BOOK II. IX. 54-x. 57 



lead his fleet out of harbour, so destroying the 

 Athenians' resources ") : all hail to your genius, ye 

 that interpret the heavens and grasp the facts of 

 nature, discoverers of a theory whereby you have 

 vanquished gods and men ! for who beholding these 

 truths and the regularity of the stars' periods of 

 trouble * (for so it has pleased you to call them), 

 would not forgive his own destiny for the generation 

 of mortals ? '^ 



Now I will briefly and summarily touch on facts 

 that are admitted about the same matters, giving 

 an account of them only at necessary points and in a 

 cursory manner, because such theorizing does not 

 form part of the task that I have set in hand, and 

 also it is less surprising that explanations cannot be 

 produced for all the facts than that agreement has 

 been reached on some of them. 



X. It is certain that ecUpses recur in cycles of EcHpses 

 223 months — ecHpses of the sun only when the moon '^'^' *** 

 is in her last or first phase (this is called their 

 ' conjunction '), eclipses of the moon only at full 

 moon — and always within the period of their last 

 occurrence ; but that yearly at fixed days and hours 

 ecUpses of either star occur below the earth, and that 

 even when they occm* above the earth they are not 

 visible everywhere, sometimes owing to clouds, more 

 often because the earth's globe stands in the way of 

 the world's curvature. Less than 200 years ago the 

 penetration of Hipparchus discovered that an ecUpse 

 of the moon also sometimes occurs four months 

 after the one before and an ecUpse of the sun six 



whereby ye have fettered gods and men ! for who would not 

 recognise that mortals are born with a fixed destiny of their 

 own? ' 



205 



