ABSTRACT
The currency of the claim – which has led, for example, to the speculation that Thales was like a “lucky charlatan who manipulates Babylonian records” – owes much to the fact that it occurs in Herodotus. It probably ought to be set aside. Thales of Miletus had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year in which the change did indeed happen. Aristarchus of Samos was a professional astronomer who dealt in depth with the moon and its light in his only surviving work, the ambitious De magnitudinibus et distantiis solis et lunae, so he speaks with rare expertise when he remarks that Thales made an important discovery when he identified the circumstances of the eclipse. According to Panchenko, Thales might well have predicted at least one eclipse because the Ionians were present in many locations ranging from the Nile delta to the northern shores of the Black Sea.
