A bewitching lady astronomer

Today in a day for celebrating the role that women have played and continue to play in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics. In the past on similar occasions I have blogged about female astronomers and I have decided today to write a short post about Aglaonice, who is possibly the oldest known lady astronomer.

Aglaonice

Aglaonice is a semi-legendary, semi-mythical figure about whom our information is all second hand. She is associated with the witches from Thessaly, who claimed to be able to draw down the moon from its course in the heavens after depriving it of its illumination. The earliest mention of this feat in in Aristophanes The Clouds, first produced in 432 BCE.

Plutarch writing at the end of the first century CE tells us that Aglaonice knew about lunar eclipses and when they occurred. He writes, “ Always at the time of an eclipse of the Moon she pretended to bewitch it and draw it down.” In another passage he writes, “Aglaonice the daughter of Hegetor being thoroughly conversant with the periods of the Full Moon when it is subject to eclipse, and knowing beforehand when the Moon was due to be overtaken by the Earth’s shadow, imposed upon audiences of women and made them all believe that she drew down the Moon”. In late antiquity the poet Apollonius of Rhodes informs his readers that she lost a close relative after one of her performances as a punishment imposed by an outraged Moon goddess.

What is interesting in these accounts is that the moon is usually still visible during a lunar eclipse, only very occasionally does it disappear completely, so if we are to give any credence to these accounts Aglaonice must have carried out her charade during one such eclipse.

Total Lunar Eclipse
27 September 2015
Source: Wikimedia Commons

We have no idea when she is supposed to have lived but she obviously predates Plutarch writing about 100 CE and cannot be earlier than about the middle of the third century BCE, which is when the Babylonians first perfected the art of predicting lunar eclipses.

Whatever the case maybe, if Aglaonice existed at all, she must have been a truly bewitching lady astronomer.