New York Scientists have identified a string of astronomical references in Homer's Odyssey that could settle a long-running debate among classical scholars and astronomers.

They say the epic poem appears to confirm that the return of Odysseus to the island of Ithaca coincided with a solar eclipse on April 16, 1178BC. In the Odyssey, the moment when Odysseus kills the suitors who have been courting Penelope, his wife, during his absence after the Trojan War, is marked by the Sun being “blotted from the sky”.

The claim that Homer is referring to a real event has been challenged, not least because the Odyssey was composed up to five centuries after the supposed date of the events it described.

Marcelo Magnasco, of Rockefeller University, New York, said: “If we take it as a given that the death of the suitors happened on this particular eclipse date, then everything else described in the Odyssey happens exactly as is described.”

The findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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