About Early Writings on Meteorites

In 405 B.C., Lysander won his great victory over the Althenian fleet at Aegospotami in Thrace, and Plutarch writes, in his life of Lysander, that a stone which fell from the heavens a short time before the battle was regarded by many as a portent predicting the dreadful slaughter that was to ensue. At the time Plutarch wrote (circa 150 A.D.) this stone could still be seen at Aegospotami, where it was regarded with great veneration by the Chersonites. The Greek philosopher Anaxagorus is said to have predicted the fall of this meteorite, as he had observed certain pertur-bations in the movements of the heavenly bodies. As Anaxagorus died in 428 B.C., his prediction must have long antedated the fall of the meteorite.

A detail given in one of the early recitals might possibly have constituted the basis of a prediction by some contemporary physicist. In the latter part of his account of the phenomenon Plutarch quotes from a Treatise on Religion, by a certain Daimachus, to the effect that, for seventy-five days before the fall of the meteorite, a vast fiery body was seen in the heavens, in appearance "like a flaming cloud. This well describes the appearance of a great comet, and might be regarded as significant when we consider the latest modern theory of the origin of meteors, according to which these bodies are detached particles of a cometary aggregation. Of this meteoric mass said to have fallen at Aegospotami, Pliny states that it was as large as a wagon and of a dusky hue, adding that a brilliant comet was visible at the time of its fall. Regarding the assertion that Anaxagorus predicted the occurrence, Pliny declares that this prediction, if true, was a greater miracle than the fall of the meteor. A portion of the stone was preserved as a venerated relic in the town of Potidaea.

The site of the city of Seleucia is said to have been determined by the fallof an aerolite, and this stone is figured on some of the coins of the Seleucidae, a thunderbolt appearing in its stead on other coins.

In the Temple of Diana, at Ephesus, there was a stone partly fashioned into the conventional form of the Ephesian Diana. This, it was asserted, had fallen down from the Heavens. The stone is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (xix. 35), where we read that the city of the Ephesians was a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter." In this text the word "Image" has been supplied by the translators, a more literal rendering being "that which fell down from the sky." This clearly shows that the stone only faintly indicated the human form.

Tacitus says of the stone sacred to the Astarte (or Aphrodite) of Paphos, that it was a symbol of the goddess, not a human effigy, since it was an obscurely formed cone. In his life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus, also, mentions this stone and tells us that when Apollonius visited Paphos, he admired there "the famous symbolic figure of Aphrodite." These "living stones" were often covered with ornaments and vestments, and it has been conjectured that these adornments were, in some cases, changed so as to accrod with the garments appropriate to certain special festivals of the respective gods.

The colossal emerald of the temple of Melkarth at Tyre is designated in the fragments of Sanchoniathon as an or star fallen from heaven. It was said to have been raised up by Astarte, and this last myth is represented on the silver coins of Marium in Cyprus. Here the radiance and splendor of the object suggested a stellar or celestial origin, and we see the same tendency at work in the application of the name-cerauniae (thunder-stones) to certain brilliant gems by Pliny.

Virgil seems to confound with thunder the detonation of a bolide, followed by a train of light, and he seems also to confound the bolide itself with a lightning flash, for he says that its fall diffused a sulphurous vapor far and wide. Seneca was more critical, for he regarded the fact of thunder sometimes accompanying the fall of a meteorite as merely a coincidence.

Although, in the absence of exact and trustworthy contemporaneous accounts of the fall of these sacred stones, we cannot be absolutely certain that they were meteorites, the testimony in several cases is sufficient to render this almost certain, while in many other cases there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the tradition. The choice of some of the batyli, however, was determined by their form alone, to which was ascribed a religious significance, not exactly compatible with our religious ideas of to-day but quite easily understood when we remember that the divine creative energy was concretely represented in ancient times by many symbols offensive to our sense of propriety.