Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/150

 by her magic songs she had not only the power to darken the moon, but to oblige it to descend upon the earth.

The Greeks, and the inhabitants of Asia Minor, stood in excessive awe of eclipses. According to Herodotus, in the year 610 B. C., while a battle was raging between the Lydians and the Medes, an eclipse of the sun, predicted by Phales of Millet, occurred. It not only put an end to the fight, but the contending parties hastened to make peace, cementing the treaty by the marriage of Aryenis to Astyages.

If we now turn to America, we find that the Peruvians, Mexicans, and others, were terrified by the phenomenon. The Peruvians particularly dreaded the eclipse of the moon; they imagined that Luna was suffering from one of the mysterious diseases to which she was supposed to be subject, and feared that the queen of night might burst open and fall upon them. To avoid such a terrible calamity, and awaken her from her lethargy, they would sound loud instruments, shout at the top of their voices, and beat the dogs to make them howl. This custom of making a racket during an eclipse still obtains all over Peru, even in Lima.

The Mexicans imagined that eclipses occurred