SEYFFARTH ON THE THEORY OF THE MOON'S MOTIONS. 473 



years prior to Diodor's date, and the latter postdates archon Phce- 

 nippus and thebattle at Marathon by one year ; Diodor, comparing 

 his archons with the Roman consuls, was compelled to repeat five 

 consular magistracies twice in order to harmonize his Greek his- 

 tory with the Roman. Besides this, in the present editions of Xeno- 

 phon (Hell. i. 2, 1) the Olympian games are referred to the year 

 — 406, instead of —405, which is obviously a repeated blunder of 

 an ancient copier of Xenophon. Furthermore, Thucydides calls the 

 year preceding the first expedition of the Athenians against Spar- 

 ta, namely, the year in which the Spartans destroyed Potidasa, the 

 first year of the Peloponnesian war. This is evident from the fact 

 that Thucydides (ii. 56) makes Pericles to have been a participant 

 in the naval expeditions of the Athenians first " in the 2d year of 

 the Peloponnesian war," and this year is astronomically fixed by 

 the nearly total eclipse No. 11 of the Table. Xenophon, on the 

 contrary, counted the years of the Peloponnesian war from that 

 January during which the Attic fleet first started against the 

 Peloponnesus. Hence it came to pass that both the last year 

 of Thucydides and the first (now lost) year of Xenophon were 

 originally termed the 23d year of the war. Nevertheless, 

 none of these incongruities, as we shall see, affect at all the 

 aforesaid dates of the eclipses observed during the Pelopon- 

 nesian war. The inscriptions (p. 411) demonstrate that, in gene- 

 ral, all archons down to —409 ruled one year (the following, 

 two years) later. 



Examination of the Eclipses of the Peloponnesian War. 



11. The eye-witness Thucydides (ii. 2S) reports that 3 yrs. and 

 5 mos. prior to the Olympian games in — 425 (p. 471), consequent- 

 ly in the year —429, in the beginning of diooc, therefore during 

 January of —429, at noon (fxevd /Jsarj/jLOfnav), a nearly total 

 (tj.evozcdrjz) eclipse of the sun happened in Athens. c y'jho^ (says 

 he) iseAiTte fiava fiea/jfiSpiav, y.a\ ~dhv dvajzX/jpcbdir) yzvofxevo^ 

 fxf^ozcdr^, xai davepcou zcvcov kxtpave^zcou. Cicero (R. P. i. 16) : 

 adds, "cum tota se luna sub orbem solis subjecisset"; and Quinc- 

 tilian (In. Or. i. 10. 47), "cum Pericles Athenienses solis obscu- 

 ratione territos, redditis ejus causis, metu liberavit." Plutarch 

 (Per. c. 35, p. 661 R.) narrates the same. The words fxetd 



