Departure time

It's also a feast for the people and a lot of animals are butchered. The entrails are also tasted just like the suitors did at the feast of Apollo. As seen before, this tasting of the entrails takes place after the preparations are done. In the case of the suitors it was about 15:20 hours when the tasting and feasting began.

So, if Telemachos' trip to Pylos took 19:20 hours, we can calculate Telemachos' departure time from the harbour of Ithaca, which must have been around 20:00 hours. Let's see if this fits Homer's description. Telemachos and Mentor arranged companions and a ship in order to sail to Pylos.

The sun went down and all the byways were filled with shadow, and then the goddess dragged the swift ship down to the sea.

That's quite simple, Homer is clear at this point, so I made a list of dates combining both Odysseus' and Telemachos' whereabouts on every day, starting at full moon, which of course occurred half a moon (14.75 days) before the eclipse, on the modern date of December 5th. As you can see Telemachos left Ithaca on December 9th. Sunset is at 17:05 that day, civil twilight ends at 17:34 hours.

There were nine companies of townspeople, and five hundred men each, and in each they readied nine bulls. They were tasting the entrails and burning the thigh bones to the god when the Ithacans put straight into shore.

To know what time the sun set, we need to know the date.

List of whereabouts and Moon Days