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This has been identified as a description of the total solar eclipse of April 6, 648 B.C.
Another eclipse reference (from the Bible) goes like this:
And I behold when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the Sun became
black as sackcloth of hair, and the Moon became as blood. -- Revelation 6:12
This compelling passage is only one of a number of literary and historical connections
between eclipses and earthquakes. The Greek historian Thucydides, in writing about
the Peloponnesian War, remarked about "earthquakes and eclipses of the Sun which came
to pass more frequently than had been remembered in former times." On another
occasion he noted "... there was an eclipse of the Sun at the time of a new Moon, and in
the early part of the same month an earthquake." Another Greek writer, Phlegon, reported
the following events:
In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was an eclipse of the Sun which was greater than any
known before and in the sixth hour of the day it became night; so that stars appeared in the heaven; and a
great earthquake that broke out in Bithynia destroyed the greatest part of Nicaea.
This interest in linking the two types of events by coincidence may have been attempts
to derive some order out of the unpredictability of earthquakes, possibly a carryover
from the celestial omens of the Babylonians. Oddly enough, this type of coincidence
seems to persist. The earthquake in Iran on September 16, 1978, the most devastating one
of that year and which killed more that 25,000 people, occurred just 3-1/2 hours before a
total lunar eclipse was visible there.
These kinds of ominous events have played important parts in human history. When
English poet John Milton, in Paradise Lost, wrote these lines
As when the Sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the Moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs
he may have been thinking of Charlemagne's son, Emperor Louis. This European ruler
was so "perplexed" by the five minutes of totality he witnessed during the eclipse of May
5, 840, that he died (some say of fright) shortly thereafter. The fighting for his throne
ended three years later with the historic Treaty of Verdun, which divided Europe into the
three major areas we know today as France, Germany, and Italy.
Solar eclipses perplexed the common people as well. Medieval historian Roger of
Wendover reported on the total eclipse of May 14, 1230, which occurred early in the
morning in Western Europe: "... and it became so dark that the labourers, who had
commenced their morning's work, were obliged to leave it, and returned again to their
beds to sleep; but in about an hour's time, to the astonishment of many, the Sun regained
its usual brightness." This was during the Dark Ages and an understanding of eclipses
was not common knowledge.