event. Cicero indeed tells us elsewhere[1] that Callus in his old age used to predict eclipses, a work which, no doubt, involved study and leisure. He would certainly have told us that Callus had predicted this particular eclipse, if he had heard of the prediction. It will also be observed that Cicero does not connect the eclipse with any particular battle.
Livy[2] is the first to give us the sensational story that appears still in our standard works on Roman history. Describing the day before the battle of Pydna, he tells us that it was after the end of the solstice. The actual solstice was on June 26, but the Romans reckoned it as lasting three days. His language therefore suggests a later date—I cannot say how much later than that of the eclipse of June 21. He also tells us that after the Roman camp had been fortified for the night C. Sulpicius Callus, military tribune of the second legion, who had been praetor the previous year, summoned the soldiers to a meeting with the consul's permission, where he predicted to them that in the coming night the Moon would be eclipsed from the second to the fourth hour, and that this was to be no more regarded as a portent than was the monthly waning of the Moon. When the eclipse took place at the predicted time, the Roman soldiers regarded his knowledge as almost divine, while the Macedonians regarded it as a prodigy announcing the fall of their king and the destruction of their race, and spent the night in shouting and howling until the eclipse was ended. On the next day, the 4th of September of the Roman calendar, so Livy tells us, the two armies fought the battle of Pydna.
I will not trouble you with later ancient writers.
Modern scholars have almost without exception accepted Livy's romantic story in spite of its disagree-
