BOOK I 



IN this part of his Essay the author has grouped together a 

 variety of phenomena, some of which are meteorological (in the 

 modern sense of that word), and belong therefore to his class of 

 Sublimia, while others are astronomical, and would be properly 

 placed among his Caelestia. They all have reference to light in 

 some form, and doubtless for that reason were considered as a 

 series. Seneca, largely swayed by the opinions expressed in 

 Aristotle s Meteorologica, agrees with that philosopher in the 

 belief that the earth gives forth various kinds of exhalations, 

 among which some contain the seeds of fire. He thought that 

 high up in the air, among dry and hot elements, these fires may 

 be kindled by the sun s rays, and further, that when the atmo 

 sphere becomes violently disturbed its friction may give rise to 

 fires (9, 10, 39). 



With these ideas, which he held as established truths, it is 

 easy to understand that he should have regarded as extremely 

 foolish the notion that any of the lights which move rapidly 

 across the sky are of celestial origin. Had such been their 

 source, he felt sure that by this time there would have been none 

 left in the firmament ; yet although no night passes when some of 

 them may not be seen, each star in the sky is found to maintain 

 its place and its size. Hence he confidently concluded that the 

 meteors, which are seen at night, and sometimes even by day, 

 have their birth far below the stars, and are soon extinguished in 

 their course because they have no solid and abiding resting-place. 

 Single aerolites and even showers of stones had been recorded 

 in Roman literature as having fallen from heaven, but it had not 

 yet occurred to any observer to connect them with the shooting 

 stars which gleam across the nocturnal sky, and are now recog 

 nised to be due to meteorites of different sizes, entering our 

 atmosphere with planetary velocity, there breaking up with 

 varying luminosity, and remaining visible for shorter or longer 

 intervals of time. 



The author appears to have regarded as akin to these meteors 



321 Y 



