AASWOMEN Newsletter for November 14, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of November 14, 2014

eds: Daryl Haggard, Nicolle Zellner, Meredith Hughes, & Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1. Queer Eye for the Straight Marriage  

2. Sappho and the Origins of Ancient Greek Astronomy 

3. The Best Part of My Week   

4. Lead ESA Scientist Wears Shirt Covered in Gratuitous Sexy Chicks For Comet Landing Livestream  

5. Why 'Interstellar' Is Great for Women in STEM

6. Rocket Science: Four NASA moms offer their 7 best insights on getting more girls into STEM  

7. For America's Future, Engineering Needs to Diversify

8. CERN Council selects next Director-General

9. Boys Who Bully More Likely to Sexually Harass 2 Years Later

10. Job Opportunities

11. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Sappho and the Origins of Ancient Greek Astronomy

Terracotta head from a statue

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1922 (www.metmuseum.org)

For a brief discussion of the possible relevance of this to Sappho click here.

Today's guest blogger is Stuart Dean. Stuart has a B.A. (Tulane, 1976) and J.D. (Cornell, 1995) and is currently an independent researcher and writer living in New York City.  Previously he worked in a variety of other capacities, including 15 years as a corporate attorney.

 

Until now you could not find the name of the ancient Greek poet Sappho in any discussion in print or online regarding ancient Greek astronomy.  Such a discussion is long overdue and I think it is best to let Sappho herself begin it: 

 

Sunset/Moonrise

 

“As when down goes the sun/the rosyfingered moon”

 

Line final ‘sun’ followed by line final ‘moon’ is in effect a ‘visual rhyme,’ implying a scan of the evening sky, looking west then east, with the knowledge that the moon reflects the sun’s light.  Her characterization of the moon as ‘rosyfingered,’ a word otherwise frequently used to describe the sun at dawn, further buttresses the ‘moonlight reflecting sunlight’ reading.

 

Evening Star/Morning Star

 

“Evening Star, carrying all that was scattered by the dazzling Dawn Star”

 

Here again, word position is key, only in this case within a single line.  Line initial ‘evening star’ and line final ‘dawn star’ implies an underlying unity.  It is thus possible that what Sappho evinces here is her recognition that the two stars are the same celestial object (Venus) and that she is referring to the 584-day cycle of Venus.