ASTRONOMY. 331 



and placed in the centre of the world ; he divided the heavens, or 

 rather found them divided by five circles : the equator, the two tropics, 

 and the arctic and antarctic circles. The year he made to consist of 

 365 days ; and determined " the motion of the sun in declination." 

 What is meant by this expression is not very easy to comprehend ; 

 if it only means that he discovered such a motion, it can scarcely be 

 considered as correct, as it must have been known prior to his time ; 

 viz., to the first observers ; and it cannot mean that he laid down rules 

 for computing it, as we have every reason to know that the most 

 simple principles of trigonometry were not propagated till many cen- 

 turies after his time. 



Thales is also said to have first observed an eclipse, and to have Predicts an 

 predicted that celebrated one which terminated the war between the ecll P se - 

 Medes and the Lydians ; an eclipse on which much has been written, 

 but no very satisfactory conclusion arrived at. Herodotus says, " it 

 happened that the day was changed suddenly into night, a change 

 which Thales the Milesian had announced to the people of Ionia, as- 

 signing for the limit of his prediction, the year in which the change 

 actually took place." Thales had therefore neither predicted the day 

 nor the month ; and, in all probability, he had no other principle to 

 proceed upon, than the Chaldean period of eclipses already alluded to 

 in the preceding part of this article. 



The pointed declaration of the historian, that the limits assigned by 

 the astronomer for the appearance of this phenomenon was the year 

 in which it happened, is a pretty obvious proof of the low state of 

 astronomical science at this time, and it would be of little importance 

 whether the eclipse was itself partial or total ; but as there is little 

 doubt that such an event actually took place, it becomes a matter of 

 high importance in chronology, to ascertain whether it was such as it 

 is described, viz., a total eclipse; for no partial obscuration of the 

 sun's light would accord with the description of Herodotus, of the day 

 being suddenly changed into night ; and such a phenomenon in any par- 

 ticular place being an extremely rare occurrence, it would, if correct, 

 enable us to determine not only the year, but the very day^ and hour at 

 which it happened, and thus furnish at least one indisputable period in 

 chronology and history. 



Various dates have been assigned to this eclipse. Pliny places it in Dates 

 the fourth year of the forty-eighth Olympiad which answers to the ^jfe 

 year 585 B.C. (' Hist. Nat.' lib. 2, cap. 12) ; a similar opinion has been 

 advanced by Cicero (' De Divinat.' lib. 1, 49), and probably by 

 Eudemus (' Clement. Alex. Strom.' lib. 1, p. 354) ; by Newton 

 (' Chron. of Anc. Kings/ amended) ; Riccioli (' Chron. Reform,' 

 vol. i. p. 228); Desvignoles, ('Chronol.' lib. 4, cap. 5, 7, &c.); 

 and by Brosses (' Mem. de 1'Acad. des Belles Lettres,' torn. xxi. 

 Mem. p. 33). 



Scaliger, in two of his writings ('Animad. ad Euseb.,' p. 89, and 

 in 'OXv/Lt. avaypatyr)'}, has adopted also the opinion of Pliny; but 



