[a. iiaevey] aerolites AND RELIGION 7S 



symbols. In the height of summer, the stone was in like manner carried 

 to a country seat, the roads being strewn with gold-dust on its path. 

 Soon, the emperor who, by the way, married and divorced three wives 

 in as many years, thought the god would be [better pleased if he were 

 mated, too, so to his fane he brought the Palladium, which had been 

 from the dawn of Roman liistory concealed from every eye. The fancy 

 did not last long, he thought the Palladium too martial and severe in 

 temper, and he sent to ( Jarthage for the equally ])rehistoric Ourania (Virgo 

 Ca'lestis), which Dido set up there when she first measured olf its liberties 

 with her famous strips of ox-hide. It is not stated how this escaped 

 wlien Scipio razed the city, and, perhaps, it was an image, not a stone. 

 With his rouged cheeks and blackened eyes or eye-lashes, with his strange 

 vesture and barbaric orgies, the soldiers soon tired of him, and when the 

 inside ring had matters well jn-epared, an end Avas put to this farce and 

 to the life of the acolyte emperor (the priest, perhaps, of a debased 

 Zoroastrian or Mithraite creed) at or about the time of his eighteenth 

 birthday. Exit from history the stone he worshipped, with its pittings, 

 crust, markings and other unmistakable characteristics of aerolites. 



To complete this paper without a reference to the significance of the 

 noise w^iich accompanies the meteors would be improper. Like thunder, 

 it was the voice of the gods. In the well known passage in Livy which 

 recounts how stones fell on the Alban mount, in the reign of Tullus Hos- 

 tilius, in a swirl like a gust of hail (coju/lobati), there is an interpretation 

 of the voices of the explosion — " Neglect not the Avorship of your local 

 deities." Something should Ije said, too, of the talismanic properties 

 attril)uted to weapons made from meteorites, such as the scimetar of 

 Attila, which may have been made from meteoric iron, and the poiiiard 

 of Jehangir, which certainly was. 



The latest notable instance of a connection between aerolites and 

 religion is in 1492, when, at Ensisheim, Maximilian fought a battle after 

 a shower of meteors, and won it. The largest of the aerolites w^as long 

 preserved in the church there, and Maximilian, subsequently negotiating 

 with the Turks, referred to this event as a seal of the divine favour. 



