Chap. 9.] 
AccorNT or the woeld. 
87 
when lie was only a military tritjune 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 Q-reeks, 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, superior 
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 occmred on the 28th of June, 168 
B. C. ; Brewster's Encjc. Chronology," p. 415, 424. We have an account 
of this transaction in Livy, xHv. 37, and in Plutarch, Life of Paulus 
jEmilius, Langhome's trans, ii. 279 ; he however does not mention the 
name of G-allus. Bee also Yal. Maximus, viii. 11. 1, and Quintilian, i. 
10. Yal. Maximus does not say that G-allus predicted the echpse, but 
explained the cause of it when it had occurred ; and the same statement 
is made by Cicero, De Repub. i. 15. For an account of Sulpicius, see 
Hardouin's Index auctorum, Lemaire, i. 214. 
2 An account of this 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 echpse 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 WheweU, 
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 Uranologie. 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 recur precisely at the same 
points. Cassini, Mem. Acad., and BaiUy, Hist. Anc. Astron., have shown 
that there is an actual foundation for this opinion. See the remarks of 
Marcus in Ajasson, ii. 302, 303. 
