On the following day Iris calls the winds to the pyre of Patroclus (I. xxiii. 212):—
They with rushing sound rose and before them drove the
hurrying clouds.
So the eclipse of the sun takes place in a natural manner, when the moon on its passage by it goes under it perpendicularly and is darkened. This he seems to have known. For he said before that Odysseus was about to come (O. xiv. 162):—
As the old moon wanes, and the new is born;—
that is, when the month ends and begins, the sun being conjoined with the moon at the time of his coming. The seer says to the suitors (O. xiv. 353):—
Ah, wretched men, what woe is this ye suffer, shrouded in
night are your heads and your faces and knees, and kindled is
the voice of wailing and the path is full of phantoms and full
is the court, the shadows of men hasting hellwards beneath the
gloom, and the sun is perished out of heaven, and an evil mist
has overspread the world.
He closely observed the nature of the winds, how they arise from the moist element. For the water transformed goes into air. The wind is air in motion. This he shows in very many places, and where he says (O. v. 478):—
The force of the wet winds blew,—
he arranged the order of their series (O. v. 295):—
The East wind and the South wind clashed and the stormy West
and the North that is born in the bright air, welling onwards
a great wave.