To begin with his mode of reckoning time. This was by years, months, days, and hours.[[16]] The week of seven days was unknown to him; but in its place we find[[17]] the triplicate division of the month used by Hesiod and the later Attics, implying a month of thirty, and a year of 360 days, corrected, doubtless, by some rude process of intercalation. These ten-day intervals were perhaps borrowed at an early stage of Achæan civilisation from Egypt, where they correspond to the Chaldean ‘decans’—thirty-six minor astral divinities presiding over as many sections of the Zodiac.[[18]] But no knowledge of the Signs accompanied the transfer. A similar 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, prevails 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;[[19]] 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. The first direct mention of autumn is in a treatise of the time of Alcibiades ascribed to Hippocrates.[[20]] This rising of the dog-star is the only indication 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.
[16]. Odyssey, x. 469; xi. 294.
[17]. Ib. xix. 307.
[18]. Brugsch, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Bd. ix. p. 513.
[19]. Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 11. Tacitus says of the Germans, ‘Autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur’ (Germania, cap. xxvi.)
[20]. Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, article ‘Astronomy.’
The annual risings of stars had formerly, in the absence of more accurate means of observation, an importance they no longer possess. Mariners and husbandmen, accustomed to watch, because at the mercy of the heavens, could hardly fail no less to be struck with the successive effacements by, and re-emergences from, the solar beams, of certain well-known stars, 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 known as its ‘heliacal rising.’ This brief glimpse extended gradually as the star increased its seeming distance from the sun, the interval of precedence in rising lengthening by nearly four minutes each morning. At the end of close upon six months occurred its ‘acronycal rising,’ or last visible ascent from the eastern horizon after sunset. 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 ‘heliacal.’ A star set cosmically when, for the first time each year, it reached the horizon long enough before break of day to be still distinguishable; it set heliacally on the last evening when its rays still detached themselves from the background of illuminated western sky, before getting finally immersed in twilight. The round began again when the star had arrived sufficiently far on the other side of the 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 agriculture 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 wears 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, Heré favours her Achæan clients by precipitating at a critical juncture the descent of a still unwearied and unwilling luminary.[[21]] 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.’[[22]] And Zeus, in promising the required satisfaction, virtually admits his power to abdicate his office as illuminator of gods and men.
[21]. Iliad, xviii, 239.