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Andrés Ruiz, you mentioned:
"In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare also put in words of Caesar wrong things about Polaris."

That's always a fun one. :)
"I am constant as the northern star"...

Technically, that's an anachronism. The only century which can claim the constancy of the North Star is ours, the 21st century, the greatest century since precession began. In every other century, Polaris was not as constant as in ours! Ah, but the phrase, at least in this form, is also a loophole, our great escape from the nitpick about an anachronism. He doesn't say, "the North Star" or "Polaris". He says the "northern star" which in 1000BC or so would have been Kochab, more or less, and in 44BC at the time of the assassination of Julius Caesar...OK, not so great. Kochab was still closest but --not much of a "North Star"-- an adequate "Northern Star".

I can think of two categories of people who can get a pass with a technical error like that: politicians and playwrights. So if we take the line as something Caesar may have said, it works because he's a self-aggrandizing dictator (*). Or if we take it as the words of the Bard alone, it's "close enough" as poetry. :)

The plain explanation is probably that Shakespeare intended nothing like realism in the play. He may well have known about precession --it wasn't a secret, and he was well-read. There was precious little realism in any of his royal tales, the "Histories" and others. For his audience, the concept of the North Star c.1600 was familar enough that the analogy worked even if the astronomy, nautical or otherwise, was iffy. Indeed Shakespeare hits the nail on the head in the same play when he writes,
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in our audiences, that they are idiots."

I think that's the line... Something like that anyway. :)

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA

* Yes, Caesar was the prototype of the self-aggrandizing dictator. He was a true peacemaker and ended eight wars by invading and destroying Gaul.