SEYFFARTH ON THE THEORY OF THE MOON S MOTIONS. 425 



1311. (Suidas, V. .4~i^', Plutarch Symp. Q. i. p. 718 ; De Iside, 

 p. 368 ; Strabo xvii. 555 ; Ammian xxii, p. 345, eic.) 



With these new chronological resources are to be numbered 



8. Pitifrrcs Computations of all Ancient Eclipses^ visible in 

 the Old World from 1000 B.C. to A.D. 2000. — These compu- 

 tations, published in "Histoire de I'Academie R. des inscriptions 

 et belles-lettres," T. xlii. p. 78, Paris, 1786, and "L'art de verifier 

 les dates," vol. i. p. 243, Paris, 1818, and p. 147, Par. 1819, rely 

 on Halley's Tables referring to Paris time. In all instances Pin- 

 gre determined the magnitudes of the lunar eclipses, and, so far 

 as the solar eclipses are concerned, he described the curves of the 

 total shadow of the moon, viz. at the beginning, at noon, and at 

 the end of each eclipse. These computations, relying on Halley's 

 Tables, it is true, have been declared to be inexact (Bode's Astron. 

 Jahrbuch, 1S20, p. 202), and yet they are very useful in deter- 

 mining the dates of ancient eclipses. It is true, moreover, that 

 Halley's and La Hire's Tables, if applied to modern eclipses, 

 prove incorrect, but they quite sufficiently agree with all the old 

 eclipses ; for the terminus a guo of Halley's Tables were the 

 eclipses in the Almagest, and the same are the bases of Burck- 

 Jiardt's, Damoiseau's, and Hansen's Tables. Pingre's computa- 

 tions, at any rate, furnish, with few exceptions, the dates of all 

 ancient ecliptic full and new moons mentioned by Roman, Greek, 

 and other authors. 



These astronomical and historical auxiliaries, unknown to 

 Petavius and his followers, viz. planetary configurations, transits 

 of Venus, calendrical inscriptions, observations of the solstices, 

 eclipses referred to certain days of the tropic year, the solar calen- 

 dars of the Greeks and Hebrews, new Greek and Roman inscrip- 

 tions, Julius Caesar's coins, the seasons of the Greeks, — these new 

 resources of ancient chronology, I say, will suffice to re-estabish 

 the true ancient history and the chronology of the eclipses men- 

 tioned in the classic and other historical works. For all ancient 

 eclipses are linked to certain years of the ^ra urbis conditae, or 

 to that of the Olympiads, or to certain years of the Babylonian and 

 Roman kings and emperors, or to certain consuls and archons ; 

 and by the very same historical and mathematical certainties 



