A team of two scientists, Marcelo Magnasco of Rockefeller University and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, have released a study according which the two have pinpointed the exact date at which the mythological character Odysseus has come back to his home in Ithaca, after a journey that lasted almost 20 years.

The two researchers have read Homer’s Odyssey and have paid special attention to details about the way constellations were described in the poem, in hoping that some of this information would converge to give the precise date of some of the events in the story.

The key clue that led to their discovery was the verses in which the seer Theoclymenus predicts the deaths of Odysseus’s wife suitors. The event that the old man considers to be a sign of the suitors’ deaths could be interpreted as a total solar eclipse. Using this information, and knowing the time frame in which the Trojan War took place, the scientist have found out that the only eclipse that took place at that time happened on April 16, 1178 BC.

The scientists have also used other information from the Odyssey as well as an astronomical simulator that recreates the night sky of a given date, and compared the inputs in order to confirm the results of their research. Among this information were Venus being visible before the event took place and the Pleiades and Bootes both being visible at sunset 29 days before the event.

These comparisons have confirmed the result of the study.