I had always assumed that an eclipse of the sun did actually take place on the 21st of June 528 AD at precisely 12:03 in the afternoon. On editing this particular chapter I thought to actually look it up and discovered that no such eclipse occurred. I made some inquiries put could not place the blame on any erroneous entries in old almanacs or other references. It seems Mark Twain invented it himself. He is not the first to use this devise, though. He does give credit to "Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, ... as a saving trump once, on some savages, ..." in chapter 5.

Try to image the English countryside before it was the English countryside.  One can almost here someone call out "Oh! There's some lovely filth down here."

The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and customs existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in practice in that day also.