History of Civilizations, 111 (Greek/Roman Contributions to Modern Times)

Man has looked to the stars for direction since the nomads. Stars have been used for navigation, divination, and to better understand the universe. They're impossible to miss, even with modern pollution clogging up the atmosphere. In the ancient times of the Greeks and Romans, scholars and plebeians alike looked to the sky for answers to many of life's questions.

Ancient astronomers learned how to predict a solar eclipse, they recognised the Earth was round and deducted that the Earth traveled in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. They mapped the constellations and tracked planet movement all with the naked eye.

One of the most well known contributions taken from these ancient times are the names of the five planets visible to the naked eye in the night sky. Both the Greeks and the Romans assigned names to the different coloured planets they noticed moving across the sky after Gods in their religion. 

Mercury was originally thought to be two different planets by the Greeks due to its' appearances in both day and night. Eventually they realised it was a single planet moving quickly through the heavens, the Greeks naming it after Hermes which was adopted by the Romans using their name for the same swift footed messenger God.

The planet Venus was named for much simpler reasons. As the brightest, and most beautiful, star in the night sky, Romans named this planet for their Goddess of beauty. Venus is the only celestial body named after a female, and was used as a symbol for womanhood even earlier by the Babylonians.

A splash of colour in the sky caught some attention, dubbing this planet “the red one” by many civilizations. This planet was given the name Mars by the Romans, their God of war, for this bloodlike colour. The largest of the visible planets has held the namesake of head deities for much of history; Marduk by the Babylonians, Zeus by the Greeks, and Jupiter by the Romans.

The Greeks viewed the furthest planet as sacred to their God of agriculture, whom the Romans called Saturn. He was also the father of Jupiter.