e was not total only
three-fourths of the Sun's disc being obscured. Venus was 20 deg. and
Jupiter 43 deg. distant from the Sun, so probably these were the "stars"
that were seen. This eclipse nearly prevented the Athenian expedition
against the Lacedaemonians. The sailors were frightened by it, but a
happy thought occurred to Pericles, the commander of the Athenian
forces. Plutarch, in his _Life of Pericles_, says:--"The whole fleet was
in readiness, and Pericles on board his own galley, when there happened
an eclipse of the Sun. The sudden darkness was looked upon as an
unfavourable omen, and threw the sailors into the greatest
consternation. Pericles observing that the pilot was much astonished and
perplexed, took his cloak, and having covered his eyes with it, asked
him if he found anything terrible in that, or considered it as a bad
presage? Upon his answering in the negative, he said, 'Where is the
difference, then between this and the other, except that something
bigger than my cloak causes the eclipse?'"

Another eclipse is mentioned by Thucydides[49] in connection with an
expedition of the Athenians against Cythera. He says:--"At the very
commencement of the following summer 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." This has been identified with the annular eclipse of March
21, 424 B.C., the central line of which passed across Northern Europe.
It is not quite clear whether the historian wishes to insinuate that the
eclipse caused the earthquake or the earthquake the eclipse.

An eclipse known as that of Ennius is another of the eclipses antecedent
to the Christian Era which has been the subject of full modern
investigation, and the circumstances of which are such that, in the
language of Professor Hansen, "it may be reckoned as one of the most
certain and well-established eclipses of antiquity." The record of it
has only been brought to light in modern times by the discovery of
Cicero's Treatise, _De Republica_. According to Cicero,[50] Ennius the
great Roman poet, who lived in the second century B.C., and who died of
gout contracted, it is said, by frequent intoxication, recorded an
interesting event in the following words:--_Nonis Junii soli luna
obstetit et nox_, "On the Nones of June the Moon was in opposition to
the Sun and night." This singular phrase has long been assumed to allude
to an eclipse of the Sun, but the precise interpre