3. By far the most remarkable statement that Herodotos makes about Thales is that he foretold the eclipse of the sun which put an end to the war between the Lydians and the Medes.[60] Now, we may be sure that he was quite ignorant of the true cause of eclipses. Anaximander and his successors certainly were so,[61] and it is incredible that the right explanation should once have been given and then forgotten so soon. Even supposing, however, Thales had known the cause of eclipses, no one can believe that such scraps of elementary geometry as he picked up in Egypt would enable him to calculate one from the elements of the moon’s path. Yet the evidence for the prediction is too strong to be rejected off-hand. The testimony of Herodotos to an event which must have happened about a hundred years before his own birth may, perhaps, be deemed insufficient; but that of Xenophanes is a very different matter, and it is this we have really to deal with.[62] According to Theophrastos, Xenophanes was a disciple of Anaximander, and he may quite well have seen and spoken with Thales. In any case, he must have known scores of people who were able to remember what happened, and he had no conceivable interest in misrepresenting it. The prediction of the eclipse is really better attested than any other fact about Thales whatsoever, and the evidence for it is about as strong as for anything that happened in the early part of the sixth century B.C. Footnote 60: Herod. i. 74. Footnote 61: For the theories held by Anaximander and Herakleitos, see _infra_, §§ 19, 71. Footnote 62: Diog. i. 23, δοκεῖ δὲ κατά τινας πρῶτος ἀστρολογῆσαι καὶ ἡλιακὰς ἐκλείψεις καὶ τροπὰς προειπεῖν, ὥς φησιν Εὔδημος ἐν τῇ περὶ τῶν ἀστρολογουμένων ἱστορίᾳ, ὅθεν αὐτὸν καὶ Ξενοφάνης καὶ Ἡρόδοτος θαυμάζει.