Thales and the Battle of the Eclipse

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Before we start today's episode,
one more time, we are going to do a live

(00:21):
show at the Indiana Historical Society. This is on Friday,
July nineteenth, twenty twenty four. So if you are listening
to this podcast way in the future, twenty twenty four,
that's the year we're talking about. This is going to
be at the Eugene and Maryland Glick Indiana History Center
again July nineteenth, twenty twenty four. Holly and I did

(00:45):
a show there back before the pandemic started, had a
great time. It's been a very long time since we've
done a lot of live shows, so it's nice to
be working toward doing some again. Yes, indeed, this will
be from seven thirty to eight thirty. There will also
be a meet and greet before the show, so folks

(01:06):
can either buy a ticket to the show or a
ticket that includes that meet and greet. And to get
more information, you can go to www dot Indianahistory dot
org slash events. And now we will move on to
the actual episode. Back in twenty seventeen, when everyone in

(01:29):
the world, it seemed like, was talking about the solar
eclipse that was about to be visible from North America.
Holly put together an episode on a handful of eclipses
in history, and I don't think it really entered our
minds at the time that in almost seven years after
that there would be another total solar eclipse visible from

(01:50):
North America, and that it would also, like that earlier one,
be happening on a day when a new episode of
our show comes out. For my pot art, pretty much
the minute the twenty seventeen eclipse was over, the group
of folks that I was traveling with started talking about
where we should go to see the next one. Uh.

(02:11):
I definitely though, was not thinking, hmm, what should we
do on the podcast for the next solar eclipse? Uh?
Did not enter my mind. But here we are, solar
eclipse happening today on the day this podcast comes out.
So I found another eclipse related topic. On May twenty eighth,
in the year five eighty five BCE, there was a

(02:34):
total solar eclipse during a battle between the kingdoms of
Media and Lydia, and this eclipse had been predicted by
Thailees of my leadas, and it led to the ends
of both the battle and the war that the battle
was a part of. Except turns out there is debate
about every single thing that I just said that has

(02:55):
been going on for centuries. We're going to be talking
about these events and the debate around them. Also, according
to Herodotus, one of the reasons that this battle was
being fought involved a particularly horrific incident of cannibalism. So
just heads up on that. The details surrounding the eclipse

(03:16):
and the battle aren't the only subjects of debate in
today's episode. Another is Stalley's of Militis himself. There are
lots and lots of references to him in ancient writing,
but we have no contemporary sources about his life. All
the references we have on him first appeared in writing
much much later. Let's just start with when he lived.

(03:39):
One source on that is Diogenes Lartius, who was born
around one eighty CE. Just to be clear, that is
not the same person as Diogenes the Senic, who we
have covered on the show before. Diogenes the senc lived
a long time before Diogenes Laardius also, we are not
going to pretend to try to say any of these

(04:01):
names the way they were quote authentically pronounced. That's kind
of not possible to piece together at this point. But
Diogenes Laardiis was referencing a Polydorus of Athens, and a
Polydorus of Athens was born around one eighty BCE, so
these two men were born more than three hundred and
fifty years apart, and then Thales was born another three

(04:24):
hundred and fifty years or so before a Polydorus of Athens.
Ancient Greek chroniclers and historians used Olympiads to count years,
with each Olympiad spanning the four year period between Olympic Games.
According to Diogenes, who was referencing a Polydorus, Thales died
at the age of seventy eight and was born during

(04:46):
the thirty fifth Olympiad that started in six forty BCE.
He died during the fifty eighth Olympiad, which started in
five forty eight BCE, but this would have made his
age more like ninety not seventy eight. Most sources agree
that there's a transcription error in the Olympiad of his birth,
and that Thales was really born during the thirty ninth

(05:08):
Olympiad that started in six twenty four BCE. So if
you're keeping score, we have one source quoting another source,
both of whom lived centuries later, and a mistake, and
we are only three paragraphs into this thing. We also
know very little about Thales's life, including who his parents were.

(05:28):
There are some ancient sources that say his mother was Phoenician.
Others give his parents names as Examise and Cleobulin, but
we don't know anything about them either. Beyond those possible names,
there is general agreement that he was born in Miletus
in Ionia on the aeg and c. This was a

(05:50):
trading hub and an intellectual center, and that's on the
Aegean coast, in an area that today is part of Turkya.
Guess what else. We don't have any surviving writing by
Thales or any exact quotes of his writing in other
later material. Instead, what we do have is lots and
lots of descriptions of what he wrote about, and references

(06:11):
to ideas that he put forth, and various facts and
ideas that are attributed to him. So all that said,
Thales was reportedly brilliant. He was named as one of
the seven wise men or sopoy of Plato's Protagoras. Plato
described Theales and these six other men as quote enthusiasts, lovers,

(06:32):
and disciples of the Spartan culture. And you can recognize
that character in their wisdom by the short, memorable sayings
that fell from each of them. They assembled together and
dedicated these as the first fruits of their lore to
Apollo in his Delphic temple. So these maxims include things
like no thyself and nothing in excess, both of which

(06:55):
are attributed to Thales. He's also credited as being one
of the founders of the Milesian school of philosophy, also
called the Ionian school. The three figures most associated with
this school are Thales, his student an Aximander, and an
axemander student in Aximenes. All three had a focus on
astronomy and cosmology, and all three put forth ideas about

(07:20):
what the universe was fundamentally made of. Some of their
ideas were really dissimilar, though, so some scholars described the
Milesian school as more of a geographic descriptor than any
kind of unified school of thought. Here are some ideas
that various ancient sources attribute to Thales. Water or perhaps fluid,

(07:40):
is the fundamental substance that makes up everything in the universe. Also,
everything has a soul, which is sometimes described as gods
residing in everything. This offered an explanation for magnetism. Loadstones
could attract iron because of the souls that were residing
within them. According to Aristotle, Sales described the Earth as

(08:03):
floating on an infinite sea of water. Seneca said he
used this floating earth to explain the cause of earthquakes.
Of course, this is not what causes earthquakes, but this
is sometimes described as a step away from blaming natural
phenomena on the behavior of gods and towards a more
rational and observable science. Side note, sources written today often

(08:25):
describe Sale's concept of the earth as a flat disk
floating on that water, but surviving references don't actually specify
a shape for this floating earth. It's pretty easy to
conclude that he meant that it was a disk, because
if there were a globe floating on the water, how
would the people on the underwater portion of it breathe? Like?

(08:47):
Is there an atmosphere? Like? How is it working is
it concased in something? Don't know? According to Aristotle, Anaximenes
and an Aximander believed that the Earth was lats, but
earlier in the same sentence that he mentioned them, he
also said some people thought the earth was spherical? So

(09:08):
does that some include bailies? If this description was meant
to be in chronological order, it could have, but like,
we just really don't know. The entry on Thales of
my Ladas at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy argues that
Thales likely thought the Earth was a sphere for the
same reasons that Aristotle did, including things like seeing ships

(09:30):
sail away into the distance with their hulls disappearing below
the horizon before their masts and sails. This entry doesn't
really explain why Anteximotes and an Aximander, who would have
had access to these same observations, would have concluded otherwise, though,
or why we should conclude that Theales had different ideas
on this idea than the two of them. Yeah, I've

(09:52):
read this entry and I felt kind of convinced, and
then I was like, wait, why am I convinced? Though
I'm not, I still have questions. Also reportedly calculated the
height of the Great Pyramids of Egypt using geometry by
comparing the length of their shadow to the length of
the shadow of his staff. He may have written a
navigational work called the Nautical Star Guide, although Diogenes Leargists

(10:17):
says this was by Phocos of Samos. Some accounts say
Thales diverted the river hallis now known in Turkish as
the Kazillermac River into a channel so that King Criesus
could cross it with an army, and that he united
the city states of Ionia in the face of aggression
from the Kingdom of Lydia. We mentioned in our episode

(10:37):
about Gerardis Mercader that Theal's is sometimes credited with making
the first map projection. In this case, it was a
star chart. Since making a map projection involves making a
two dimensional map from a three dimensional globe, that's what
it is. This means that he recognized that the visible
night sky had a curved surface, even if he thought

(11:01):
the earth below it was flat. Again seen two arguments
on this that kind of contradicts the infinite sea concept. Well,
if you sort of imagine, like, uh, one of those
poppamatic bubbles where the flat part is the earth, and
the domed part is the night sky, and then infinite
sea all around it. Oh yeah, I guess sometimes. Daylees

(11:25):
is described as bringing geometry to Greece from Egypt, and
he's sometimes credited with several geometric theorems. Some of them
include that a circle is bisected by its diameter, that
if two sides of a triangle or of equal length,
the angles opposite those sides are also equal, and that
opposite angles formed by intersecting straight lines are also equal.

(11:47):
Daylees is sometimes even credited with coming up with the
entire idea of geometric proofs. There are also a couple
of anecdotes about Daylies that paint almost contradictory pictures of
him as a person. One as that once upon a
time someone criticized him for not using his wisdom to
get rich. So based on his observations of the heavens,

(12:11):
he predicted that there was going to be a larger
than normal olive crop that year, and he got control
of all the olive presses in the area, so when
that crop was harvested, everybody had to pay him to
press their olives into oil. And then, having proved his
point that he could get rich with his brain if
he wanted to. He went back to his own work

(12:32):
and left olive pressing behind. Aristotle is one of the
sources for this story, but he doesn't actually seem to
really believe it or think. He thinks that if it
did happen, it wasn't something that Theales did. Among other things,
even if the olive crop hadn't been particularly large, he
still would have had a monopoly on all the presses.

(12:54):
Theylies definitely didn't invent the idea of the monopoly. The
other is his story reported by Plato, who said that
one time Thales was so focused on studying the night
sky that he fell into a well listen who among us?
When a servant pulled him out, She made fun of him,
asking rhetorically how he could hope to learn about the
heavens when he could not even watch his feet. Yeah,

(13:18):
according to the stories, he was both very astute and
incredibly absent minded. Uh. This episode feels like it was
already two thirds caveats, but we have still more caveats,
Like we really don't have any way of knowing whether
Thalies actually accomplished a lot of these things that were
attributed to him. It's possible that since he was an
early Greek philosopher who was reputed to be very wise,

(13:41):
people just gave him credit for things that didn't have
a clear origin point. It was not all that unusual
to sort of attribute things to early Greek philosophers. Even
the ancient Greek sources that comment on his life and
work do not suggest that they had any first hand
access to any of his writing to back any of

(14:02):
this up. And there are so many sources today that
describe Thales as the first Greek philosopher or the first
scientist or first astronomer, and claim that ancient Greek scholars
described him that way as well. But the idea that
Thales established Greek philosophy and that Greek philosophy then formed
the foundation for the entirety of Western thought really seems

(14:25):
to have started to evolve in Europe around the eighteenth century.
In writing that is threaded through with so much xenophobia
and racism, it's likely that much of Thali's seemingly groundbreaking
knowledge actually came from Egypt. Thales's eclipse prediction and the
Battle of the Eclipse are intertwined. We are going to
start with that battle after a sponsor break, and that

(14:47):
is the part of the show that will have the
horrific cannibalism in it. Our earliest source on the Battle
of the Eclipse is by Herodotus, who lived from around
for eighty four BCE to around four thirty BCE, so

(15:11):
that was more than one hundred years after the death
of Thales, in a century or so before this battle
is believed to have happened. Here is what Herodotus had
to say. Quote, there had a risen war between the
Lydians and the Medis, lasting five years, in which years
the Medis often discomfited the Lydians, and the Lydians often

(15:32):
discomfited the Medis, and among others they fought also a
battle by night, and as they still carried on the
war with equally balanced fortune, in the sixth year a
battle took place, in which it happened when the fight
had begun, that suddenly the day became night. And this
change of the day Theales the Milesian, had foretold to

(15:55):
the Ionians, laying down as a limit this very year
in which the change took place. The Lydians, however, and
the Medis, when they saw that it had become night
and said of day ceased from their fighting and were
much more eager both of them that peace should be
made between them. So to contextualize that a bit, Lydia

(16:17):
occupied much of what is now western Turkia, and it
was heavily influenced by neighboring Ionia, where Thales was from.
The Medis were the people of Media, which occupied what's
now northwestern Iran as well as parts of what's now
Azerbaijan and Iraq. It's possible that there was a pretty
mundane reason for this war. It had started when Aliades

(16:38):
was king of Lydia and Sayagsaris was king of Media.
Both were trying to expand their kingdoms and annexed the
territory that lay between Lydia and Media, which brought the
two kingdoms into conflict with each other. But sometimes Herodotus's
histories included stories that were really compelling but not necessarily substantiated.

(17:00):
We've mentioned that previously on the show, and we've talked
about Herodotus and he offers a way more horrifying and
gruesome explanation for this war that was connected to a
group of Scythians. Scythians were a nomadic people who migrated
from Central Asia to what's now Russia and Ukraine. Eventually
their empire was centered on what's now Crimea. Their history

(17:24):
can be tricky to put together because they didn't use writing,
and a number of ancient sources that did write about
them sometimes conflated them with other nomadic peoples who spoke
Iranian languages. Also, a lot of these sources were describing
a society that their own people or their allies had
been attacked by, which of course influenced how they wrote

(17:47):
about these other people. But the Scythians were known for
their horsemanship, their archery, and their prowess in combat, very
broadly speaking. When this war took place, the Scythians controlled
territory to the northwest of Media and across the Black
Sea from Lydia. But more than a century prior, the
Scythians had controlled Media and the Medes had expelled the

(18:09):
Scythian Empire from their territory sometime around six hundred BCE,
but there were still small groups and bands in the
area after this point. So according to Herodotus's history, there
was a group of Scythians who were feuding with the
rest of their people at first, Syaksaris offered them his protection,
and he also sent some boys to the Cythians to

(18:32):
be taught their language and to learn archery. But one
day the Cythians went hunting, and they came back empty handed,
and Sayaksari's quote dealt with them very harshly and used
insult towards them. According to Herodotus, in response, the Scythians
quote planned to kill and cut up one of the

(18:52):
boys who were being instructed among them, and having dressed
his flesh as they had been wont to dress the
wild animals to you, bear it to siaks Aris and
give it to him, pretending that it was game taken
in hunting. There are also some later sources that suggest
that this boy was one of Syaxari's's own children, or

(19:12):
some other child who was part of the royal family.
Once they had done this, the Scythians fled from media,
and quote Sayasaris with the guests who ate at his
table tasted of that meat, and the Scythians, having so done,
became suppliants for the protection of Aliades. Sayasis demanded that
Aliades return the Scythians to him so they could be

(19:35):
brought to justice, and Aliades refused, and that started a war,
one in which, according to what we read earlier, the
two sides were pretty evenly matched for more than five years.
Herodotus states that after this battle, in which the day
turned into night and the two armies were inspired to
lay down their arms, two men helped negotiate a peace.

(19:58):
One was si Ansis of Cilia and one was Libidinous
of Babylon. Other sources say that the Babylonian negotiator was
actually King Nebuchinezer. The second this treaty involved a marriage
between Aliats's daughter Arhinius and Sayaksaris's son Astyages. There are
some other fragmented writings that suggest that maybe there was

(20:21):
also a second marriage between a Median princess and either
Aliates or Aliati's son Cretius. We have all whole episode
on Cretius, and since this is the second time that
he has come up, we will run that as a
Saturday Classic sometime soon. It's probably not surprising based on
how many caveats were involved in our discussion of Thales,

(20:43):
but there are various conflicting accounts of this war. Besides
the conflicting details that we've already mentioned and scholars have
been trying to piece together all of these details for
literally centuries. One question is whether Sayaksaris was king of
Media for the entire content. The account of Herodotus suggests
that he was, as does Clement of Alexandria, but Cicero

(21:07):
and other sources say that Saya Czaris died at some
point during the conflict or during the battle, and was
succeeded by his son Astyages, who continued the war with
the Lydians. Some translations of Herodotus interpret the treaty negotiations
as happening under Astiagies and not Saya Csari's. There's also
some debate about exactly where the border between these two

(21:31):
kingdoms was set under this treaty. The Kazillarmac River is
a logical and kind of widely assumed borderline, but it's
not really spelled out specifically in the surviving accounts. But
the last big question is when and where the battle happened,
which is connected to when and where the eclipse happened,
and that ties in to exactly what Theales predicted about

(21:53):
the eclipse and how or whether he could have made
such a prediction. And we're going to talk more about
all of that after or a sponsor break. If you
read about the battle of the eclipse in a newspaper

(22:14):
or a magazine, maybe a website meant for a general
audience today, maybe today specifically, because this is something that's
gotten just a lot of attention in the run up
to this today's eclipse, it'll probably say that this eclipse
happened on May twenty eighth, five eighty five BCE. That's
the date that I said up at the top of

(22:34):
the show. And most of the time it comes across
as like this is and always has been the definitive
date that was established for the eclipse and consequently the battle.
Some sources go so far as to say that because
we know exactly when and where this eclipse occurred, we
also know exactly when and where the battle happened, meaning

(22:58):
it is one of the first events and where we
can pinpoint the exact date, time and place. Naturally, it's
way more complicated than that. The account of Herodotus doesn't
really say that there was a solar eclipse. He said
that day turned tonight. Most sources interpret that as being

(23:18):
about a solar eclipse, and that's the most obvious possible explanation.
This is especially true since Herodotus also put it in
the context of a prediction, unless someone just makes a
lucky guess. Successfully predicting an eclipse requires knowledge of math, geometry,
and astronomy, and predicting where it will actually be visible
also requires a knowledge of geography, so the ability to

(23:41):
predict eclipse is also seen as an indication of where
a society is. In terms of all of this needed knowledge,
it would make sense for someone who had the reputed
brilliance of Thales to be credited with this kind of prediction.
At the same time, there are also Greek accounts of
philosopher anex Agoris predicting a meteor strike that is not

(24:02):
something you can predict in the same way that you
would predict an eclipse. We've talked about EnEx Agris on
the show before, but not about this whole meteor prediction.
So it's like within the realm of possibility that Theyales
predicted some other phenomenon that could turn day into night,
one that wouldn't necessarily be predictable in the same way

(24:25):
that an eclipse is. Some of the other possible explanations
for the day turning intonight include more mundane things like
a very sudden, dense cloud cover moving in, or things
that are a lot more dramatic, like atmospheric debris from
a volcanic eruption or smoke from a massive fire. Herodotus

(24:45):
also didn't specify when exactly they Lees had predicted this
eclipse would happen. According to the translation that Tracy used
for this episode, Herodotus just said Theaylees had foretold it
to the Ionians quote laying down as a limit this
very year in which the change took place. Neither he
nor later Greek writers specified which year they Lees had predicted,

(25:08):
although some did correlate that prediction with a specific eclipse
that by that point was known to have occurred sometime
in the six or seventh century BCE. There are so
many not entirely answered questions about all of this. First,
if Theyales really did successfully predict a solar eclipse, meaning

(25:31):
he did some kind of calculation rather than just making
a lucky guess, how did he do it? One common
idea is that he used something called the Babylonian saras,
which is a cycle of two hundred and twenty three
lunar months or eighteen years ten days and eight hours
in which there is a repeating pattern of eclipses. This

(25:56):
cycle does exist, but it's not entirely clear what the
Babylonians knew about it. Lunar eclipses are visible only at night,
and solar eclipses are very brief and are fully visible
only in a narrow band that is not in the
same place from one solar eclipse to the next, So
it's possible that the Babylonians had enough records of lunar

(26:16):
eclipses to spot a pattern among them, but this probably
would not be true for solar eclipses. In nineteen fifty two,
mathematician Otto Neugebauer argued that the idea that the Babylonians
used the Sero cycle to predict eclipses came from an
error made by Edmund Halley in the late seventeenth century
and then picked up by basically everyone else who wrote

(26:38):
about eclipses for the next three hundred years. I guess
if you're going to pick up somebody's mistake and repeat
it for Halle's a good one, why not start with
Edmund Halley? Again? There is a real pattern there. It's
pretty obvious using something like a color coded chart of
all the various types of eclipses, and today we have

(27:01):
things like measurements taken using reflectors that astronauts left on
the Moon in order to allow us to like more
specifically track and measure the movement of the Moon. We
have way more precise data on this and what this
pattern actually looks like. It is just not as clear
how much the Babylonians understood about this and whether it

(27:25):
could have been enough to allow Thales to use it
to make a prediction about a solar eclipse. While there's
various other speculation about methods Dalies may have used to
predict the eclipse, it's possible that it was just a
lucky guess, or it could be that the dramatic intersection
between a battle and eclipse and the end of a

(27:46):
six year war seemed like something someone as wise as
Day's would have predicted. Some of the sources that were
used in this episode conclude that there was no prediction
and that this entire story is made up, or that
the idea of day turning into night was actually more
of a literary trope than an actual description of what
was happening in the sky. There are even some arguments

(28:10):
that the armies were so preoccupied with fighting that they
fought into the night and then decided to lay down
their arms when they realized what they had done. This
last interpretation, though, doesn't work with translations that also say
that night then turned back to day unless it all
took a really long time. By the sixteenth century, mathematicians

(28:33):
and astronomers knew a lot more about the solar system
and mathematics, and were using the movement of the Earth
and the Moon to more precisely calculate when previous eclipses
had happened, and they started proposing eclipses that could have
been the one connected to Thales, again based on more

(28:53):
specific math rather than kind of guessing. Setus Calvisius put
the year at six O seven. Isaac Newton said it
was five eighty five BCE. Henry Usher said six zho
one BCE. That is really just a sample. I don't
think that's even half of the ones that were put forth.

(29:13):
But these and other astronomers in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries kind of narrowed it down to eclipses that had
happened sometime between six twenty six BCE and five eighty
five BCE. Astronomer Francis Bailey took up the question again
in the nineteenth century and concluded that the Theailey's eclipse
had taken place on September thirtieth, six ' ten BCE,

(29:37):
because based on his calculations, that's the only one that
would have reached totality and would have crossed what was
then known as the River Hallas in the general area
where the battle was believed to have taken place. By
this point, so many people had tried to figure this out.
In Bailey's words, quote, there is probably no fact in

(29:57):
ancient history that has given rise to so many discussions
and to such a variety of opinions as the solar eclipse, which,
according to Herodotus, is said to have been predicted by Thales,
in which, owing to a very singular coincidence, put an
end to a furious war that raged between Sayaksari's King
of Media and Aliaates, king of Lydia. Bailey wrote this

(30:20):
in eighteen eleven, which was before even more work about
it was published later in the nineteenth century, after astronomers
started to realize that earlier calculations didn't account for small
shifts in the moon's movement known as secular acceleration. These
small shifts could have a big effect on exactly what
a solar eclipse looked like from Earth, where it was visible,

(30:41):
and where the path of totality was, and how the
eclipse moved along that path. Other astronomers started proposing other
eclipses as possibilities, including one on May eighteenth, six oh
three BCE, and then one on May twenty eighth, five
eighty five BCE, which seemed to be the general consensus
for the so called right eclipse at this point. There

(31:05):
are still arguments against the five eighty five BCE eclipse,
though One major argument is when exactly the eclipse would
have been total in the area where the battle probably
took place. Totality of a solar eclipse does not last
for very long. It's you know, very very roughly speaking,

(31:26):
between two and four minutes. In this region, the eclipse
would have started around five thirty PM, so just with
the Sun starting to be covered. Totality would have started
about an hour after that and lasted for a couple
of minutes. Then the eclipse would have ended around seven
twenty PM, with the Sun no longer blocked by any

(31:48):
part of the moon. But then sunset would have started
another ten or fifteen minutes after that. Most translations of
Herodotus and other accounts described the day turning into night
not long after the battle began, So one argument is
that it would have been unusual for a battle to
start so late in the day, although Herodotus did also

(32:10):
note that these two armies fought at least one battle
at night during this war. The other is that two
armies in the middle of the battle probably would not
have even noticed a solar eclipse that started that close
to sunset, when the sky was already darkening. Okay, we'll
talk about this more on Friday. But personally, having been
in the path of totality in twenty seventeen, and also

(32:32):
being a person who routinely hikes in like the thin,
sad light of four pm in the winter in New England,
I disagree with the idea that they would not have
noticed an eclipse close to sunset. We'll talk again more
about that on Friday. This examination of when Thailey's eclipse
may have happened is It's not the only such effort

(32:53):
to try to apply astronomy to history. There are a
lot of references to eclipses in old historical documents or
two astronomical events that might have been eclipses. So when
Isaac Newton and others were trying to figure out the
date when the eclipse of Thales happened, they were also
doing similar work on other historical eclipses, and the focus

(33:17):
of this research shifted over time. At first, the historical
record was the starting point. What actual eclipse could this
document be referring to? Astronomers and other researchers would look
for an eclipse that exactly matched the account, But over
time it became clear that historical accounts weren't always totally
accurate when it came to astronomical phenomena. This was especially

(33:41):
true in the works of people like Herodotus, who were
often reading about things that happened more than a century earlier.
Sometimes no specific year was mentioned, but sometimes when there
was a year mentioned, it wasn't a year that had
an eclipse at all. So the focus shifted a little
bit from finding the eclipse that matched the written record
to correcting the written record based on the only options

(34:03):
for when the eclipse could have happened. So even though
if you read this like one page article, that's many
of them floating around about the battle of the eclipse
the day. It'll probably make it sound like there was
definitively or almost definitely an eclipse on May twenty eighth
of five eighty five BCE, and that it definitely did
interrupt a battle that day. There's still just a ton

(34:25):
of debate around this. Based on what's become our typical schedule,
this episode should hopefully be out before the eclipse starts
in Mexico today and a couple of hours before it
reaches the southwestern US. So if you are about to
try to watch it, good luck and please protect your eyes.
If you're in the Pacific and it's already passed you,
I hope, we hope that you had clear skies and

(34:48):
that you were able to get a glimpse. Yeah. And
if you're not watching an eclipse to day, if it's
three years from now or whatever, you know, if you've
seen one before, I hope it was great. I have
some listener mail from Kieran and Kieran's listener mail was
titled Etiquette the Outbursts of Everett True, and Kieran wrote, Hi,

(35:12):
Holly and Tracy, I just finished listening to the new
episode on etiquette, and it immediately reminded me of this
American comic that ran from nineteen oh five to nineteen
twenty seven. I originally came across it on social media,
and forgive me that I haven't researched it as thoroughly
as I could have. I'm sure there are some things
about it that have not aged well, but I was
surprised at some of the comics being more progressive than

(35:33):
I would have expected from a white comic creator during
this time period. Unlike the etiquette books you covered in
the episode, which emphasize being prem and proper, it takes
on the rather different tone of an older, portly man
pummeling people into good sense and manners. I especially enjoyed
the ones where Everett true calls out someone racist, another

(35:54):
of him correcting someone who was abusing a dog, as
well as one as Everett being decided anti quote man
spreading things we are still dealing with today. Obviously, I'm
not advocating for violence, but bits of the comic did
make me chuckle, and I hope it offers an interesting
addition to your etiquette research. I'm attaching here the original

(36:15):
post that caught my eye. Thanks so much, for that
wonderful podcast and all that you do. All the best, Kieran.
Kieran then sent another email shortly thereafter that said, PS,
I forgot to add this to the original email, but
I'm afraid I cannot pay the pet tax at the moment,
as my precious for a baby of fourteen years passed
away back in twenty twenty one and I haven't been

(36:35):
ready for new for babies yet. But I do have
some recently finished quilts and quilts and progress. I hope
y'all are into some textile goodness. Thanks again, First, these
quilt pictures are beautiful. What us send it? Textiles? What yuck?
Thank you so much for sending these quilt pictures. They're
so lovely beautiful. Yeah. So when I got this email,

(36:58):
I was like, Everett True, all of this is ringing
a bell to me. We have to have talked about
this before. When was it? And the answer was it
was during the episodes where we sort of talked about
our prior episode on the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic in
our new context of having lived through a year at

(37:19):
that point of COVID nineteen pandemic. Because other things that
Everett True beat people into a pulp about were refusing
to wear a mask in places that masks are supposed
to be worn and coughing without covering their mouth. So yes,
Outburst of Ever it true. I similarly have no idea

(37:42):
about like this comic beyond those kinds of things that
we just talked about or the creator. But I did
appreciate getting this email. If you would like to send
us a note about this or any other podcast, we
are at History podcast atiheartradio dot com. Our social media
our username is typically missed in History. Email is the

(38:02):
best way to get us. I will say, for the
most part, I personally do not look at any of
my social media mentions on any platform, so if you
try to talk to me there, I'm probably not gonna
see it. You can subscribe to our show on the
iHeartRadio app or anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.

(38:26):
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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Thales and the Battle of the Eclipse