. W. T. Lynn, who pronounces, but
with some hesitation, in favour of the eclipse of October 2, 480 B.C.,
as the one associated with the battle of Salamis. He does this by
refusing to see in the above quotations from Herodotus any allusion to a
solar eclipse at all, but invites us to consider a later statement in
Herodotus[46] as relating to an eclipse though the historian only calls
it a prodigy.

After the battle of Thermopylae the Peloponnesian Greeks commenced to
fortify the isthmus of Corinth with the view of defending it with their
small army against the invading host of Xerxes. The Spartan troops were
under the command of Cleombrotus, the brother of Leonidas, the hero of
Thermopylae. He had been consulting the oracles at Sparta, and Herodotus
states that "while he was offering sacrifice to know if he should march
out against the Persian, the Sun was suddenly darkened in mid-sky." This
occurrence so frightened Cleombrotus that he drew off his forces and
returned home. It is uncertain from the narrative of Herodotus whether
Cleombrotus returned to Sparta in the autumn of the year of the battle
of Salamis, or in the spring of the next following year which was that
in which the battle of Plataea was fought. Bishop Thirlwall[47] thinks
that it was the latter, but Lynn pronounces for the former, adding that
the date may well have been in October, and the solar eclipse of October
2, 480 B.C. may have been the phenomenon which attracted notice,
particularly as the Sun would have been high in the heavens, the
greatest phase (6/10ths) occurring, according to Hind, at 50 minutes
past noon. Here I must leave the matter, merely remarking that this
alternative explanation obviates the necessity for disturbing the
commonly received date of the battle of Salamis.

Thucydides states that during the Peloponnesian war "things formerly
repeated on hearsay, but very rarely confirmed by facts, became not
incredible, both about earthquakes and eclipses of the Sun which came to
pass more frequently than had been remembered in former times." One such
eclipse he assigns to the first year of the war and says[48] that "in
the same summer, at the beginning of a new lunar month (at which time
alone the phenomenon seems possible) the Sun was eclipsed after mid-day,
and became full again after it had assumed a crescent form and after
some of the stars had shone out." Aug. 3, 431 B.C. is generally
recognised as the date of this event. The eclips