Ancient Greece is well known as the place where the modern science of astronomy has its roots. This resulted from the blending together, in the Hellenistic era that followed the conquests of Alexander the Great in the latter part of the fourth century b.c.e., of two earlier traditions: a Babylonian tradition of careful empirical observation and a Greek tradition of cosmolog-ical and philosophical theorizing about the cause of observed phenomena. It is easy to forget that the classical world not only contained famous philosophers and astronomers—Plato, Aristotle, Aristarchus, Apollonius, and Hipparchus—but also contained common people, such as farmers, who made use of observations of the sun, moon, and stars in going about their everyday activities, as they had done for many generations.
Hesiod was a farmer who lived in central Greece in the eighth century b.c.e. He was also a poet, and his epic Works and Days was written to be chanted or sung. It was passed on for many generations and eventually written down three centuries later, whence it has come down to us. Thanks to Hesiod we know something of the ways in which his contemporaries regulated their activities through the seasons by watching the skies, thereby helping to overcome the vicissitudes of the climate. Works and Days contains a series of tips about signs to watch for and what to do in response to them— a sort of farmer’s almanac that could be easily memorized and recited. Tips such as those contained in Hesiod’s poem had doubtless been carefully accumulated and passed down over many generations.
The Works part of Works and Days refers to many seasonal astronomical indicators that make good sense from a modern perspective. For example:
Descriptions such as this one of the changing appearance of the Pleiades refer to observable events in the skies that are tied to the seasons, and give good practical advice. So useful are these types of observation—and in particular observations of the heliacal rise (first pre-dawn appearance) of stars and asterisms—as seasonal indicators, that similar practices have evolved, and persisted, as an aid to subsistence all over the world, from prehistoric times right up to the present day.
The Days part, in contrast to the Works, contains prognostications associated with the phase of the moon that, from a modern scientific perspective, represent no more than irrational superstition. However, it is important to realize that, to the farmers of the time, there was no fundamental distinction between the two parts: they would have viewed them on equal terms. This illustrates an important general principle. In attempting to interpret ancient practices relating to astronomy, we can rarely separate what, from a modern perspective, might appear to be “rational” behavior with pragmatic outcomes from “irrational” actions that are only explicable if one knows something about the prevalent systems of beliefs.
