Did Alexander stage the date of the battle at Gaugamela?

[marcus]

Marcus,

I really don't appreciate this; Apollo is my namesake (Φοιβος), not Fear (Φοβος).

Oops! mea culpa. I do apologise.

That's what happens when you are in a hurry!

ATB

[marcus]

Marcus my good man, did you type up that quote from Curtius or lift it from an online version?

For the bloody life of me, I can't find my copy and if I've lent it, I can't remember who to!

An online English version would be a marvellous temporary solution.

It'll be in this house somewhere....

I copied it from my paper and ink version, for the very reason that I have never been able to get my hands on an online version. It's annoying! Maybe one day I'll sit down and type up the entire work, just so I have it electronically (not! )

ATB

[marcus]

[However, more to the point is that there is no mention of the effect of the eclipse on the Persians; nor is there any evidence that Alexander knew it was going to happen, and so no indication that he could have timed the battle to coincide with the eclipse. (Anyway, the battle actually happened a few days after the eclipse, so it doesn't really work as a theory for that reason.)

No, evidence for the effect on the Persians is absent. That because very little - near enough to none - of the evidence left to us is interested in either the Persians or what they thought. Outside of, that is, the view (entirely Hellenic) of them being effeminate, degraded and useless in war. What evidence we do have comes from the Babylonian "Astronomical Diaries" and Jona Lendering's writings on them, linked above, should be read by anyone interested in this battle. The Iranians (Persians and Medes) in this battle well knew what the eclipse and the surrounding astronomical phenomena portended.

Indeed.

ATB