ECLIPSES IN THE PRE-CHRISTIAN PERIOD. 271 



selected for sailing away from the ill-fated spot chanced to be a full moon, and 

 when its beams shone the brightest over the city and the waters a lunar eclipse 

 suddenly darkened all. The utmost consternation pervaded the whole camp, and 

 the retreat, which would have saved them, was given up. In the morning Nicias 

 consulted the soothsayers, and they unanimously declared that it was the will of 

 heaven that the army should not move or attempt any new enterprise for thrice 

 nine da} 7 s. Nicias obeyed and lost army and fleet, and the eclipse thus prepared 

 the grave of the Athenian hopes. Eighty-two years afterwards another eclipse 

 threatened to arrest the career of one of the greatest soldiers the Avorld has ever 

 produced. The battle of the Issus had been fought, and Alexander in his 

 triumphant march had forded the Tigris in pursuit of the main body of the army 

 of Darius, and the moon, again at the full, was eclipsed in the sight of the won- 

 dering and awe-stricken Macedonians. The officers and the soldiers alike 

 murmured against what they called the insolence of Alexander in opposing the 

 will of heaven, thus manifested by the marvelous sign in the skies. They vowed 

 that they would no longer tempt the gods by penetrating fatrher into an unknown 

 and mysterious country. But Alexander was more cunning and made of sterner 

 stuff than Nicias. He summoned his own astrologer and some Egyptian sooth- 

 sayers he had with him, and induced them to declare that the sun represented 

 Greece and Macedon, and the moon the Persians, and therefore the obscured 

 disk heralded the defeat of Darius. They were believed, and by thus working 

 upon their credulous belief in the augury he was enabled to pursue his victorious 

 march. 



The belief in the supernatural character of a lunar eclipse lingered indeed 

 long after that of the solar became partially known. Artemis, whom the Latins 

 called Diana, was the sister of Apollo, and as he was the god of the sun, her 

 abode and her worship naturally enough came to be associated with that of the 

 moon. Some of the Greeks, with lighter and airier fancies, imagined, therefore, 

 that when her orb was darkened the goddess was absent in the mountains of Caria 

 on a visit to Endymion, with whom she was chastely enamored. Others, whose 

 minds were darker, thought that she had been temporarily dragged from her 

 throne by the incantations of the magicians of Thessaly, the abode, in the opinion 

 of all antiquity, of every species of unholy magic. This latter superstition was 

 held by the Romans, and as soon as the outer rim began to be obscured they ran 

 into the streets, and with the braying of brass trumpets, the clash of iron and the 

 loud cries of women, they endeavored to drown the foul mutterings and the songs 

 of the enchanters and so prevent their reaching or staying in the ears of Diana 

 too long. Some, indeed, believed that if she stayed in Thessaly too long she 

 would never return, and thus night would be forever deprived of its brightest 

 luminary. Juvenal alludes to this tenet of the popular faith when, after sarcasti- 

 cally describing a blue-stocking and strong-minded woman of his day, he says that 

 she made noise enough in her arguments, harangues and commentaries upon the 

 poets, to aid the moon in her troubles without assistance from any one else. This 

 idea of averting the consequences of an eclipse by a noise might well serve Sir 



