Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, believe they have figured out the date when Odysseus, King of Ithaca, returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered the 108 suitors who had been pursuing his wife Penelope. 

Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, the scholars place that date at April 16, 1178 B.C. - the date of a total solar eclipse in Greece.  They reported their finding in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

"What we'd like to achieve is to get the reader to pick up the Odyssey and read it again, and ponder," said Magnasco.  Read more.

"...I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom."

View the live video recording, download the audio recording, and read the entire Commencement Address in the June 2008 issue of Harvard Magazine . 

The four-story high, seven-ton bronze statue of Atlas in Rockefeller Center will spend six weeks receiving a divine spa-treatment to help restore its "luminosity."  The famous statue of the Titan (son of Iapetus and brother of Prometheus) was installed in 1937. 

Atlas was the leader of the Titans in the battle against the Olympians.  The Olympians won that battle, and Zeus (the Olympians' fearless leader) punished Atlas by forcing him to carry the weight of the broad sky (some say the wide heaven) on his shoulders for all of eternity.

Read more in the May 4 2008 New York Times. 

Adam McDowell of Canada's National Post has been on a blogging journey with Odysseus for the past few months.  It's part of his year-long campaign to get acquainted with the classics of Western literature. 

Adam recently interviewed our own Joy Marie Sever to learn more about TellmeOmuse.  Read the article at The Ampersand. 

Visit our Tell Me A Myth page to read our latest monthly myth: The Muses. 

For more inspiration, listen to WNYC's Soundcheck Do Musicians Still Have Muses? and Behind Every Great Artist...is a Great Muse (originally aired Wednesday February 20, 2008). 

Woody Allen's latest thriller, "Cassandra's Dream," stars Collin Farrel and Ewan McGregor.  The Greeks and Greek mythology have "always been something I've been interested in ..." says Woody Allen. 

Listen to the entire interview and learn more about the myth of Cassandra, the new movie, and the influence of the Greeks on other Woody Allen movies.