8. In fiu^, an attempt has lately been made in thb direction, which, if successful, must set oar BB^cd chronology adrift from its old bearings. It is ooa- tended by Mr. Bosanquet {Readjustment ofSacrtd <md Profane Chronology ^ Lond. 1858) that a lower date thu 604-606 B.C. for the accession of Nebuchadnezzar is imperatively demanded by the historical connectks of that event with the famous *' Eclipse of Thales ;'' which, accdrduig to Herodotus (i, 74, 108), occurrinf during a pitched battle between the Medea and Lyd> ians, was the occasion of a peace, cemented by maT> riages, between Cyaxares and Halyattes, afUr vhtch, as Hefodotus seems to imply, the former turned hit arms against Ass3rria, and, in conjunction with Lsby- netus (the Nabopolassar of Berosus and the Canon), took and destroyed Nineveh. The dates assigned bj the ancients to that eclipse lie between OL 48 a^^d 50. Kepler, Scaliger, and Sur Isaac Newton made it B.C. 585 ; Bally {I^dloa. Trans., 1811) and Oltmanna (iSd&r. der Berlin. Akad. 1812-18) found U 80th Sept. aC. 610, which date was accepted by Ideler, Saint^Marthi, and most subsequent writers. More recently it has been announced by Mr. Airy (PhUos. Mag. 18o3) and Mr. Hind (Aihenaum, Aug. 1857), as the result of cal- culation with Hansen's improved tables, that in the eclipse of 610 the moon's shadow traversed no port ef Asia Minor, and that the only suitable one is that of 28th May, B.C. 585, which would be total in looia, Lydia, Lycia, Pamphylia, and part of Cilida. It has, indeed, been contended by Mr. Adams that the tables need a ftirther correction, the effect of which (as Mr. Airy remarked, Athenawn^Oci, 1859) would be such as to render the edipee of 585 inapplicable to the record- ed circumstances ; but it appeara that the astronomer- royal no longer entertains any doubts on this pdnt, having quite recently (see AAen. Sept. 1861) express- ed his ** unaltered conviction that the table* of Han- sen give the date of the great solar eclipse, which tef«> minated the Lydian yar, as the most reliable records of antiquity placed it, in the year 585 B.C." Indeed, however the astronomical question may ultimately be dedded, it would appear, from all that is known of the life of Thales, that he could hardly have predicted an eclipse in Ionia so early as B.C. 610 (R6tb,<;esei. m- serer abendiSndis<Aen Philosophie, ii, 98). But that the **£dip6e of Thales" occurred at the conjuncture indi- cated by Herodotus rests only on his testimony, and in this he might easily be mistaken. Either he may have confounded with the eclipse predicted by Thales an earlier one occurring during the war of Cyaxsres and Halyattes— possibly that of 610, for no localinr is mentioned, and there is nothing to forbid our seddng the battle-field in some suitable situation (e. g. irith Niebuhr, p. 508, in Atropatene, or with Yon Gumpach, Zeitrechnung der Bab. u. Assgr. p. 94, in Armenia) ; or, he^ may have assigned to that earlier war wbat really took place during a later war of the Modes and Lydians under Astyages and Halyattes. The latter supposition is not without support of andent autbore. Cicero (de Divinat. i, 50), from some lost authority, places the eclipse, without date or mention of 4he wu, under Astyages. Pliny {H. N. ii, 9), giving the date 01. 48.4= B.C. 585, says, also without mention of the war, that the eclipse occurred in the reign of Halyattes (this lasted, in the usual chronology, from B.C. 620 to 568). Solinus (c. 15, 16) assigns 01. 49.1 as date of eclipse and batde, but (c 20) he speaks of the war as between Halyattes and Astyages. From Eudemus, a much earlier author, Clement of Alexandria (Strxm. i, 14, § 65) gives the date of the eclipse "about 01. 50, " with the addition that it was the time of the war be-
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