HE STEERS BY THE STARS

So now Odysseus has himself a craft and sets sail:

"Glorious Odysseus, happy with the wind, spread sails

and taking his seat artfully with the steering oar he held her

on her course, nor did sleep ever descend on his eyelids

as he kept his eye on the Pleiades and late-setting Bootes,

and the Bear, to whom men give also the name of the Wagon,

who turns about in a fixed place and looks at Orion,

and she alone is never plunged in the wash of the Ocean.

For so Kalypso, bright among goddesses, had told him

to make his way over the sea, keeping the Bear on his left hand.

Seventeen days he sailed, making his way over the water,

and on the eighteenth day there showed the shadowy mountains

of the Phaiakian Land where it stood out nearest to him,

and looked like a shield lying on the misty face of the water."

It's clear from this description that he's sailing east, if he has the Bear on his left, because that constellation circles around the (North) pole star.

In order to find out what the night sky looked like in about 1200 BCE I went to the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto, and talked with Dr. Tom Clark, the director of the planetarium, and with astronomer Richard Gray. What I was after was to compare the night sky as it would have been in the Mediterranean and the sky as it would have been seen further north on the coast of Norway at the time we're talking about, that is, about 1200 BCE. My idea was this. If the instructions in the Odyssey were to fit the Mediterranean sky, then my theory would be in trouble. But if the instructions given to Odysseus fitted the sky further north better, then my theory would have considerable support.

TC - "By Precessing the planetarium backwards, we place the point directly over the earth's north pole in its correct position among the stars, and so the constellations appear as they would be seen in 1200 BC. The polar altitude is changed and we bring it into position for latitude 37 1/2 degrees."

EF - "The planetarium has a domed ceiling which represents the night sky. A projector throws images of the constellations on to the dome. The projector is connected to a programmable console, so you can get essentially any sky you want. And the planetarium sky can be set back in time to any date."

EF - "Perhaps I could comment on what I'm looking at here. I can just see Cassiopeia , about north-east, I guess. And we have over on the west side now the image of the sun just on the horizon, and we have, not far from there Arcturus. And above Arcturus are two stars, and then three stars like a low sloped roof, which is the constellation of Bootes. And if we follow that along further, we come up to Dubhe and Mirak, the two stars at one end of the ploughshare, if we call it the Plough rather than the Bear. And then the others, Phecda, Megrez, Alioth, Mizar and Benatnasch, sweep down towards Arcturus. So that is fairly high up in the sky, about 60 degrees would it be, or more?"

TC - "Well, of course, right now we're at the point of sunset when the stars wouldn't be visible. So if we take the traditional view that you don't get full darkness until about an hour and a half, at least that's the astronomical view, we should get rid of most of the twilight, and this will bring Arcturus and the Bear a little closer to the northwestern horizon."

EF - "I should explain what we're doing here now. We have the problem of latitude. Those who believe the voyages were entirely within the Mediterranean have Odysseus sailing towards Corfu from somewhere near Sicily. A good example is Bradford, who has him sailing from Malta to Corfu. Now that's using latitudes from 36 degrees to about 39 degrees of latitude, and he's sailing at an angle of about 40 degrees north of east on this course. With this setting that we now have on the planetarium we can test that. If we look and hold our hands out and point with one hand -- the right hand I'm pointing to the east -- I'm trying to find Arcturus with my left hand, but then I am taking an east-west course. To move 40 degrees north of east, you see my hands have turned around and I now have the Bear immediately facing me. So we're okay for a start. At this point of time, at nightfall, we have the Bear about 90 degrees off the course, so we're okay. Now, can we go through the night, please? You can, I believe, speed the machinery up and we can go through the night."

TC - "We can essentially simulate the rotation of the earth, and so the stars now appear to move from east to west. We're now four hours into the night."

EF - "I'm still keeping my arms at this angle, and now I'm sailing SOUTH of east."

TC- "Right, and we're now at midnight."

EF - "I'm now sailing south of east because the Great Bear has moved around. It's moving east. And now I'm going about 20 degrees south of east and more. I'm now going about 30 degrees south of east."

TC - "We're now about an hour before dawn, so at this point, they'd be losing the stars. And just about this point, in fact, Orion makes his appearance."

EF - "Yes, there's Orion. And Orion is mentioned in the text."

TC - "And there's the sunrise."

EF - "All right. So now at this point, to keep the Bear on the left, that is, the centre of the left, I am now sailing substantially south of east, I'd say 40 degrees south of east. We're not going to get anywhere near Corfu, we're going to end very, very much further south. So although we started off in the right direction, as we go through the night, he is going to gradually steer a more southerly course. Would you agree with that, Richard Gray?"

RG - "Yes, that certainly seems reasonable. I would suppose that since at the beginning of the night we're going to be heading slightly north of east, and since at the end of the night we're going to be heading a bit south of east, the average course would be roughly east."

EF - "Yes, it would seem. And that is very much further south than we need to go to get to Corfu. (Probably a landfall in Crete, or possibly Beirut, Haifa or Tel Aviv.) Well, that's interesting. I won't say it disproves the theory of those in the Mediterranean, but it certainly doesn't get him on the right course. And you can see from a map of the Mediterranean how far out that would be."

"The map shows us he would have to sail north east from Malta across the Ionian sea to reach Corfu (Kerkira) next to what is now the coast of Albania.

1 Malta (Odysseus' supposed starting point)

2 Ithaca, his home island (Corfu, supposed destination, is further north)

3 Crete

4 Cyprus

5 Lebanon

TC - "Moving the pole much higher, up to an altitude of 58 degrees above the northern horizon, all of the constellations appear to shift, and in fact we can see that the sun, which was on the horizon, is now well above the horizon. This is a fairly common experience in the summertime when days are longer the farther north you get. So we'll place that sun back on the horizon. And its setting point now, this far north, is actually well north of even the north-east point."

EF - "That is very good, because now we have Bootes just about exactly above the west. There is Arcturus -- almost due west."

TC - "In actual fact, if we put it an hour and a half below the horizon. " .

EF - "Now Arcturus has moved a little further north of west. Dubhe, the first star of the the Great Bear, is very close to true north, and the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades have not come up yet. So if we keep going then ..."

TC - "Go through the night now?"

EF - "Yes, please. because now we're fine, we're right on course. Right on the centre of our left is the Plough or the Great Bear."

TC - "We're now three hours past sunset, but of course we're almost at midnight because we're so far north."

EF - "The light will be coming up pretty soon."

TC - "We're actually at midnight now."

EF - "The Bear is just crossing the pole now. It's halfway through true north. Bootes is not really set yet. There's the Pleiades coming up, so now we have an easterly line to the Pleiades. The sun is up."

TC - "The sun is up -- very short night."

EF - "It's about five hours, I think, at this latitude in the summer."

TC - "It would only be really dark for a very short period."

EF - "The Great Bear is still exactly right for giving us our setting of steering across due east, which is keeping the Bear on the left. So that part of it is just fine. Well, I'm quite happy with that. It doesn't seem to disprove anything that I have been arguing.

(Note: Stroma, where I suggest he stayed with Kalypso, is the small dot on the map between the eastern tip of Scotland and the Orkneys. Almost due east from there is Stavanger, in Norway, which I suggest he reached after coming ashore.)

EF - "Maybe now I could ask you an entirely different question, Dr. Clark. In book ten, line 82, this is what the text says:

'...Where one herdsman, driving

his flocks in hails another, who answers as he drives

his flocks out; and there a man who could do without sleep could earn him

double wages, one for herding the cattle, one for the silvery

sheep. There the courses of night and day lie close together.'

What do you think of that? What does that mean to an astronomer?"

TC - "That suggests a very short night."

EF - "Ah, thank you! That's just what I hoped you'd say."

TC - "At latitude 58 the nights are very, very short. In fact, I myself spent a week in July in Churchill, and it was interesting that the sky never really got totally dark because the sun is never very far beneath the northern horizon. One always has a bit of twilight glow around."

EF - "That's very interesting because earlier we were talking with a classics professor who is a Mediterraneanist, so to speak, in these matters, and he says "I must admit total bafflement with this phrase. I don't know how to explain it." That's because he has Odysseus in the Mediterranean. But to me that is not a matter for total bafflement, it suggests to me that he is in a northern latitude, and I'm glad you see it that way. "