Eclipses demand our attention, then keep tugging at our minds. In this we are not alone. and neither are eclipses..
Thucydides realized war is like other disruptions in our hoped-for order of things. He believed that war, like eclipses, had understandable causes, but like them war tugs us back toward more primitive ways of thinking.
With war raging in Ukraine and Gaza, earthquakes, the persistent pandemic and now the eclipse, we know what he meant.
Here’s how Hobbes translated the crucial passage:
Old stories of occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon them with the late war
Thucydides’ point is not about causality or predictability but about the stories that get told about the past at times of disruption. . With the sun darkened, the ground under foot shaking, the rasping coughs from those dying in the pandemic. old fears and old-fashioned ways of talking and thinking about experience become credible once again. For Thucydides this was perhaps a temptation he himself felt, but – read on! – he declines that invitation to return to old ways of thinking about the past, and moves on instead to new ways of understanding human experience.
Here’s the Greek of 1. 23.3 so you can see if I’m right:
Τά τε πρότερον ἀκοῇ μὲν λεγόμενα, ἔργῳ δὲ σπανιώτερον βεβαιούμενα οὐκ ἄπιστα κατέστη,
σεισμῶν τε πέρι, οἳ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἅμα μέρος γῆς καὶ ἰσχυρότατοι οἱ αὐτοὶ ἐπέσχον, ἡλίου τε ἐκλείψεις
, αἳ πυκνότεραι παρὰ τὰ ἐκ τοῦ πρὶν χρόνου μνημονευόμενα ξυνέβησαν, αὐχμοί τε ἔστι παρʼ οἷς μεγάλοι
καὶ ἀπʼ αὐτῶν καὶ λιμοὶ καὶ ἡ οὐχ ἥκιστα βλάψασα καὶ μέρος τι φθείρασα ἡ λοιμώδης νόσος· ταῦτα
γὰρ πάντα μετὰ τοῦδε τοῦ πολέμου ἅμα ξυνεπέθετο.
Thucydides realized war is like other disruptions in our hoped-for order of things. He believed that war, like eclipses, had understandable causes, but like them war tugs us back toward more primitive ways of thinking.
With war raging in Ukraine and Gaza, earthquakes, the persistent pandemic and now the eclipse, we know what he meant.
Here’s how Hobbes translated the crucial passage:
Old stories of occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon them with the late war
Thucydides’ point is not about causality or predictability but about the stories that get told about the past at times of disruption. . With the sun darkened, the ground under foot shaking, the rasping coughs from those dying in the pandemic. old fears and old-fashioned ways of talking and thinking about experience become credible once again. For Thucydides this was perhaps a temptation he himself felt, but – read on! – he declines that invitation to return to old ways of thinking about the past, and moves on instead to new ways of understanding human experience.
Here’s the Greek of 1. 23.3 so you can see if I’m right:
Τά τε πρότερον ἀκοῇ μὲν λεγόμενα, ἔργῳ δὲ σπανιώτερον βεβαιούμενα οὐκ ἄπιστα κατέστη,
σεισμῶν τε πέρι, οἳ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἅμα μέρος γῆς καὶ ἰσχυρότατοι οἱ αὐτοὶ ἐπέσχον, ἡλίου τε ἐκλείψεις
, αἳ πυκνότεραι παρὰ τὰ ἐκ τοῦ πρὶν χρόνου μνημονευόμενα ξυνέβησαν, αὐχμοί τε ἔστι παρʼ οἷς μεγάλοι
καὶ ἀπʼ αὐτῶν καὶ λιμοὶ καὶ ἡ οὐχ ἥκιστα βλάψασα καὶ μέρος τι φθείρασα ἡ λοιμώδης νόσος· ταῦτα
γὰρ πάντα μετὰ τοῦδε τοῦ πολέμου ἅμα ξυνεπέθετο.