On Monday, from about noon until 3 p.m. (local time), most of us are going to stop what we’re doing to note a natural phenomenon — a solar eclipse. When the eclipse is full, at approximately 1:28 p.m., the sun will look like a small orange crescent and the skies will be dark, but not entirely dark.
For centuries, people have paused from their daily activity to marvel at this spectacle.
Unlike in the olden days, we now understand what’s going on with a solar eclipse and that is not entirely a good thing. Nothing ruins a good story like facts, which almost always dull down the narrative.
Much of the great literature of early civilization is built upon romantic tales and legends used to describe and explain the mysteries of nature and the universe.
Today, we know that solar eclipses are caused by the moon passing directly between the sun and the earth. In ancient China, a solar eclipse was the result of a dragon trying to eat the sun. What’s the better story? Easy. Let’s hear more about that dragon.
So, in one respect at least, being an “ancient” was much more interesting than being a modern man. Today, if you go on a cruise, you’re thrilled by the prospects of visiting new sights and enjoying new experiences. Two thousand years ago, a cruise meant you had to consider the prospects of sailing right off the edge of the world. Now, that’s exciting. How did they pack for that, I wonder.
Monday, the solar eclipse will stop traffic. Twenty-six hundred years ago, it stopped a war.
The solar eclipse of 585 B.C. was the first recorded instance of a solar eclipse being predicted. According to Greek historian Herodotus, Thales of Milete (as opposed to Thales of Steens, I guess) correctly predicted the 585 B.C. solar eclipse, which happened to have occurred while the Medes and Lydians were having yet another war.
According to Herodotus, the two armies were slugging it out near the Halys River in what is now Central Turkey when the sky darkened as the eclipse arrived. Herodotus wrote that both armies immediately put down their weapons and quit fighting.
Herodotus doesn’t say why they did this, but two thoughts emerge:
First, I have serious questions about their commitment. It’s like calling the game on account of the weather. Armies just don’t do that.
Second, it could be that the soldiers were preoccupied with building pinhole cameras out of cardboard boxes, a task made exceedingly more time-consuming because, first, somebody had to invent cardboard. So that took a while and I figure both sides just forgot what it was they were fighting about and went home.
What we do know about this war is that you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent — not to put anybody on a moral plane, of course, since planes wouldn’t be invented for quite some time.
Scientists say even today we don’t know all there is to know about solar eclipses, which provides a glimmer of hope. Maybe something magical will happen.
If a solar eclipse can stop one war, maybe it can stop another.
Our country is presently torn by conflict over Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville and Confederate monuments all over the South. We are having arguments over questions we assumed had been answered anywhere from 70 to 150 years ago just as a solar eclipse prepares to sweep across the continent.
The ancients might have explained this by saying that the sun, having observed our conduct, has hidden its face in embarrassment.
“Maybe when I come back in a couple of hours, things will be better,” says the sun. “Hey, it’s happened before.”
If only…
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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