Note 668 — Chapter LXXIX · FROM THE FOUNDATION OF MESSENE AND MEGALOPOLIS TO THE DEATH OF PELOPIDAS. (continued 2)

Diodor. (xv, 78) places in one and the same year both,—1. The maritime project of Epaminondas, including his recommendation of it, the equipment of the fleet, and the actual expedition. 2. The expedition of Pelopidas into Thessaly, with its immediate consequences.—He mentions the former of the two first, but he places both in the first year of Olympiad 104, the year in which Timokrates was archon at Athens; that is, from Midsummer 364 to Midsummer 363 B.C. He passes immediately from the maritime expedition into an allusion to the battle of Mantinea, which (he says) proved fatal to Epaminondas and hindered him from following up his ideas of maritime activity.

The battle of Mantinea took place in June or July 362 B.C. The maritime expedition, immediately preceding that battle, would therefore naturally take place in the summer of 363 B.C.; the year 364 B.C. having been occupied in the requisite naval equipments.

I incline to think that the march of Pelopidas into Thessaly also took place during 363 B.C., and that his death thus occurred while Epaminondas was absent on shipboard. A probable reason is thus supplied why the second Theban army which went to avenge Pelopidas, was commanded, not by his friend and colleague Epaminondas, but by other generals. Had Epaminondas been then at home, this would hardly have been.

The eclipse of the sun, which both Plutarch and Diodorus mention to have immediately preceded the out-march of Pelopidas, does not seem to have been as yet certainly identified. Dodwell, on the authority of an astronomical friend, places it on the 13th of June, 364 B.C., at five o’clock in the morning. On the other hand, Calvisius places it on the 13th of July in the same Julian year, at a quarter before eleven o’clock in the day (see L’Art de Vérifier les Dates, tom. i, p. 257). We may remark, that the day named by Dodwell (as he himself admits) would not fall within the Olympic year 364-363 B.C., but during the months preceding the commencement of that year. Moreover Dodwell speaks as if there were no other months in the year, except June, July, and August, fit for military expeditions; an hypothesis not reasonable to admit.

Sievers and Dr. Thirlwall both accept the eclipse mentioned by Dodwell, as marking the time when the expedition of Pelopidas commenced—June 364 B.C. But against this, Mr. Clinton takes no notice of it in his tables; which seems to show that he was not satisfied as to the exactness of Dodwell’s statement or the chronological identity. If it should turn out, on farther astronomical calculations, that there occurred no eclipse of the sun in the year 363 B.C., visible at Thebes,—I should then fix upon the eclipse mentioned by Calvisius (13 July 364 B.C.) as identifying the time of the expedition of Pelopidas; which would, on that supposition, precede by eight or nine months the commencement of the transmarine cruise of Epaminondas. The eclipse mentioned by Calvisius is preferable to that mentioned by Dodwell, because it falls within the Olympic year indicated by Diodorus.

But it appears to me that farther astronomical information is here required.