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Roman Astronomical Omens

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Thursday, 10th August 2006

  Hi,
  
  After reading the life of Caesar by Plutarch, I noticed that there was no footnote mentioning if there was any evidence for the comet that supposedly was visible for a few days immediately after his death. So I've decided to try to do a bit of research on the veracity of astronomical omens. I've posted on the Science and Nature board asking if there are any resources they know of that would be of any help, as I'm certain that some of these events are regular and predictable and can be verified.
  
  Somebody (if not more than one person) has probably done this before and written a decent and extremely scholarly book on it, but although I love reading, there's nothing better than doing the research yourself. This really is kind of "just for fun", and a damn good excuse to reread some Livy etc. and add some notes in the pristine margins in pencil.
  
  Does anybody have any advice or comments? Especially appreciated would be classical texts that may supply a good source of these omens for me to use. One concern I have is dates before Julius Caesar sorted out the Roman calendar, and the reliability of years in, for example, Livy.
  
  
  Cheers,
  
  
  RF
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Friday, 11th August 2006

  Discovered a great site that lists visible comets throughout history at:
  
  ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets
  
  It covers 373BCE to the present day, but unfortunately doesn't appear to back up Plutarch's claims that a comet was visible after old Julius's death in 44BCE...
  
  Looking at the frequency of recorded sightings, it's pretty clear that the nearer we come to the modern day, more are recorded (kind of obvious really!). So Plutarch hasn't been proved wrong yet in my eyes - a bit like absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence...
  
  
  RF

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Friday, 11th August 2006

  Another two sites for lunar and solar eclipses
  
  Solar eclipses from 1999BCE to 4000ACE can be found at:
  sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEcat/SEcatalog.html
  
  Lunar eclipses from 1999BCE to 3000ACE can be found at:
  sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEcat/LEcatalog.html
  
  Sorry to bump my own thread but these websites are a pretty good resource for anyone interested in verifying dates! I'll post a method of calculating if a latitude / longitude would have been in the path of an eclipse when I work out a way to do it - it may involve counting on my toes so I may be some time...
  
  RF

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