Event #2649: Solar eclipse observed by Pindar

Ninth Paean, addressed to the Thebans

“Beam of the Sun! O thou that seest from afar, what wilt thou be devising? O mother of mine eyes! O star supreme, reft from us in the daytime! Why has thou perplexed the power of man and the way of wisdom by rushing forth on a darksome track? Art thou bringing on us some new and strange disaster? Yet by Zeus, I implore thee, thou swift driver of steeds! Do thou, O queen! Change this world-wide portent into some painless blessing for Thebes …

But art thou bringing a sign of some war, or wasting of produce, or an unspeakably violent snow-storm, or fatal faction, or again, some overflowing of the sea on the plain, or frost to bind the earth, or heat of the south wind streaming with raging rain? Or wilt thou, by deluging the land, cause the race of men to begin anew? I in no wise lament whate’er I shall suffer with the rest!”

In the odes of Pindar, there are two allusions to the effects of a very large solar eclipse. Both these quotation probably refer to the solar eclipse of 30 April 463 BC, which was nearly total at Thebes. Fotheringham¹ was the first to propose this identification. Pindar saw himself the eclipse. He was atonished and although he seems to have heard that the phenomenon was visible at other places too (‘worldwide’), he regarded it as a major portent for Thebes. In describing the apparent theft of the Sun and the resulting darkness, Pindar clearly refers to either a complete solar eclipse or one in which the Sun all but disappeared.

Fragemnt 142

God can cause unsullied light to spring out of black night. He can also shroud in a dark cloud of gloom the pure light of day