PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 503 



/Hratores, observers of lightning, occupied themselves in inves- 

 tigating the direction of the lightning, with " drawing it down," 

 and " turning it aside."* They carefully distinguished 

 between flashes of lightning, from the higher regions of the 

 clouds, and those which Saturn, an Earth God,f caused to 

 ascend from below, and which were called Saturnine-terres- 

 trial lightning ; a distinction which modern physicists have 



The story formerly current in Germany, and reported on the testi- 

 mony of Father Angelo Cortenovis, that the tomb described by Varro, 

 of the hero of Clusium, Lars Porsena, ornamented with a bronze hat and 

 bronze pendant chains, was an apparatus for collecting atmospherical 

 electricity, or for conducting lightning (as were also, according to 

 Michaelis, the metal points on Solomon's temple) was related at a 

 time when men were inclined to attribute to the ancients the remains of 

 a supernaturally revealed primitive knowledge of physics, which was, how- 

 ever, soon again obscured. The most important notice of the relations 

 between lightning and conducting metals (which it was not difficult to 

 discover), appears to me to be that of Ctesias (Indica, cap. 4, p. 169, ed. 

 Lion; p. 248, ed. Baehr). "He had possessed, it is said, two iron 

 swords, presents from the King Artaxerxes Mnemon, and from Pary- 

 satis, the mother of the latter, which, when planted in the earth, 

 averted clouds, hail, arid strokes of lightning. He had himself seen the 

 results of this operation, for the king had twice made the experiment 

 before his eyes." The great attention paid by the Etruscans to the 

 meteorological processes of the atmosphere in all that differed froia the 

 ordinary course of natural phenomena, makes it certainly a cause for 

 regret that nothing has come down to us from the books of the Fulgura- 

 1-ores. The epochs of the appearance of great comets, of the fall of 

 meteoric stones, and of showers of falling stare, were, no doubt, recorded 

 in them, as in the more ancient Chinese annals made use of by Edouard 

 Biot. Creuzer (Symboltt und Mythologie der alien Vdlker, th. iii. 

 1842, s. 659) has endeavoured to prove that the natural features of 

 Etruria acted on the peculiar direction of mind of its inhabitants. A 

 " calling forth " of the lightning, which is ascribed to Prometheus, calls 

 to mind the strange pretended "drawing down" of lightning by the 

 Pulguratores. This operation consisted, however, in a mere conjura- 

 tion, which was probably not more efficacious than the skinned ass'i 

 head, supposed, in accordance with Etruscan religious usages, to have 

 the faculty of preserving against the danger of thunder storms. 



t Otfr. Miiller, Etrusker, abth. ii. s. 162-178. It would appeal 

 that, in accordance with the very complicated Etruscan augur-theory, 

 a distinction was made between the " soft reminding lightnings propelled 

 by Jupiter by his own independent power, and the violent electrical 

 means of chastisement which he could only send forth in obedience to 

 established constitutional prescriptions, after consulting with the o:hei 

 twelve gods" (Seneca, Nat. Qucest., ii. p. 41). 



