Homer, Telemachus, Ulysses,
and the Summer Solstice
by Alberto Majrani
Apparent movements of the sun over the course of
the year
In the previous interventions we have seen how the
Homeric poems suddenly assume an extraordinary "coherence",
once they are read with the right criterion and how many mysterious
phrases become very clear for those who have a solid scientific
background. Let's now see in this key one of the most dramatic
moments of the Odyssey: the description of the massacre of suitors,
by Ulysses (or whoever for him), his son Telemachus and faithful
servants. But is it possible to understand on which day the crime
takes place? The chief of suitors Antinous will give us a suggestion:
Today there is a solemn feast among the people
(XXI, 258)
So this is not an ordinary day, but it is a day of
celebration for all the people: in an age when few are able to use a
calendar, if the conspirators have to make an appointment, they can
only do it on a particular day, well known to all. A few verses later
it turns out that the festival is dedicated to the archer god Apollo.
Since Apollo was also the god of light, we can even venture the
hypothesis that it could be a solar festival, such as the summer
solstice, which was a particularly important day for the ancients.
The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, while the winter
solstice is the shortest. Often people unfamiliar with astronomy
believe that the sun always rises exactly in the east and sets in the
west: in reality, this only happens on the day of the spring or autumn
equinox. During the other days of the year, the rise and sunset point
gradually moves to the right or left. On the solstices, the sun rises
and sets at the farthest point from the east and west: it is said
that the "sun stays" because for a few days it seems to stop
at a fixed point and then go back.
Summer solstice festival in Finland
Astronomical knowledge was already present in
prehistoric times: many archaeologists think that even the animals
painted in the famous Lascaux caves are a representation of the
constellations. In 14000 BC, a period that agrees with the dating of
the paintings obtained with other methods, the sun set on the summer
solstice, lighting up the painted wall, located about forty meters
from the entrance. It is definitely unlikely that this is due to
chance, because there are many caves in the area and that is the only
one painted, and the phenomenon only occurred on the days immediately
close to the summer solstice.
If the observation is extended to southern France,
we find about a hundred decorated caves from the Paleolithic era, and
almost all of them are astronomically oriented. If we then consider
the aesthetic quality of the paintings, we can realize how those
distant ancestors of ours were anything but rough cavemen, and the
intellectual abilities of the men of that era were practically
identical to those of contemporary men. A similar phenomenon occurred
in many other prehistoric temples, from the mound of Newgrange in
Ireland, of 3200 BC, oriented towards the winter solstice, to that of
Abu Simbel in Egypt, of 1200 BC, with the sun going to illuminate a
room placed at the end of a long corridor only on two days a year,
probably on the birthday and coronation anniversary of Pharaoh Ramses
II.
Mound of Newgrange
Archaeological studies are now almost in agreement
in believing that megalithic temples had functions of astral worship:
their main orientations are almost always directed towards points of
astronomical importance, such as the place of rising or setting of
the sun at the solstices (or, more rarely, at the equinoxes), as well
as the moon or the main stars and constellations on particular days
of the year. The megaliths therefore also had a calendar function,
essential for populations who had to know the right times for sowing
or transhumance.
Abu Simbel at dawn; Abu Simbel the illuminated
room
Archeoastronomy is a relatively "young"
discipline, but by now its calculation and survey techniques have all
the trappings of scientificity, even if it often risks being
discredited by the work of many imaginative amateurs in search of
complicated and improbable stellar connections.
This is the case, for example, of the most famous
megalithic monument, the circle of Stonehenge, about which everything
has been said, and even too much: many astronomical lucubrations are
however not very credible also because in the last two centuries the
site has been subjected to several restorations, as several stones
had collapsed or been torn down. Although the restoration may have
been accurate, we cannot be sure of the original orientation of the
megaliths: surely, however, there was an alignment towards the sun at
the summer solstice, since the ancient road that reached the complex
had this direction. The historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC),
citing the writings of other ancient Greek historians, mentions a
large spherical temple of Apollo located on a Hyperborean island that
could be identified with Great Britain: if the correlation with
Stonehenge is correct, we can deduce that in Northern Europe Apollo
was worshiped, as in Greece, and that his cult was linked to the
summer solstice (others believe that Diodorus refers to the analogous
circle of Callanish megaliths, located in the Hebrides, but the
discourse does not change). Some burials of individuals from the
Mediterranean basin, unearthed in the area of Stonehenge, indicate
that the megalithic complex was a pilgrimage destination since
prehistoric times.
Spectacular rainbow at Stonehenge
Almost all the religious buildings of antiquity
continued to have a significant astronomical orientation: to give a
fairly well-known example, in Milan the Duomo is oriented along the
east-west axis, that is towards the position of the sun at dawn and
sunset on the day of the equinox, while the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio
is oriented towards the position of the sun at the solstice. Even in
many medieval churches, the windows are arranged so that the sun hits
the frescoes of the saints in correspondence with the days on which
they are celebrated. This type of knowledge has largely been lost in
recent centuries, but those who knew how to interpret these celestial
signs inevitably enjoyed great respect and authority. We find
something very similar in the nineteenth book of the Odyssey: we are
at sunset, all the suitors have gone to sleep in their homes, and the
doors of the palace have been closed. Ulysses and Telemachus are
preparing to hide the weapons hanging on the walls, taking torches to
shed light, when suddenly the whole house lights up:
while in their path Pallas Athena
held up a golden lamp of the purest light.
Telemachus at last burst out: “Oh, Father,
here is a marvel! All around I see
the walls and roof beams, pedestals and
pillars,
lighted as though by the white fire blazing near.
One of the gods of heaven is in this place!”
Then said Odysseus, the great tactician,
“Be still: keep still about it: just remember
it.
The gods who rule Olympos make this light.
You may go off to bed now. Here I stay
to test your mother and her maids again.
Out of her long grief, she will question
me.”(XIX, 33-43)
therefore we have a further element to hypothesize
that it was the day of the summer solstice: in light of what we
know about the importance of astronomy for the ruler of antiquity,
we can think that in the king's house there was a kind of window or
slit oriented on the position of the sun at the summer solstice,
which was used by the sovereign to calculate the years, and perhaps
to create amazement among his subjects with a "prodigious"
event. The winter solstice, on the other hand, should be excluded,
because in ancient times navigation was limited to the summer period,
and both Ulysses and Telemachus, as well as the herdsman Philoetius,
had just arrived by ship. And of course,
experienced sailors must have been familiar with astronomy. Moreover,
when Telemachus had secretly left for his tour, Penelope was
desperate that her son would undertake such a perilous journey, so
the season of sailing must have just begun, and the risk of running
into a storm was still well strong. It should be noted that the same
goddess Athena stops the chariot of the sun before dawn to prolong
the night of love between Ulysses and Penelope (XXIII, 241-246): a
further indication that the night was particularly short, so much so
as to make it indispensable precisely a miracle to delay the dawn.
Finally, I add that in many parts of the world, the summer solstice is
still celebrated with the lighting of large bonfires, and therefore
also the fact that Antinous has a fire lit to heat the bow could be
another clue. In a continuous game of references, there is a further
link between fire and the bow, as anyone who has seen any documentary
on primitive populations knows: to light the fire, you rub a stick in
your hands, or rather you rotate with the help of the string of a bow
that makes a spiral movement, like a snake climbing a tree; the
movement is very similar to that of the drill, and Ulysses himself
will claim to have worked his nuptial bed with the drill (XXIII,
197); and it is not for nothing that the attributes of Apollo are the
bow and the serpents, as well as the lyre, to be related to the
singer who is saved from the massacre. So, within a few pages, the
same concept is repeated several times, albeit cryptically enough to
make it incomprehensible until today.
This text is an excerpt from the long Chapter 18 - The sun and other stars,
dedicated to astronomy in Homer
The e-book
THE CUNNING HOMER
in English (translated
by the author) is ready for april 2023. I thank now
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