Latin Eclipse! PLINY: "Naturalis Historia" (Book II, 56-57)

Latin and Astronomy are such needed fundamentals of any classicalist! Thanks from Pliny, we are able to experience an eclipse in Latin: 

"⁵⁶Defectus CCXXIII mensibus redire in suos orbes certum est, solis defectus non nisi novissima primare fieri luna, quod vocant coitum, lunae autem non nisi plena, semperque citra quam proxime fuerint; omnibus autem annis fieri utriusque sideris defectus statis diebus horisque sub terra nec tamen, cum superne fiant, ubique cerni, aliquando propter nubila, saepius globo terrae obstante convexitatibus mundi.

⁵⁷Intra ducentos annos Hipparchi sagacitate compertum est et lunae defectum aliquando quinto mesne a priore fieri, solis vero septimo, eundem bis in XXX diebus super terras occultari, sed ab aliis hoc cerni, quaeque sunt in hoc miraculo maxime mira, cum conveniat umbra terrae lunam heetari, nunc ab occasus parte hoc ei accidere, nunc ab exortus, quanam ratione, cum solis exortu umbrae illa hebetatrix sub terra esse debeat, semel iam acciderit ut in occasu lunae deficeret utroque super terram conspicuo sidere. Nam ut XV diebus utrumque sidus quaereretur, et nostro aevo accidit imperatoribus Vespasianis patre III. filio consulibus."

Pliny, "Natural History", II, 56-57, Loeb Classical Library, v.330.

"It is certain that eclipses recur in cycles of 223 months - eclipses of the sun only when the moon is in her last or first phase (this is called their 'conjunction'), eclipses of the moon only at full moon - and always within the period of their last occurrence; but that yearly at fixed days and hours eclipses of either star occur below the earth, and that even when they occur above the earth they are not visible everywhere, sometimes owing to clouds, more often because the earth's globe stands in the way of the world's curvature.

"Less than 200 years ago the penetration of Hipparchus discovered that an eclipse of the moon also sometimes occurs four months after the one before and  an eclipse of the sun six months, and that the latter when above earth is hidden twice in thirty days, but that this eclipse is visible to different nations, and - the most remarkable features of this remarkable occurrence - that when it comes about that the moon is obscured by the shadow of the earth, this sometimes happens to it from the west side and sometimes from the east; and he also discovered for what exact reason, although the shadow causing the eclipse must from sunrise onward be below the earth, it happened once in the past that the moon was eclipsed in the west while both luminaries were visible above the earth. For the eclipse of both sun and moon within 15 days of each other has occurred even in our time, in the year of the third consulship of the elder Emperor Vespasian and the second consulship of the younger."