Chap. 9.] ACCOUNT OF THE WOELD. 87 



when he was only a military tribune he relieved the army 

 from great anxiety the day before king Perseus was con- 

 quered by Paulus' ; for he was brought by the general into 

 a public assembly, in order to predict the eclipse, of which 

 he afterwards gave an account in a separate treatise. Among 

 the Greeks, Thales the Milesian first investigated the sub- 

 ject, in the fourth year of the forty-eighth olympiad, pre- 

 dicting the eclipse of the sun which took place in the reign 

 of Alyattes, in the 170th year of the City*. After them Hip- 

 parchus calculated the course of both these stars for the term 

 of 600 years^, including the months, days, and hours, the 

 situation of the different places and the aspects adapted to 

 each of them ; all this has been confirmed by experience, 

 and could only be acquired by partaking, as it were, in the 

 councils of nature. These were indeed great men, siiperior 

 to ordinary mortals, who having discovered the laws of these 

 divine bodies, relieved the miserable mind of man from the 

 fear which he had of eclipses, as foretelling some dreadful 



* This eclipse is calculated to have occurred on the 28th of June, 168 

 B.C. ; Brewster's En( yc. *' Chronology," p. 415, 424. We liave an account 

 of this transaction in Livy, xlir. 37, and in Plutarch, Life of Paulus 

 jEmilius, Langhomo's trans, ii. 279 ; he however does not mention the 

 name of Gallus. See also Val. Maximus, viii. 11. 1, and Quintilian, i. 

 10. Val. MaximuB does not say that Chillus predicted the eclipse, but 

 explained the cause of it when it had occurred ; and the same statement 

 is made by Cicero, De Rcpub. i. 15. For an account of Sulpicius, see 

 Hardouin's Index auctorum, Lemaire, i. 214. 



2 An account of tliis event is given by Herodotus, Clio, § 74. There 

 has been the same kind of discussion among the commentators, respect- 

 ing the dates in the text, as was noticed above, note \ p. 29 : see the 

 remarks of Brotier and of Marcus in Lemaire and Ajasson, in loco. As- 

 tronomers have calculated that the ecUpse took place May 28th, 585 B.C.; 

 Brewster, ut supra, pp. 414, 419. 



^ Hipparchus is generally regarded as the first astronomer who pro- 

 secuted the science in a regular and systematic manner. See Whewell, 

 C. 3. p. 169 et seq.y 177-179. He is supposed to have made his observa- 

 tions between the years 160 and 125 B.C. He made a catalogue of the 

 fixed stars, which is preserved in Ptolemy's Magn. Const. The only 

 work of his now extant is his commentary on Aratus ; it is contained in 

 Petau's L^ranologie. "We find, among the ancients, many traces of their 

 acquaintance with the period of 600 years, or what is termed the great 

 year, when the solar and lunar phsenomena rectir precisely at the same 

 points. Cassini, Mem. Acad., and Bailly, Hist. Anc. Astron., have shown 

 that there is an actual foundation for this opinion. See the remarks of 

 Marcus in Ajasson, ii. 302, 303. 



