Aglaonice

Aglaonice

Aglaonice or Aganice of Thessaly (Ancient Greek: Ἀγλαονίκη, Aglaoníkē, compound of αγλαὸς (aglaòs) "luminous" and νίκη (nikē) "victory") was a Greek astronomer and thaumaturge of the 2nd or 1st century BC. She is mentioned in the writings of Plutarch and in the scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes as a female astronomer and as the daughter of Hegetor (or Hegemon) of Thessaly. She was regarded as a sorceress for her (self-proclaimed) ability to 'make the moon disappear from the sky' (καθαιρεῖν τὴν σελήνην : kathaireĩn tìn selénen) which has been taken – first by Plutarch and subsequently by modern astronomers – to mean that she could predict the time and general area where a lunar eclipse would occur. Plutarch wrote that she was "thoroughly acquainted with the periods of the full moon when it is subject to eclipse, and, knowing beforehand the time when the moon was due to be overtaken by the earth's shadow, imposed upon the women, and made them all believe that she was drawing down the moon." Peter Bicknell notes that in most lunar eclipses the Moon does not disappear completely, but simply takes on a reddish hue. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Aglaonice has received more than 117,590 page views. Her biography is available in 33 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 31 in 2019). Aglaonice is the 6,080th most popular politician (up from 11,869th in 2019), the 349th most popular biography from Greece (up from 639th in 2019) and the 156th most popular Greek Politician.