Note 3 — Chapter XXVI
Reading edition
If any one should feel astonished at our insisting not only upon the exact day, but the very hour, when certain things occurred, let him or her remember that the calculation of eclipses, passing backward from one to another (as though ascending the steps of a staircase), reaches and fixes the date—yes, the precise minute of day—when incidents took place between which and us the broad haze of twice a thousand years is interposed.