Eclipse

Use in the book

Anaximander’s solar report describes closure of a fiery outlet, while the lunar report speaks of the wheel’s turnings. The Pythagorean solar explanation assigns obscuration to the moon’s passage in front. Xenophanes instead gives extinction and renewed formation. Each mechanism must be read independently; even the Anaximander notices are not silently made uniform.

Places to read

1. I.25.1cClosure of the solar outlet causes eclipse.
2. I.26.1a.1Turnings of the lunar wheel cause eclipse.
3. I.25.1iThe moon passes in front of the sun.

Translation in this edition

“Eclipse” identifies the phenomenon being explained. It does not certify that a report describes the physical mechanism now associated with the word.

Use in the book

The moon interrupts the sun's rays for the duration of its passage and darkens a region of earth described by comparison with the moon's breadth. Read with B 43 and B 45, the account distinguishes the moon's received light from its capacity to obstruct light reaching elsewhere. It is a physical relation among bodies and illumination, conveyed through the personal pronouns and gray-eyed epithet retained in the translation.

B 48 gives a related explanation of ordinary night: earth stands in the way of light. The mechanisms share interposition, but they are not the same event or the same blocking body. Preserving that distinction prevents the whole astronomical cluster from being flattened into an undifferentiated statement about darkness.

The quotation's ancient geometrical claim should be reported as such. No distances, angular measurements, or complete account of shadow cones is supplied. It would therefore be misleading to turn the passage into an exact modern diagram and treat every labelled quantity as the poet's own.

Places to read

1. B 42The moon cuts off rays and darkens a stated breadth of earth.
2. B 43Light strikes the moon, supplying a related illumination context.
3. B 45The moon's circulating light is not its own.
4. B 48Earth's interposition explains night and provides a comparison, not another description of the eclipse.

Translation in this edition

“She” and “his” in B 42 clarify the presumed lunar and solar referents of the compressed Greek. The explanation is not a quotation of a standalone noun “eclipse.” The isolated extract's wording should remain distinct from any later exposition in Plutarch.

Use in the book

The one-line Aëtian testimony identifies the moon's interposition as the cause of a solar eclipse. It is important to distinguish the explanatory success of that broad relation from the rest of the lunar model. A body can obstruct solar light whether one imagines that body as spherical or disc-shaped; A60's disc theory therefore does not prevent the eclipse explanation. Conversely, the notice supplies no eclipse geometry, size estimates, orbital inclination, or account of why eclipses are intermittent. A61's contradictory distance reports cannot be used to fill those gaps confidently. A concise correct identification of the intervening body remains a concise report, rather than evidence for an entire correct astronomical system.

Places to read

1. A 59 (testimony)Aëtius. Attributes solar obscuration to the moon passing beneath the sun.
2. A 60 (testimony)Aëtius and Plutarch. Supply the distinct, partly problematic accounts of the moon's body and illumination.

Translation in this edition

The edition's “Correct, and stated without qualification” concerns the causal core of the report. The English words identifying a solar eclipse are bracketed additions; the original excerpt is only a subordinate clause.