585 BCE the armies of the Median Empire and Lydia
met on the river Halys in Anatolia, and during
the ensuing battle there was the terror
on the skies, a solar eclipse, driving the terrified
armies to cease to fight; a peace was made
to last (until rising Persia conquered both).
Thales of Miletus, it was claimed, had
predicted the eclipse, enough to put him
(together with his claim that all was made
of water) as the first of the natural philosophers
at the beginning of Occidental science
(even when Diogenes Laertios made
him a Phoenician who had studied
in Egypt and Mesopotamia).
Truth, as usual, is something else when it
comes to what really took place; a prediction,
perhaps, but not down to the exact date; assuming
that the eclipse and the battle even took place
on the same date; by the time history is written
down, oral memory might combine into a one
story what was separate. Thales, eclipse, armies
clashing - perhaps they never intertwined.
Perhaps politics just took due course after feast
had been laid for birds and wild beasts,
the corpse-strewn battlefield, and eclipse
came when birds had feasted, or before,
seen by eyes soon picked by beaks.
06.04.2024
#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry #Verse Verse
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