Homer's Secret Odyssey by Wood Kenneth

Author:Wood, Kenneth [Wood, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780752463896
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

Wooden Horse: Dark of Moon

The last days of the ninth year of the siege are complex and involve much activity: Odysseus’ secret reconnaissance beneath the walls; the wooden horse being taken into the city; Helen walking around the horse three times; the city falling; arguments between the Greek leaders; and finally warfare with the Cicones. All of this discord is in keeping with waning and dark periods of the moon. The story of how, towards the end of the ninth year of the siege, the cunning Greeks built a wooden horse in which was hidden a party of soldiers needs little retelling. Odysseus claimed to have devised the stratagem that led to the city’s destruction but it is Demodocus who tells in some detail how the Greeks sailed away beyond the horizon and left behind the wooden horse they had built as a ‘gift’ for the Trojans. Some Trojans argued that the horse should be destroyed but eventually they sealed their own doom and dragged it into the city. Inside the walls, Helen was suspicious of the gift and three times walked around it and three times cried out to try and expose the men inside, but no one replied. Then, in the dark of a moonless night, the Greek fleet returned and soldiers emerged from the horse to open the city gates and let in their army; soon the citadel was burning and the Trojans put to the sword. With the constellation of Pegasus, possibly the inspiration for Homer’s wooden horse, poised over the constellation of Aquarius (Troy), the city would certainly have ‘burned’ as the setting sun disappeared below the horizon (see Fig. 4.6).

With Troy destroyed and Helen reunited with Menelaus, the moon is still in its dark period and the Greeks, ‘heavy with wine’, hold an acrimonious meeting. Menelaus wants to sail home at once but his brother, Agamemnon, is adamant they should offer sacrifices to appease the anger of Athene (3.142), but this would delay them until the appearance of the first crescent moon after the winter solstice, which marks the beginning of a new year. Menelaus, once more happily reunited with his beloved Helen, may have felt a pressing need for a speedy departure for ‘some god has made good the cavernous sea’. His urgency may have been heightened by knowledge of the fabled ‘halcyon days’, a period of some two weeks of calm weather around the winter solstice when in myth the halcyon bird laid its eggs in a nest of fish bones on the sea.3 Odysseus was also anxious to leave for home before sacrifices were made and he sets sail for Tenedos in dark of moon. He soon repents and returns to Troy to honour the gods and make his peace with Agamemnon – but leaves again before the new crescent for a disastrous encounter with the Cicones. Agamemnon, Aestor and Diomedes, who had stayed behind to make sacrifices, sail away in the tenth year.

The point in the 19-year cycle at which

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