SHOOTING STARS. 207 



earth by the violence of the rotation (Plut., De Plac. Philos.^ 

 iii., 13). He considers that the whole heavens may be conti- 

 posed of stones (Plato, De Legib., xii., p. 967). The stony 

 solid bodies are made to glow by the fiery ether, so that they 

 reflect the hght communicated to them by the ether. Lower 

 than the Moon, and still between her and the Earth, there 

 move, says Anaxagoras, according to Theophrastus (Stobeeus, 

 Eclog. Phijs., lib. i., p. 560), yet other dark bodies, which 

 can also produce eclipses of the Moon (Diog. Laert,, ii., 12 ; 

 Origenes, Philoso'phum, cap. viii.). Diogenes of Apollonia, 

 who, if he is not a disciple of Anaximenes,=^ still probably 

 belongs to an epoch between Anaxagoras and Democritus, 

 expresses himself still more distinctly as to the structure of 

 the world, and, as it were, more moved by the impression of 

 the great fall of aerolites. According to him, as I have al- 

 ready mentioned, " invisible (dark) masses of stone move with 

 the visible stars, and remain, on that account, unknown. The 

 former sometimes fall upon the earth, and are extinguished, 

 as happened with the stony star which fell near ^Egos Po- 

 tamos." (Stob., Eclog., p' 508. )t 



The " opinion of some physicists" as to fiery meteors (fall- 

 ing stars and aerolites), which Plutarch develops in detail in 

 the life of Lysander (cap. xii.), is precisely that of the Cre-. 

 tan Diogenes. " Falling stars," it is said there, " are not 

 ejections and waste of the ethereal fire, which, when they 

 enter our atmosphere, are extinguished after their ignition ; 

 they are much rather the off-shoots of celestial bodies, of such 

 a nature that, by a slackening of the revolution, they are shot 



* Brandis, GescJi. der Griechisch-Roin. Philos^phie, toni. i., p. 272- 

 277, agaiust Schleiermacher, in the Abhandl. der Berl. Akad. tVuni the 

 year 1804-1811 (Berl., 181.5), p. 79-124. 



t When Stobfeus, in the same passage ( Eclog. Phys., p. 508), ascribes 

 to the Apollonian that he had called the stars pumice-sion^-like bodies 

 (therefore porous stones), the occasion for this term might have been 

 the idea so generally diffused in antiquity, that all celestiai bodies wei'e 

 nourished by moist exhalations. The Sun gives back again what is 

 absorbed. (x\ristot., Meteorol., ed. Ideler, torn, i., p. 509; Seneca, Nat 

 Qmcss^., lib. iv., 2.) The pumice-stone-like cosmical bodies have their 

 peculiar exhalations, " These, which can not be seen so long as they 

 wander round in the celestial space, are stones; they ignite and ar« 

 extinguished again when they fall to the eai'th." (Plut., Z>e P/ac. 

 Philos., ii., 13.) Pliny considers the fall of meteoric stones as frequent 

 (Plinius, i., 59) : " Decidere tamen crebro, non erit dubium." He also 

 knew that the fall in clear air produced aloud noise (ii., 43). The ap- 

 parently analogous passage in Seneca, in which he mentions Anaxime« 

 nes {Nat. Qucest., lib. ii., 17), refers probably to the thunder in a 

 ttorm-clor.d 



