Eclipse

Thucydides knows everything about everything, Part 1283. It’s not enough that he recorded eclipses of both sun and moon, without directly attributing them to divine action – okay, he does claim an increased number of eclipses as grounds for recognising the unprecedented greatness of the Peloponnesian War, but he also notes that the eclipse of 431 occurred in the moon’s first phase, implying a natural event. No, he has to have anticipated all our modern concerns as well:

Where does this stuff come from? It can’t be anyone who has actually read the relevant sections of Thucydides, as obviously he doesn’t say anything about blindness and doesn’t offer advice either way. It’s actually an interesting question as to when people started trying to observe eclipses closely and whether they suffered adverse consequences, but Thucydides is not the place to look for an answer. I wonder f there is some sort of bleed-over from the ‘Thucydides invented the theory of post-viral immunity’ stuff that’s been popular since COVID.