Nicias

But just as everything was prepared for this and none of the enemy were on the watch, since they did not expect the move at all, there came an eclipse of the moon by night. This was a great terror to Nicias and all those who were ignorant or superstitious enough to quake at such a sight. The obscuration of the sun towards the end of the month was already understood, even by the common folk as caused somehow or other by the moon;

but what what it was that the moon encountered, and how, being at the full, she should on a sudden lose her light and emit all sorts of colors, this was no easy thing to comprehend.

The first man to put in writing the clearest and boldest of all doctrines about the changing phases of the moon was Anaxagoras. But he was no ancient authority, nor was his doctrine in high repute. It was still under seal of secrecy, and made its way slowly among a few only, who received it with a certain caution rather than with implicit confidence.

Men could not abide the natural philosophers and visionaries, as they were then called, for that they reduced the divine agency down to irrational causes, blind forces, and necessary incidents. Even Protagoras had to go into exile,[*](Not far from 411 B.C.) Anaxagoras was with difficulty rescued from imprisonment by Pericles,[*](About 432 B.C. See Plut. Per. 32.3.) and Socrates, though he had nothing whatever to do with such matters, nevertheless lost his life[*](In the spring of 399 B.C.) because of philosophy.

It was not until later times that the radiant repute of Plato, because of the life the man led, and because he subjected the compulsions of the physical world to divine and more sovereign principles, took away the obloquy of such doctrines as these, and gave their science free course among all men. At any rate, his friend Dion, although the moon suffered an eclipse at the time when he was about to set out from Zacynthus on his voyage against Dionysius, was in no wise disturbed, but put to sea, landed at Syracuse, and drove out the tyrant.[*](In 357 B.C. See Plut. Dion 24.)