A Tuesday Afternoon in 585 B.C.E.

The year was 585 BC. By all accounts, the month was May, and the day the twenty-eighth. Whether or not it was a Tuesday, like it will be this year, is inconsequential. But what is consequential is the time and location; twelve hours and fourteen minutes in the PM, and, unfortunately not accurately approximated, “somewhere” along the Kizilirmak River. This is going to be tricky.

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I’m currently sitting at home in my bathrobe, staring at my dark and empty television set. A storm of immense fortitude had swept through my small town of Aurora, Indiana, and it wasn't until after the blackout that I noticed my lack of non-electrical pastimes. I happened to be mid-shower during this incident, hence the robe.

Although, I do own some books. These days I haven’t the affinity for fiction or fantastical things aside from those within my own life, so my assortment of encyclopedias, biographies and history books are where my collection really shines. My shelf holds at least thirty books, but I’ve read just about all of them. However, there is one I keep putting off, and if I’m going to sit here anyway, I might as well pick that one.

I chose a birthday gift from four years prior, a book titled “Phenomenal: The Greatest Celestial Events that Shaped History.” It had been collecting dust ever since its unwrapping, and something about its horizontal station on my bookshelf seemed particularly inviting on this stormy night. I’m certainly not going to read the whole book, so I opened blindly to the middle pages: “Chapter 18: Battle of the Eclipse, and the War for Anatolia.” The pages still smelt of fresh manufactured adhesive.

On the off chance you’re unfamiliar with this blisteringly random moment in history, the Battle of the Eclipse refers specifically to the war between the ancient kingdoms of Lydia and Media, two bordering nations within the region of Anatolia, which is now considered Asia-minor; specifically Turkey and Iraq. According to the book, the two kingdoms, once allies, were amidst six bloody, gruesome years of war with each other…until abruptly coming to a peace treaty one miraculous afternoon in May, possibly a Tuesday, in the year 585 BC after witnessing a solar eclipse.

Needless to say, it seemed incredible, and I had to see it for myself. So, I snapped the book closed, threw off my bathrobe, and proceeded to pack a picnic basket. I also got dressed.

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Some might call it a seance, and I suppose it isn’t unlike that, especially during a blackout. Tonight, I call it a candle-lit meditation session at nine p.m. Mind you, the year is 2024, so I’m looking at, roughly, a 2,609-year journey, to a place I’ve never been, that’s on the other side of the world, and will also be war-torn upon my arrival. I own no armor or weapons other than pepper-spray, so my best chance at escaping any ill-timed encounter will be an offering of cheese and crackers, and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. So, here I am, sitting on my apartment floor with a woven basket in my lap, wearing sunglasses, surrounded by four candles; two pine scented, one ocean breeze, and the other a half used lilac.

In the movies you’ll see a sports car flying at eighty-eight miles an hour, a phone booth sliding through a temporal tube, or a steamy naked man in an alleyway. In reality, it’s more like a timelapse of images where objects and people zoom by in the blink of an eye. My television set flashes on and off, showing hundreds of movies in reverse in milliseconds, until disappearing all together. Semblances of my furniture, myself, and even past tenants move around me until my building, my town, the trees, the roads and the rivers are unrecognizable. Suddenly I’m across the globe seeing the same thing happen to cities and villages, and watching flowers turn back into seeds. And just as the reversal of the sun and moon start to give me a headache, I’m there.

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The Kizilirmak River Valley is much like any other, but somehow calmer and more polite. It meanders more than average, sure, but not annoyingly so, and despite being two thousand years younger, its shores have just as many townships as it does in the present, which is quite few. The land is arid with spotted brush, and projects a unique layered geology over its years of water flow.

Birkenstocks, while aesthetically poignant, were not the move for indefinite hiking. As I mentioned before, the exact location of the battle had not been determined, so I was hoping that walking along the riverbed, and blind luck, would find me at the battle…and I wasn’t wrong. Maybe a mile or two along my journey I started to hear faint screams and the roars of war; lovely stuff. Each hilltop I crossed now came with a cumulative sense of worry that a bloodthirsty soldier may be waiting on the other side, but they never were. I did, however, pass a few locals who, although scurrying for cover from the nearby battle, had no issue stopping dead in their tracks to look me up and down. Perhaps my AirPods were too much.

At long last, I summited one of the small mountains that had a vast overlook, and across the river I saw them; the Lydians and Medes fighting for their lives. Even with the naked eye I could see the blood stains in the dirt, and hear their cries for mercy…time for my picnic.

I unfurled my falsa blanket and laid it flat, using my basket and three nearby stones to weigh it down. A cry of agony came so clearly up the mountainside it almost made me drop my bottle of wine, which had aged wonderfully from the journey (the cheese had molded over). My binoculars were unchanged, thankfully, and so was my corkscrew. So, I sat down, popped the wine and proceeded to view the battle from afar. It was half past eleven, which gave me forty-five minutes until the eclipse.

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My binoculars allowed me a sharper view of the battle, but nothing so detailed I would be considered a psychopath for viewing them as an audience. I’ll be honest, I found myself involuntarily gasping, letting out a few Oh My’s, and fearfully closing my eyes on about a dozen occasions. I should also point out that I wasn’t the only person watching. Locals had also gathered to witness the fate of their people, and had even asked to borrow my binoculars once or twice. The things we saw across the river would haunt you, your parents, your friends' uncle, and even your cat. It was nightmarish, even in broad daylight…and then the light went out.

My binoculars became useless as the moon covered the battlefield in a red dawn. I threw on my solar-viewing glasses and stood with excitement while the locals beside me dove for cover from God’s wrath. I had never actually seen a solar eclipse before, and neither had the soldiers. Across the river, the fighting ceased instantaneously. It was silent. Their swords stopped clashing, their battlecries disappeared. I could see them all turn and look up at the eclipse; shimmering like a ring of fire. Some men fell to their knees to pray. Many removed their helmets and dropped their shields. Only moments ago had they been enemies of differing beliefs, but now they were all the same; just men gazing up at the sky. We all stood together in awe, and my eyes welled with tears.

The moon carried on with its path and released daylight back onto the earth. The two armies continued to stand motionless for quite some time, myself included, before slowly retreating back behind their lines, packed up, and went home. I stayed to watch until I was the last person in the valley.

According to the book, it stated that the two nations “unanimously agreed to cease fighting and enter negotiations for peace.” Despite their issues, they both believed that the eclipse was a bad omen from the gods, which, if you had seen that battle, you’d tend to agree with. I thought maybe I’d stick around to inform the locals they weren’t being smote, but I figured I’d skip ahead. Perhaps the storm has passed back home in Indiana.