SEYFFARTH ON THE THEORY OF THE MOON'S MOTIONS. 489 



8. Pindar, being born in — 575, deceased in — 436, aged 76 

 years, and he flourished from _4So to 440 in Thebes, Thessalia 

 (38 20' N., 21 E.), where he had the opportunity to see a really 

 total eclipse of the sun. A fragment of the hymn by which he 

 immortalized this rare phenomenon is to be found in Dionysius 

 Hal. (p. 167, 18 Sylb., vol. vi., p. 972 R.), which reads thus: 

 dxvtQ aikiou, re — dazpov bnkpraxov Ivb-fikpn. '/Astttousvov XtTtoua 

 l&rjxaz d/xd%avov laybv itorafibv dvftpdot xa't oaxpaveiat: bdov x. r./. 

 (See G. Hermann i De Pindari ad solem deficientem versibus, 

 Lips., 1S45.) The fact being known that during a period of So 

 or more years only one total eclipse of the sun can occur on the 

 same place of our globe, there is no doubt that Pindar's eclipse 

 was that in — 469, March 20th, ih. 30m., SI o° E., curve -24°, 

 _ll°, -J- io°. According to our Table (p. 429), however, the ft 

 lay about 5° 46' west of the sun, wherefore the obscuration of the 

 sun must have been total in Thebes, Thessalia. 



27. To these 26 Greek and 66 Roman eclipses, discussed in the 

 premises, 2 very old ones may be added which concur in verify- 

 ing that the present theory of the moon's motions needs some 

 fundamental corrections. First, it is notorious that the Chinese 

 authors mention an infinite number of eclipses, but the majority 

 of them are not chronologically fixed. The date of the following, 

 only, is determined by a planetary configuration : — The Chinese 

 annals, it is universally known, contain an uninterrupted series of 

 Chinese regents down to this day. Their dynasties go back, like the 

 Egyptian dynasties specified in Manetho's Sothis, further in the 

 so-called "Vetus Chronicon," by the Tables of Abydos and Kar- 

 nak, by Herodotus, Eratosthenes, and Diodor of Sicily, to about 

 the "Dispersion of the nations in Peleg's days," 666 years after 

 the deluge ; in other words, to about the commencement of the 

 first Canicular period, beginning with July 19 in the year _ 27S0, 

 which epoch is mathematically fixed by sixteen astronomical 

 monuments. (See the author's " Berichtigungen der alten Ge- 

 schichte und Zeitrechnung," Leipz., 185=5, p. 103.) According to 

 Chinese historians, as will be seen in Mailla's "Histoire de la 

 Chine" (vol. i. p. 1, vol. ii. p. 1), the history of China commenced 

 in — 333 2 i and the first regent of the presumed first Chinese dy- 

 nasty reigned since the year — 259S. This chronology has been 

 repeatedly attacked for two reasons. In the first place, many 



