The Battle of The Eclipse

Picture this: two raging kings have been at war for five years now. Lives have been lost, battles have been fought, and in the current moment, their armies are locking horns in active aggression. Suddenly, the sky that was till now filled with the clanking of armor and spurting of blood, turns into a blanket of darkness as a solar eclipse pervades the horizon. As day turns into night within minutes, soldiers on both sides drop their axes and spears, watching stunned as the play of nature overshadows the wrath of man. Both kings decide to call a truce. Photo: opapaty / 8 images Tales of history are no less than those of a make-believe fairy land; this one in particular has stunned astronomers and historians alike for centuries now. According to an account written by Greek historian Herodotus, the battle took place in Asia Minor. Aylattes, the king of Lydia, was fighting Cyaxares, king of the Medians or present day Iranians, somewhere along the River Halys in what we today know as Turkey. But the war was halted abruptly by a near total solar eclipse, the first ever that was predicted in advance. This went down in history as the Battle of the Eclipse. Thales of Miletus The eclipse occurred on May 28, 585 B.C. Herodotus suggests that Greecian astronomer and mathematician, Thales of Miletus, had predicted it way before it happened. This was why the eclipse also came to be identified as the Eclipse of Thales by many. His city Miletus itself sat on the edge of the path of totality, and though was not directly shadowded by it, witnessed the event closely. What’s strange is that the doyen could only pinpoint the exact year of the event but not the date or time. Predicting a solar eclipse is tough, with the moon falling the earth’s shadow of the sun for only seven and a half minutes. Yet any calculations that can gauge the coming of an eclipse can predict it down to the exact time.