586 



NA TURE 



[April 2 1, I i 



concerning them he repeated ; adding, of his own, the 

 marshalHng skill, the vital touch, by which they were per- 

 petuated. 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 'reatmen*. 



It was accordingly looked at and portrayed as a whole ; 

 and it is this very uiholcness 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 approxi- 

 mate entirety. Hence the encyclopedic character of the 

 early epics. Hjiiiiaiii niJiil alieiium. 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 constiuct 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 wqth his mode of reckoning time. This was 

 by years, months, days, and hours (" Od ," x. 469, xi. 294). 

 The week of seven days was unknown to him ; but in its 

 place we find (in the " Odyssey," xix. 307) the triplicate 

 division of the month used by Hesiod and the later Attics, 

 implying a month of thirty, and a year of 360 days, cor- 

 rected, doubtless, by some rude process of intercalation. 

 A corresponding 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, pre- 

 vails 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 ; ' 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. This rising of the dog-star is the only indi- 

 cation 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. 



The annual risings of stars hadform.erly, in the absence 

 of more accurate means of observation, an importance 

 they no longer possess. Mariners and husbandmen, ac- 

 customed to watch, because at the mercy of the heavens, 

 could hardly fail no less to be struck with the succes- 

 sive effacements by, and re-emergences from, the solar 

 beams, of certain well-known stais, 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 



* Lewis, " Astr. of the .Ancients." p. ii. Tacitus says of the Germans : 

 " Autumn! periude nomen ac bona ignorantur" (" Germania," cap. xxvi ). 



known as its " heliacal rising." This brief glimpse ex- 

 tended gradually as the star increased its seeming distance 

 from the sun, the interval of precedence in rising length- 

 ening by nearly four minutes each morning. At the end 

 of close upon six months occurred its ''acronychal rising," 

 or last visible ascent from the eastern horizon after sun- 

 set. 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 " hehacal." 

 .\ star set cosmically when, for the first time each year, it 

 reached the horizon long enough before break of day toj 

 be still distinguishable ; it set heliacally on the last evening 

 when its rays still detached themselves from the back^ 

 ground of illuminated western sky, before getting finallj 

 immersed in twilight. The round began again when th^ 

 star had arrived sufficiendy far on the other side of thd 

 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 agricul- 

 ture 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 w-ears 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, Here favours her -Achaian 

 clients by precipitating at a critical juncture the descent 

 of a still unwearied and unwilling luminary (" Iliad," 

 xviii. 239). 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" (•' Od.," xii. 383). 

 And Zeus, in promising the required satisfaction, virtu- 

 ally admits his power to abdicate his office as illuminator 

 of gods and men. 



Once only, the solstice is alluded to in Homeric verse. 

 The swineherd Eumaeus, in describing the situation of his 

 native place, the Island of Syrie, states that it is over 

 against Ortygia (Delos), "where are the turning-places of 

 the sun " (" Od.," xv. 404). The phrase probably indi- 

 cates the direction in which Delos lay from Ithaca, being 

 just so much south of east as the sun lies at rising on the 

 shortest day of winter. To those early students of Nature, 

 the travelling to and fro of the points of sunrise and sun- 

 set, furnished the most obvious clue to the yearly solar 

 revolution ; so that an expression, to us somewhat re- 

 condite, conveyed a direct and unmistakable meaning 

 to hearers whose narrow acquaintance with the pheno- 

 mena of the heavens was vivified by immediate personal 

 experience of them. 



Selene first takes rank as a divine personage in the 

 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, represerited 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: 



" Even as when in heaven the stars about the bright 

 moon shine clear to see, when the air is windless, and all 

 the peaks appear and the tall headlands and glades, and 



