,
2010b). But lists of constellations are more likely to have been kept in seafarers’
heads than in city centres, and yet it is precisely in city centres—arguably Classical
Athens itself and certainly Hellenistic Miletos—where we happen to have found
them archaeologically (Hannah, 2001). These findspots demand another explanation for the peopling of the sky.
5 Agriculture
A traditional role of observational astronomy in ancient Greece was—at least in
literary form—to provide indications of pivotal moments of change in the seasonal
year. For Homer and Hesiod, at the dawn of Greek literature, the rising and setting
of just a handful of stars and constellations served as agricultural ‘event markers’,
much like calendar dates, signalling or reflecting the appropriate time for various
2 The brief and remarkably uninformative discussion of the navigational technique implied by
Homer in as authoritative a text as McGrail (2001): 101 is unfortunately typical of literature on this
passage.
The Stars in Ancient Greece