On Aug. 21, the United States will see an event not seen in many decades: a solar eclipse cutting a swathe across the nation from the Pacific Northwest to South Carolina. Those interested can see the more precise path and times of the eclipse by visiting the following website: http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/maps.htm .
Both solar and lunar eclipses have an interesting impact on history, ranging from curious indifference to awed consternation. While it would be easy to say that eclipses have been seen by past historians, especially before what we now call the modern era, to be portents of significant events, this is actually not the case. Ancient and medieval writings often mention eclipses with no connection to any significant event at all. Nevertheless, there are times when an important event and eclipse coincide, thus creating the notion that the two are connected.
When Alexander the Great prepared to invade deeper into the Persian Empire in 331 BC, a lunar eclipse was observed during the summer and taken as a good omen of success. Alexander continued his march, with the smashing success at Gaugamela in October to confirm this viewpoint. Thucydides, when discussing the Peloponnesian War, noted that a series of earthquakes and frequent eclipses that occurred during that time lent truth to earlier legends that such signs occurred during great and terrible human conflict.
Even as one writer of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of Great Britain states that in AD 664, when "the sun grew dark" there was also a great plague, another writer of the Chronicle recorded other eclipses with no significant event attached to them whatsoever. Fast forward nearly 400 years, when a major eclipse was recorded in 1135 and seen as a harbinger of evil to come--only to have such confirmed with the death later that year of Britain's King Henry I.
Other medieval chroniclers often failed to make any significant connection to eclipses and events. The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fedegar records a lunar eclipse in AD 590, but then almost as an afterthought states that it was the same year in which war started between the Franks and Bretons. During the First Crusade, a Christian writer took note of a lunar eclipse as the Crusading army approached Jerusalem in AD 1099, citing it as a good portent of success. Yet, there is no record of the eclipse among Muslim chroniclers of the same period, possibly in large measure due to the fact that the Prophet Muhammad had forbidden to use eclipses as predictors of future events.
While this writer sees no connection to eclipses and major historical events, the coming solar eclipse, which will be close enough for many of us to observe either in part or in full, provides a catalyst to tickle the imagination and elicit from a host of folks who when seeing some significant event occur in the coming months, will say "see--it was foretold."
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