eclipse Greekastronomy

In a fragment of a lost poem by the 7th-century-bc Greek poet Archilochus occur the words:

Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians, has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything.

This seems a clear reference to a total solar eclipse. The phenomenon has been identified as most likely the eclipse of April 6, 648 bc, which was total in the Aegean and occurred during Archilochus’s lifetime.

Fragments survive of other early Greek poetic descriptions of eclipses, and the ninth paean of Pindar, addressed to the Thebans, takes an eclipse of the Sun as its theme:

Beam of the Sun! O thou that seest from afar, what wilt thou be devising? O mother of mine eyes! O star supreme, reft from us in the daytime! Why hast thou perplexed the power of man and the way of wisdom, by rushing forth on a darksome track?

The 5th-century-bc poet then proceeds to speculate on the meaning of this omen. Although he prays, “Change this worldwide portent into some painless blessing for Thebes,” he adds, “I in no wise lament whate’er I shall suffer with the rest.” This strongly suggests that Pindar, who was a Theban, had himself recently witnessed a great eclipse at his hometown. The most probable date for the eclipse is April 30, 463 bc; modern calculations indicate that the eclipse was nearly total at Thebes.

The historian Thucydides records three eclipses during the Peloponnesian War, which began in 431 bc and lasted for 27 years. The first of these was a solar obscuration that occurred in the summer of the first year of the war (calculated date Aug. 3, 431 bc). On this occasion, the Sun assumed the form of a crescent in the afternoon before returning to its natural shape, and during the eclipse some stars became visible. This description agrees well with modern computations, except that no “star” apart from the planet Venus should have been seen. Seven years afterward, Thucydides noted that a “small” solar eclipse took place in the summer of the eighth year of the war (calculated date March 21, 424 bc). Finally, a lunar eclipse occurred in the summer of the 19th year of the war (calculated date Aug. 27, 413 bc). This last date had been selected by the Athenian commanders Nicias and Demosthenes for the departure of their armies from Syracuse. All preparations were ready, but the signal had not been given when the Moon was totally eclipsed in the evening. The Athenian soldiers and sailors clamoured against departure, and Nicias, in obedience to the soothsayers, resolved to remain thrice nine days. This delay enabled the Syracusans to capture or destroy the whole of the Athenian fleet and army.

Aug. 15, 310 bc, is the date of a total eclipse of the Sun that was seen at sea by the tyrant Agathocles and his men after they had escaped from Syracuse and were on their way to Africa. Diodorus Siculus, a historian of the 1st century bc, reported that “on the next day [after the escape] there occurred such an eclipse of the Sun that utter darkness set in and the stars were seen everywhere.” Historians of astronomy have often debated whether Agathocles’ ships sailed around the north or south coast of Sicily during the course of the journey. Modern computations of the eclipse track are still unable to resolve this issue, although they indicate that the eclipse was total over much of Sicily.

In the dialogue of the Greek author Plutarch (ad 46–c. 119) concerning the features of the Moon’s disk, one of the characters, named Lucius, deduces from the phases of the Moon and the phenomenon of eclipses a similarity between Earth and the Moon. Lucius illustrates his argument by means of a recent eclipse of the Sun, which, “beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from many parts of the sky and tempered the air in the manner of twilight.” This eclipse has been identified with one that occurred on March 20, ad 71, which was total in Greece. Whether Plutarch is describing a real, and therefore datable, event or is merely basing his description on accounts written by earlier authors has been disputed. However, his description is so vivid and original that it seems likely that Plutarch witnessed the eclipse himself. Later in the same dialogue, Lucius refers to a brightness that appears around the Moon’s rim in total eclipses of the Sun. This is one of the earliest known allusions to the solar corona. Plutarch was unusually interested in eclipses, and his Parallel Lives, an account of the deeds and characters of illustrious Greeks and Romans, contains many references to both lunar and solar eclipses of considerable historical importance. There also are frequent records of eclipses in other ancient Greek literature.

Ptolemy in his Almagest records several lunar eclipses between 201 bc and ad 136. Most of these were observed at Alexandria in Egypt. For instance, the eclipse of May 1, 174 bc, is described in the following words:

From the beginning of the eighth hour till the end of the tenth in Alexandria there was an eclipse of the Moon which reached a maximum obscuration of 7 digits from the north; so mid-eclipse occurred 2¹/₂ seasonal hours after midnight, which corresponds to 2¹/₃ equinoctial hours.

The local times of beginning and end correspond to about 12:55 am and 3:35 am, so mid-eclipse would have been close to 2:15 am.