The Battle of the Eclipse

The Battle of the Eclipse

 

      Today is not the anniversary of the Battle of the Eclipse, which took place in 585 bc.  Rather, that anniversary is on May 28.  Still, with the upcoming eclipse on August 21, I thought a reprise of a prior posting on this important event is in order.  That said, the event itself is largely unknown and it of interest only to scholars.

      The battle itself took place in 585 BC in what is now north-east Turkey between a force of Medes (based in western Turkey) and a force of Lydians (eastern Turkey). Like I said, this is specialist stuff - the Medes and the Lydians have passed from history as distinct peoples. Today, if remembered at all, it is likely the Medes who were cannon fodder against the Spartans under Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae. Anyway, a war ostensibly predicated on the failure by the Lydians to turn over to the Medes a party of Scythians who has murdered a son of the Medes’ king, was being fought for control of that portion of the Anatolian peninsula.

      According to Herodotus, the eclipse had been predicted by Thales of Miletus, a mathematician/astronomer.

The importance of the battle is that it was interrupted by an eclipse, and the time and date of that eclipse can be ascertained astronomically. As such it serves as a fixed point from which to measure dates. In an era in which dates were typically recorded in reference to rather transient events such as in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Whomever, a fixed point is very useful. If it is known that the Battle of the Eclipse took place in the fourth year of the reign of King X, and that his total reign was of 26 years, then we can know that he died some 22 years after 585 BC, and from there the reign of the successor to the throne can be measured. When that king, in his fifth year, signs a treaty with a neighbor, that being the ninth year of that neighboring king’s reign, it is now possible to start putting a series of events into chronological context.

 

BTW, the Medes and the Lydians took the eclipse as a sign that they should drop their at that point six year war; a peace treaty followed.