Less than a century after Bodin we find Bayle protesting against this superstition, which appeared singular indeed to a man so enlightened as he who has been compared to Montesquieu. In his Pensées sur la Comète, in which so much good sense is blended with so much irony, Bayle ingeniously shows with what skill popular credulity was turned to account, and how the same comet was made to subserve several ends. 'Augustus,' he says, 'from policy, was well pleased that the people should believe it to be the soul of Cæsar; because it was a great advantage for his party to have it believed that they were pursuing the murderers of a man who was then amongst the gods. For this reason he caused a temple to be built to this comet, and publicly declared that he looked upon it as a very auspicious omen. . . . Those who were still republican at heart said, on the contrary, that the gods testified by it their displeasure that the liberators of their country were not supported.'

In the Natural History of Pliny we find several passages attesting the terrible significance attached to comets by the ancients. A comet,' he observes, 'is ordinarily a very fearful star; it announces no small effusion of blood. We have seen an example of this during the civil commotion in the consulate of Octavius.' This refers to the comet which appeared B.C. 86. The following alludes to the comet of B.C. 48, and perhaps no less to the apparition of remarkable bolides and Aurora Boreales: 'We have, in the war between Cæsar and Pompey, an example of the terrible effects which follow the apparition of a comet. Towards the commencement of this war the darkest nights were made light, according to Lucan, by unknown stars; the heavens appeared on fire, burning torches traversed in all directions the depths of space; the comet, that fearful star, which overthrows the powers of the earth, showed its terrible locks.'

Virgil, at the end of the first Georgic, expresses in his harmonious language all the horror caused in the superstitious minds of the vulgar by the prodigies so skilfully turned to account by politicians and sceptics. After speaking of the prognostics which may be drawn from the aspect of the setting sun in reference to the weather, he adds:

'Who dares to call the sun deceiver? He even forewarns often that hidden tumults are at hand, and that treachery and secret wars are swelling to a head. He also pitied Rome at Cæsar's death, when he covered his bright head with murky iron hue, and the impious age feared eternal night; though at that time the earth too, and ocean's plains, ill-omened dogs, and presaging birds, gave ominous signs. How often have we seen Etna from its burst furnaces boil over in waves on the lands of the Cyclops and shoot up globes of flame and molten rocks! Germany heard a clashing of arms over all the sky; the Alps trembled with unwonted earthquakes. A mighty voice, too, was commonly heard through all the silent groves, and spectres strangely pale were seen under the cloud of night; and the very cattle (Oh horrible!) spoke; rivers stopped their courses, the earth yawned wide; the mourning ivory weeps in the temples, and the brazen statues sweat. Eridanus, king of rivers, overflowed, whirling in mad eddy whole woods along, and bore away the herds with their stalls over all the plains. Nor at the same time did either the fibres fail to appear threatening in the baleful entrails, or blood to flow from the wells, and cities to resound aloud with wolves howling by night. Never did more lightnings fall from a serene sky nor direful comets so often blaze.' *

All these prodigies, this mixture of facts natural and true, and the whimsical beliefs of popular credulity, are for the poet

* Georgic, i. 463–488.

testimonies of the anger and vengeance of the gods, forerunners of fresh disasters, the precursors of that battle of Philippi in which Roman armies inflamed by civil discord are about to encounter and shed each other's blood. Nature acts in unison with man, and her manifestations are a reflex of his fury. Everything, moreover, concurs to render the divine intervention striking; earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and inundations. The comets and bolides with which Virgil concludes his enumeration appear to be the supreme signs of this menacing intervention:

Non alias cœlo ceciderunt plura sereno

Fulgura; nec diri toties arsere cometa.

Later on, comets were not only presages: they became pretexts for the persecutions of imperial tyranny. Thus, Tacitus says, in regard to the comet of the year 64: 'At the close of this year people discoursed only of prodigies, the forerunners of approaching calamities; of thunderbolts more frequent than at any other epoch, and of the apparition of a comet, a kind of presage that Nero always expiated with illustrious blood.' Several comets, in fact, appeared during the reign of this monster, and it is concerning one of them that Seneca had the audacity to say, 'that having appeared in the reign of Nero, it has removed infamy from comets.' It does not seem, however-and we shall find other proofs of it later on that the author of the Quæstiones Naturales shared the prevailing prejudices on the subject of comets. He does not deny that they cause disasters, but he manifestly inclines towards a physical explanation of these phenomena. Speaking of the comet of the year 62, he observes: The comet which appeared under the consulate of Paterculus and Vopiscus has been attended with the consequences that Aristotle and Theophrastus have attributed to this kind of star. Everywhere

เ

there have been violent and continual storms: in Achaia and Macedonia several towns have been overthrown by earthquakes.'

Let us conclude what more we have to say of the superstitious beliefs of the ancients concerning comets with the mention of two or three famous apparitions; they will suffice to show that from the most remote antiquity down to the Middle Ages, from the erroneous ideas of the pagans to those of Christian nations, during this long dark night of history we pass without interruption or sensible modification.

In the year 69, according to Josephus, several prodigies announced the destruction of Jerusalem. 'Amongst other warnings, a comet, one of the kind called Xiphias, because their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above the city for the space of a whole year.'

this

Pingré quotes, in reference to the comet of the year 79, curious passage from Dion Cassius, which proves that there were esprits forts even amongst the Roman emperors: 'Several prodigies preceded the death of Vespasian; a comet was for a long time visible; the tomb of Augustus opened of itself. When the physicians reproved the Emperor Vespasian for continuing to live as usual and attend to the business of the state, although attacked by a serious malady, he replied, "It is fitting that an emperor should die standing." Perceiving some courtiers conversing together in a low tone of voice about the comet, "This hairy star," he remarked, "does not concern me; it menaces rather the King of the Parthians, for he is hairy and I am bald." Feeling his end approach, "I think," said he, "that I am becoming a god."'

The death of the Emperor Constantine was announced by the comet of the year 336.

In the year 400 the misfortunes with which Gainas menaced Constantinople were so great, say the historians Socrates and

Sozomenes, that they were announced by the most terrible comet mentioned in history; it shone above the city, and reached from the highest heavens to the earth. The same comet was also regarded as the presage of a plague which broke out about the same time.

Lastly, the invasions of barbarians, at a time when moral disorder and anarchy of ideas were in unison with the disorganisation of the Empire, could not fail to be signalised by various prodigies, birds of evil augury, frequent thunderbolts, monstrous hailstones, fires, and likewise apparitions of comets, 'that spectacle which the earth has never seen with impunity.' In the Middle Ages, therefore, we shall find that beliefs in the supernatural and the intervention of the gods in human affairs are further strengthened and increased by the mysticism which the ascendency of religious ideas tended to foster in the minds of the people.