Homer's Secret Iliad: The Epic of the Night Skies Decoded, Florence and Kenneth Wood, London: John Murray, 1999, hardback, 294 pp.

The Woods claim that the Iliad can be read as a set of precise astronomical allegories, in which the war between the Greeks and Trojans becomes a representation of the struggle between constellations for ascendancy in the skies. Although there are some undisputed astronomical references in the Iliad, the Woods' delineation of detailed correspondences will be necessarily controversial, as will their claim that the evidence can be traced back to the ninth millennium BCE.

 

The Many Faces of Venus: the Planet Venus in Ancient Myth and Religion, Ev Cochrane, Aeon Press 601 Hayward, Ames, IA 50014, 2001, paperback, 217 pp.

Cochrane describes this book, the first in a planned series on Venus, as 'very much a work in progress and more a series of vignettes or snapshots than a full-fledged documentary'. Cochrane has gathered many references to Venus and Venus goddesses mainly from Greek and Near-Eastern myth and enters controversial territory by arguing that the planet once had a comet-like appearance and arguing in support of Immanuel Velikovsky.

 

Hengeworld: Life in Britain 2000 BC as revealed by the latest discoveries at Stonehenge, Avebury and Stanton Drew, Mike Pitts, London: Century 2000, hardback, 404 pp, £17.99.

Pitts, who has excavated at both Avebury and Stonehenge, has written a personal account of what is known about megalithic life, drawing primarily on his own experience and knowledge as an archaeologist and academic. Chapter 24 deals with astronomical questions and generally takes a conservative line. Pitts is dismissive of Thom and cites Ruggles against Newham, Hawkins and Hoyle, coming to his own conclusion that no 'celestial observations that might have been made at Stonehenge were other than symbolic' (p. 227), though he does not define what he means by 'symbolic'. The three appendices of chronologies are useful in view of the dramatic revision of dates of megalithic structures over recent